RE….RE….REMIX! That’s right. 2 years into the 30s, Hollywood had figured out what genres worked for people, and basically gave them more of the same. We’ve got Muni doing gangster stuff. We’ve got monsters. We’ve got War movies. We’ve got celebrities. Deal with it!
Boris Karloff and creature effects win the day here. Karloff’s Imhotep (told campily in 1999), is brought back to life unexpectedly. However, instead of a generic evil creature, Karloff imbues the former man with a tragic sad romantic arc, hoping to bring back the former love of his life.
Before Sam Raimi reinvigorated it, there was James Whale who created it. This horror film actually tries to blend it some comedy along with it, a feat only the rare great filmmakers can pull off. Plus Whale’s use of shadow is on point.
Terrific premise for early Hollywood: set your movie in a giant 5 star hotel in Berlin, and have the studio assemble all of their acting talent and put them in that hotel, learning about their goings on. Garbo. Barrymore. Crawford. Beery. It’s mostly pretty breezy, and has a 3rd act twist you do NOT see coming to carry the movie to its end. Looking fab and being famous, sounds fun!
This movie was so special it bascially became cinema’s first big movie series. Johnny Weissmuller plays the boy raised by gorillas in the jungle. Eventually, Maureen O’Sullivan’s Jane shows up, intriguing Tarzan to the point that they try to communicate with one another, with cute, romantic results. Also, some really cool animal shots as well for the animal lovers out there.
Before Brian De Palma and Al Pacino moved the story to Miami, Howard Hawks and Paul Muni were doing their story about 1920s Chicago and Al Capone. Muni plays Tony Camonte, a fast riser in the bootlegging gangster underground. Drunk on power, he rises to the top, drawing every cop on the planet to try and take him down, even though his greatest enemy is the paranoia inside his head over betrayal.
Big year for Paul Muni! He played Capone, and here he plays a wrongly convicted man who gets his life destroyed by the prison industrial complex. Mervyn Le Roy shows the scope of horrors Muni faces, being treated as less than human by a system that’s decided he’s worthless, and that, even after he’s out, can never escape.
One of the great short stories of all time turned into a scary action thriller. Joel McCrea and Fay Wray, after a ship wreck, end up on a strange island, owned by Leslie Banks, a hunting enthusiast. What follows is something you’ll probably see coming, but leads to a thrilling battle of wits on the island.
Hemingway’s classic turned into a great movie of love and war. Garry Cooper, an ambulance driver, meets Helen Hayes, a nurse during WWI in Italy. After Garry gets sent off to fight somewhere else, the two star crossed lovers try to continue that love at all costs, and do whatever it takes to try to get back to each other. The love story is progressive for its time, and the war stuff gets around a smaller budget with great use of shadow, light, and sound.
Monster and horror movies of this era scared people…at the time. Now these films are more seen as interesting character pieces about weirdos. Tod Browning, our earliest horror afficionado, makes this his piece de resistance. Freaks is a great character piece about the various ways of being a freak for its first half, and then scares the bejesus out of you in the final 10 minutes, a true feat for a film made so early in cinema history.
