A movie a day

Post Reply New Topic

The Maltese Falcon (1931)

It's a quest for a falcon statue involving detectives, dames, and gangsters. The 1941 version with Humphrey Bogart is more famous, but this one is just as worthy of consideration. The two movies seem to have opposite strengths and weaknesses. The performances are worse in the 1931 version but it was made before the Hays censorship code, and it makes the 1941 version feel positively puritan in comparison. It's made very clear that Sam Spade is boffing both his clients and his partner's wife, and he makes a woman strip nude to prove that she's not hiding any money instead of simply taking her word for it like he does in the 1941 version. With all the talk about how much better the 1941 version is, I was surprised to find them both about as good. Believe it or not, there was yet another version of this story filmed in between the two versions discussed, and that one's coming tomorrow.

Satan Met a Lady (1936)

At one point in Satan Met a Lady, one character says to another, "Honey, it blows." He's talking about a horn, but his observation applies to the movie as well. The story behind Satan Met a Lady is a lot more interesting than the movie itself. The MPAA began enforcing the Hays censorship code in 1934, and Warner Brothers found that they could no longer show their 1931 crime thriller The Maltese Falcon, which was banned after being judged as too sexually explicit. Their solution to this problem was to remake it in 1936 as a lighthearted comedy, and the result was Satan Met a Lady. In 1941, they filmed the story a third time, and that was the classic version of The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart. So from 1936 to 1941, the only version of The Maltese Falcon that audiences could watch is this pile of crap. It's so lighthearted and cheerful that it's hard to hate it, but it's not even remotely funny. Ironically, even though Satan Met a Lady was intended to be a less offensive version of The Maltese Falcon, it's easily the most offensive of the three versions, since its characters refer to black people as "darky" and "boy."

I don't understand YouTube. One day it works fine, and the sound is skipping like a scratched CD the next. It's working fine today. Hope it stays that way.

Dracula (1931, Spanish version)

The English language version of Dracula may be iconic and influential and memorable, but it's an awful movie. The acting is a joke, the direction is so bland and static that it feels more like a stage play than a film, and the script is such a disaster that it's amazing it was ever used in the first place. The Spanish version has a reputation for being better than the English version, and while I rarely agree with the majority on anything, they're right this time. This isn't just the English version with a redubbed soundtrack, it's an entirely different version filmed with Spanish actors. The two movies were filmed simultaneously, with the English crew filming during the day and the Spanish crew filming at night. The Spanish crew reportedly saw what the English crew was doing wrong and vowed to improve upon it, and they did. It's 29 minutes longer than the English version, but it feels shorter because it's a much more engrossing movie. It has much better acting, some creative camera movement, and it fixes the problems with the script. (To name just one example of many: after Lucy is turned into a vampire, the English version forgets about her entirely, but she gets staked in the Spanish version.) I watched this on YouTube without English subtitles, but I know the English version like the back of my hand and had no trouble following along.

Fascinating stuff ! ! I knew about the 3 versions of The Maltese Falcon, but I've only ever seen the Bogart version. I had no idea there was a Spanish version of the original Dracula, with Spanish actors. It was common back then for Hollywood to film 2 or 3 versions of a movie with the same actors reading other languages phonetically. Buster Keaton later complained that he not only made a bunch of lousy talkies, he was forced to make each of them 3 times.
As to the quality of Dracula, the cameras were huge and so were the microphones. It was exceedingly difficult to do any camera movement at all. The innovation of that version is Bela Lugosi's age. Previously Dracula was always an aged ugly old man. That was the stage and film version that presented the Count as as younger, sophisticated man. There are supposedly more film versions of Dracula than any other fictional character.

I still get an obscure kick out of Renfield as played by Dwight Frye. His chewing on the scenery sort of acting is hilarious.

I've read that there were other Spanish versions of popular English films with Spanish actors, but Dracula is apparently one of the few to survive. There was even a third version of the movie, a silent version to be shown in theatres that weren't equipped for sound.

House of Frankenstein (1944)

Frankenstein! The Wolf Man! Dracula!

...are supporting characters in this movie. Unfortunately, the filmmakers were far more interested in the adventures of yet another mad scientist and his hunchbacked assistant. A ridiculous amount of time is spent on Quasimodo being in love with a gypsy girl and wanting the scientist to give him a new body and he's jealous because she loves the Wolf Man and OH MY GOD WHO CARES. I stopped watching Godzilla movies because I got sick of them wasting the first half of the running time on a bunch of crap that had nothing at all to do with Godzilla, but House of Frankenstein is even worse. The movie becomes worth watching in the last ten minutes when Lon Chaney turns into the Wolf Man and Frankenstein's monster gets brought back to life, but before that, all we get is Dracula turning into a bat and biting someone before dying in the sunlight. What an unbelievable waste of time. I could have masturbated for 71 minutes and spent the time more productively.

Silver Blaze (1937)

I've said before that Sherlock Holmes movies sucked before 1939, but the movies starring Arthur Wontner were a step in the right direction, because Wontner was the first really good Holmes. He was the first actor to capture the way that Holmes manages to be charming despite the fact that he's a narcissistic show-off who insults the intelligence of anyone around him. It's just a shame that he's surrounded by crap. His films were cheap b-movies with lousy scripts and supporting actors, and this one is no different. The script is a mess that combines too many short stories. We know the who, how, and why of the crime before Holmes even begins his investigation. Watson is useless. The "Napoleon of crime," Professor Moriarty, is turned into just another petty criminal. And every actor who isn't named Arthur Wontner is embarrassing. This movie may have impressed British audiences in 1937, since it was the best cinematic Holmes by that point, but it must have been pretty disappointing when it was released in America in 1941. That was two years after Basil Rathbone starred in The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and showed the world just how good Holmes movies could be.

Son of Dracula (1943)

Whatever.

It means that I felt too sh***y to type up anything about it, and that it didn't really deserve much of a critique anyway. It's nothing terrible but nothing worth watching. Just another monster movie. I "discover" movies like this by reading books and websites about old movies. (I say old instead of classic because a lot of them suck and don't deserve to be called classics.) I considered watching Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, but I'm getting sick to death of old monster movies. I'm watching Plan 9 from Outer Space right now. I'm 20 minutes into it and I already want to give up. It's supposed to be entertaining because of how bad it is, but it's just boring me to tears. After today, I'm done with monster movies for a long time.

I can't wait for your review of Plan 9. Complaining about the bad parts should take you about 20 paragraphs ! !

I don't think I'll be reviewing it. It just bored me, and I shut it off after 20 minutes. I doubt I'll watch anything else today. This topic may be done. I'm not getting much enjoyment out of this. I'm not always in the mood to watch something, and it doesn't help that I've been feeling physically horrible lately. I'm still going to watch movies, but probably not every day. If I stop posting here, start looking in "What movies have you seen recently?" instead. Just not every day.

All the best then. Hope you're feeling better and have another go at it.