Reeling Backward: "The Black Sleep" (1956)

"The Black Sleep" is an interesting if not particularly entertaining mix of high and low horror elements.

It's got Sherlock Holmes himself, Basil Rathbone, in the leading role as a high-minded scientist, spouting dialogue in his signature clipped British accent. Classy Hollywood character actor galore John Carradine is here, too. And it's got the generally higher production values associated with an "A" picture, released as the top half of a double bill with "The Creeping Unknown."

But the story is a derivative Dr. Moreau knockoff, complete with a late-arriving menagerie of twisted creatures to terrify the distressed damsel. The other lead, the idealistic younger doctor recruited as the assistant, is a mortal stiff.

Perhaps its most intriguing aspect is the inclusion of several famous "creature feature" actors, now running out the string as their careers wind down: Lon Chaney Jr., Ed Wood favorite Tor Johnson. And it's got ol' Dracula himself, Bela Lugosi, in his final film role. Sadly, he plays a mute and doesn't actually speak any lines; his lips quiver with the effort of communication, as if frustrated by his lack of dialogue.

(Lugosi's "appearance" in Wood's (in)famous "Plan 9 from Outer Space" three years later actually consisted of test footage shot outside of his home shortly before his death in 1956.)

This is one of those old-school horror films that has several genuinely chilling moments, but they're interrupted by long dialogue scenes where the characters explain quite obvious expository information to each other.

"You mean that shambling madman used to be the brilliant Doctor Monroe! How could that be?!? Oh, yes, that huge scar on his skull, and the fact we're in the castle of a famous but maniacal brain surgeon, may have something to do with it."

Things start off well enough, with some narration about the mysterious drug "nind adhera" from the furthest reaches of India, also known as "the Black Sleep" for its ability to put people into a death-like slumber -- from which they can be conveniently awoken with the proper antidote.

It seems Dr. Gordon Ramsay (Herbert Rudley) is to be hung from the gallows for murdering a moneylender named Curry. On the night before his execution, Sir Joel Cadman (Rathbone), a former instructor of his, comes to offer his condolences and slip a mickey of the black sleep into Ramsay's drink, telling him it's a sedative that will ease his death.

Ramsay is astonished to wake up two days later in his own coffin, with Cadman and his obsequious gypsy toady, Udu (Akim Tamiroff), leering over him. In return for saving his life, Cadman requires Ramsay to assist him in his dark experiments upon the human brain.

The science of the film is pretty goof even for its day, with Cadman attempting to map the functional areas of the brain one at a time by performing surgery on perfectly healthy specimens obtained via Udu. They've all been failures, leaving the patients with serious disabilities or deformities. Cadman is tuning up his skills so he can remove a brain tumor from his suspiciously young and beautiful wife, who now resides in a (normal) coma.

Ramsay goes along for awhile, until it becomes obvious that Cadman is just using humans as guinea pigs for experiments. He joins forces with pretty assistant Laurie (Patricia Blake), who is later revealed to be the daughter of one of the early surgical failures, Mungo (Chaney), an oafish strongman who goes into a murderous rage whenever he sees his daughter.

Phyllis Stanley has a neat, underwritten role as Daphnae, Cadman's nurse and right-hand woman, who appears to harbor a secret, unrequited affection for him. I was hoping this would build up into a full-throated love triangle, with the devoted servant ultimately betraying her undeserving romantic object, but it was not to be.

Johnson turns up almost at the very end as Curry, Ramsay's supposed murder victim, still very much alive if blind. Carradine plays Bohemund, an apparent amnesiac who fancies himself a Holy Crusader who encourages deadly vengeance against the Saracens, his famous stentorian voice booming through Cadman's dungeons.

Sally Yarnell plays an unnamed female patient who's left with a head that's half-bald and a body covered in patchy fur. (I guess it was the hair-growing part of her brain that got trashed.) George Sawaya plays a handsome young man who gets turned into a gargoyle.

I'm not sure how audiences in 1956 took "The Black Sleep." It seems pretty silly and contrived now, prime material for a "Mystery Science Theater 3000" type of spoof. Merely watching it for what it is, or at least what it wants to be, seems a gross experiment.

Reeling Backward: "Raiders of the Seven Seas" (1953)

John Payne's beard was not very red, despite carrying the Spanish name for "Redbeard" in "Raiders of the Seven Seas," a film that at one time was to share the moniker if its main character, Barbarossa. But he's a stolid, charismatic presence in this mid-century example of B-movie high adventure, co-starring Donna Reed as the ubiquitous love interest.

The sea battles are just terrible, a mix of stock footage, chintzy-looking model ships and snippets from other movies. Director Sidney Salkow re-uses shots over and over again, including an exceedingly strange one of Barbarossa's merchantman seemingly plowing through the waves -- except it never moves forward.

Granted, this was low-budget spectacle. But compared to the magnificent sea battles in "Damn the Defiant!" from just nine years later, the ones in "Raiders" look positively amateurish.

Forget about historical accuracy -- the real Barbarossa was a 16th-century Ottoman who never made it west to the "Caribbes," where his film doppelganger plunders Spanish ships and townships with glee. He's got a writ from the opposing French government granting him authority to make war on their enemy, a common tactic during the golden age of piracy, when the line between outlaw and hero often grew faint.

Payne, best known for film noir roles and the lead in "Miracle on 34th Street" -- and also as screenwriting legend Robert Towne's father-in-law -- plays Barbarossa as a full-blooded man of passion. He loved gold, women, food and humiliating his enemies, and not necessarily in that order. Of course, his appetites are brought to heel by the attentions of a beautiful woman, Alida (Reed).

A noblewoman who acts as governor of Tortuga in her father's absence, the strong-willed Alida becomes Barbarossa's prize trophy, to be sold back to the Spanish for 50,000 pieces of goal. Her arranged-marriage fiance, Captain Jose Salcedo (Gerald Mohr), plays the heavy of the piece. He'd rather risk his would-be wife's life than pay the gold and give up a chance at Barbarossa's head.

Lon Chaney Jr. shows up as Peg Leg, a slave whom Barbarossa frees along with a whole galley of subjugated men. True to his name, Peg Leg is missing a limb, which of course the real Chaney did not. They use the old tie-the-leg-behind-him trick, complemented by an entire menagerie of objects and pieces of the set that conveniently get in the way of his profile. Still, you can see the ruse of you care to look closely enough.

Everyone in the movie speaks in an arch, oddly formal way as if they were addressing each other for posterity rather than mere communication. Salkow co-write the script with John O'Dea, filling it with familiar tropes of the buccaneer genre. A peppy little boy even shows up named Datu to act as the pirates' cheerleader and mascot; normally this sort of role is played by an ethnic minority to give the movie a little zing of exoticism, but here young Norwegian Skip Torgerson keeps things lilly-white.

The tiny scale of the film is easy to see in relation to what it is supposed to represent. Salcedo at one point has 1,500 Spaniard soldiers under his command, but somehow we never actually see more than 20 of them at once, and seemingly the same 20 over and over again. Similarly, Barbarossa eventually captures a whole fleet of ships, but they're seemingly manned by the same handful of henchmen.

"Raiders of the Seven Seas" isn't a bad movie, just a cheap one. It's the sort of thing you saw on the bottom of a double-feature back in the day, munched your popcorn and enjoyed, and quickly forgot about.

Reeling Backward: "The Defiant Ones" (1958)

I've learned that the filmography of Stanley Kramer as a director is feast or famine. This space has previously featured columns about "On the Beach" and "Ship of Fools," finding them to be heavy-handed films whose strident moralism overpowers their functionality as movies. Of course, he also directed wonderful pictures like "Look Who's Coming to Dinner," "Judgment at Nuremberg" and "Inherit the Wind."

I guess the secret to Kramer is to steer clear of any movies not starring Spencer Tracy.

Sadly, "The Defiant Ones" falls into the former category. It's a mawkish, occasionally cringe-worthy treatise against racism and imprisonment, featuring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier as a white man and a black man shackled together while on the lam from a chain gang.

Despite its pedigree -- nine Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Actor for both Poitier and Curtis, winning two for cinematography and original screenplay -- I found it obvious and blunt as social commentary. It's pretty much ordained that the two main characters' antagonism will boil over, and then cool into a forged friendship based on altruism and shared sacrifice.

Curtis plays Johnny "Joker" Jackson, and Poitier is Noah Cullen. Joker uses the n-word freely befitting his Southern rearing, but deep down his hard-boiled anger is directed more at a world that has beaten him down than any particular race or group. Cullen was a regular farmer and family man before he was sent to prison for assaulting a bank officer who came to foreclose his property.

It's a usual strong performance from Poitier, playing a man who recognizes that he can't change the deck that's stacked against him, but isn't about to take it lying down. It's interesting to see him play an uneducated rural man, since we associate a certain intellectualism with Poitier's screen persona.

Curtis' acting, though, is borderline awful. His famous Bronx accent bleeds through his faux Southern one like a bloody shirt, and he continually grits his teeth in a failed attempt to show the character's self-loathing -- walking around with this ridiculous rictus grin most of the time. Curtis should've taken a few notes from Humphrey Bogart, who could convey a great deal of bile just by sliding his jaw a bit.

Apart from this sub-par turn here, Curtis had a brilliant but truncated career. He essentially had a 10- or 12-year run beginning in 1957, with starring roles in some of the era's most iconic films -- "Some Like It Hot," "Spartacus," "Sweet Smell of Success" -- but by his 45th birthday in 1970 he was essentially done, reduced to silly movies and small parts.

Curtis never seemed to mind being out of the limelight, though, and turned to painting in his autumn years. "The Defiant Ones" was his only Academy Award nomination. It's flabbergasting to me that Curtis was nominated for this terrible performance, while his brilliant one in "Some Like It Hot" was not.

The screenplay has a pretty straightforward three-act structure. The first part deals with Joker and Cullen's escape when the prison van overturns, and the beginning of the manhunt to chase them down. They bicker, and Joker complains about being chained to a black man, but they realize their fates are entwined.

The second act is built around their growing desperation to escape, culminating with their capture by the residents of a tiny village while breaking into the hardware store to separate their chains. The racist mob is whipped into a frenzy by the local hothead (Claude Akins) who wants a lynching. Joker is gobsmacked by the idea that he would be hanged just like a black man, though he later admits to Cullen he saw some lynchings in his youth.

Lon Chaney Jr. has a brief but powerful role as Big Sam, the local foreman who puts a stop to the lynching, and secretly frees Cullen and Joker in the middle of the night. Again, though, Kramer and his screenwriters (Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith) aren't content with a moment of simple humanistic empathy, but have to ramp up the mawkishness by revealing that Big Sam was once a chain gang member, too.

I did admire the cutaway scenes to the pursuing posse, led by a somewhat progressive sheriff (Theodore Bikel, who also got an Oscar nod) with a distaste for employing harsher methods like attack dogs. He's badgered by a gung-ho state trooper -- played by famously gravel-voiced character actor Charles McGraw, who also was the gladiator trainer in "Spartacus" -- who deems the sheriff soft.

The final act is where things fall utterly apart. After finally coming to blows, Cullen and Joker stumble across a lonely farm wife (Cara Williams) and her young son. Although she's initially a hostage, the woman (who is never named) helps the two prisoners break their chains, feeds them and nurses Joker back to health after he collapses from his injuries and ordeal.

Then, the predictable happens: She and Joker fall in love. Or at least lust. Or something. After having sex, they wake up early in the morning before Cullen and her son, and resolve to take her car and run off on both of them. Cullen wakes up and overheard their conversation, and sees that he's no longer necessary to Joker.

The woman gives Cullen false directions to the railroad tracks through the swamp, believing he will be swallowed up by the bog and not be able to give away their plans. Joker discovers her ruse and is enraged, and races after his friend to save him, after being shot by the boy when he wrestles with his mother. Joker and Cullen fail to catch the train -- Cullen makes it aboard but refuses to let go of the injured Joker and is pulled off -- and are caught by the sheriff, wrapped in each others' arms.

This whole sequence is either way too short or too long. The idea that a woman would be willing to abandon her life and child for a man she's only met a few hours earlier -- a runaway prisoner at that -- simply strains credulity to the breaking point. Granted, she's lonely and dreams of life in a big city, but to believe she's that desperate we would need to know a lot more about the character than we learn in a relatively short amount of screen time.

As Joker points out right before running off, she doesn't even know his name.

I wanted to like "The Defiant Ones," but its strident moralizing and hammy story construction put it into the "Bad Kramer" file for me.

2 stars out of four

Reeling Backward: "Of Mice and Men" (1939)

I've always felt that the characters of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" were more allegories for different facets of humanity rather than believable, flesh-and-blood people.

It's pretty obvious, for example, that the gigantic man-child Lennie Small represents the undeveloped id -- pure, innocent, harmless in thought but capable of an instinctual lashing out at those who hurt him. Lon Chaney Jr., not yet typecast as the monster in endless creature features, made Lennie an iconic character whose rolling speech patterns and fumbling charm would influence generations of portrayals on stage and screen.

His partner, George Milton, is the common man who yearns for a better life away from back-breaking ranch work bucking bales for some uncaring boss. He and Lennie share a dream of owning their own stake, a little place where they can "live off the fat of the land." As played by Burgess Meredith, George is resolute but not stubborn, clever but not calculating, doesn't look for a fight but doesn't back away from one, either.

Curley, the pugnacious son of the boss, is fiercely protective of his beautiful new wife, and has a chip on his shoulder the size of the moon -- particularly against big men like Lennie. Short-statured but a former semi-pro boxer, Curley (Bob Steele) is in some ways Lennie's shadowy reflection -- impulsive, instinctual, vindictive. He never seems to think more than one step ahead of his actions. He can only hold a few thoughts in his head at time, mostly blind rage and jealousy, in much the same way Lennie is fixated on small soft creatures and objects he can stroke.

Both men are singular in purpose -- Lennie to adore, and Curley to despise.

Curley's wife -- played by Betty Field and credited as Mae, though she's only known in the book as "Curley's wife" -- is deathly bored by life on the ranch. Without anything to do or anyone to talk to, she takes to flirting with and teasing the ranch hands, knowing full well it will send Curley into another rage and have him giving "the old one-two" to some unlucky employee.  We suspect that even though Curley's wife expresses disgust for all the fights she causes, she secretly harbors joy for holding the center of attention.

From the 1939 film, I'm most intrigued by Slim (Charles Bickford), the mule skinner and "prince of the ranch." Slim is looked up to by all the other ranch hands, and is the one man Curley dares not provoke. He takes an instant liking to George and Lennie, though he's careful not to show favoritism. Slim is the only character who understands that George kills Lennie out of love and pity, after he oafishly breaks Curley's wife's neck when she foolishly invited him to stroke her hair.

For me, Slim's critical moment comes in the showdown between Carlson (Granville Bates), a crusty older worker, and Candy (Roman Bohnen), the one-handed old man. Carlson can't stand the stink of Candy's ancient, decrepit dog, calling it a travesty to keep the animal alive when it's no use to itself. Candy is deeply attached to the animal, perhaps his only true friend in the world, and looks to Slim to defend him.

But Slim admits it's probably for the best that the dog be put down, and Candy allows Carlson to take it outside and shoot it in the back of the head -- the same way George will later kill Lennie, and for much the same reasons.

Slim, I think, represents the best of mankind, the rational and upstanding side, that nevertheless often stands aside and lets evil come to pass. The natural state of humanity is to be kind to each other, Steinbeck says -- holding George and Lennie up as an imperfect example -- until the twisted selfishness and moral rot represented by, respectively, Curley and his wife warps the way things were intended.

Slim, unafraid to stare down Curley and defend his own reputation, is reluctant to interfere when others become a target. It's an old-school notion of virility, in which a man must stand up for himself, or he's worthless. Slim allows the brewing trouble between Curley and Lennie to boil over not because he's afraid, but because he believes it's not his business to get involved.

It's interesting how the reputation of this film has waned and peaked over time. Directed and produced by Lewis Milestone from a screen adaptation by Eugene Solow, it received four Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture. It was the first major film adaptation of a Steinbeck property, rushed into theaters before 1940's "The Grapes of Wrath," which went on to enjoy a much more hallowed reputation.

The 1939 version saw something of a revival in the 1970s and '80s, including a stage adaptation at the Steppenwolf Theatre starring Gary Sinise and John Malkovich, which they would go on to reprise in a 1992 film directed by Sinise. Still, other than Lon Chaney's portrayal of Lennie, his film has faded in memory, and unfairly so.

Aaron Copland's evocative musical score -- his first for a feature film -- was also nominated for the Academy Awards.

3.5 stars out of four