Tue 27 Oct 2015
A Halloween Movie Review by Jonathan Lewis: THE WALKING DEAD (1936).
Posted by Steve under Horror movies , Reviews[5] Comments
THE WALKING DEAD. Warner Brothers, 1936. Boris Karloff, Ricardo Cortez, Edmund Gwenn, Marguerite Churchill, Warren Hull, Barton MacLane. Director: Michael Curtiz.
If you haven’t yet seen The Walking Dead, do so. You’re in for a real treat. But I don’t mean the AMC television show. No, I mean the taut programmer directed by famed Warner Brothers director Michael Curtiz. Starring the legendary Boris Karloff, this proto-noir thriller squeezes in melodrama, social commentary, and suspense in a running time just over an hour long. All that, and some beautifully filmed camera shots at unsettling angles and an economical use of light and shadow to convey meaning.
The plot isn’t all that inventive. Karloff portrays John Ellman, an ex-con and general all around sad sack, who gets framed for the murder of the judge who put him in the slammer in the first place. Making matters even worse for the music-loving and piano-playing Ellman is the fact that his serpentine lawyer (Ricardo Cortez) is in bed with the very racketeers who framed him. Ellman’s sentenced to the chair and despite some last minute attempts to stay the execution, gets put to death.
Or does he? Enter the bespectacled foreign scientist, one Dr. Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn) who brings – you guessed it – Ellman back to life.
Although he’s alive again, there’s something just not quite right about Ellman. Maybe he is beholden to supernatural forces from beyond the grave. Whatever the case may be, it’s not long until Ellman exacts revenge on the men who unjustly sentenced him to death. Blending horror with social realism, The Walking Dead is an effective thriller that’s well worth your time.
October 27th, 2015 at 5:25 pm
Curtiz was too often dismissed as a Studio Hack, but he had some very stylish moments, and this film is full of them.
October 27th, 2015 at 10:28 pm
Curtiz is usually considered the opposite of an auteur, but in terms of camera work and his entire output it is hard to not to see him as a stylist, certainly in his use of German Expressionist film styles.
This one should be a Warner’s programmer, but is lifted above that by Curtiz, Karloff, Gwenn, and in this case even Cortez. Given a different cast this would have been at best an interesting B, but with this lot it is as good as many A films.
Back when the term auteur was first being used in regard to directors the fact that Curtiz was a studio director above all was a mark against him with critics trying to make a name championing less mainstream types. That his work encompassed everything from horror to westerns, from detective to soap, and from comedy to swashbucklers made him much too difficult to pin down.
Today fewer critics are so strident about insisting he was not an auteur though his wide range of work and close association with studio product still causes some prejudice among cineastes. Old prejudices are hard to let go of and there is still a tendency to credit everyone but Curtiz with his films look, style, and success.
Despite the atmospherics and bringing Karloff back from the dead this is more a standard crime revenge film than horror, perhaps to be expected from Warners, but one stylishly done with just enough of a suggestion of something otherworldly going on to make it work as horror.
For anyone looking for a solid lesser Karloff outing I would rate this with THE INVISIBLE RAY as one of the best.
October 28th, 2015 at 2:03 am
Definitely a Karloff performance that deserves wider recognition.
October 28th, 2015 at 2:19 am
Warner Bros. horror movies of that era tend to have one foot in the Crime genre (MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is played out more like a gruesome crime drama than an out-and-out horror movie). THE WALKING DEAD is very much of that type, although there is far less humour than in most of their other horrors, and more genuine creepiness.
Edmund Gwenn gives a fascinating performance. He’s not the usual ‘Mad Scientist’, but rather a well-intentioned person who becomes more and more driven and increasingly callous as he sees the opportunity of discovering the secrets of life and death.
January 4th, 2017 at 12:53 am
Welcome once again to Better Late Than Never(?):
This movie recieved an unexpected ‘afterlife’ of sorts, from (of all people) Joshua Logan.
In 1964, Logan was putting together Ensign Pulver, his own home-brewed sequel to Mister Roberts.
It was supposed to make a star out of Robert Walker Jr. in the title role (that didn’t happen, but that’s another story).
Burl Ives was The Captain, Walter Matthau was Doc, and the crew was packed with newbies (then, anyway) like Larry Hagman, James Coco, Peter Marshall, Gerald O’Loughlin, Al Freeman Jr., Jack Nicholson, and some others I’ll remember after I hit Submit.
Ensign Pulver was a major money-loser of ’64, and helped grive Josh Logan to Paint Your Wagon (which is another another story).
What this has to do with The Walking Dead:
In Pulver, the Captain forces the crew to endlessly rewatch his favorite movie, Young Dr. Jekyll Meets Frankenstein (I may have that title wrong; I’ll have to check later), starring Boris Karloff, Edmund Gwenn, and ‘introducing’ Morgan Paull as the Young Doctor.
Morgan Paull was a TV actor from Warners’s contract list, who doubtless jumped at the chance to be in a Joshua Logan Production (see under “It seemed like a good idea at the time …”).
Exactly how YDJMF fits into the Pulver scenario – well, if you ever see the Logan movie, you’ll get it.
Nothing more to my story, really, but I thought I’d pass it along, FWIW …