THE EVIL DEAD (1981)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


I don't remember much about my earliest screening of EVIL DEAD, except that back in the days of videocassettes I rented it together with EVIL DEAD II. Like many horror-fans, I found the more manic (and comic) version of the story to be the more interesting. My recent rewatch of EVIL DEAD on Halloween weekend was probably the first time I bothered to see the original opus again.

My main observation is that there really isn't much to say about DEAD in his "straight" manifestation. Writer-director Sam Raimi patently made the film as cheaply as possible, with no-name actors in one location. It's principally a movie that gets by on the technique of Raimi's camerawork and the special FX, which are very much of their time in terms of their fascination with splattery gore.

EVIL DEAD I is funny, to be sure, but in contrast to the sequel, the humor stems from laughing at the transparent cheesiness of the story, not from imaginative setups within the story proper (with the possible exception of the notorious "Tree Rape.") I imagine that Raimi, unlike many previous cult-film makers, was aware of the risible nature of his story. The most one can say is that EVIL DEAD was a "training-exercise" that gave him good experience for much better work down the line. The same applies to principal actor Bruce Campbell, who's pretty terrible throughout DEAD, even though he was the only one of the unknowns to acquire some measure of lasting fame.

I term this film's function "sociological" only because it follows a common narrative trope in constructing a small, unstable society and then exploiting the tensions between the characters. Here it's five young college-students renting a cabin in the Tennessee woods, who have the misfortune to unleash a bevy of Sumerian demons, who take turns possessing each of the students and turning them against their fellows. The possessions turn each possessee into gross monsters who can only be stopped by dismemberment. This might have been more impressive if all the characters were not such ciphers that they make the victims of FRIDAY THE 13TH movies seem like figures from an Ibsen play by comparison.

BEFORE I HANG (1940)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, cosmological*

As I remember, I first saw Boris Karloff's first three "mad doctor" films for Columbia in chronological order of production. I also remember thinking that the third, BEFORE I HANG, was the least of the three.

However, on re-viewing HANG, I think it's a little more adventurous than the previous two Columbia Karloff-outings, both of which concerned a dedicated but somewhat fanatical scientist trying to bring people back to life through new scientific procedures. HANG, however, pursues a different course toward restoring life, as Karloff's Doctor Garth argues that his unique treatments can reverse old age. A lot of people may idly wish for this or that person to return from the dead, but it seems to be a more universal wish to reverse the course of aging.

In TYRANNY OF THE NORMAL, Leslie Fiedler argues that modern attempts to slow that course are the equivalent of Faust's ancient bargain, even if moderns need not actually sign devilish contrasts in their own blood. Nick Grinde's HANG, despite being a cheap B-film, sometimes touches on this theme very aptly. The film begins with Garth already in prison for having committed a mercy killing. He makes an impassioned speech to the warden to be allowed to continue his research, asserting (as many modern anti-aging treatments do) that aging isn't inevitable: that proper treatment can eliminate the "poisons" that build up in the theoretically eternal cells. Most B-grade mad scientist-films don't try very hard to provide even a modicum of scientific logic to their wondrous effects, so the scripters of HANG should be credited for grounding Garth's speech in this particular theory of human aging-processes.

Naturally, Garth soon learns that you can't get something for nothing, when he attempts to reverse aging by injecting himself with the blood of a fellow prisoner, a convicted murderer-- perhaps more borrowing from HANDS OF ORLAC and MAD LOVE than from FAUST here. Garth manages to de-age himself, perhaps about twenty years, but the cost of this devil's bargain is that he begins to commit senseless murders. However, unlike the alter ego of Mister Hyde, this doctor manages to conceal his deeds so well that the authorities believe him a modern saint (not least because he holds out the promise of eternal youth) and commute his sentence. Soon Garth is free, and one of the first things he does is to try to persuade a small elite class of talented men to join him in gaining relative youth. His effort fails, as one of the older men eloquently refutes the need of the aged to have any more lifetimes. In frustration Garth kills his dialectical opponent and nearly menaces his daughter before he's finally detected and brought to the hangman's noose.

The anti-aging theories supply the aforesaid cosmological content, but the most interesting psychological component, apart from the Faust/anti-Faust debate, is what HANG leaves hanging. Unlike Faust, Mister Hyde and most over-reachers who get a second lease on life, Garth never becomes preoccupied with pursuing the opposite sex once more. I don't know if the screenplay's writers even gave the idea any thought, as they were attempting to promote the idea of Garth as fundamentally well-intentioned. In addition, while the magic of makeup may have de-aged Garth to Karloff's real fiftysomething age, there was no way a production like this one could have reversed time enough to make Garth into a credible predator, as was the case with Hyde. Thus "death" rather than "love" becomes the obsession of this bargain-basement Faustian.

CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN (1955)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*

CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN's title is probably its best feature, as the film itself is, like ZOMBIES OF MORA-TAU, one of director Edward L. Cahn's more workmanlike affairs. I remarked earlier that Cahn did seem able to exert extra effort given a solid script, but CREATURE's story, courtesy of famed fantasy-writer Curt Siomark, is perfunctory at best. The film sustains some interest in that it's one of the several Siodmak films dealing with the nature of the mind and/or brain, but CREATURE is pretty limited in what it has to say about either. It reminds me of nothing so much as an 1940s serial crossbred with a LEAVE IT TO BEAVER story.

Following his deportation from the U.S., gangster Frank Buchanan sneaks back into the country with a new acquisition picked up in Europe: an ex-Nazi mad scientist. (That'll teach the U.S. not to dump criminals in the Old World: who knows what kind of apocalyptic madmen they may bring back with them?) The scientist, Doctor Steigg, has perfected a way to raise men from the dead using atomic-powered mechanisms. (This tip of the hat toward atomic-menace films of the 1950s is about all one gets to justify the title: neither Siodmak nor Cahn seems to have invoked atomic perils much in their films, in marked contrast to Jack Arnold or even Fred Sears.) And raising the dead isn't all Dr. Steigg can do: he can also fit them with cameras, so that while still in the laboratory his boss Buchanan can see everything seen by the dead eyes of his atomic puppets-- which is a visual motif that strongly resembles similar devices from science-fiction serials, though they usually confined themselves to robots rather than the living dead. Given that these revived cadavers are both super-strong and invulnerable, it's surprising that Buchanan doesn't choose to emulate the more ambitious world-rulers of the old serials, but seems interested only in avenging himself on the people who deported him via his zombie assassins. One assumes he planned to get around to ruling the world sooner or later, though.

Steigg is a curiosity: given his Nazi background he's not precisely sympathetic, but he doesn't like being controlled by Buchanan, and so comes off as a little less despicable than his boss. I think he would have made a better villain than the rather mundane gangster, perhaps in part because the actor playing him, Gregory Gay, had previous experience conquering the world as the head villain of FLYING DISC MEN OF MARS.

Richard Denning plays the sort of stalwart policeman-hero common to 1940s serials, but with a difference: this time the tough cop has a wife and a small daughter (hence the BEAVER reference). CREATURE's one memorable moment takes place at the white-picket-fence home of Denning's family, when Buchanan zombifies Denning's cop-brother and sends him to the Denning house to gain intelligence of police activities from the unsuspecting wife. Cahn does maintain some decent suspense as to whether the killer zombie will do something horrible to the cute little daughter while he's sitting around pretending to be alive.

The final battle of cops vs. zombies is fairly risible, especially when the zombies don't even react when hit by grenades that act more like smoke-bombs. Still, I must admit that the key idea of invulnerable dead men shambling their way through troops has been a fantasy strongly nurtured by the zombie-film genre, so CREATURE deserves a few points for being among the first cinematic articulations of the idea.

To be sure, I was probably too old for the scares of this film when I first saw it. I note in passing that three or four imdb respondents found it terrifying when they viewed CREATURE as kids.

LEOPARD MAN (1943)

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *high*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

(SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS)

In my reviews of two other films in the repertoire of producer Val Lewton, SEVENTH VICTIM and GHOST SHIP, I've noted a motif I called the "Jane Eyre" myth, in which one character must supplant another in order to gain romantic happiness. I find the same myth present in Lewton's CAT PEOPLE, but not in the equally-feline subject of this review, LEOPARD MAN, though I do think there's a strong related motif, in which feelings of envy are passed from character to character like a supernatural curse. Since LEOPARD MAN is purportedly a reasonably faithful adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich novel BLACK ALIBI, it may be that the novel's close but not identical thematic focus were what interested Val Lewton in the property.

The opening scenes of LEOPARD MAN fairly drip with one kind of envy or another. In the fictional Mexican city of Ciudad Real (a "fake city" name for Mexico City), we first see two women backstage at a club, one a cigarette-girl, the other Kiki Walker (Jean Brooks), a singer-performer at the club. There's a moment of envy expressed by the cigarette-girl as to Kiki's superior position in the pecking-order, but the two ladies join in dissing a third woman; the Mexican castanet-shaker Clo-Clo (Margo), because she's popular with the club-patrons due to her exoticism. As the cigarette-girl leaves, in comes Jerry Manning, who's decided to take a rash action to help Kiki upstage Clo-Clo. Minutes later, while Clo-Clo is still performing on stage, Kiki, clad in black as the illo shows above, enters the club with a black leopard on a leash.

Unfortunately for Kiki and Jerry, Clo-Clo reacts badly to being upstaged: she clacks her castanets so loudly that she frightens the leopard. The animal breaks free of Kiki and vanishes into the city. Jerry, who has hired the leopard from a local animal trainer (the first person to be called a "leopard man"), is duly remorseful for having brought about a danger to the public, but he puts off paying the wrangler for his animal in the hope that the creature may be recaptured. However, the creature, confused by its freedom amid the lights and noise of the city, goes berserk and kills a lone girl, at which point the local cops start looking for it a lot more assiduously.

Lewton had gained some repute for "stalking scenes" of the type seen in CAT PEOPLE and SEVENTH VICTIM, and the one with the lone girl is the best here. Interestingly, shortly after the leopard gets loose, a fortune-teller draws the ace of spades for Clo-Clo, but after she greets the young girl in the street, it's as if she passes her fate on to the girl. Later yet another girl is killed while trying to hold an assignation with her lover. The fortune-teller's next prophecy involves Clo-Clo getting money from an older man, which does come true, but it doesn't do the performer any good, for her deferred fate finally catches up with her.

Given the film's title, I doubt that any viewer in 1943 expected the film to be purely about the depredations of a leopard on the loose, even before Jerry suspects that there's some human agency behind some of the killings. The animal trainer, having passed out once during the second killing, wonders if he's committed some horrible act, and asks the sheriff to lock him up-- which, as any good filmgoer should realize, is the filmmakers' way of exonerating him when the third murder takes place.

The script doesn't provide many other suspects, so there's no big surprise when the "leopard killer" turns out to be Jerry's confidante Dr. Galbraith, who was once a "zoologist" before he unaccountably ended up running a small museum in Ciudad Real. Galbraith happens to have seen the "broken" and "mangled" body of the leopard's first and only victim, which inspires him to become a serial killer, though one sane enough to attempt leaving clues to incriminate the leopard. In truth, Galbraith actually shoots the leopard in the country and leaves it there, making it possible for Jerry to destroy that alibi. It further comes out that Galbraith's thinks of the leopard as something of a totem of violence, invoking the Aztecs' similar thoughts on the jaguar. Jerry, accompanied by the bereaved boyfriend of the second victim, overtakes the killer, and the boyfriend saves the city the expense of a trial.

I found the moral compass of SEVENTH VICTIM fuzzy, but I admire the moral theme of LEOPARD MAN. Although Jerry and Kiki might be accused of having been rash in trying to play the publicity game, they're both clearly conscience-stricken by the damage they've (literally) unleashed. To some extent, Jerry's quest to unveil a human agent has the added effect of exonerating him from some of the fatalities, though it could be argue that he's still responsible for bringing Galbraith's insanity to the surface. Still, the two Americans don't dodge their responsibilities and do their utmost to correct the situation.

As I've detailed elsewhere, all of my ten tropes are capable of having either "naturalistic" or "uncanny" manifestations. If the leopard as presented in LEOPARD MAN had been the sole menace, this would have been a purely naturalistic manifestation of the "astounding animal" trope, for there's never any suggestion that the leopard is anything more than an animal. However, Galbraith participates in "uncanny" versions of both the "perilous psycho" and "bizarre crimes" tropes. However, with respect to the "phantasmal figuration" trope, this would be a "naturalistic" manifestation, because the criminal is covering his actions with the appearance of normality, rather than (say) pretending to be a ghost, smiling or otherwise.

4D MAN (1959)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*

4D MAN, one of three sci-fi films directed in close succession by Irwin S. Yeaworth Jr,, is a good deal more complex than his other two films, the classic monster-film THE BLOB and the amiable "dumb fun" flick DINOSAURUS! 4D MAN has an intellectual rigor reminiscent of the best Jack Arnold sci-fi flicks of the same period, but this rigor doesn't seem to be present in other works by Yeaworth. Writer Jack H. Harris provided the basic idea for the film, but apparently didn't contribute to the script, though some psychological aspects are not unlike those of Harris' only writer-director project, the 1966 farce UNKISSED BRIDE. Of the two writers, one only has about four credits (including THE BLOB) while the other worked largely on westerns. I suppose I should regard 4D MAN as the result of a unique gestalt of talents and let it go at that.

In contrast to THE BLOB, where an inhuman monster was in the narrative forefront most of the time, most of 4D MAN's screen-time is devoted to the human conflict that creates the monster. Scenes of the "4D Man" passing unharmed through solid walls and draining victims of their life-force probably comprise less than twenty minutes all told, as the narrative concentrates more fully on the fraternal conflict between two scientist-brothers, Scott Nelson (Robert Lansing) and Tony Nelson (James Congdon), with the side-item of Linda (Lee Meriwether), the woman who comes between them.

Nothing is ever said about the parents of the two brothers, but Scott, the seemingly responsible older brother, takes a quasi-paternal air toward young Tony. This condescension seems justified, in that Tony's first accomplishment on screen consists of blowing up someone else's laboratory. Because that feat puts Tony out of work, he shows up at the physics lab where Scott works, implicitly looking for a handout. Scott agrees to let Tony work for him, though it soon comes out that Scott's project-- to produce an impenetrable metal, "cargonite"-- is one for which Scott receives no public renown thanks to his credit-hog boss Doctor Carson. Even before Linda enters the picture, the battle lines are drawn. Scott is the practical brother who stays employed at the cost of giving in to an egotistical supervisor. Tony is the more daring, charismatic brother who takes chances and so gets booted out of jobs. One guess which brother seems more romantically intriguing to Linda, the lady scientist who's worked alongside Scott for years.

Shortly after Scott introduces Linda and Tony, Scott mentions to Tony that he plans to ask Linda to marry him. But since Linda evinces no more emotion toward Scott than professional admiration, it's clear that long before Tony arrives, Scott's let the proverbial grass grow under his feet. Later, long after Linda and Tony have become romantic, Scott tries belately to woo Linda only to be told that she believes he only thinks he loves her out of "habit." And though the character isn't significantly older than the lady scientist (he states his age as "32," roughly the same age as the actor's in 1959), it's evident that Linda only admires Scott in the distanced sense of a mentor, possibly even a father-figure. This is made ironic by a later sequence when she takes a slightly motherly aspect toward Tony (who responds with a flip "Yes, mother" line) and by the climax, where she kills Scott to protect Tony.

Tony tries manfully not to steal Linda from Scott. He tells Linda that once before he stole away a girl Scott intended to marry, but that she was "no good," implying that on some level he did Scott a favor. However, despite Tony's claims of loyalty, it's clear that he wants to one-up his older brother in more ways than one. While Scott perfects his impenetrable metal, Tony comes up with a way to penetrate it. Initially Scott scoffs at Tony's method, equating it with the wild claims of ancient alchemists. Tony argues that he's found a way to speed up the process by which substances become amalgamated, and that it involves using a special machine that boosts his own brain waves, so that his own mind is instrumental in transposing atoms-- such as causing a pencil to become imbedded in a piece of steel.

On a side-note, in Colin Wilson's 1971 book THE OCCULT, Wilson argues that if the alchemists had been able to truly transmute metals, it could not have been done chemically, but only by some sort of mental magic.

Tony, having already stolen the woman Scott thought was his, indirectly causes his conservative brother to become consumed with this new line of research. Inevitably, Scott follows the course taken by Wells' "Invisible Man" and many others; he tries the process on himself. But whereas Doctor Griffin went mad because of the effects of the drug he took, it's suggested that Scott already has some brain-troubles, due to migraine headaches. Are the headaches the result of pent-up rage as he's constantly overshadowed, both by boss Carson and brother Tony? It would seem so, for once Scott gains the power to drain life-forces from humans with a touch, he intentionally kills Carson. He also kills another lab-worker, Roy Parker, who expresses envious sentiments toward Scott and who makes an unsuccessful pass at Linda some time before Tony comes into the story.

What we have, then, is the story of the Prodigal Brother, retold so that when the Prodigal comes back to the fold he manages to steal the Loyal Brother's girlfriend and poison his mind so that Loyal Brother goes on a killing spree. The cosmological aspects of the narrative, dealing with the ability of substances to penetrate one another, are largely metaphors for the psychological conflict, in which Scott, the sci-fi scapegoat of the tale, suffers for Tony's erratic brilliance.

Not to say that Scott is without fault. Early on he's portrayed as being overly logical, without any strong emotions and certainly without the ability to charm a woman. (Later he's picked up by a b-girl, whom he ends up killing; one wonders if the "no good" woman was also just after his money.) He never takes Linda's feelings into account, and his belated desire to relate to her causes him to drop his guard at the climax. After she's wounded him, he defiantly cries that no one can touch him-- and then essentially kills himself by trying to pass through a wall of cargonite, where he (like the earlier pencil) becomes stuck and expires.

Still, for all his faults, my sympathies remained more with Scott than either Tony or Linda, who don't come off as particularly admirable despite all their breast-beatings.

AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES VOLS 1-2 (2010)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological, cosmological*

There have been dozens of media-adaptations of Marvel Comics characters since the company rose to prominence in the 1960s. However, aside from a handful of cartoons produced during that decade, few adaptations sought to emulate the resonance of Silver Age Marvel. Usually, any time a production company got its hands on, say, SPIDER-MAN, they decided to do "their" version of Spider-Man, which could be anything from "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" to "Spider-Man Unlimited" (Spidey trapped on an alternate Earth with lots of ugly beasties that looked like they escaped Image Comics).

Such an approach isn't unjustified, given that the Silver Age style in Marvel Comics faded with the arrival of the Bronze Age and with the infusion of many new talents who had their own often boundary-shifting takes on Spider-Man, the Avengers et al-- to say nothing of the changes that took place in subsequent decades. None of these changes are in themselves objectionable; each generation speaks to its own particular concerns. And perhaps that was for the best. Generally speaking, it was rare to see any comics-professionals of later generations credibly reproduce the excitement and inventiveness of Silver Age Marvel, least of all the overblown "homage" of Alan Moore's "1963" works.

So if Marvel Comics themselves don't credibly pull off the Silver Resonance, why should anyone when adapating the characters to other media?

To my surprise, the first season of THE AVENGERS: EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES, which debuted on the Disney XD Channel in fall 2010, did a fine job of assembling not just the Avengers but also the Marvel Universe in which they operated.

As the illustration above suggests, in the first season the series emphasizes the same characters who started the supergroup in the early 1960s comic books: Thor, Iron Man, the Hulk, Giant-Man (leaping over but not forgetting his previous I.D. as Ant-Man) and the Wasp. As it happened, the comic-book series didn't focus on these characters past the first fifteen issues-- indeed, one of them, the Hulk, had departed the group in issue #2. For the rest of the Silver Age the supergroup concentrated on bringing together diverse heroes who didn't have their own features, such as Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Black Panther-- one exception being Captain America, who shepherded the motley crew for several issues before he too departed.

In contrast, AEMH is all about Marvel's "big guns," in deference to the live-action films featuring three of the five charter-member characters. Yet the writers (headed by one Christopher Yost, a veteran of the X-MEN EVOLUTION teleseries) have done a fine job of keeping the storylines fluid enough to work in a varied array of classic Silver Age characters, principally Captain America, Black Panther, Hawkeye, and Black Widow-- the last two also slated for the 2012 live-action film. And if the series is entirely dependent on the Silver Age comics for its villains, at least it chooses some of the best-- though on occasion, some of the worst, like the Mandrill, are included for comic effect.

The series, like the original 1960s comic, begins in media res, in that the separate heroes and their foes have already been around for years before the good guys band into the Avengers. There's a decent if unexceptional plotline establishing that one motive for the group's formation is that of following the group's conscience rather than being manipulated by the government, as represented by SHIELD honcho Nick Fury. This roughly references a similar development in the live-action IRON MAN 2 (2010), and to some extent Iron Man, having been one of the better successes of cinema-Marvel, does assume a more central role in the AEMH series than he did in the comic book. Other plot-developments are clearly derviced from storylines established in this year's feature-films, THOR and CAPTAIN AMERICA, particularly one in which Cap's foe the Red Skull starts siphoning powerful entities from Thor's Asgardian realm. It's a credit to Yost and his writers that these adaptations don't seem intrusive in the overall story-arc.

Plotwise, my worst criticism is that on occasion the writers introduce a character who has very little impact on the plotline as such, with an eye toward further expansion later. Such is the situation in Episode 10, "Everything is Wonderful," which interrupts the overall arc (super-villains busting out of all the high-security prisons) to introduce viewers to the cartoon's version of Wonder Man. True, Wonder Man would come to be an important character in long-term Avengers history. But his cartoon adaptation comes off as being of little consequence to the overall plot, leading me to wonder, "what was the point of that, beyond a fannish reference?"

Still, on the whole AEMH recaptures the feel of the way Silver Age Marvel felt: not only in terms of ambitious plotlines and deft character touches, but also in the way the heroes are portrayed. Silver Age creators such Lee, Kirby, Heck and Thomas always portrayed the Avengers in broad heroic strokes, keeping them distinct without bogging them down with too much labored characterizational tics. The result is that, very much in contrast to a lot of current Marvel Comics product, the heroes of AEMH are actually both likeable and interesting.

SON OF DRACULA (1943)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological*


In my review of DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS I said:


"I'd speculate that filmmakers in the 1930s and 1940s might have been wary of claiming that this kind of blasphemous corpse-activity [Dracula reviving again and again] could take place on a regular basis."

Robert Siodmak's SON OF DRACULA manages to have it both ways, in that one character claims that the mysterious "Count Alucard" is really the Dracula of legend, while two other characters speculate that he may simply be a descendant of the Dracula line, though possibly that line was added only to justify the title. Admittedly Alucard (Lon Chaney Jr.) never speaks or acts as if he has some long-dead paternal figure in his background-- something of a vivid contrast to an actor who actually did take his father's name to advance his career.

In any case, though it's likely that the Curt Siodmak-Eric Taylor script meant to imply that Alucard was the real Dracula, they clearly abandon any real continuity with 1931's DRACULA, in marked contrast to 1936's DRACULA'S DAUGHTER. When the legend of Dracula is discussed by this movie's fearless vampire killers, they seem to believe he died long before the story's modern-day setting. Thus the script is spared the trouble of having to figure out how Dracula was resurrected, which became a repeated theme in some though not all of the Hammer DRACULA series. When Universal Studios did their next version of Dracula in next year's HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, even less continuity is stressed. Ironically John Carradine's Dracula-- the first cinematic Dracula to be revived on-screen in U.S. cinema-- is revived as if he had previously suffered the staking-death doled out to Bela Lugosi at the end of the 1931 film, not the "death-by-extreme-tanning" to which Chaney Jr.'s vamp succumbs.

Chaney Jr.'s take on Dracula is definitely *not* one of those perfomances of which one can say, "You'll either love it or hate it." I'm with the many fans who think he did the role adequately, though given the actor's general hangdog look, I wish the script had gone with Dracula as a troubled, lonely soul rather than a master planner-type. Chaney Jr. does project a strong sense of power as Dracula, but he doesn't seem to be much of a thinker. His best lines are the ones when he meditates about enjoying the "virile" potential of a young healthy country, as against his native Hungary, which he and the local vampire expert Professor Lazlo consider to have been "drained" of life.

In a way, SON might be read as the fair sex's revenge for all the times Dracula fanged feminine necks. This Dracula doesn't make plans to invade the modern world: he's brought to America-- specifically a rich Southern plantation--by the influence of morbid heiress Katherine Caldwell (Louise Albritton). Katherine, unlike her sister Claire (Evelyn Ankers), has a deep belief in the occult and a fear of death (the professor calls her a "thanatophobe.") Not long after "Count Alucard" arrives, Katherine and Claire's father mysteriously dies of apparent fright, bequeathing his inheritance to the two sisters. Not long afterward, Katherine throws over her long-time fiancee Frank and officially (if secretly) marries Count Alucard.

Frank, driven to distraction by this betrayal, gets into a fight with Alucard, who naturally hurls him away like a flea. The outraged fiancee draws a pistol, shoots Alucard, and kills Katherine when the bullets pass harmlessly through the vampire's body. Frank tells various people that he's killed Katherine, but thanks to Alucard Katherine rises from the dead as a vampire, and pretends to be alive. Later she comes to Frank in his cell, telling him that she only married Alucard to gain vampiric immortality. She promptly betrays Alucard by telling Frank how to destroy him. However, though Frank carries out her wishes, he declines to join the ranks of the undead with Katherine and finishes her off as well.

Whereas the slightly-later CRY OF THE WEREWOLF bogged down with many tedious scenes of modern-day skeptics denying the existence of werewolves, the script of SON OF DRACULA alternates adroitly between belief and unbelief, as gradually Frank and his allies are convinced of the existence of the undead. Robert Paige does an excellent job as the beleagured Frank, a far cry from many of Universal's handsome leading-man nonentities. Other cast-members, even those introduced for humorous contrast, turn in effective performances as well, though Evelyn Ankers really has nothing to do. I'd speculate the script included her on the theory of giving a "consolation prize" once he found out that his former love was a rotter. Thankfully, there's no such "happy ending" intimated at the close of SON: Frank looks like he's well and truly devastated at having to off his former beloved, vampire or not. But the narrative focus is clearly on Chaney's Dracula and Albritton's scheming Katherine.

There's not much speculation on the metaphysics of vampirism this time, aside from the Stoker-derived image of his leeching the life out of whole countries. Katherine's "thanatophobia" is the main source of psychological interest, though at no time does the script really dwell on what makes her so fearful of death. A more complex film might have noted that she's complicit in the death of her father, but SON pretty much breezes past this sort of intensity.