Horror Movies Old Movies Horror Classics 1940 to 1949 Review

Horror movies didn't get any respect, never won awards and were often scrutinized by movie censors from the Breen office who enforced the Hayes Code.  Universal Studios nearly cornered the market in the 30s and in the 40s they put out mostly formulaic sequels to Frankenstein, developed the well done sensation: The Wolfman, and cranked out 4 cheap Mummy follow-ups. There were a lot of really cheap 'b' movies cranked out by the Poverty Row studios.  They were usually more mystery and thriller than horror and when they did attempt real horror they had no money for decent special effects. Rubber bats and puppet monsters appear before my eyes!

We did get some solid Horror, mostly from Val Lewton working at RKO studios withsoon to be better known directors like Jacques Tourneur (best known perhaps for the film noir classic  Out of the Past ) and Robert Wise (Curse of the Cat People, The Body Snatcher) whose resume includes  The Set Up,  The Day the Earth Stood Still, Somebody Up There Likes Me, West Side Story, Sound of Music, The Haunting and Star Trek: The Motion Picture.   And in 1944  audiences could have seen one of the best ghost stories ever filmed: The Uninvited.  

Studios continued to do well with Musicals, comedies, watered down literary adaptations and melodramas but by the end of the decade.. a threat that would eventually topple the mighty moguls, destroy the studio system as it was known, and change the entertainment business forever - -would appear on the horizon.  TELEVISION. On the other hand  it was on television that most of the early horror movies found their audiences who embraced the nearly forgotten, less than prestigious genre.  And it would be the horror film that would rescue the studios in the 50s, and get them out of the slump of the 80s.

Now a brief look at the better horror films of the 1940s  order of the year they were released.

The Ghost Breakers (1940)
A very good haunted house type comedy with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard. They were a hit with The Cat and the Canary and they are even better here. Hope and his buddy hide out from gangsters by going to Cuba where Goddard has inherited a haunted castle. There's a zombie and a real ghost and Richard Carlson and Anthony Quinn show up too. It's a lotta fun and was remade by Martin and Lewis as 1953's Scared Stiff.

Black Friday (1940)
This was misleadingly billed as another Karloff/Lugosi film. Lugosi and Karloff have no scenes together and Lugosi doesn't last very long. The real star is the now forgotten Stanley Ridges. Karloff gives him part of a gangster's brain and under hypnosis Stanley goes after gangster Lugosi and some of his men. It's barely above average, but somewhat interesting in how this plot was recycled and resurrected in various versions of 'Donovan's Brain' for the next thirty of so years. Originally Lugosi was supposed to play Karloff's role and Karloff was originally supposed to have Stanley Ridges role.  Some notoriety at the time occurred when reports that Lugosi was put under hypnosis to play his role. Lugosi later denied this happened, but others have insisted it did happen.

Mummy's Hand, The (1940) ; Mummy's Tomb, The (1942); Mummy's Ghost, The (1944);. Mummy's Curse, The (1944)
For those who just need to know. The Mummy's Hand stars Tom Tyler under the bandages, while the rest of the films star Lon Chaney Jr. as the Mummy. George Zucco is in three of the four films, he's not in The Mummy's Curse-the worst of them all which features a lot of footage from the previous films. The best is probably the third one- The Mummy's Ghost, because it's got a faster moving pace and John Carradine. So the next time there's a marathon of these on the tube and you have nothing better to do... have at it. If you're in the mood three of them are kinda fun. None of them are scary, or particularly well done.

The Wolf Man (1941)
Horror and pathos mix pretty well in this story of Larry Talbot who's bitten by a gypsy werewolf and cursed to become a man/wolf with an animal desire to kill what he loves most when the moon is full and the wolfsbane blooms. A fine cast of supporting characters (including Bela Lugosi) help make this a delightful MONSTER classic.

Man Made Monster (1941)
A low-brow classic. Lon Chaney Jr, on a roll after The Wolf Man, plays a circus performer who does tricks with electricity. Mad doctor Lionel Atwill turns nice guy Lon into a zombie like killer. He's caught and electrocuted but that just really pisses him off. This idea is a re-working of Karloff's Walking Dead, Invisible Ray and Man They Could Not Hang but it is very entertaining in this slickly made version..

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
Spencer Tracy with very little make-up plays the title characters. He's mis-cast. Ingrid Bergman plays a barmaid, rather than a prostitute (like Miriam Hopkins played in the much superior 1932 version). It's well produced by MGM, and director Victor Flemmings follow up to '39's Gone with the Wind, but not nearly as good as the Barrymore or March versions.

The Devil Commands, The (1941)
This is a weird one which features some strange scenes and images you'll long remember. Boris Karloff is the mad scientist who is trying to communicate with the dead. He puts corpses in robot/diving suits sets them around a table and makes them spastically move about with electricity. He really wants to talk to his dead wife, you see. Yikes. It's odd, creepy and rather fun.

The Devil's Hand (1942/47) aka Carnival of Sinners
Maurice Tourneur, the father of Jacques Tourneur wrote and directed this atmospheric horror fantasy during the German Occupation of France ( It was called: La Main du Diable). It was released in the U.S. in 1947 /48. A poor painter sells his soul to the devil. A distorted living hand is the symbol of the contract and various owners of the hand from various time periods appear with masks and proceed to tell their tales to the painter. It's a film I strongly recommend to all fans of atmosphere and mood in film.

Cat People (1942)
Mood , atmosphere and suggestion creates a superior horror classic in Producer Val Lewton's first low budget film for RKO, brilliantly directed by Jacques Tourneur. They were subtle in presenting this very 'adult' material, and it worked beautifully. It's a horror film about the 'Fear of sex'. The 'monster' is never seen.   It was remade as an over-the-top gory sexed up Cat People by Taxi Driver writer Paul Schrader nearly 40 years later-but stick with this subtle and much superior version.

Ghost of Frankenstein, The (1942)
Logic is thrown out of the window in this the fourth of the Frankenstein series. Characters who were killed in past films show up without explanation in this one. Lon Chaney Jr. takes over as the monster and plays him like a big lumbering giant. He's dull. Lugosi as Igor is still fun though. He wants to put his brain in the big guy and will do anything to make sure that happens. A few well done scenes do not save the film. Sir Cedric Hardwicke & Lionel Atwill with Ralph Bellamy and yep, Dwight Frye!!!! But wait the series gets even more formulaic with Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). Lugosi plays the Monster (stiffly) and Chaney does the Larry Talbot/Wolf Man thing.  This leads to  1944's House of Frankenstein (1944) where Boris Karloff pretends to be George Zucco who has a travelling horror show.  John Carradine is Dracula but he's gone before Karloff finds Wolf Man and Frank. Not scary of good but kinda fun.  Glenn Strange's first appearance as the Monster. In 1945's House of Dracula, Onslow Stevens is trying to use real medicine and science to cure the Monsters of their curses.  No Karloff but entertaining if your in the right mood.

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)Val Lewton produced this slow moving, atmospheric classic for RKO. Jacques Tourneur directed from Curt Siodmak and Ardel Wray's script. If you let the film work like a haunting poem, you'll find yourself mesmerized by a very unique and special film. Nurse Dee goes to the West Indies to care for the sick wife of a plantation owner and finds much more than she bargained for including strange rituals, voodoo and Carre-four (Darby Jones) the zombie guard.

The Seventh Victim (1943) Producer Val Lewton's best film (for RKO) is directed by Mark Robson, and written by Dewitt Bodeen and Charles O'Neal. There's a satanic cult in New York's Greenwich village which needs to kill one of it's former members. Her sister arrives and finds an apartment furnished with just a noose and a chair. There's a restaurant called Dante's, a shower scene which will surprise you, and plenty of dark foreboding in this atmospheric and quite grim story. Tom Conway, Kim Hunter and Hugh (Mr Cleaver) Beaumont star in one of the finest classic horror films ever made. An inspriation for Rosemary's Baby.

The Lady and the Monster (1944) Republic pictures occassionally made horror films in between their cheap serials and westerns. Here's a pretty decent one .Erich von Stroheim is the doctor who keeps the brain of a dead gangster alive. The brain takes over lab assistant Richard Arlen and makes him kill the gangster's enemies. Not particularly scary, but fun. (Don't confuse this one with 1940's Monster and the Girl which is a human brain gets put into a man in a gorilla suit gorilla and seeks revenge kind of movie).

The Uninvited (1944)
This serious, straightforward, haunted house/ghost story was unique in 1944 and in fact few serious haunted house films were made until 1963's The Haunting. Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey rent a haunted house on an English Coast. They get a young medium to try and exorcise the spirit. It's a well made ghost story and many consider it one of the best..

Bluebeard (1944)
Cult director Edgar Ulmer's version isn't particularly noteworthy except that it has one of
John Carradine's finest performances. Carradine was actually a very able and talented actor and you can see evidence of it right here as he plays Gaston Morel a puppeteer in 19th century Paris who kills women.

Curse of the Cat People (1944)
This Val Lewton produced (for RKO) film has nothing to do with the original movie. It's a ghost story/fantasy and though a well made, atmospheric film, isn't much of a horror film either. Still it's certainly worth seeing. A young girl , sees the beautiful ghost of her father's first wife (Simone Simon). Co-directed by Robert Wise and Gunther V. Fritsch.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
Splendid version of Oscar Wilde's novel about the handsome wealthy Londoner who stays young while his portrait ages. George Sanders nearly steals the picture as Dorian's cynical friend. It's mostly in black and white with a few color sequences and also stars Angela Lansbury, Donna Reed, and Peter Lawford.

The Body Snatcher (1945)
Val Lewton produced this classic for RKO based on Robert Louis Stevenson's short story. It was the last film to team Karloff and Lugosi together. Lugosi has a small role as a simple minded would-be- black-mailing servant. Karloff plays Gray, a cab driver who supplies cadavers for medical experiments to Dr. Macfarlane (Henry Daniels). The ending still packs a punch. Wonderfully atmospheric, a tight well written script, well directed by Robert Wise (!) and superior acting from Karloff and Daniels. (Burke and Hare)

Dead of Night (1945)
Everything from t.v.'s Twilight Zone to comic books to the anthology films like Tales from The Crypt and Creepshow owe a huge debt to this grandfather of all horror anthologies and still one of the very best. 4 directors (perhaps you know of Charles Crichton) worked on this English film produced and distributed by Universal. There's a strong story that links everything in the film together. The best of the stories features Michael Redgrave as a deranged ventriloquist (you'll see how this sequence influenced Psycho years later). There's a Christmas ghost story, a mirror that is haunted, an ominous waiting hearse, and a rather silly ghost on a golf course. Don't miss this gem.

Beast with Five Fingers, The (1946)
The film features that remarkable scene with the disembodied hands coming after a terrified Peter Lorre. If you never saw it before, it might appear quite silly but it was the stuff of nightmares when I was a kid. .  It's a twist on Hands of Orloc and Mad Love from previous decades.  The famous scene was co-directed by Bunnuel. It's the last good, pure horror film until the mid-50's. It stars Robert Alda (Alan's father), features Victor Francen (as the dead pianist) and J. Carrol Naish as a police captain.

Bedlam (1946)
Bedlam was the final low budget horror type film Val Lewton made for RKO pictures. It remains an interesting movie mainly for it's clever ideas, more than anything else. There's not a lot of action or horror in the film, but I particularly loved the scene where an inmate is judged insane because he invented the motion pictures. There is an interesting story, and some memorable characters including Boris Karloff who plays the sadistic ruler of an English insane assylum. Set in the late 1700's the film ws inspired by the engravings of William Hogarth. Certainly worth a look.

Flying Serpent, The (1946)
It's got the exact same plot as The Devil Bat (the Lugosi cheapie) but the advantage of plot elements that will be particularly interesting to the fans of Larry Cohens cult classic 'Q'. This is a 'baaad' movie with an over the top and campy performance from George Zucco. He plays a demented archeologist who uses Quetzalcoatl, the ancient Aztec Bird/God to murder anyone he doesn't like. He does this by placing one of the bird's feather on his intended victims. Soon the cheap puppet on a wire that's supposed to be a ferocious bird/god attacks and kills the person who's got its feather. An almost fun camp classic that 'Q' fans will none-the-less want to see.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
A truly remarkable mixture of horror and comedy resulted from some of the best Abbott and Costello bits (Hold that Ghost) blended onto a bedroom farce structure to support most of the Universal Monsters- - Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, and a final gag using Vincent Price. Although none of it was new, the blending of the genres and well seasoned comedy routines was never done better. One of the reasons it works so well is because the Monsters played it straight as if they were in House of Dracula/Frankenstein Part 2, while Abbott and Costello hammed it up.
Lon Chaney Jr (in one of his best performances), Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange were the monsters. Karloff would join Abbot and Costello in Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff the following year and in A and C Meet Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (a much lesser effort) in 1953.