Trailers From Hell - DOCTOR X (1932)

"Michael Curtiz’ perversely entertaining pre-code thriller would have been a perfect fit for Weird Tales Magazine. Lee Tracy plays a pushy reporter tracking down the so-called “Moon Killer”, Fay Wray is the soon-to-be damsel in distress and Lionel Atwill plays her father, the titular Doctor Xavier. The eleventh hour unveiling of the killer, bathed in eerie two-strip Technicolor, is the stuff of nightmares." 

Let inveterate jokester Michael Schlesinger tell you all about it! 

Poster Art and Lobby Cards for NOAH'S ARK (1928)

Brief Thoughts - THE KEY (1934)

I caught up with another Michael Curtiz film tonight. This one is a romantic triangle drama set in Ireland during the British Army's hunt for Michael Collins in 1920. The film fictionalizes things in the usual Hollywood fashion and even renames the Collins character Conlan so as to smooth over any potential problems with the Irish in the audience. This is an odd one. It is part police style manhunt with nighttime gunfights and daytime sniper attacks and part regretful romantic pasts coming home to mess with a newly married couple. The cast does a fine job with the excellent William Powell (of the great Thin Man films) as Captain Bill Tennant doing his usual fine job as an honorable cad with sad doubts about his way of living his life. And Colin Clive (of FRANKENSTEIN fame) is the married man whose wife knew Powell a little too well three years before. This has some darker story elements that mark it as a project made prior to the instituting of the Hayes Code such as adultery and premarital sex along with some sexy dancers flirting shamelessly from the stage. The film is a quick and interesting 71 minutes and seems almost over before it has time to really sink in. I suspect some post shoot trimming as at least one character (Tennant's aide) disappears after the first twenty minutes with no word of explanation. Maybe his story had some saucier feature that necessitated their editing? Still, I liked the film and it certainly goes into the win column for Curtiz even if it's a pretty small scale tale. 

Here's a cool picture of Clive, Curtiz and Powell from the set of THE KEY! 

SODOM and GOMORRAH (1922)

In my 2016 project to see more films directed by Michael Curtiz I delved into this silent effort from his early European career. I was expecting a full-on Biblical epic in the DeMille vein but what this turns out to be is a mostly contemporary set tale of sin and redemption. Yes, make no mistake - this is definitely a morality tale - but for the first hour of this two hour long film the Bible story of Lot and his wife in no where in sight. But right at the one hour mark we get our principal actors recast in the classic tale to illustrate the moral lines that are being delineated. The plot has older, widowed multimillionaire Jackson Harber wanting to marry the young model Mary who is not sure she wants to throw away her freedom. Her mother convinces her that this is her chance to lead a life in luxury and leisure and after some thinking she agrees even though she knows another man loves. This other man is the sculptor Harry Lighton who has been casting Mary in clay. Harry is poor, with few prospects and when Mary tells him of her choice he is despondent.

The engagement is celebrated by hundreds of revelers with an extravagant party at Harber's huge estate. The wealthy man's son Eduard arrives from Cambridge, accompanied by his tutor, the priest Varconi. The priest is disgusted by the bacchanalian party with its rampant sex and drinking. Mary spots young handsome Eduard and quickly moves to seduce him while Harry tries to convince her to break the engagement and be with him. When she refuses Harry shoots himself and is carried off to the hospital. As Varconi spirits Eduard away from temptation, Mary falls asleep and is transported in her dream into the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the dream she is the wife of Lot leaving her husband so that she can play a central role in the pagan rites of the goddess Astarte. An angel arrives to lead Lot and his wife out of Sodom but (as you knew from Sunday school) when the city starts to collapse Lot's wife cannot resist looking back and, because of her disobedience, is turned into a pillar of salt. This horrible (if fascinating) dream opens the eyes of Mary who wakes up, leaves the party and goes to Harry in the hospital to watch over him in his recovery.

Yeah, it's just as cheesy and obvious as you might think but it's a film made in 1922 so it's also exactly what I expect. And this is an entertaining film, by the way. SODOM AND GOMORRAH isn't some boring drama dragging it's story out in long shots and broad performances. The direction here is fluid for the era with some smartly chosen close-ups and well choreographed sequences that rival anything being done in Hollywood at the time. You can see why this Mihály Kertész fellow might have been seen to have a career in pictures in front of him! I might have preferred a shorter film that just told the Biblical story at more length, but I still really enjoyed this. 

Michael Curtiz - Film Director!

Today I started watching the classic Bogart film WE'RE NO ANGELS (1955) and, although I had (sadly) never seen the film before, I knew I was in good hands as soon as the Directed By Michael Curtiz credit flashed onto the screen. I've been aware of Mr. Curtiz for most of my life because he directed several of my favorite films of all time. He made CASABLANCA, CAPTAIN BLOOD, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, THE SEA HAWK, DOCTOR X, THE MYSTERY IN THE WAX MUSEUM, DODGE CITY and about 90 other English language movies. Remembering how impressed I alway am by his work I decided to look up his list of credits with a joking eye toward seeing how difficult it would be to try to watch everything he ever made. Damn! I knew he had emigrated here from Hungry in the 1920's but the length of his credits both before moving to Hollywood and after is astounding. He made around fifty films in Europe and another hundred in the US. Wow! His first film stateside appears to be the 1926 silent Biblical epic SODOM & GOMORRAH and his was the John Wayne western THE COMANCHEROS in 1962. I need to see both of those to start!

Closer examination of his output shows that he was often directing as many as five films in a single year with the count for 1933 being seven! Clearly, any viewer that sets out to see his entire filmography has their work cut out for them. I'm not going to claim that I'll find a way see all of them or even most of them, but I think that in 2016 I'm going to try to watch more of Curtiz's work. Many more. I've lined up copies of SODOM & GOMORRAH and his 1931 John Barrymore horror film THE MAD GENIUS to begin this project and I'll try to check in here with my thoughts as I watch them.