Eureka Classics Edition

Eureka out now

This Halloween season brings another Boris Karloff Universal Horror box set on Blu-ray; at least in name, though as with the set released in May, the term “horror” is applied rather loosely. It certainly qualifies for the labels of “Maniacal” and “Mayhem” though.

It’s an interesting mix of films, comprising The Invisible Ray (1936), Black Friday (1940), and The Strange Door (1951).

First up is The Invisible Ray, on Disc 1, which is probably the best of the set as a genre-spanning film. Karloff – in the last of his five films simply billed under the surname – plays scientist Dr Rukh, who has invented a means to record imagery from the stars, and then use that as a sort of way to look back in time. This is actually what you see when you look at the stars – you see them the way they looked thousands of years ago – but Rukh somehow turns it round so that he can then see Earth from that far back in the past. This enables him to prove to his detractors, such as Dr Benet (Bela Lugosi, playing the good-ish guy for a change) wrong about his theories. In the course of this, he tracks the arrival of an ancient meteor that landed in Africa, bearing a strange ore called Radium X. This first section is an interesting bit of Wellsian early SF more than horror, and manages to work in what at the time was pretty realistic science (as well as clips of electrical props from 1931’s  Frankenstein). The film then travels to Africa, in a horrifically racist middle act, in which Rukh gets infected by Radium X, making his skin glow and his touch deadly. He’s also invented a death ray gun. Benet figures out a treatment that Rukh needs to keep himself non-glowy-deadly, lest he glow too long and explode. Meanwhile Rukh’s wife wants to leave him for a younger model of scientific adventurer, and so when Rukh appears to die, everyone else goes to Paris. There, Rukh gets to murder assorted expedition members who he blames for stealing his discovery – even though he was properly credited by all- the Radium X poisoning has made him paranoid.

It’s a fun mix of genre, from SF to jungle adventure, to horror, and backed up by some great performances, especially in the case of the two leads. Karloff, sprouting a Bobby Ball type wig, gets to show his range, from icy threat, to charm, to anguish, while Lugosi gets to play the good guy for once. It’s nice to see them play off each other so well, both as friends and rivals, though their ultimate confrontation is very brief and disappointing – almost an afterthought, really. That’s a flaw with the movie as a whole: for every clever twist or new take, and its globe-hopping cross-genre coolness, it’s rife with cost-cutting off-screen deaths, exposition by newspaper headline captions, and a distinct lack of invisible rays. The effects are great for the era, though, especially with the rotoscoped glow on Karloff – and you can see in a lot of shots that he has some sort of makeup on that was probably intended for some kind of front axial projection system.

Nevertheless, apart from the short-cuts and racism, it’s an intriguing movie with a long shadow, influencing many later films and shows.

 

It’s joined on the first disc of the set by Black Friday, a borderline SF gangster noir co-scripted by Surt Siodmak. Originally intended to be titled Friday the 13th(!), this sees Karloff as a kindly doctor, Sovac, whose equally kindly Professor friend, Stanley Ridges, is run down by a fleeing bank robber. When the robber dies, Sovac transplants part of his brain into the Professor in order to save his life, but this leads the robber’s personality to make itself known in a Jekyll And Hyde kind of way – and Sovac suddenly becomes a lot less ethically concerned when he finds that his friend’s new personality knows where half a million dollars in loot is stashed- which would buy a lot of lab equipment. Unfortunately, the rest of the gang of robbers, led by Bela Lugosi, is also after the loot…

Despite Lugosi getting second billing, it’s actually Stanley Ridges who’s the real co-star, and in fact the real star. Lugosi is wasted in a relatively small role, though he is good in the part, as is Karloff in his role of a doctor tempted to the dark side, but Ridges gives an amazing triple performance, playing the Jekyll and Hyde Professor/gangster and the original robber in a couple of scenes, under heavy makeup. His is the real tour de force of the set. There are some surprisingly dark and brutal moments too, even for something dubiously marketed as a horror film; rather this is a Warner Brothers gangster movie in tone and style, with a brain transplant as a mere genre justification for the rest of the plot, and actually that makes it better. It comes at the end of the second Universal horror cycle, but it doesn’t feel like it, because it feels more like a noir dipping its toe momentarily into that pond, and both the supporting cast and director Arthur Lubin totally play wholeheartedly into that.

 

The Strange Door gets the second disc to itself. Directed by Joseph Pevney, of numerous genre TV shows, this 1951 historical mixture of gothic melodrama, swashbuckler, horror, and adventure may seem familiar from May’s previous Karloff set from Eureka, as that set’s The Black Castle was a reboot/semi-sequel to this film.

This has a complex plot involving the evil Sire de Maletroit (Charles Laughton), exacting revenge on both the man who stole his bride and caused her to die in childbirth, and the daughter who he intends to debase, and a local cad who he wants to make think has murdered someone… Based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Sire de Maletroit’s Door, Karloff has a scene-stealing supporting role as the sides-switching sinister servant Voltan, opposite main star Charles Laughton, and there is great fun to be had watching the two of them square off in the screen magnetism stakes.

There are plenty of moments that are disturbing and dark, thrilling, mysterious, and so forth, but the film really has a plot that’s too over-complicated and all over the place for its own good. But Laughton and Karloff make it worth watching, and Pevney displays some nice brisk direction. That said, it’s probably best watched with a suitable blood alcohol level – it may not make any more cohesive sense, but it won’t matter because the wide array of good moments scattered throughout will keep you entertained.

 

All three films have never looked better, with these 2K scans from the fine-grain negatives making them nice and crisp, and the depth of contrast is great. If you need a comparison, just look at the trailers included on the discs, with the trailer for Black Friday being particularly horrible quality – you’d think the quality the actual film prints achieve is impossible, yet there they are.

There are commentaries on all three films. Stephen Jones and the ever-listenable Kim Newman comment us through The Invisible Ray, and it’s wonderful, with lots of information about the background to the film, and geeking out about the science and the influence it had on later productions. They also return for a wonderfully entertaining chat through The Strange Door, and are almost worth the admission price alone on that one, as well as being a great continuation or companion piece to the one they did for The Black Castle on the previous set.  Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby then join us for a more academic-feeling study and exploration of the history behind Black Friday.

The best surprise among the usual set of stills galleries, collector’s booklet etc., however, is a couple of full-length radio adaptations of Robert Louis Stevenson’s original story, varying from truer to the story to truer to the film, and this is a fantastic addition to the set – more of this kind of thing, please, Eureka!

Verdict: Three largely overlooked and forgotten – and somewhat mislabelled – movies that have such a wide range of surprises and genre-switching concepts, and of course great performances from Karloff, Lugosi, Laughton and Ridges. Well worth acquiring both for the gems – even if the racism in The Invisible Ray (thoroughly criticised in the commentary) is really cringe-inducing and unpleasant – and the surprise vintage radio shows as well as the commentaries. None of them individually are classics, but together in this set, they’re greater than the sum of their parts. 9/10

David A McIntee

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