White Zombie (1932)

Directed by Victor Halperin
Starring Bela Lugosi, Madge Bellamy and Joseph Cawthorn
Produced by Edward Halperin Productions

Pop culture today seems more and more focused on a single horror creature.  While Twilight and its vampires have come and gone, zombies seem to be as ubiquitous on the big and small screens as there are undead in World War Z.  These films and shows have given us all sorts of zombies. Fast zombies. Slow zombies. Romantic zombies. Even "zombies" that may not be zombies at all. (And no, I am not stepping into the 28 Days Later debate.)

With the supremacy of zombies in the horror genre, it's useful to go back to the undead's humble beginnings. In the case of today's brain-eating legions, patient zero is 1932's White Zombie, starring horror legend Bela Lugosi.

The story of White Zombie will be unrecognizable to modern zombie film aficionados.  An engaged couple, Madeleine and Neil, arrive in Haiti to be married.  They head for a plantation owned by their friend Charles Beaumont, unaware that the man is obsessed with Madeleine and wants her for himself.

Beaumont approaches Murder Legendre, a voodoo master, for help in winning his love.  The evil Legendre runs a sugar mill using zombies as his labor force.  He gives Charles a potion that will turn Madeleine into a zombie. And from there, things get complicated.

The zombies in White Zombie will seem entirely foreign to fans of The Walking Dead, Night of the Living Dead and the recent World War Z. The zombies appear dead, but they are not entirely mindless.  They hate Legendre and would murder him but for the mental control he exercises over them.  Madeleine is turned into a zombie, but her "death" is not a permanent condition.

As with many zombie films, White Zombie uses its situation to address social issues and the human condition, specifically focusing on labor conditions and free will.  Sadly, the movie is barely interested in doing a flyby on these issues.  We get a brief scene in Legendre's mill with the zombies being forced to work every hour.  One of the zombies falls into the machinery, but the work continues without interruption.

Beaumont struggles with the idea of loving a woman who is forced to obey his commands.  His dilemma and the resulting dialogue are so on the nose as to sound nonsensical.  And the film contemplates this for just long enough to give Legendre time to zombify Beaumont.

White Zombie excels at conveying mood and atmosphere.  Legendre's castle, set on a cliff overlooking the ocean, provides just the right amount of shadow and dread.  And the look of the zombies in this black and white film is suitably creepy.

Where the film absolutely collapses like a brained member of an undead horde is the acting.  Lugosi, so great as the titular vampire in the prior year's Dracula, is maniacally over-the-top in the most annoying of ways.  Bellamy's Madeleine and John Harron's Neil overreact to every line and sound.  And Robert Frazer plays Beaumont, a scheming character trying to conceal his true intentions, by wearing every emotion plainly on his sleeve and face.

White Zombie is ultimately more important than it is good.  A fine sense of tone and mood is more than offset by a ridiculous script and hammy acting.  Still, if you are looking for the first time zombies rose from the dead, White Zombie remains history-making.

** out of *****

NOTES:

• White Zombie was made as an independent film, but utilized a lot of Universal Studios' sets from films including Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
• The band White Zombie, popularized by Beavis and Butthead in the 1990s, took their name from this film. Lead singer Rob Zombie has gone on to direct horror movies himself.

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Me and My Gal (1932)

Directed by Raoul Walsh

Starring Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Marion Burns

Produced by Fox Film Corporation 

Spencer Tracy plays policeman Danny Dolan who dutifully walks his beat by the pier and flirts with a waitress named Helen. When Danny rescues a drunk who has fallen into the water, he gets a promotion to detective. 

Unfortunately, Danny's heroics distracted another police detective Al from his surveillance of a couple of gangsters, allowing the bad guys to escape. One of the men, Duke, is working with Kate, a bank teller and Duke's ex-girlfriend, to rob some safety deposit boxes. And (just to bring things full circle) Kate is Helen's sister. 

Danny and Helen begin falling in love, but Danny's investigation into Duke's gang threatens them all. Will Duke carry out his robbery? Can Danny and Helen survive? 

Me and My Gal seems determined to answer one overriding question: Is it possible for a minor character to ruin an otherwise great film? 

The answer? Almost. 

Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett are great as the main couple. Many of their dating problems would be familiar to a modern audience. Helen debates allowing Danny to kiss her. If she does, she's easy. If she doesn't, she's a prude. There is a perfect chemistry between the two which sells you on the courtship. 

Raoul Walsh may be the most unappreciated early Hollywood director around. His work here is solid without being distracting, making really effective use of early sound technology. 

In one scene, we see Danny and Helen having a conversation, but their voiceover betrays what they are actually thinking. It's well staged and the timing of the moment is spot-on. Have you seen this done before? Sure, but this must be one of the first instances of the technique. 

As for that minor character....sigh. Will Stanton plays the drunk Danny saves. For the first half of Me and My Gal, the drunk is constantly wandering into every scene. Danny leaves him at the pier and goes to the chowder house. The drunk follows him. He's at the pier later. He keeps popping up, over and over. 

In and of itself, this is not a problem. But Stanton has his own unique take on playing a drunk character. Imagine telling a high school freshman to act as obnoxiously inebriated as he possibly can. The resulting stumbling would be subtle and restrained compared to what we get here. 

Me and My Gal is a great blend of romantic comedy and crime drama. I only wish there was a sober edition. 

*** out of *****

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1932: Say Hello to My Little Friend... For the First Time

We've come to 1932. A gallon of gas costs 10 cents, a loaf of bread is 7 cents and a new car sets you back over $600. Big money if you're only making $1,650 per year. 

In the U.S., the Great Depression continued to decimate the economy and the unemployment rate was over 24 percent. Charles Lindbergh son was kidnapped and Amelia Earhart became the first woman to cross the Atlantic. Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion, providing an ending for The Untouchables. And Oklahoma debuted the first parking meter. In related news, I now dislike Oklahoma. 

In Hollywood, it was another big year. The original Scarface (non-Pacino version) debuted and became a touchstone for censors. Katharine Hepburn made her premiere, as did Shirley Temple. Disney produced its first Technicolor toon. And Walking Dead fans can look up White Zombie as ground zero of the undead craze. 

So what are we watching? White Zombie and Tod Browning's Freaks are obvious. I'll dive into my first Renoir with Boudu Saved from Drowning and Ozu with I Was Born, But... Of course, we will continue with the Marx Brothers via Horse Feathers. Beyond that? We will see where the year takes me.

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The Skin Game (1931)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock 

Starring C.V. France, Helen Haye, Jill Esmond

Produced by British International Pictures 

The Jackmans have just gotten bad news. Their current landlord Mr. Hornblower is evicting them from their home. 

Despondent, they appeal to the prior land owner Mr. Hillcrest for assistance. Hillcrest is angered by their displacement as he had specifically required they be allowed to remain in the house as part of the sale. 

This sets the two families on a warpath, waging their battles through land auctions and family secrets. Who will emerge victorious? And will either family ever be the same again? 

The Skin Game has to be amongst the most boring films I have ever seen during this marathon. There are maybe 30 minutes of material here stretched to almost 80 minutes. And you never have the sense that anything is at stake. 

If the film succeeds at all, it is because of Hitchcock's direction. It's as though he realized how shoddy the material was and just decided he'd play with the camera a bit. 

The best scene in the movie involves an auction. Once the land goes up for sale, Hitchcock's camera gives us the perspective of the auctioneer, his eyes darting around the crowd for the next bidder. The approach adds tension to a scene that would otherwise be as exciting as watching paint dry. 

The flip side of the director's approach however is it becomes too busy, as though we can feel Hitchcock trying really hard to make it work. But all the excessive camera movement and editing does is highlight how little was there to start with. 

I'm sure there are some messages and themes in here about the plight of British aristocracy in the 1920s. I'm positive The Skin Game has a lot to say about the divide between new and old money and the peasants who are stuck in the middle. But the film has to keep its audience awake long enough to ask those questions.

As an experimental film and a step along the way to Hitchcock becoming the master of suspense, there's something here. I just don't think it is worth anyone's time. 

 *1/2 out of *****

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Little Caesar (1931)

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy

Starring Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Glenda Farrell

Produced by First National Pictures

Rico is a small time hood in a tiny little 'burb. With his pal Joe in tow, he steals and extorts from gas stations and diners, never getting the payout he wants. 

Never, that is, until he moves to the big city and joins Sam Vettori's's crew. Suddenly he's hanging out at swanky clubs and getting big scores. But he still wants more. He doesn't want to be a soldier. He wants to be the boss. 

Meanwhile, Joe is trying to leave a life of crime behind. He wants to be a dancer and has found the perfect two-stepping partner in Olga. But we all know what happens when you try to get out.

 Soon, the bodies start piling up. Can Rico claw his way to the top? And will he allow Joe to escape the life? 

Little Caesar is the type of film that rises or falls based on its lead performance. Either the actor makes it work and gets you invested, or the film is a failure.

Fortunately, Little Caesar features Edward G. Robinson in the starring role and he delivers a character that is one of the iconic gangster characters of all time. 

It's a harder feat to pull off than you might think because Rico is irredeemably loathsome. From the first frame, he's a bad guy driven by greed and ambition. His first instinct is to pull a gun and start shooting. When he meets his mob bosses, there's no respect. He simply eyes their jewelry with all the charm of a vulture waiting for its prey to die. 

Robinson throws himself into the role and has charisma to spare. You don't want to see him succeed necessarily, but you can't look away. He turns the journey into a NASCAR car crash where you feel every flip and tumble. 

The secondary story about Joe who is trying to crawl out of the shadows of his former life gets little attention here.  Joe is played by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (yes, the son of that Douglas Fairbanks). Its resolution is literally plastered on a billboard. In another film, that might be a problem. Here, it is really only used to highlight Rico's one good quality: his loyalty to his best friend. Under the mob's code of conduct, Rico should have killed Joe a half dozen times, but he doesn't and that's worth something. 

Little Caesar is a fun and prototypical take on the Depression-era gangster, establishing the "myeah see" line delivery that marked the Warner Bros. cartoons of my childhood. It's more than worth a watch. 

**** out of *****

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