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Post by topbilled on Oct 1, 2023 14:06:13 GMT
This month:
October 7: CAT PEOPLE (1942)
October 14: THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943)
October 21: I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)
October 28: ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945)
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Post by topbilled on Oct 7, 2023 16:31:56 GMT
Essential: CAT PEOPLE (1942)
TopBilled:
 Afraid of salvation?
The film’s story is meticulously told, and it is also very slow which means modern audiences may struggle to stay with it. The incredibly leisure way events unfold deliberately delays key moments, or else altogether omits some of them (such as the young couple consummating their marriage), which means it will be frustrating for some viewers. But because its pace is so drawn out, it has the luxury of commenting at length about the characters’ situation and building suspense, even if a lot of it seems belabored and repetitious. The slowest most tedious scenes involve the new husband (Kent Smith) in his office with his pretty female coworker (Jane Randolph). She gets about as much screen time as the star, Simone Simon, who is cast as the troubled bride. When there aren’t monotonous scenes at the office, there are monotonous scenes at home in Simon’s rented apartment. This dwelling is repurposed with a famous staircase from THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. After Smith weds Simon, he never suggests moving to his own place, since one guesses there wasn’t adequate budget to build another set of living quarters. In fact the other main set concerns a hotel where Randolph resides, complete with a swimming pool that invites danger. Oh, and there is also a modest outdoor zoo-like set with cages for animals which are probably leftover from the Xanadu set of another RKO production, CITIZEN KANE.Some of the scary nonsense involves hokum presented as folklore about Simon’s east European village. These are tales, or should I say tails, she believes too dearly, which ultimately become her undoing. There is also some gibberish about her psychological ailments ludicrously diagnosed by a doctor (Tom Conway) who thinks curing her can occur by making love to her. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if producer Val Lewton, screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen and director Jacques Tourneur were trying to convince us this desirable woman was sexually timid and just afraid of phallic salvation…or if a bunch of this was code for repressed lesbianism.The bit right after the wedding where Simon meets a woman at the restaurant who appears like a cat and calls her sister, suggests homoerotic vibes. Then we get “necessary” dialogue about evil, assuming Simon’s character is somehow possessed. If she’s dealing with lesbian tendencies, we are led to believe she is in some way mentally ill and should be committed to an institution. The panther that escapes from the zoo seems half real, half mythical…as if Lewton and his team couldn’t decide how concrete or abstract this symbol of repressed sexuality and pent up wildness was meant to be regarded. I suppose it did not matter most of the time since a lot of the suspenseful mumbo jumbo could easily be coated over by arty shadows and unsettling angles– and an occasional jump scare– to keep us awake and make us think we had actually watched something meaningful and classic.***Jlewis:
Jacques Tourneur, who previously did some wonderful one and two reel short films for MGM in their classic “Crime Does Not Pay” and other series, directed this classic, which was remade in 1981 starring Nastassja Kinski and dramatically pumped up in sexual heat to please changing audience tastes. I guess modern viewers may consider this version rather quaint (relating felines to women and not men is odd and likely sexist), but it pleases with unique cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca. It was the first of eleven influential spooks that producer Val Newton provided RKO as wartime hokum. Curiously, just one of his productions, BEDLAM, was filmed after the war before studio leadership changed and Newton’s own failing health ended them rather abruptly.Comparing and contrasting these to Universal’s far more durable horror franchises is interesting, especially since Boris Karloff appeared in a trio of them. While the other studio focused more of monsters and diabolical humans (from Frankenstein’s monster to Dracula, the Wolf Man to the Creature from the Black Lagoon), these are more focused on troubled human psychology with humans becoming their own worst enemies rather than facing enemies from elsewhere. Thus, the RKO product more closely resembles the horror genres of the 21st century in this regard, being more everyday realistic rather than fantasy oriented. Cinematography in all these is excellent and influential on another genre that defined the 1940s: the detective who-done-it and its distinctive “film noir” look, with the use of shadow adding to the mysteries and troubled states of mind.Another key difference between the two studios is that RKO was much more serious and bleak in tone in regard to the stories. While a few of Universal’s can be equally bleak, more of them display offbeat comic elements to lighten up the horror and this adds much to their cult appeal. Not that I would ever expect something like CAT PEOPLE to be viewed in the same lighthearted manner as, say, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN or, even more specifically, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN. CAT PEOPLE is a most enjoyable and re-watchable title, although one wonders how many characters here represent the title. Elizabeth Russell plays a curious stranger at a party who confronts our central star, Simone Simon as Irena Dubrovna, and is described by onlookers as resembling a cat but we don’t get any concrete suggestion that she and Irene are sisters of the same ancient cult.Irena comes from Serbia and tells a curious history to her new husband Oliver Reed (no relation to the movie star of later decades, being played by Kent Smith) about her being potentially descended from shape-shifting witches and warlocks driven out of a mythical land by King John who speared them when they became felines. Oliver first meets Irena at the zoo where she is sketching a black panther in a cage…a panther she later sets free due to a careless keeper who frequently leaves the cage key available for anybody to steal. Essentially this story boils down to your standard stock scenario of boy meets girl, boy loses girl and, with a minor twist, boy gains a better alternative girl to the one he actually marries. Waiting in the wings is co-worker friend Alice Moore (Jane Randolph) who respects the marriage of Oliver and Irena and does not intend to break it up. Irena is naturally jealous of her and may or may not stalk her at a nighttime swim pool and rip her robe to shreds and later stalk her and Oliver walking together.Much about Irena is left to our imagination. Is she really capable of changing into a cat when she gets emotionally volatile (not that we see her change much from her demure, sweet self on screen) or are others and she herself merely thinking that? A visit to the pet shop to exchange a pet kitten for a soon-to-be-doomed canary prompts all of the furry and feathered residents to act alarmed in Irena’s presence (much like THE BIRDS with Tippi Hedron).A fourth character is added to make our romantic triangle into a romantic rectangle. This is psychiatrist Louis Judd, played by Tom Conway in a George Sanders-ish accent and, intriguing, he is playing the exact same named character both here and in our future reviewed THE SEVENTH VICTIM despite supposedly meeting his doom in this first picture. The opening quote after the main titles is attributed to him: “Even as fog continues to lie in the valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depression in the world consciousness.” He is quite the sinner here himself. Hired by Oliver at the suggestion of Alice to help Irena get over her issues (and Irena is angry that her husband reveals her private struggles to That Other Woman), the shrink becomes rather smitten with the kitten…err…his patient. After Irena refuses to return to his sessions, he tries to take advantage of her and becomes our one human victim in the story. Was he attacked by a woman or a beast? We are never totally sure.There are a few others in our story such as Oliver and Alice’s shared boss C. R. Cooper (Jack Holt) and the careless zoo keeper (Alec Craig) but they are less important so we can stay focused on our primary four. All performances here are excellent even if Kent Smith is a bit dull and standardized compared to the others as the “always happy” Good Guy who feels compassion for a woman who is a bit…strange. Simone Simon plays Irena as a mild mannered Good Girl whom one would not expect to be strange, while Jane Randolph’s Alice is the “real deal” Good Girl we are supposed to root for in the end. As I suggest here, there is a somewhat judgmental attitude the writers have for their characters that may date this a bit, but I personally like the way they are all cast as sympathetic and easily relatable to.CAT PEOPLE is likely the best of the four titles we will be reviewing this month and, of course, is the one most often documented in movie history books due to its surprise box-office success. Released in December 1942, it sports a 1943 copyright in its opening titles and was delayed a bit in wide release to a quieter moment in the war when audiences were ready for less topical and more escapist entertainment (the California premiere being in January after New York City openings). With a final production cost of 141 thousand, it grossed 4 million in domestic markets alone and doubled that internationally. A reissue in 1952 was also very successful.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 14, 2023 21:10:18 GMT
Essential: THE SEVENTH VICTIM (1943)
TopBilled:
 Victim of the production code
Scenes were cut from this film in attempts to explain its unevenness. I think the studio realized it had a potential flop on its hands and tried to save the story by diluting the most sinister aspects of the satanic cult and by giving the cult members a religious lecture at the end.The lecture is delivered by a well-meaning psychiatrist (Tom Conway) and Greenwich Village poet (Erford Gage) who know the titular seventh victim (Jean Brooks) was brainwashed by them. Solution: confront the baddies by reciting the Lord’s Prayer. It’s one of filmdom’s more preposterous resolutions. As if a stern talk will lead them no longer into temptation. After the lecture scene, we see Brooks’ character enter a room she rented above an Italian eatery to commit suicide. RKO execs were afraid of the production code office and resulting backlash from moviegoers (some walked out during contemporary screenings before reaching the last scene), so the ending is compromised and the suicide is not shown nor is it even heard off-screen. Instead, we watch a neighbor go out for a night on the town, while Brooks meets her maker behind a closed door with a noose.Producer Val Lewton and screenwriter DeWitt Bodeen, who previously collaborated on CAT PEOPLE, weren’t thinking ahead. They would have known elements in their script would have been rejected outright by the production code office. They would have known any horror film in 1943 would have to find creative ways to subvert the code. Reliance on shadowy atmosphere and spooky music could only do so much. They would either have had to soften the horror with humor like Universal did with its similarly themed productions, or else use the horror aspects to create a thesis that supported Christian beliefs and depicted the tragedy of a life lived for Satan.Because Lewton and his screenwriter, and director Mark Robson, didn’t have the power to defy the code or get around executive studio decisions, they set in motion a project that was doomed from the start…a project that would be sacrificed at the altar of commercialism and good taste. It makes THE SEVENTH VICTIM a mess to watch, a film that neither the right nor the wrong can take joy in watching. There are still several moments that do stand out. There is one extremely ludicrous scene near the end of the movie where a female cult member (Isabel Jewell), supposedly with lesbian tendencies, goes all hysterical when Brooks’ character is being coerced into drinking a cup of poison. To say it is over the top is an understatement. I can only imagine how Miss Jewell would have done playing Gertrude with the poisonous cups in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The most important, or should I say most realistic and sympathetic, character is the one played by Kim Hunter. She’s the good school-aged sister of Brooks who spends two-thirds of the narrative trying to find out where her sister has gone. Ultimately she learns her sister joined a cult then sought help from Conway the psychiatrist.If Lewton and his associates had turned this into a story about Hunter’s own journey into evil, and the resulting peril of her being indoctrinated by Satanists then maybe, just maybe, the proceedings would have had purpose. Certainly we’d have been more invested in a character needing help from a good shrink, the police or an attractive man (Hugh Beaumont). Instead, there are way too many characters, too many abandoned plot threads and too many cliched shadows that don’t fully cover the absurd shallowness of it all.***Jlewis:
 Mark Robson directed this one, being a key editor on the previously covered CAT PEOPLE. I had seen it a while back and wasn’t terribly fond of it in comparison to the other Lewton productions but could not remember exactly why. Sluggish in its story telling and quite depressing, it is still innovative in a few respects. As with all vintage movies, TV shows, old time radio and literature of yesteryear (comics included), we have to view it through the historic lens of past society norms that may no longer apply today.There is a slightly judgmental view of troubled women on screen that echoes a male dominated world and also one at war that viewed such topics as suicide (a time when each person’s life was needed to help save other lives) far more harshly than today. Regardless, this is a great break-out vehicle for the young Kim Hunter, future star of A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH (which resembles this slightly as she plays an innocent bystander just discovering alternative realities), A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and PLANET OF THE APES. She plays Mary Gibson, a student at a convent school who leaves when she runs out of tuition funds and seeks the whereabouts of her missing sister Jaqueline (Jean Brooks), her one family contact.In New York City, she learns that Jaqueline’s partner Esther Redi (Mary Newton) has bought out the ownership of a cosmetics company they co-owned, but a former friend of hers (Isabel Jewell as Frances Fallon) is helpful, at least on an emotional support level. Also helpful is Doctor Louis Judd (Tom Conway, again as he appeared in CAT PEOPLE) who claims Jaqueline was a patient of his. Yet Mary’s first investigator contact, Irving August (Lou Lubin), is a profit seeking private detective who, in a shocking twist, is mysteriously murdered while seeking answers he was warned by sinister others not to seek.Primary love interest…and you need the traditional hetero pair-up that every Hollywood production requires…is a poet turned investigator named Gregory Ward (Hugh Beaumont of future Leave It to Beaver fame). He is her shining light (even helping her find a job as a school teacher) in this very dark unraveling of a seedy cult called the Palladists. On a more personal level, he reveals that he was the former husband of Jaqueline i.e. Mary’s brother-in-law! Not that they are still in love. Oh…and he also has a poet rival named Jason Hoag (Erford Gage). A visit to Jaqueline’s apartment reveals a noose and a chair, suggesting an attempt at killing herself and this all brings additional hints of doom and gloom. Jaqueline does reveal herself to her sister much later, after Dr. Judd gets involved, and she is quite the sight with a gothic hair-style that would certainly be trendy and fashionable today.Best feature here is the very noir-ish, full of shadows, cinematography of Nicholas Musuraca. Many of the dimly-lit indoor parlor sets remind me of such up and coming classics as LAURA and THE BIG SLEEP. Predating PSYCHO is a wonderful conversation between Mary in her shower (!?) and ex-business partner Esther who is visiting her, with Esther as the shadow outline on the curtain. This is when Esther accuses Jaqueline is accused of killing August. The Palladists preach non-violence but members mysteriously…die…if they reveal details of their secret cult. Jaqueline is requested to drink poisoned wine for her misdeeds and doesn’t in defiance, but you know this story won’t end well regardless. There are some nice melodrama scenes in the final climax and a sermon about religious “right” by Dr. Judd and Jason to the cult members which fit in well with such preaching in other wartime propaganda.Apparently additional scenes were shot but edited out due to Production Code issues and I suspect this would have been a far better movie overall had they been included. One wonders if the whole crime-does-not-pay strategy could have been overturned here and the character of Jacqueline been presented as a stronger woman in charge of her own destiny in the end. We get a key scene towards the end that hints at an alternative ending with a fellow apartment neighbor she meets who is living life to its fullest despite suffering an ominous disease. But a twist leaves this on a more unsettling note.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 21, 2023 17:03:48 GMT
Essential: I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE (1943)TopBilled:
Afraid of its own shadow?
The film has a provocative sounding title…and there are some intriguing moments…but it doesn’t quite work. One prolonged sequence with a native man using a doll to simulate voodoo power is downright laughable. It’s made even more absurd when the action cuts to a catatonic woman being lured to her death. Is that how people really die in the superstitious region of the Caribbean?Producer Val Lewton and his team borrow heavily from Jane Eyre, but why they’ve chosen to set this disturbing tale on a Caribbean island is anyone’s guess. I suppose it’s so they can subject the audience to endless stereotypes about poor island folk and substitute religious hokum for true gothic horror. There’s an obligatory heroine (Frances Dee) thrown into a situation she doesn’t fully understand. She’s a Canadian nurse who travels south to a hypnotic tropical paradise known as Saint Sebastian. Initially, she is fooled by what seems to her to be an idyllic place. Before long she realizes that the beauty of this locale is deceptive, and it's populated by a lot of depraved people. One person who may or may not be depraved is a cold-acting plantation owner (Tom Conway) who has hired the lovely nurse to function as a caregiver for his ailing wife (Christine Gordon). Meanwhile, we meet his angry half-brother (James Ellison) who drinks and sulks, then drinks and sulks some more. These siblings are meant to be polar opposites, but even if the script works towards that end, the actors’ performances do not. We’re never told why Ellison has such an attachment to Conway’s zombified wife. And later we can only surmise why he is compelled to kill her. The brothers share the same mother (Edith Barrett), who is mentioned early on…but aside from a few medical-related scenes between her and Miss Dee’s character, the mother is largely absent in the first half of the movie. She isn’t glimpsed living at the estate or interacting with her two sons until quite late into the story, which lessens the impact she has on how the family squabbles play out. The film offers a thesis about medical practice versus common wisdom, when it comes to treating the severely ill. We are left to decide just how mentally ill Conway’s wife is, and how her state of mind connects to her long-term physical maladies. The wife’s murder at the end is depicted in a shocking almost glamorous manner. It is some kind of mercy killing. However, the production code prohibits any frank discussion about euthanasia.Despite some chilly atmospheric touches, this is not a film that lives up to its potential premise. In some respects, it is afraid of its own shadow and defeats itself. ***Jlewis:
Another classic from Val Lewton, this one has enjoyed the lengthiest cult status among TV viewers decades after its initial release. This was his second, also directed by the great Jacques Tourneur but with a different cameraman, J. Roy Hunt, taking on a more “Universal” approach (visuals reminding me a bit of THE WOLF MAN two years prior). It popularized the voodoo theme of Caribbean set (with Haiti being the popular hot spot) entertainment which later was considered a bit old-hat by social activists questioning such themes as condescending and stereotyping of non-white cultures. I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE definitely shows its age but it is still fun in its own way. It enjoyed a revival of sorts in the 1970s due to a resurgence of interest in the subject matter; this being the decade of Leonard Nimoy hosting IN SEARCH OF… which covered zombies along with Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle.The story is more complicated than the others covered this month, but also involving romantic entanglements. Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is a nurse who travels from Canada (Ottawa, Ontario) to the West Indies, an undisclosed island plantation of sorts on Saint Sebastian featuring a garden statue of the arrow-tormented soul in a statue mast-head culled from an early 19th century slave-ship. The Rand family are descendants of slave owners who are a bit cursed in this multi-cultural and multi-raced community. Paul Holland (Tom Conway, whom we see in three other pictures profiled) is married to Jessica (Christine Gordon) whom Betsy is hired to assist with fellow Dr. Maxwell (James Bell) and, on occasion, by the medically inclined Mrs. Rand (Edith Barrett) as well. Jessica is quite zombie-like, merely walking around and not speaking or looking at anybody with noticeable consciousness. Paul is naturally devastated about her condition, supposedly brought about by a dramatic disease. Yet he is often at odds with his half-brother (I was a bit confused by their family relationship since they look nothing like each other, especially in the eyes) Wesley Rand (James Ellison). Wesley seems happy-go-lucky to Betsy at first (contrasting to morbid Paul whom she actually starts to fall in love with) until the conflicts of the past are revealed. Mrs. Rand is the most unusual character here, heavily involved in the voodoo culture with the “natives” whom she views in a rather antiquated colonial way, but feels she is bringing them modern medicine and better hygiene in the process. When Betsy decides to daringly bring Jessica to a voodoo ritual, at a hounfour as they are called, to help get her out of her state when shock treatment with Dr. Maxwell fails, lo and behold…Mrs. Rand is there with the natives. She secretly enjoys having control over others, including a zombie-like Carrefour (very well played by Darby Jones) who attempts to retrieve Jessica again for further ceremonies. Our family backstory unfolds in various stages. Wesley was in love with Jessica and attempted to take her away from Paul and he blames her catatonic condition on Paul. As for Jessica, there is much debate whether or not to take her to an asylum far away from the island where she is of great interest to the population there, but Mrs. Rand admits later that she herself contributed to the overall “possessing” of Jessica in a disastrous effort to maintain peace in the family. The expected bleak ending involves a still-in-love Wesley taking the Jessica with him into the here-after.Although it shows its age from a segregated period in U.S. history that was reflected in mainstream Hollywood productions, it is still noble in how many supporting roles are provided here to non-Caucasian performers. Theresa Harris is quite good as the most talkative house servant Alma, whom Betsy often needs for emotional support and gets her curious about the native cultures. Sir Lancelot is a colorful Calypso ballad singer-teller who reveals much of the family story to Betsy indirectly in verses.The film should also be praised for taking on a realistic approach to how modern society copes with racial issues stemmed from a dark past that included slavery, often overlooked in most antebellum and Civil War pictures of Hollywood’s golden age. For that time, great attempt was made by the filmmakers to showcase voodoo culture objectively and with less criticism than previous horror films and, overall, it ages…fairly well, compared to the competition.
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Post by topbilled on Oct 28, 2023 13:51:34 GMT
Essential: ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945)
TopBilled:
 Cleanup on Isle 666
This is a helluva movie. Like most Val Lewton productions, it starts with an intriguing premise…but quickly bogs down, since it’s too ambitious in its scope to be properly contained within a B-film. Despite my liking it more than other Lewton exercises in horror, I felt the story got away from its makers, and as such, it became rather unwieldy in the middle section. Because it was attempting to go off in so many directions with too many characters, it became convoluted.It starts simply with Boris Karloff playing a Greek military leader who plans to stop by a nearby island to pay respects to his late wife at her gravesite. He takes an American reporter (Marc Cramer) with him, though he doesn’t need the company or the distraction. Once they arrive on the island, Karloff and Cramer learn the deceased wife’s crypt was vandalized by locals. They hear the voice of a woman (Ellen Drew) singing at a nearby home, so they walk to the place to get answers about the vandalism. The vandalism plot point is soon dropped, and the focus shifts to all the strange people inside the house. In fact, so much attention is paid to these odd misfits that Karloff basically becomes a supporting character in this environment.The singing woman has a grudge against him, due to some taxes he’d levied on her people years ago. But even that plot point is dropped, when the focus shifts yet again, this time to a doctor (Jason Robards Sr.) who dies while treating an invalid woman (Katherine Emery), who later is buried alive and ends up walking in a catatonic state. In addition to this, there are suggestions that Miss Drew’s character is either a misunderstood temptress, a lady vampire, or both…oh, and that she may have a lesbian relationship with the invalid whom she brings medicine to in the middle of the night. As I said, the narrative splinters off in all sorts of directions to the point where we can no longer be sure which character is most important.Over all of this eerie hubbub is an umbrella story about a plague that is contaminating the region and killing off people. Supposedly a warm wind will solve the problem. A few scenes imply the plague is more mental than physical, perhaps one of Lewton’s references to homosexuality. One can never be sure, because he’s throwing so much into the mix to see what gels. Despite the more bizarre aspects of the film, there is some quality acting, particularly from Karloff and also from Helene Thimig who plays a superstitious old gal that seems to have her own unholy issues. It’s not a great film. It could have been much better. But it’s an interesting one, and for that I will give it a 6.666 out of 10. Rounded up to a 7.***Jlewis:
 Mark Robson directed both this and last week’s entry; the second to the last of Val Lewton’s classic B-horrors made for RKO. I had mixed feelings about THE SEVENTH VICTIM but I greatly enjoyed this one. It was released in September 1945 as the United States was settling down after VJ day and trying to get back to pre-war life adjustment. The nation was also getting over some of the shocks at the end of the war, such as the Holocaust, the suicide of Hitler and other Nazi higher-ups, kamikaze attacks on the Pacific front and, of course, the impact of Hiroshima (though filming here preceded it).In the opening titles, we are referenced the Greek source of goddess Aphrodite giving way to Vorvolaka and how ongoing superstitions related to them carried over into the war of 1912, the nebulous and not entirely accurate historically setting of our story. Boris Karloff plays Gen. Nikolas Pherides as a “cold” authoritarian who insists that other generals take their own life as punishment for cowardice and other sins in an isolated island setting. Yet he is sentimental of his past as his beloved wife died and was buried on this island long ago.American reporter Oliver Davis (Marc Cramer) is a visitor, reporting on the war, but they soon discover that they are not alone. Occupying a quaint villa (quaint but well furnished with food and nice furniture, canary in cage included…bringing this film full circle to CAT PEOPLE in some way) is an ensemble: archeologist Dr. Aubrecht (Jason Robards, Sr.), assistant maid Madame Kyra (Helene Thimig), Brits Mr. and Mrs. St. Aubyn (Alan Napier & Katherine Emery), a curious effeminate fellow Brit named Andrew Robbins (Skelton Knaggs) and named lovely but disliking of Pherides maiden Thea (Ellen Drew). The last of these has particular interest to Pherides after she refuses to serve him wine at dinner. Andrew doesn’t last long on screen: his character dies of the plague quickly. Then, Mr. St. Aubyn starts feeling the symptoms before he too expires, but his wife is against his burial because she is unsure if he is really dead. The fear of the disease becomes the springboard of our plot as the Colonel decides to quarantine them all. Madame Kyra is a lot of fun here as the old traditions commentator of “evil spirits” and so forth (cue references of evil Vorvolaka running amok). Dr. Drossos (Ernst Deutsch) arrives to confirm the deaths as a professional and gives the others some confidence on how good hygiene and changing weather can bring an end to the pandemic. Yet, in a curious twist of fate, he too succumbs to the disease and death. This gets Madame Kyra all the more animated in her sermonizing, conflicting with the more practical (if still cool) Pherides.Mrs. St. Aubyn becomes a much stronger character than she appeared in the beginning, protesting the way they are all kept hostage by the general “watch dog.” She appears to become the next destined victim of the island disaster, before the winds change on the island to take the disease away. One fear she expressed earlier when her husband died was that he would be buried alive…a fate she herself experiences as her coffin is put into the crypt! Screams and pounding fill the soundtrack in this most dramatic scene. Without spoiling, this is not the end of her character. At least not at first. She takes on the role of “vorvolaka” and seeks revenge.Leigh Harline composed the delirious music score here. Lots of swirling orchestration heightens the psychological breakdowns on display. This is a very bleak film but it is still captivating and a nice, melodramatic end-note to our Val Lewton foursome. Then again, I will watch practically anything starring Boris Karloff.
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