Monograms and Moonstones
The Moonstone
The Moonstone marks our first real foray into a universe in which we will be spending a lot of time as I work my way through this latest round of Netflix Diaries: the Poverty Row thriller. An understanding of what Poverty Row was — if not an actual appreciation for its product — is an important part of any cult film education (and given the way you kids are allowed to make up any damn thing and call it a college major these days, you can probably go PhD in Cult Film Studies or some such nonsense, when you should be spending your time in college learning about Hammurabi, thermodynamics, and beer funnels), because Poverty Row is where the b-movie was born.
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Comments
Comment from lyzard
Time: April 16, 2008, 12:19 am
Do we point and shriek, or would that be impolite?
Comment from El Santo
Time: April 16, 2008, 7:07 am
Nah. We just tell him to watch THE CORPSE VANISHES and THE BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT at the earliest opportunity. And then we ask him if anybody has yet introduced him to the comparable anti-wonders of the Producers’ Releasing Corporation…
Comment from KeithA
Time: April 16, 2008, 9:22 am
Don’t worry hman — I have a lot of these lined up for review. You will know more about a group of shift aristocrats sitting in the parlor in an isolated location than any man ever wanted.
Comment from hman
Time: April 16, 2008, 9:56 am
Keith - Just call me Blake. 
El Santo - I believe both of those films are available on the Internet Movie Archive, and I have a national holiday coming up, so I think I’ll be able to remedy my problem. Just to kill the proverbial cat, what are some of the anti-wonders of which you speak?
Comment from hman
Time: April 16, 2008, 10:30 am
Hmm…they don’t have Bowery at Midnight, and I’m downloading “Corpse Vanishes” right now. Any other (at least three) recommendations?
Comment from El Santo
Time: April 16, 2008, 1:12 pm
“to kill the proverbial cat, what are some of the anti-wonders of which you speak?”
The most noteworthy of PRC’s desperately cheap (and usually commensurately terrible) horror films is probably The Devil Bat, which you can read about at length on either Lyz’s site or mine. (Lyz also has a review of its infuriating sequel.) Also worth a look is The Mad Monster, which has George Zucco turning Glenn Strange into the Worst Werewolf Ever and using him to kill off his old professional rivals, dreaming all the while about parleying his cracked revenge scheme into a contract to make werewolves for the US Army. (Observe the curious inversion of Monogram’s pet gimmick of putting mad scientists to work making zombies for Hitler.) There were also a couple PRC horror programmers that managed, against all odds, to be halfway decent. Bluebeard benefits from director Edgar G. Ulmer’s usual meticulousness about production design, and gives John Carradine a pretty solid role as a multitalented artist (painter/fashion designer/singing puppeteer/etc.) who would rather not be a serial killer, but just can’t help himself. Then there’s Dead Men Walk, a slow moving but commendably atypical vampire movie that stars Zucco (again– somebody at PRC really liked that guy) in a dual role as both a doctor who was moved to fratricide in order to protect his niece, and his devil-worshipping twin who returns from the grave as a bloodsucker and proceeds to ruin the doctor’s life. All the aforementioned films are in the public domain, and are readily available on bargain-bin DVD.
Comment from El Santo
Time: April 16, 2008, 1:19 pm
As for “at least three” Monogram recommendations to make up for the absence of The Bowery at Midnight, I’d suggest you try Black Dragons (which plays as if it started life as an ordinary crime melodrama, but was rewritten halfway through shooting in the hope of making it both a horror picture and a patriotic, post-Pearl Harbor Jap-baiter), The Ape Man (in which Bela Lugosi injects himself with cerebrospinal fluid from a gorilla for absolutely no reason, and turns into an Amish man), and The Invisible Ghost (yet another Lugosi vehicle, which earns distinction both for having maybe the most dignified performance by a black actor in any 1940’s B-movie, and for making no sense whatsoever on any level).
Comment from hman
Time: April 16, 2008, 3:11 pm
Well, I just watched one now. “The Spooks Run Wild” with Bela Lugosi and the Bowery Boys. It wasn’t bad. The banter is okay. although for 64 minutes, it seems awfully padded. I’m not sure who’s better, The Bowery Boys or the Ritz Brothers (I remember now that I watched “The Gorilla” back in 2006 and had forgotten about it).
Comment from KeithA
Time: April 16, 2008, 3:15 pm
That’s the miracle of Poverty Row productions — they can be 50 minutes long and still full of padding.
Comment from lyzard
Time: April 16, 2008, 8:32 pm
We’re watching the 1934 serial The Perils Of Pauline at the moment, and John Davidson is the bad guy in that, too: “Dr Bashan, a Eurasian”, as they like to put it. He was one of those guys who spend fifty years playing bit parts; one of those guys who really ought to write their memoirs, but never do.
Comment from Matthew Fudge
Time: April 17, 2008, 8:25 am
A lot of these can be found on the fifty movie pack box sets - as covered in snazzy detail on teleport city - though for the most part the transfers are pretty fuzzy. They also turn up, at least in my country, in petrol stations, discount stores and generally anywhere that a £1 dvd seems like a good bet. Ah, the joys of public domain.
Comment from Matthew Fudge
Time: April 17, 2008, 8:30 am
On another tack: John davidson. At what point did it stop being okay to cast white men as Asians? They were still doing it in the early eighties with Alec Guiness in A Passage to India or in fact, I think the guy in Short Circuit might also be white. That’s the kind of comparison I like. My personal faovourite being Sean Connery as an arab warlord in the Wind and the Lion. An arab warlord with a scottish accent. In fact let’s face it, he’s the king of that stuff.
Comment from El Santo
Time: April 17, 2008, 9:05 am
Yeah, the guy who played Benjamin in the Short Circuit films is definitely white. You can see him acting with his natural skin tone in The Burning.
Comment from KeithA
Time: April 17, 2008, 9:14 am
Now, you are allowed to cast Indians as Arabs, which I guess is a sort of progress. But only British Indians.
And I think the Short Circuit guy’s best role by far was as the villainous evil hacker in HACKERS.
Comment from KeithA
Time: April 17, 2008, 9:16 am
Lyz: You know, I wanted to write a book that was nothing but interviews and memoirs of actors who have never been “famous” but have been working for decades. Tim Thomerson, Michael Wong, Billy Draco, Don Wilson — guys like that. They have to have the best stories, esp. if my interview format of “get them all together in the same room with lots of booze and just press record” comes together.
Comment from hman
Time: April 17, 2008, 9:59 am
Keith - I sincerely hope that you include Dr. Toru Tanaka and Al Leong in that book, should you ever write it.
Lyz - So are you still going to point and shriek, or are you going to warmly welcome me into the club?
Comment from The Rev. D.D.
Time: April 17, 2008, 10:07 am
Get James Hong too, if for no other reason than to do a Letterman. “Wong, Hong. Hong, Wong” for minutes on end.
Hey, if they’ve all had enough liquor it’ll probably even amuse them.
Not that anyone would really need an excuse to talk to James Hong.
I recognized Fisher Stevens in The Burning and even a couple of recent appearances on “Lost,” but why didn’t I recognize him in Hackers?
I can only assume it was due to the relative quality of those projects…
Comment from KeithA
Time: April 17, 2008, 10:34 am
Oh come now, that scene where the shiny good hacker is waiting on the suspiciously clean seedy New York street to hand over a disc, and then a black sedan pull sup — but Fisher isn’t in the car…HE’S CLINGING TOT HE BACK OF IT WHILE RIDING A SKATEBOARD!!! Now that’s a moment of absolute brilliance.
Blake: I still harbor dreams of making a movie where Danny Trejo and Al Leong are the leads. Possibly a romantic comedy.
Comment from lyzard
Time: April 17, 2008, 4:12 pm
Lyz - So are you still going to point and shriek, or are you going to warmly welcome me into the club?
Convince me of your credentials by doing a reasonable impression of Bela saying ‘goodbye’ in The Devil Bat, and you’re in!
Comment from lyzard
Time: April 17, 2008, 4:26 pm
Actually - to cross the discussion lines of racial impersonation and guys who work forever - The Perils Of Pauline also features Frank Lackteen, who was born in Lebanon, but over a fifty year career played innumerable Chinese, Arab, Turkish, Mexican and Indian (dot and feather) bad guys, as well as a bunch of “native” and “half-breed” roles. Here he’s supposed to be Chinese. He’s “Fang”, Bashan’s main henchman - and what a henchman! Last night while trying to steal the MacGuffin, he was menaced by a python, mauled by a leopard, and captured by the good guys. To avoid being made to talk, he threw himself into a crocodile-infested river and outswam the crocs, then staggered about ten miles through the jungle to reach Bashan. Bashan’s greeting? “YOU HAVE FAILED!!”
I tell you, these henchmen have *got* to unionise….
Comment from lyzard
Time: April 17, 2008, 4:31 pm
Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany’s is generally considered the nadir of racial impersonation, I think, but yeah, Sean Connery gets away with murder, doesn’t he? - particularly in light of what John Wayne had to take over The Conqueror.
Comment from lyzard
Time: April 17, 2008, 4:38 pm
Keith - I for one would keel over from joy at the prospect of such a book….and a romantic comedy with Danny Trejo and Al Leong would probably finish me off. (Uh, are you planning on casting any women in that, or…?)
Comment from hman
Time: April 17, 2008, 7:36 pm
I’d shoot for either Kim Maree Penn or a comeback from Caroline Munro. I mean, if Diane Keaton can date Keanu Reeves in a movie, Al Leong and Danny Trejo can go after the great Munro.
Comment from hman
Time: April 17, 2008, 7:39 pm
“Convince me of your credentials by doing a reasonable impression of Bela saying ‘goodbye’ in The Devil Bat, and you’re in!”
My Monogram-fu is still weak and I cannot snatch the Devil Bat from your hand at this point. I mean, I now have three Poverty Row films to my credit: The Gorilla, Spooks Run Wild, and Dead Men Walk (which I saw today).
Comment from hman
Time: April 15, 2008, 1:25 pm
I don’t think I can say that I’ve seen a Monogram movie yet. The cheapest classic horror film that I saw was Lionel Atwill’s the Vampire Bat.