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.

Scrooge (1951)

"Humbug!"

Mrs Llamastrangler suggested that, as Gremlins counts as a Christmas film only on a technicality, I ought to do one (interpret that how you will) before the Chrimbo Limbo concludes. I think she had Jack Frost in mind, but heigh-ho...

Anyway, this is bloody good. Alastair Sim proves that actors associated with comedy can be truly arresting at straight drama- although his comic side is of course very much on display at the end..The entire cast is magnificent, though.

While bits are expanded from Dickens’ original novella, chiefly concerning how Scrooge got his wealth, this is a faithful adaptation, on the whole. The film deserves top marks, in particular, for taking care to include Dickens’ social commentary; the unreformed Scrooge refuses to forgive a debt, potentially forcing his unfortunate debtor to spend Christmas in a debtor’s prison, and announces that prisons and the Poor Law, cruel though they are, are a suitable response to poverty. Also it’s clear, in what we see of Scrooge’s past, that his hardness is a response to a perceived hardening of the world from the ore-factory age, when money wasn’t everything, to now (1843-ish?) where money is progress and traditional considerations for the less fortunate have fallen by the wayside. It’s very much about the problems of industrialisation, but it has much to say to That her’s children in this new age of austerity. And it’s heartening to see Christmas being set against all this, rather than as another commercial pressure.

It’s all full of Dickensisms, of course, from those inimitable character names to the poor working class family that inexplicably speaks RP, but that’s all part of the fun. This is the finest adaptation of A Christmas Carol that I’ve seen, very much including those with Muppets in...!