BEDLAM

Mark Robson, 1946

Starring: Boris Karloff, Anna Lee, Billy House

Val Lewton’s final film that can loosely be described as a horror movie (he made two romantic comedies and a Western before dying of a heart attack in the early ‘50s), Bedlam is one of his lesser efforts, but is still an interesting attempt to blend horror, suspense, and historical drama. Based on artist William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, this series of 12 incredibly detailed paintings charts the rise and fall of Tom Rakewell, the heir of a wealthy merchant who travels to London, blows his money on drinking, gambling, and prostitutes, and winds up first in jail and finally in Bedlam, the nickname for Bethlem Hospital for the insane. The eighth and final panel (as seen above) is what specifically inspired the film. 

Bethlem was a real hospital founded in London in 1247 by King Henry III. It is Europe’s oldest institution dedicated to the study and treatment of mental illness, though for many years it was associated with the incredibly poor treatment its patients received and filthy conditions. Lewton’s film concerns a young courtesan, Nell (Anna Lee), who becomes aware of the treatment of the Bedlam patients by their apothecary general, Master Sims (Karloff) and is determined to help. Her meddling begins with her beneficiary, Lord Mortimer. Mortimer loses patience with her when she rebukes him for his indifference and he revokes his financial support. Determined to carry on, Nell asks a local politician for help, but Sims has other ideas. With Mortimer’s support, he has Nell committed to Bedlam for "moral depravity." Though at first terrified and repulsed by the inmates, she learns to help them and eventually turns them agains Sims. 

Though Bedlam has some wonderful cinematography, courtesy of one of Lewton’s regular collaborators, Nicholas Musuraca, it will probably not be of interest to most horror fans. Though often described along with Lewton’s many excellent genre films, this is really a historical drama and morality tale with some dark and violent undertones. There are good performances all around, particularly from Karloff, Anna Lee (The Ghost and Mrs. Muir), Billy House as Lord Mortimer, and Richard Fraser as Nell’s Quaker friend. The film is also awash with excellent side characters and bit parts. The script is smart and literary, and is nearly drowning in references. There is fine direction from one of Lewton’s main collaborators, Mark Robson, who manages to include several excellent suspense scenes and hint at the dark nature of what is happening to the prisoners at Bedlam, things Lewton could not show due to the Production Code (such as sexual molestation). One of the finest scenes of the film involves Sims covering an asylum boy in gold paint and making him perform at one of Mortimer’s parties. The paint causes him to suffocate to death, which Sims calmly and coldly asserts is the boy’s own fault before throwing his corpse in the Thames.  

Despite these fine moments and the wonderfully chilling conclusion, there is simply not enough here to compare to Lewton’s other films. The film does have some flaws. Most of the humor falls flat (except Karloff’s) and Nell can be an extremely grating character. Her constant sense of moral superiority is pretty tiresome and even though we are glad for the sake of the mental patients that she triumphs over Sims at the end of the film, it would be nice if someone took the wind out of her sails a little. As with The Ghost Ship and Isle of the Dead, I think this film is simply too ambitious and tries to be too many different things at once. There are some great moments of suspense and horror and these perhaps should be the emphasis of the film, but they are sadly not. The moral argument is frustrating simply because it is so obvious. 

I don’t think I can recommend Bedlam, though fans of historical drama and films set in mental institutions, as well as Karloff completists, will want to check it out. Bedlam is available on a split DVD with Isle of the Dead and as part of the must-have Val Lewton Horror Collection box set. If you do get around to watching this, be sure to check out the fascinating and informative commentary track. 

ISLE OF THE DEAD

Mark Robson, 1945

Starring: Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer, Alan Napier

“When war and tumult torment the Earth, 

the Dead are disquieted; there is frenzy in the grave.”

-Herodotus

This is not one of my favorite of Val Lewton’s series of horror films for RKO, but it is certainly one of his most interesting and ambitious. Though The Body Snatcher was technically released prior to Isle of the Dead, this was Lewton’s first collaboration with horror icon Boris Karloff. The film was delayed because Karloff needed back surgery and Lewton was unable to reunite the cast and crew, so instead filmed The Body Snatcher in the interim. Though initially reluctant to work with Karloff - he assumed, correctly, that hiring the actor was a stunt by RKO to piggyback on the success of his films with Universal - the two men become close friends and successful creative partners. Karloff believed Lewton revived his career and allowed him to make serious horror films instead of forcing him into increasingly gimmicky, make up-focused roles as Universal was doing. Though his performance in The Body Snatcher is perhaps the finest in his career, he gives a good turn here as an increasingly paranoid Greek general. 

Karloff stars as General Pherides, a commander in the First Balkan War of 1912. Along with a young war correspondent, Pherides travels to a nearby island to visit the grave of his wife, but orders the island quarantined when a plague breaks out. The small group begins to die one at a time, but an old woman on the island thinks something more sinister than the plague is responsible. She believes a young nursemaid is a vorvolakas (also known as a vrykolakas), a blood-drinking, vampiric being of Mediterranean or Slavic legend. When Pherides begins to believe the old woman, the young girl’s life is in danger, as is everyone on the island. 

The script, written by Lewton and a regular collaborator, Ardel Wray, was inspired by Arnold Böcklin’s disturbing painting Isle of the Dead (pictured above). It was initially going to be an adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu’s famous lesbian vampire tale, Carmilla, and shades of this remain in the script. As with all of Lewton’s films, style is the main objective. Though Mark Robson made a number of other interesting and beautifully shot, noirish films with Lewton, this is unfortunately his darkest. Some of the stark, nighttime or indoor scenes of Lewton’s masterpieces like The Seventh Victim and Cat People are filled with beautiful chiaroscuro, but Isle of the Dead is plunged into almost total darkness and it is occasionally difficult to tell what is happening. 

Isle of the Dead is deeply flawed and often seems confused about its larger aims. Though the film raises questions about the power of beliefs and tradition, of fear and desperation, it fails to follow through on anything more than a perfunctory examination. Though the script utterly resists following a formula, sometimes to its benefit, it frequently gets caught up with twists and turns that lead nowhere. As far as menace and scares, several scenes are set up but soon fizzle out. For example, when Karloff visits his wife’s grave early in the film, it is empty and desecrated, but this disturbing image is quickly forgotten. The most successful scene involves a woman being buried alive and horrifically clawing her way out. 

Though Karloff is always excellent and gives a good performance as the icy, conflicted General, most of the other characters are simply too weak to be interesting. As a group, they should feel the pressure of enforced quarantine on a tiny island, but seem too nonchalant and ignore the fact that they are supposed to be isolating themselves from other people to keep the plague away. Next to Karloff, the most interesting characters are, unsurprisingly for Lewton, the women. Ellen Drew’s lovely young nursemaid accused of being a vampire has a compelling dilemma and her patient (Katherine Emery) turns out to be much more than she seems. The other men are difficult to watch. Marc Cramer is incredibly irritating as the young male lead and Jason Robards Sr is somewhat pointless as a man who prays to Greek pagan gods. 

Overall I would recommend Isle of the Dead, even if you only get around to renting it. Like Lewton’s masterpiece The Seventh Victim, death haunts nearly every frame of this film. Cerberus looms large over the proceedings, often literally in the form of a cemetery statue. It is also one of Lewton’s few works to reference WWII, which was underway during all of his films. War, disease, superstition, desperation, and madness push the film toward its impressive conclusion. Isle of the Dead is available on a split disc with Karloff and Lewton’s final film together, Bedlam. You can also find it as part of the excellent Val Lewton Horror Collection box set. 

THE BODY SNATCHER

Robert Wise, 1945

Starring: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell, Edith Atwater, Russell Wade

Val Lewton’s first film with horror icon Boris Karloff would begin a three-film relationship between the producer and actor, though this remains their finest work together and is possibly the best performance of Karloff’s career. Based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story of the same name, this is one of the first films that Lewton got a writing credit for, even though he had a hand in writing drafts of all of the films he produced. He added an element of realism to the story by including numerous details about real body snatchers William Burke and William Hare who first stole corpses and then begin murdering for profit to sell the bodies to Dr. Robert Knox, who used them for his anatomy classes at the Edinburgh medical college. 

The Body Snatcher is set in the late 1800s in Edinburgh, a city that is still recovering from the crimes of Burke and Hare. A local medical student, Donald Fettes, quits medical school because his family can no longer afford it, but his mentor, Dr. MacFarlane recognizes his potential and takes him on as an assistant so that he can continue school. They are visited by Mrs. Marsh, whose young daughter is paralyzed. Mrs. Marsh believes that only Dr. MacFarlane can save Georgina, her daughter, with an operation. MacFarlane claims that he only teaches and no longer operates and sends the devastated woman away. Fettes must convince him to change his mind. Soon after, MacFarlane reveals to Fettes that he regularly has corpses delivered to perform experimental surgery on them and that not all of these corpses come through strictly legal channels. Enter John Gray, a local cabman who is more than he seems and has a very unhealthy relationship with MacFarlane, both business and personal. 

This is the final film to feature Karloff and Lugosi together, though Lugosi is barely recognizable in the small role of Joseph, MacFarlane’s servant. Years of alcohol and drug abuse and likely the disappointments of a failing career have not treated him well and he looks far more aged than Karloff here. (In reality, Karloff was only five years younger.) The scene where Joseph confronts Gray and attempts to blackmail him is the finest scene in the film, the most explosively violent, and perfectly illustrates Karloff’s excellence. He is absolutely the reason to see The Body Snatcher and gives a very nuanced performance, ranging between menacing, soulless, murderous and kind, charismatic, and humorous. Henry Daniell also gives a good performance as the slimy, unlikable protagonist, Dr. MacFarlane. As with nearly all of Lewton’s films, the villain is humanized, but in this case, both MacFarlane and Gray are on equal playing fields: morally gray, willing to do anything for money or reputation. 

Gray’s humanity, though there is precious little of it, is exposed in his treatment of both the innocent Fettes and the handicapped little girl. He holds her up to pet his horse, which gives her the motivation to stand later in the film, after she finally gets her operation. I don’t believe that Lewton is making a statement about the enduring humanity of men, rather it seems to be a cynical, obscure joke. MacFarlane’s only humanity is shown when he has private moments with housekeeper (Edith Atwater), who is secretly his wife. These are quickly dashed when we realize that he has kept their relationship secret for years because he is more concerned with his professional reputation than her feelings. 

The only real human, feeling characters are unfortunately two-dimensional and hard to sympathize with. Fettes is cloyingly naive and is afraid to act even during moments when he feels revulsion about MacFarlane and Gray’s nocturnal activities. The handicapped girl and her mother are so far removed from the proceedings that they are utterly unbelievable and almost annoying. 

There are some excellent scenes, but overall moments of the film lag, particularly when we are stuck with Fettes. But if you are familiar with Lewton's earlier masterpieces, story and acting are only two elements of his excellent films. Though much of The Body Snatchers takes place indoors, there are some excellent sets and Lewton’s typically wonderful visuals. Lewton takes a break from the noir-like nighttime sets and plenty of the film takes place in a thoroughly gloomy, fog-soaked, daytime Edinburgh. The soundscape is equally complex, focusing on moments of eerie silence and haunted by the lovely a cappella singing of a blind street girl. 

Overall this comes recommended for Karloff's unbeatable performance. It will also interest fans of classic '30s and '40s horror or anyone who enjoys historical drama mixed with their terror. The Body Snatcher is available on a single disc with I Walked With a Zombie or as part of the Val Lewton Horror Collection box set.

CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE

Gunther von Frisch, Robert Wise, 1944

Starring: Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane Randolph, Ann Carter

Due to the success of Cat People, Val Lewton was forced by RKO to make a sequel. Though many of the same actors (and corresponding characters) returned, this is a sequel in name only. Anyone expecting Cat People 2 or a menacing, psychological horror film with supernatural undertones will be suitably baffled, which is a shame, because Curse of the Cat People is a melancholy, imaginative film worthy of multiple viewings.

Oliver and Alice Reed, the surviving couple from Cat People, are married and have a young daughter, Amy. She is an imaginative loner, playing alone and making up complex stories. While Alice dotes on her, Oliver punishes her for these flights of fancy and wishes she was more like other children. She promises her father she will make friends, which she does, though they are not quite what he had in mind. First, she wanders into an abandoned old house and meets an aged actress who befriends her. The actress is suffering from some mental plight, probably dementia, and does not believe that her adult daughter (the haunting Elizabeth Russell, who has bit parts in many of Lewton’s films) is who she claims to be. The daughter is bitter and unloved and, as a result, deeply resents her mother's relationship with Amy.

Later, Amy is visited by Irena, Oliver's dead wife from Cat People. In the first film, Irena was a tortured woman who believed that her Serbian heritage cursed her to become a were-leopard whenever aroused with anger, jealousy, or lust. Here, Irena acts like a guardian angel of sorts to Amy, showing her the wonders of childhood and encouraging her natural intelligence and creativity. Oliver, who is still haunted by his first wife's memory, is outraged when he finds out the identity of Amy's imaginary friend. He hits Amy for the first time and drives her to run away during a snowstorm. She finds her way to the actress's house and right into the arms of the woman's hateful daughter. Will Amy survive the night?

Curse of the Cat People is primarily a fairy tale that blends elements of horror and fantasy. It would make an almost perfect double feature with the beautiful Charles Laughton film, Night of the Hunter, which was produced a decade later and I can't help but feel was influenced by Curse of the Cat People. Irena’s influence on Amy, at least in Oliver’s eyes, is that Irena was consumed by her superstitions and flights of fancy and this led to paranoia, insanity, murder, and death. He fears that little Amy will go the same route simply because she is unable to anchor herself in the rational world. This is also echoed in Elizabeth Russell’s character, a woman plunged into an imaginary world because of her mother. Her mother, a famous actress suffering from dementia in the late stages of her life, refuses to accept that Russell is her daughter, driving Russell to a state of misery and near-psychosis. 

Though this film (and its references to Cat People) show the negative effect of the imagination on multiple female characters, it has an uplifting, positive ending. Oliver, so traumatized by Amy’s flight, is willing to accept his daughter for who she is and seems to concede that even though she is imaginative, she'll turn out healthy with some love and support. 

Interestingly, this was one of Robert Wise's first assignments as director. His first film was Lewton’s romantic comedy, Mademoiselle Fifi, but this was his first horror-tinged work. Though Gunter von Fritsch began directing the film, he was soon replaced by Wise, who would go on to make some of the most memorable films in a variety of genres throughout the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, including The Haunting, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Sound of Music, and many more. The set is also notable, as part of it was recycled from Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons. Lewton was notable for his ability to make a film on a very small budget and enhance the production with costumes and sets from other RKO films. 

Curse of the Cat People is totally separate from the vein of classic Universal horror popular at the time and has more in common with imaginative, later horror films like Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural or Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. Though Curse of the Cat People is less scary or surreal than either Valerie or Lemora, it is a film that plays by its own rules and is unapologetic about its use of characters from an earlier, unrelated film. If you can get past these strange circumstances, it is a lovely, haunting movie that deserves to be rescued from obscurity. You can find Curse of the Cat People on a single disc DVD from Turner with Cat People or as part of the wonderful Val Lewton Horror Collection box set.

THE GHOST SHIP

Mark Robson, 1943

Starring: Richard Dix, Russell Wade, Edith Barrett, Ben Bard

Val Lewton’s second film with director Mark Robson is also his first with an almost all male cast. Tom, a merchant marine, gets a job as the third officer aboard the ship Altair. The captain, Will Stone, is a kindly, father figure and the rest of the crew seems friendly, though things start off a little weird when Tom’s cabin is a mess because it still hasn’t been cleaned up from the death of the former third officer. When crew members begin dying, Tom suspects that the Captain is responsible and that the once kindly man has some very dark secrets. When they dock to find more crew members, Tom begins a formal inquiry against the Captain, though Tom loses and resigns his post. When Tom tries to break up an unrelated fight, he is badly beaten and the Altair’s crew members bring him back aboard for medical treatment. He is now trapped there, forced to confront Captain Stone a final time. 

Though technically written by Leo Mittler and Donald Henderson Clarke, Lewton did all the final edits and came up with the general story idea. When the film was released in theaters (it did well, despite some mixed reviews), Lewton was sued for plagiarism shortly after by two playwrights who claimed that Lewton stole most of the plot elements from a script they had submitted for review. Though Lewton said he returned the script unread, he lost the case. As a result, The Ghost Ship was removed from theaters and wasn’t available for almost 50 years, until the copyright expired and it entered the public domain in the ‘90s. This allowed it to finally be released on DVD a few years later. 

Though this is one of my least favorite Lewton films, it is still an interesting experiment in subtle, psychological terror and explores many of Lewton’s common themes. Richard Dix is fantastic as the maniacal Captain Stone, a man whose insanity is boiling just beneath the surface of a calm exterior. He is never portrayed as truly mad or unhinged and his humanity is always apparent. Rather, Stone has slowly lost his grasp on reality because of all the years spent in isolation on a ship. The only female character in the film, Stone’s fiancee (Edith Barrett, another Lewton regular), finally obtains a divorce and tells Stone that they can now really be together. He rejects her and goes back to the ship, saying that it is too late. All the time that Stone spends alone on the ship with an entirely male crew is presented as being perverse in some way, as warping Stone, and some critics read this as a homosexual subtext. The film raises an issue also explored in other Lewton films - the effect of a healthy relationship on a person’s life. Lewton’s most miserable, isolated characters all suffer from failed relationships, divorce, infidelity, falling in love with the wrong person. Captain Stone has spent his life isolated on a ship and in love with a woman who was married to someone else. 

The most interesting relationship in the film is the father-son bond that begins to form between Stone and Tom (Russell Wade, who would go on to have a similar relationship in The Body Snatcher). Their discussions about the importance of command, authority, and responsibility provide a philosophical depth to the proceedings. We learn that Stone kills because he believes he has the authority and is somewhat power mad with the thought of so many men’s lives in his hands. It is clear that the young, promising, and naive Tom is following in Stone’s career footsteps and has the potential to follow in his psychological footsteps as well. 

Part of the reason Lewton made The Ghost Ship is because RKO wanted to capitalize on the giant ship set built for another film. Like most of Lewton’s films, the dreary, claustrophobic set and stark cinematography from regular collaborator Nicholas Musuraca is extremely effective. Director Mark Robson was fresh off of editing the Orson Welles film Journey into Fear and there are certainly similarities between the two to The Ghost Ship’s great benefit. There are some horror undertones, namely a terrifying scene with a giant, murderous cargo hook swinging dangerously around the boat like some kind of otherworldly creature, and one of the mute crewmen (Skelton Knaggs) does a gothic-influenced voice over for much of the film. 

I’m not sure if I can recommend The Ghost Ship, but anyone who enjoys lower key psychological thrillers will want to check it out. Just don’t go in with the expectations that there are ghosts, a haunted ship, pirates, or anything that the somewhat lurid title implies. The acting and directing are all excellent, but the ending is a bit abrupt and the pace may be a little slow and uneventful for contemporary audiences. Possibly because of his lack of compelling female characters with any serious screen time, the characters are also not as complex or as well developed as in Lewton’s best films. Like some of Lewton’s other films from this period, this is a sort of twist on the conventional murder mystery and is considerably more morbid than other films of this type from the period. The Ghost Ship is available on DVD with Lewton’s superior The Leopard Man. It is also part of the excellent Val Lewton Horror Collection box set. 

THE LEOPARD MAN

Jacques Tourneur, 1943

Starring: Dennis O’Keefe, Margo, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell 

“Time is strange. A moment can be as short as a breath or as long as eternity.”

Based on noir author Cornell Woolrich’s novel Black Alibi, Jacques Tourneur and Val Lewton’s final film together is a disturbing meditation on death and is one of the first American films to portray a serial killer. In a club at a small town in New Mexico, a performer named Kiki is given a leopard by her manager Jerry as part of a publicity stunt. Wanting to keep all the attention for herself, a rival performer Clo-Clo frightens the animal and it runs off into the night. Another performer, the cat’s owner, Charlie How-Come, the “Leopard Man,” is upset that his tame, trained leopard is lost and wants money from Jerry. A young girl is soon mauled to death when her mother sends her out at night for groceries and Jerry, Kiki, and Charlie all feel guilty about the cat. Another young woman is killed while secretly meeting her boyfriend at a cemetery, and a group is formed to hunt down the cat, though they begin to have other suspicions. When Clo-Clo is killed, Jerry, Kiki, and the police have finally realized that they are looking for a human murderer only imitating the leopard. 

One of Lewton and Tourneur’s most difficult and interesting films, this maintains some of the themes of their best work. Sexual repression, the devastating effect of isolation, and, most of all, death, represented in the three episodic killings of local hispanic women. Unlike later serial killer films (but similar to Hitchcock’s The Lodger), the murders are not about the madness or sexual psychosis of an individual, they are about the psychosis of an entire community. While Cat People began with a couple and I Walk With a Zombie moved to a family unit, Leopard Man extends outward to a small community. Guilt and responsibility do not really lie with the killer, but with everyone. Many of the deaths occur because characters simply made the wrong decisions, decisions lacking in feeling, warmth, and love. The two protagonists, if this film really has any, Jerry and Kiki, openly resist compassion and sympathy for much of the film. They follow a typical ‘40s detective trope, where a man and a woman falling in love investigate a crime. Though they mostly fail as investigators and their romance is lukewarm, they represent problems that many of the other characters have. In another example, the first victim is sent out to buy cornmeal by her mother, who does not care that her daughter is afraid of the dark and that she’s sending a young girl out alone late at night. Her daughter screams in terror at the door and she taunts her, not knowing that real violence is about to unfold. 

Also unlike later slasher movies and serial killer films, Leopard Man focuses on the victims, providing intimate, but brief snapshots of the three women and their lives. This tendency to jump back and forth between characters throughout the film somewhat weakens the plot, but is a unique and interesting examination of small town murder. Like Lewton’s earlier films, there is a certain obsession with foreignness and with independent female characters. In Cat People, Irena is Serbian and is transfixed by the supersititions of her homeland. In I Walked With a Zombie, Betsy moves to the Caribbean and is immersed in local voodoo beliefs, which she begins to take seriously despite her medical training and profession. Though superstition is absent from Leopard Man, the community is a mingling of white and hispanic Americans. Like the earlier two, this is also a film about women trying to find their way in the world and, like the earlier Irena and Betsy, the female characters are much more developed and interesting than their male counterparts. 

As always, Tourneur’s use of noir-like visuals and Robert de Grasse’s haunting cinematography makes this a must-see film, but here Tourneur also plays with sound, creating a threatening landscape in nearly every frame. The use of silence, in particular, is masterful, particularly when it is partnered with the all consuming blackness of Tourneur’s shadowed spaces within the film. There are some impressive set pieces, namely the first death scene, when a young girl is stalked and killed right at her own front door. Her mother is cruelly teasing her and will not let her in, but she is made to regret her actions when her daughter’s blood pools under the door.

A number of other critics have already written about how this essentially fails as a murder mystery. On the surface level, this is a horror-mystery and there are a number of red herrings and non-sequitors throughout the film, including a hefty reliance on the “Lewton Bus,” where you think a character is about to be attacked or killed, but the scene is interrupted with some kind of benign surprise instead. If you pay the least bit of attention and have a basic familiarity with murder mysteries, it will become quickly apparent who the killer is. But I don’t think this is truly a mystery. The film’s power does not lie in discovering the identity of the killer, it is about the effect of the crimes on the community. This is one of the first true blends of horror and noir and is more about mood and tone than unraveling a mystery. 

Leopard Man is plagued by somewhat some average performances from leads Jean Brooks and Dennis O’Keefe. Dynamite, the black leopard from Cat People, is used to great effect, though it’s a shame that RKO forced Lewton and Tourneur to use the deceptive title, Leopard Man, which tricked audiences into thinking that this would be another riff on The Wolf Man. 

This is one of my favorite Lewton films and comes highly recommended, though like all his works, it is an acquired taste. Anyone who loves early serial killer films like Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, Psycho (on which this and Lewton’s next film, The Seventh Victim was surely an influence) or Nicholas Ray’s masterful horror-tinged noir In a Lonely Place, will want to seek this out. Leopard Man is available as part of a split disc with the lesser Ghost Ship, also the study of murder and a diseased mind, or in the excellent Val Lewton Horror Collection box set.