The Red Eye Report's 2010 October Horrorthon #26: "You'll Find Out"

Just when you thought you'd seen every old dark house movie -- well, here's another one. But in lieu of Bob Hope or Creighton Hale prowling about a spooky abode, You'll Find Out features Kay Kyser, star of stage, radio, and apparently haunted mansion flicks. On loan from their College of Musical Knowledge, Kay and his ragtag band are hired to play at the 21st birthday gala of pretty young Janis Bellacrest (Helen Parrish). The shindig is being held at her ancestral home, where the spirit of her eccentric father is said to still roam the halls. But the house has attracted some flesh-and-blood terrors, as an old judge (Boris Karloff), a phony psychic (Bela Lugosi), and a gap-toothed mythbuster (Peter Lorre) have teamed up to swindle Janis out of her healthy inheritance. With all the strength a wimpy wisecracker like him can muster, Kay sets out to brave the Bellacrest house of horrors and keep Janis out of harm's way.

You'll Find Out is a scary movie that normal people can feel good about watching -- which is to say it isn't scary at all. It's more in tune with The Cat and the Canary, only with even more emphasis on humorous shenanigans. The spooky side of the story is pushed aside a lot, as You'll Find Out was essentially made as a vehicle for the Kay Kyser players. As such, we get a ton of musical interludes that pop up without much rhyme or reason, and this film having been made in 1940, they can be mighty lame (the "Bad Humor Man" number alone sent me into a corniness coma). The only things to fear here are Kay's one-liners and the slapstick set pieces, which make Abbott and Costello's schtick look like Bill Hicks material. Even the main mystery doesn't seem to have been given much thought, considering it's not even really a mystery. The bad guys are revealed not even halfway into the movie, and while it's part of the joke that an oblivious Kay puts his trust in the nogoodniks, it's a reach just to make him look like an even bigger doofus.

But in spite of it all, I'd be lying if I didn't say that You'll Find Out didn't warm up to me at least a little bit. The humor is campy and dated, sure, but neither your intelligence nor the cast's dignity suffers for it. It has an innocent spirit that's hard to hate, and it doesn't treat its thrill-centric side as a total joke. Karloff, Lugosi, and Lorre are all in on the act, and all three give surprisingly wonderful performances. Lugosi was a treat in particular, playing the role of a self-important psychic straight and getting more laughs for it (there's even a silly seance scene with a few freaky tweaks). Plus, for as many cheesy songs there are, some can be extremely charming, especially the Oscar-nominated "I'd Know You Anywhere" -- it hasn't a thing to do with the story, but it's a good tune anyway, dammit. Kay Kyser himself also carries on a fine tradition of film cowards, playing the part of unlikely hero, who's more liable to throw out snarky quips than battle the forces of darkness head-on.

You'll Find Out isn't terrible funny, and it's even less suspenseful, but I can't rag on it too much. The sentimentality seeps from every pore, and despite the best efforts of that cranky old fart in all of us, we can't help but be charmed by the earnestness of the production. You'll Find Out comes in a set with three other Karloff/Lugosi cheese wheels, so if you've got the stomach for some serious saccharine, this well-meaning ditty will be a breeze to watch.

The Red Eye Report's 2010 October Horrorthon #3: "The Boogie Man Will Get You"

When Winnie Slade (Miss Jeff Donnell) bought a dusty old country house, she thought a few creaky floorboards were the worst she'd have to deal with. Sure, the farmhands are a bit nutty, and weird Professor Billings (Boris Karloff) carries on some funny business in the basement, but they're just some harmless eccentrics. But little does Winnie know that the professor's experiments in turning men into super-powered beings have left her with a few well-preserved corpses tucked in the cellar. Not only that, but some shady houseguests check in, there's a mad bomber on the loose, and a killer has taken to stalking the premises. The Slade estate is getting screwier by the minute, and Winnie's ex-husband Bill (Larry Parks) is the only one sane enough to try and figure out what's going on.

Anyone who says that old movies are boring can put The Boogie Man Will Get You in their pipe and smoke it. A surplus of subplots is tough for any movie to handle, but this one clocks in at 66 minutes and still whips itself into entertaining shape. But it should be said that this isn't a true horror movie. There's no ordained "Boogie Man" to speak of, and that Mothman guy on the poster is nowhere to be seen either (what, did the artist think the flick wasn't busy enough?). We have Peter Lorre gussied up like the Reverend Harry Powell, but even he gets in on the goofiness pretty quickly. Nah, Boogie Man isn't an official fright film but rather a farce with a cheerfully diabolical sense of humor. In tone, it's closer to Arsenic and Old Lace than Frankenstein, with Karloff's nutty professor humorously lamenting many a human guinea pig lost in the name of science.

Still, the light approach works best for Boogie Man; with a workload like the one it takes on, truly sinister overtones would've killed its charm. As it, the movie has some trouble keeping up with itself, occasionally dishing out gags and side bits for the sake of having something to do. But with its short running time, Boogie Man wraps up long before it has the chance to really wear out its welcome. It's too cheery to hate, especially when you see the actors having just as much fun. Karloff has a blast defying God's will any chance he gets, but I was even more impressed with Lorre's performance. To be honest, I'm not as up on my Lorre as I should be, but he was wry comic gold here, playing the town jack-of-all-trades who joins up with Billings to make a few quick bucks. Donnell and Parks are just fine as the prototypical bickering lovers, and Maxie Rosenbloom enjoys some good-natured goofs as a particularly dimwitted shuckster.

The Boogie Man Will Get You comes packaged with Boris Karloff's Icons of Horror set, where it's easily the least frightening of the bunch. It's not the first time this has happened, but it's of more respectable quality than Karloff's lighter material tends to be. Sunny and amusing over campy and intolerable, The Boogie Man Will Get You is the very picture of macabre hilarity.

October Horror-thon #22: "Tower of London" (1939)

It's the 15th century in jolly ol' England, and the air is thick with royal hullabaloo. King Edward IV (Ian Hunter) has snatched the throne away from the delusional Henry VI (Miles Mander), but further treachery still brews behind the scenes. Richard, Duke of Gloucester (Basil Rathbone), has his eyes on the kingdom and will resort to the most lowdown methods possible to seize control. With the assistance of sadistic executioner Mord (Boris Karloff), Richard has gruesome fates in store for those next in line, including his own brother, the Duke of Clarence (Vincent Price). But as Richard moves closer to the crown, an exiled subject (John Sutton) plots in secret to end the tyrant's reign before it begins.

Right about now, you're probably interested in where the whole horror aspect figures into Tower of London. Truth be told, I'm still trying to figure that out, too. All things considered, it's a solid film, but it doesn't quite fit into Universal's thriller pantheon. I'm guessing Karloff's presence played a big part in its categorization, not to mention his character's knack for enjoying his job a little too much. Plus, Rathbone's Richard is one ruthless mofo, knocking off potential successors by way of everything from stabbing to drowning in a vat of mine. But Universal played up the historical horror angle more so in films like The Black Castle and The Strange Door. Tower of London has nary a hint of exploitation to its name, although the story's constant backstabbing and shifting alliances do allow for ample intrigue.

In any case, pound for pound, Tower of London has one of the best casts in any Universal chiller. Of course, there's Karloff, suitably menacing as club-footed madman Mord, but other familiar faces put in an equally good show. Rathbone appeared in just a few horror flicks (spending most of his Universal tenure as Sherlock Holmes), but he turns in a pitch-perfect performance here. He plays Richard as a perfect schemer, a man charismatic enough to mask how he's practically snarling beneath the surface. The film's meat stems from just how low he'll go to claim the throne, reaching a fever pitch when he targets his young nephews for assassination. No stranger to horror himself, Price also shows up in a role that's brief but impressionable, thanks to a memorable scene in which he engages in a deadly drinking game with Richard. The remainder of the cast is fine enough, though their basic medieval material is greatly overshadowed by Richard's homicidal goings-on.

Tower of London suffers a few kinks in the armor (some rushed editing, battle sequences on par with Ren Faire re-enactments, etc.), but it holds its own rather well. Though I wouldn't call it straight-out horror by a longshot, it does work such elements into the plot's costume drama structure with relative ease. Besides, any film that gets you to fear some of classic horror's most famous icons without pounds of make-up involved is aces in my book.

October Horror-thon #16: "Corridors of Blood" (1958)

Pain and the knife are inseparable...

Such was the attitude of most medical professionals in 1840s England, at least according to Corridors of Blood. It was a time before anesthesia was introduced, when operations had to be performed quickly to avoid prolonging a patient's pain. But this approach doesn't sit well with Dr. Thomas Bolton (Boris Karloff), one of the country's top surgeons. Sickened by the cries of horror he hears on a daily basis, he decides to formulate a gas to numb one's senses. Bolton successfully creates a batch, only to develop an unfortunate addiction to the stuff. His experiments proceed to consume his life and destroy his career, to the point that he pairs up with a cryptic criminal (Christopher Lee) to perfect his concoction.

The way it usually went in cinema's golden age was that if you hit it big in horror, that's where you stayed. It's easier for genre actors to branch out these days, but you need only survey the careers of Karloff or Bela Lugosi to witness the side effects of being typecast. But bless his heart, Karloff made the best of it by delivering performances so uncommonly good, he was almost always the highlight of his vehicles. Corridors of Blood is no different, though it has the added bonus of a sound story to start with. It's more of a historical thriller than a fright fest, its disposition leaning more towards tragedy than delivering shocks. In fact, it's not unlike Karloff's own The Body Snatcher, in which roles are reversed, and Karloff brilliantly played a villain who specializes in conjuring corpses.

And just as with The Body Snatcher, Karloff really is the heart of this film. He's a man you can't take your eyes off of, whom you can't help but feel sorry for as good intentions lead him down a dark road (a theme repeated by countless misguided movie scientists of the time). The terrible lengths to which Bolton will go in the name of a noble cause generate more suspense than any traditionally lurid thrills. That said, director Robert Day really nails the film's mood, with just a few simple sets and a colorful population of supporting players. Lee stands out in particular, and it's no wonder why; he was just getting into Hammer's Dracula pictures at the time, and even in his low-key role here, he displays a chilling presence that the man still hasn't been able to shake.

Corridors of Blood does run out of things to do when the third act commences. It would've been better having taken a cue from some of Karloff's Universal outings, which ran a little more than 60 minutes and ended just when the dramatic payoff was at its most ripe. But Corridors of Blood still runs smoothly a great deal of the time, thanks in no small part to Karloff. The film is proof positive that not only was he a great horror actor, he was a terrific performer all-around, possessing the pathos to transform a simple tale of terror into a much more involving picture than it could've been.