The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

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I wasn't surprised to see that this film is very, very good- the director and the star meant that would always be likely. What did surprise me, however, is how funny it is- and how relatively frank about sex- in a humourous way, yes, but this is hardly picture postcard humour.

Charles Laughton is, of course, definitive as Henry, with both his performance and the acript showing him as merry yet dangerously capricious. Intelligent, cultured, yet the ultimate spoiled brat, self-indulgent and able to turn on a sixpence.

Yet the film plays this largely for black humour, downplaying religious matters entirely, as well as foreign affairs... although Henry is made to say that "If those French and Germans don't stop killing each other then Europe will be in ruins"- hard not to see as a comment on the Europe of 1933, a decade and a half after the Great War and with Hiller yet to burn down the Reichstag.

I laughed out loud as the opening blurb dismissed Catherine of Aragon as being of "no particular interest", the opening scenes set on the day both of Anne Boleyn's execution and Jane Seymour's wedding to Henry, leaving us in no doubt whatsoever what a callous man he is, with scenes of Anne bravely facing her last couple of hours juxtaposed with Henry and Jane being frivolous... and Henry cynically sees Jane as a "stupid woman".

He is, again, callous as Jane dies in childbirth, caring only for his baby son. Yet the film focuses on the contrast between Anne of Cleves, who plays the game cleverly and ends up divorced, alive and rich... and the true tragic focus of the film, Katherine Howard, whose eagerness to court the king and have a crown eventually results in being trapped into a marriage to an old man, followed by her inevitable doom. These moments are dark, although it is not dwelt upon here that young Kate was only nineteen.

A superb, witty, funny, dark and tragic script all in one, and a strong overall cast with Charles Laughton giving the performance of his life. This is one of the triumphs of early historical sound cinema.

The Ghoul (1933)

 "I shall be among the trees, waiting..."

There are quite a few '30s horror films, in the wake of Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff. They are, as you would expect B movies. They have their charms, I'm rather fond of them, but you wouldn't mostly say they were actually very good.

Except this one.

Plot-wise, it's nothing special: an old man with a stolen Egyptian artifact manages to cheat death by means of ancient yet cursed magic. Yet the cast is startlingly excellent. Not only is there Karloff but also a typically camp Ernest Thesiger, a delightfully dastardly Cedric Harwicke, and even an alarmingly young and splendidly splenetic Anthony Bushelll as our heroic yet delightfully rude leading man. We even get Ralph bloody Richardson.

The film is well shot, certainly more so than one would expect for a B movie in the period. There are some nice touches- the leading lady's friend has a genuinely funny infatuation with a visiting "sheikh", clearly not having got over Rudolph Valentino. There's a comedy vicar who turns out to be not quite what he seems. Most of all, there's genuine suspense so that, despite the slow pace, there's none of the dragging quality often found with these sorts of films. 

An unexpectedly pleasant surprisew. Even Karloff's relatively limited screen time can't spoil this one.

The Vampire Bat (1933)

 “You give me apple. Herman give you nice soft bat."

These '30s horror films, by no means all of them Universal, are certainly something to be enjoyed. Not all  of them, alas, can be directed by James Whale. Yet this one is, as the amusingly hypochondriac maid in the film keeps saying, rubbish.

On paper it should at least be fun, if not necessarily good. Fay Wray is the leading lady, albeit in an underwritten role. Yet Dwight Frye, such a cult favourite that Alice Cooper wrote a rather good ballad about him, gets a nice and juicy part which shows how stereoyped he has become as the Renfield figure, but he's bloody good at it. He's the best thing in the film.

And yet... Lionel Attwill and Melvyn Douglas give passable performances, but the burgomeister is shocking. And, while there is some good visual stuff, the film is sloooow and dull, with appallingly functional dialogue. I suppose it's a plus to focus on vampire bats from South Ameirca somehw biting people here in central Europe and turning them into vampire-like people, but the resolution at the end is silly.

And so is the film as a whole, worth seeing only for the sake of the lovely Fay Wray and the splendid Dwight Frye. Not all of these '30s horror films, alas, are any good.

King Kong (1933)

“It was beauty killed the beast."

I’d seen this film before, of course- it’s King Kong- but not for many, many years. It’s an awesome tour de force of stop motion awesomeness, and I don’t care either how jerky it is or, indeed, how stilted the acting is. It’s a film all about the set pieces with Kong and the dinosaurs- so we get a stegosaurus, a plesiosaur and a, er, carnivorous long-necked sauropod that snatches a bloke from a tree and eats him. But even more it’s about Kong vs. the tyrannosaurus, Kong vs. the pterosaur, Kong vs. the snake, Kong going wild in New York and combing up the sparkly new Empire State Building, only to be finally shot down by some state of the art modern biplanes.

All that is what the film is about, and why you have to declare it a triumph, dodgy acting and pulp storytelling notwithstanding. I have to except Fay Wray from the “dodgy acting” comment, though- she’s natural, charismatic and splendidly flirtatious throughout. The other actors are generally outshone by the stop motion models, but that’s ok. It’s not about them.

Of course, there are things that raise an eyebrow, such as casting African Americans as the natives of an island south west of Sumatra, which would more likely be inhabited by Polynesians. There’s the vague racism of the Chinese crewman, not to mention the “savage native” trope but, hey, it’s 1933. There’s Jack’s chat up line “Say, I guess I love you”, which had me laughing out loud. And then there’s the fact that Denham essentially commits genicide upon the native just for the sake of his own glory. There they are, safe from the dangers of the island in their peninsula behind their wall, and then along comes Denham to destroy their only protection and leave them to probably all be eaten, including all those cute little kids.

It’s a bit slow, the acting is a bit stilted, but this is truly a special effect classic with some glorious set pieces that deserves its place in cinematic history.

The Invisible Man (1933)

“He meddled in things men should leave alone…”

What a brilliant film that was. I mean, I should have expected it to be good after seeing James Whale’s Frankenstein, but this just knocks the earlier film into a cocked hat. Great camerawork, incredible special effects, a magnetic and charismatic star who mesmerises with his voice alone, many amusing comic characters and an assured and pacey plot… what’s not to like? This whole film is a gleeful and glorious spectacle, breezily confident in how good it is but innocently eager to share the fun with the rest of us. It’s not the greatest film ever made, but it’s one of the easiest to love.

Claude Rains is such fun. He gets to be rude, to laugh hysterically, to be gentle with Flora, to twirl his moustache, to deliver hilarious lines such as “We’ll begin with a reign of terror; a few murders here and there!”, yet to hold the character together with sheer charisma and joie de vivre. His performance is as much a spectacle as the joyful and amazing scene where he first reveals his invisibility to the dumbfounded villagers. Even today the effects are genuinely amazing. And the character of Griffin suits his invisibility perfectly; without being seen, he’s able to get naked (symbolic in itself!) and gleefully break all of society’s rules, and get away with it. We’d all do the same, up to a point, if we could.

The film has such fun with his invisibility; hew plays so many practical jokes that it’s necessary for the murders to keep piling up more and more to stop us liking him. In the end he has to destroy a whole train in order to deserve his punishment. But that’s not the only side to the fun- I love the scene where he admits that rain, fog, smog, food visibly digesting, and even dirt between his fingernails(!) could be his undoing. Rather cleverly this prefigures the ending; snow, of course, is rather suspiciously not mentioned.

None of the other characters matter much, really, although the comedy police constable and the comedy pub landlady and landlord are fun. Cranley and Kemp are stock characters (although the slow unravelling of how Griffin manages to kill Kemp, as he says he will, is huge fun, and the car crash is great, too!), and Flora is the wettest female lead ever. In fact, aside from being wet, she has no other character traits whatsoever. Hardly a rewarding part to play, I’d imagine. As for Cranley, he seems to exist purely as a contrast with Griffin; a “responsible” scientist, concerning himself with the practical affair of food preservation, as opposed to “mad” scientist Griffin, with his self-centred and wild meddling into Things Which Should Not Be Disturbed. But no character here can compete with Rains.

The ending- with its mob and its burning building- is so similar to Whale’s earlier Frankenstein that it seems to be almost a deliberate tribute. But the ending is satisfying; it seems to follow on from lots of characters throughout the film, serious and silly, speculating on the various ways in which Griffin might come unstuck.  And it’s fitting that Rains, whose performance has been an utter triumph, finally gets his face on screen for the closing moments.