17. The Mummy (1932) and 18. Dracula is not Dead (2017)
Saturday, 14 November 2020 21:07![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
strange_complexI haven't been watching very many films recently, as I have simply been too busy, but at least that means it isn't too big an undertaking to catch up on the reviews.
17. The Mummy (1932), dir. Karl Freund
I've seen this one before (LJ / DW), and indeedlady_lugosi1313 and I followed it up by working our way through the whole of the Universal Mummy series - an enterprise which I would highly recommend. Its great and all the things I mentioned in my first review still very much impress on a second viewing - the well-informed and indeed cutting-edge for the time treatment of archaeological issues, the agency of the main female character, the striking use of deliberately vintage-looking film footage to show the past in a vision and the amazing ending in which Imhotep is destroyed via the power of a pagan goddess. But maybe I didn't say enough about Boris Karloff's performance last time, except to comment on his pleasingly malevolent delivery of the dialogue. That goes together with some excellent eye acting - shifty glances and menacing stares which are ably enhanced by good lighting and close framing - as well as a stiff gait and some chunky lifts which helped him to look taller than everyone else in the film despite only actually being 5'11". Like all the best monsters, Imhotep also has a complexity which Karloff brings out well, especially when speaking dialogue about how he loves Helen Grosvenor for her soul, not her body. Synchro-watching this time with lady_lugosi1313, we agreed that if we had to choose one or the other of them, he would be a better option than sappy tedious Frank, the human love interest played by the same guy as Jonathan Harker in Dracula, who does precisely nothing helpful or interesting throughout the entire film.
18. Dracula is not Dead (2017), dir. Luizo Vega
This was screened as part of this year's IVFAF, which I went to IRL last year (LJ / DW). I didn't get to engage with it very much this year, because the first of its two days clashed with the academic conference I spoke at recently, and after all that intensive academic Zooming the last thing I wanted was more of the same on the second day. However, by the evening I did feel more or less up to staring at vampire-related stuff streamed to my telly, and as this was the only full-length film I could find in that timeslot which sounded interesting (on the basis of this trailer and this article), I went for it. It is basically a series of vignettes loosely tied together into a story by our hostess, Vampira (Mariana Genesio Pena), who explains what is going on between the various vampy characters we see. The primary aesthetic is a cross between a fetish fashion shoot and an industrial music video, though it's generally experimental and plays around with various techniques - e.g. some sections are filmed in the style of silent film. The 'plot' (such as it is) is that Dracula, who dominates the Paris fetish club scene along with his lover Lilith, is dying for want of virgin blood in this modern world, but I have to say I find that whole premise rather tiresome. I also wasn't wild about the sequence in which Dracula hears of the existence of one last remaining virgin, Lucy, whom we see bathing erotically in a lake, and who is then 'saved' from Dracula's bite by Van Helsing pursuing her through the bushes and basically raping her. On a charitable reading it might have been meant to make us reconsider the idealisation of virginity and our notions of heroism, but I am not convinced the director's thinking was anything like that sophisticated. Still, Vampira the hostess, who happens to be trans, was absolutely great. Her sassy, worldly, gossipy persona will be what stays with me from this film the most.
17. The Mummy (1932), dir. Karl Freund
I've seen this one before (LJ / DW), and indeed
lady_lugosi1313 and I followed it up by working our way through the whole of the Universal Mummy series - an enterprise which I would highly recommend. Its great and all the things I mentioned in my first review still very much impress on a second viewing - the well-informed and indeed cutting-edge for the time treatment of archaeological issues, the agency of the main female character, the striking use of deliberately vintage-looking film footage to show the past in a vision and the amazing ending in which Imhotep is destroyed via the power of a pagan goddess. But maybe I didn't say enough about Boris Karloff's performance last time, except to comment on his pleasingly malevolent delivery of the dialogue. That goes together with some excellent eye acting - shifty glances and menacing stares which are ably enhanced by good lighting and close framing - as well as a stiff gait and some chunky lifts which helped him to look taller than everyone else in the film despite only actually being 5'11". Like all the best monsters, Imhotep also has a complexity which Karloff brings out well, especially when speaking dialogue about how he loves Helen Grosvenor for her soul, not her body. Synchro-watching this time with lady_lugosi1313, we agreed that if we had to choose one or the other of them, he would be a better option than sappy tedious Frank, the human love interest played by the same guy as Jonathan Harker in Dracula, who does precisely nothing helpful or interesting throughout the entire film.18. Dracula is not Dead (2017), dir. Luizo Vega
This was screened as part of this year's IVFAF, which I went to IRL last year (LJ / DW). I didn't get to engage with it very much this year, because the first of its two days clashed with the academic conference I spoke at recently, and after all that intensive academic Zooming the last thing I wanted was more of the same on the second day. However, by the evening I did feel more or less up to staring at vampire-related stuff streamed to my telly, and as this was the only full-length film I could find in that timeslot which sounded interesting (on the basis of this trailer and this article), I went for it. It is basically a series of vignettes loosely tied together into a story by our hostess, Vampira (Mariana Genesio Pena), who explains what is going on between the various vampy characters we see. The primary aesthetic is a cross between a fetish fashion shoot and an industrial music video, though it's generally experimental and plays around with various techniques - e.g. some sections are filmed in the style of silent film. The 'plot' (such as it is) is that Dracula, who dominates the Paris fetish club scene along with his lover Lilith, is dying for want of virgin blood in this modern world, but I have to say I find that whole premise rather tiresome. I also wasn't wild about the sequence in which Dracula hears of the existence of one last remaining virgin, Lucy, whom we see bathing erotically in a lake, and who is then 'saved' from Dracula's bite by Van Helsing pursuing her through the bushes and basically raping her. On a charitable reading it might have been meant to make us reconsider the idealisation of virginity and our notions of heroism, but I am not convinced the director's thinking was anything like that sophisticated. Still, Vampira the hostess, who happens to be trans, was absolutely great. Her sassy, worldly, gossipy persona will be what stays with me from this film the most.
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Date: Saturday, 14 November 2020 22:31 (UTC)As far as I can tell, David Manners is at his absolute least interesting in horror movies, which makes it incredibly annoying that they are his most famous roles. I've seen him be great! But not in Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Black Cat (1934), or The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935). I'd had no idea it was possible for a person to be bad at an entire genre, but here we are.
Still, Vampira the hostess, who happens to be trans, was absolutely great. Her sassy, worldly, gossipy persona will be what stays with me from this film the most.
Nice!
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Date: Sunday, 15 November 2020 00:09 (UTC)I suppose we should acknowledge in his defence that his role in all of these films is to embody straight, unthreatening normality for the likes of Lugosi and Karloff to play against. But still, I think he may have over-interpreted his brief.
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Date: Sunday, 15 November 2020 01:30 (UTC)Claude Rains is delightful and Manners is a drip!
But still, I think he may have over-interpreted his brief.
I salute his commitment and will just rewatch The Last Flight (1931) instead.
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Date: Sunday, 15 November 2020 19:00 (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, 15 November 2020 19:51 (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, 15 November 2020 22:09 (UTC)He can, actually, act: I've seen evidence in The Miracle Woman (1931), The Last Flight (1931), and Crooner (1932). He's just sort of present in Lady with a Past (1932), but there once again he's asked to be a nice young romantic lead and in consequence I've met more interesting slices of toast.
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Date: Sunday, 15 November 2020 22:21 (UTC)no subject
Date: Sunday, 15 November 2020 22:27 (UTC)no subject
Date: Monday, 16 November 2020 11:55 (UTC)I know that, say, Nosferatu and at least many Lugosi movies are accounted cinematic classics. Would you say that horror movies were not considered marginal to moviemaking in general in the period-- just another way to make Grand Spectacle?
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Date: Monday, 16 November 2020 22:20 (UTC)As for how these films were seen or categorised, I actually only learnt recently (via this book) that the term 'horror film' only emerged as a recognised genre description during the first half of the 1930s, in response to these very Universal films. So yes, you're right that at the point when they were being made, they were probably not thought of as a distinct or marginal genre in the way horror films are now - and that goes all the more so for Nosferatu in 1922. Grand Spectacle probably was indeed one framework for thinking about them - others might be melodrama, fantasy, expressionism or simply a particular kind of literary adaptation.