Old Movie Round-Up: The Ape, The Bat, Doomed to Die, The Corpse Vanishes
Toward the end of the era of video rental and the rise of online streaming, there was a time when discount and dollar stores would sell dollar DVDs of old movies, likely in public domain. I collected a few of these before coming to the realization that if I wouldn't pay a dollar to rent one of these, why am I paying money to own them?
The answer is that some of these are classics that would never show up at regular video stores, and with the rise of chain stores pushing the "mom & pop" places out of business, the price to rent was considerably more than a buck anyway.
Anyway, I recently had occasion to pull a few videos out of the basement on a mission to view them and then pass them along. Passing along likely means the donation pile, because I'm not sure who might be interested and also owns a DVD player. As it is, I watched these on my desktop PC. I do have a portable player, but the screen is small and the speakers aren't that great. But I digress.
These are the first four movies I viewed, all of which were part of the same series of DVD releases. All of them were a bit choppy in places probably because of the condition of the prints used to make these disks.
The Ape is a 1940 film starring Boris Karloff. Karloff doesn't turn into an ape -- not directly. The ape actually escaped from his cage at a circus and terrorizes the town. But it meets its fate and the hands of Karloff's Dr. Adrian, a scientist working on a cure for a girl's polio. He'd been having some success using spinal fluid to help the girl. However, in the confrontation with the ape, the last vials he had to work with are destroyed.
This being the 1940s, Dr. Adrian hatches a crazy plan to acquire more spinal fluid. He would wear the ape skin. Then the ape would once more terrorize the town, murdering people so their spinal fluid could be collected. Naturally, the authorities have to hunt down or recapture the ape.
It's as satisfying as any Saturday night schlock movie, and I can't say I hated it.
The Bat starred Vincent Price and Agnes Moorehead, along with other people I'm not familiar with or didn't recognize. It was a straight-forward story but was a little confusing at times. Possibly I was distracted because sitting at a desk watching a movie on a PC can be distracting. But Price is always fun to watch, even when you know he's a murderer, but is he the murderer, the Bat, who has been attacking women and ripping their throats with his claws? Not a horror story, nor supernatural. No one turns into a bat. It's a crime story, period. Enjoyable, but nothing special.
Doomed to Die is another 1940 starring Karloff, but this was an oddity. Karloff isn't out to kill anyone -- instead he plays Mr. Wong, a Chinese detective from pulp stories of the time. Apparently, this film was part of a series, based on the pulps, which explains why the detective is Asian in the first place. Back in those days, I assume, they needed a film for Karloff more than they needed an appropriate lead actor for a random script.
The story revolves are the death of a shipping magnate, who is murdered after the sinking of a cruise ship and the death of so many people on board. The police captain thinks the guilty party is a rival tycoon's son, who is in love the murdered man's daughter. Wong steps in to solve the case.
It held my attention for the most part. But I check my iPad a couple times.
Finally, The Corpse Vanishes from 1942, starring Bela Legosi. It was definitely the best of the bunch and I'm glad it was saved for last. (Luck of the draw.)
A bride receives an unusual orchid, the smell of which knocks the woman out so that she's in a state of suspended animation. After this, she's spirited away so that she can be used to nefarious ends. Similar to "The Ape" (above), fluid needs to be extracted, except from a gland, not from the spine. And instead of using it to help the lame walk, it's needed to prolong someone else's life. Legosi is Dr. Lorenz, the mad scientist, who is an expert on orchids. He lives in a mansion with his crazy wife and two odd sons, one a dumb giant, and the other a sadistic dwarf. This pairing is interesting because when researching the other actors in this film, I discovered that that dwarf actor, Angelo Rossitto, was The Master half of Master/Blaster is Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
A compelling enough film, this was a good movie for a Saturday night.
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