UNIVERSAL HORROR COLLECTION: Vol. 1 - Blu-ray (Universal, 1934-40) Shout! Factory

In their prime, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi were considered two of cinema’s premiere ghouls and for very good reason. Lugosi had cemented his fame as the elegant Transylvanian blood-sucker, Dracula (1931); a role that, rather tragically type-cast him and limit his career-advancing opportunities. For Karloff, the iconic monster in Frankenstein (1931) the outlook was somewhat rosier. Billed as ‘the magnificent’ by Universal’s press department, the studio was quick to ram their lanky English thespian into more like-minded fare, even to have him appear as a figure of fun in two Abbott and Costello monster mash-ups post their interest in ‘horror’ movies. But Karloff would go on to appear in two Val Lewton masterpieces, sans make-up to disfigure and conceal his otherwise angular features, and, in later years, could be heard as the beloved narrator of everyone’s favorite Christmas Grinch. Rewind, and go back to the mid-1930’s and early 40’s – and both men were at the peak of their first cycle as go-to ghouls. In the mid-50’s, each man’s career would receive a jolt in audience appreciation, resurrected as late-night film fodder for the television age; several generations thereafter, weaned on re-runs of their Uni’ back catalog as part of the Saturday afternoon ‘creature feature’.  But Universal had yet another plan to capitalize on their popularity. Why not ‘re-unite the pair for a thriller franchise? And so, the Lugosi/Karloff alliance began, in 1934, with The Black Cat (a.k.a. The Vanishing Body or The House of Doom).

The Black Cat professes to be based on a tale by Edgar Allen Poe – great for publicity, but actually, quite untrue, as nothing but the title survives in the movie. Karloff's world-weary Hjalmar Poelzig was actually named after Austrian architect come art director, Hans Poelzig with whom this film’s director, Edgar G. Ulmer had worked for on The Golem (1920) – a silent horror masterpiece. Despite rumors of a rivalry between Karloff and Lugosi, their working relationship herein proved more than amicable – each, admiring the other’s work ethic and acting style.  Alas, The Black Cat would prove Ulmer’s undoing, and, not just because the picture bombed at the box office. But Ulmer had the audacity to squander his ‘chance of a lifetime’ on a cheap and tawdry affair with Shirley Castle – then, the wife of producer, Max Alexander – nephew to studio mogul, Carl Laemmle Sr. As Laemmle considered Universal his own private oligarchy, and moreover, abhorred any intrusion into his family, he saw to it that when The Black Cat wrapped, Ulmer was history and virtually black-balled from gainful employment at any of the other majors in Hollywood. Castle married Ulmer in spite of his penniless prospects. And although Ulmer would eventually work for low-budgeted Producers Releasing Corp., he remained ostracized for the rest of his career.  

In hindsight, one cannot blame Ulmer for the picture’s box office failure. Indeed, viewed today, it possesses a rare and unsettling quality unlike any other horror film made at Universal during this period – too perversely original for its own good, as it were, and destined to become a footnote in its day, forever thereafter to evolve its cult standing. As Poe’s psychological horror proved virtually un-filmable, Ulmer hired screenwriter, Peter Rurig to hammer out the details of an entirely new story. What emerged, however, was a very dark and harrowing tale of genocide, betrayal, revenge, and Satanism. In the years before the full extent of Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps became known to the world at large, Lugosi was cast as Dr. Vitus Werdegast, the sole survivor of a WWI Hungarian prisoner-of-war camp where 10,000 men were murdered. Seeking vengeance fifteen years later, Vitus returns to the scene of these war crimes only to discover that the architect behind this heinous legacy, Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff), has since built his mansion atop their mass graves. Into this nightmarish tale is thrust a honeymooning couple, Peter (David Manners) and Joan Alison (Julie Bishop, billed as Jacqueline Wells in the credits). It was a dark and stormy night…so the legend – and cliché - oft go, though precisely why Rurig chose to include either character in this scenario remains one of the unsolved mysteries of The Black Cat, as the entire show revolves around the brewing animosity between Vitus and Hjalmar, to be satisfied in the penultimate scene where Vitus flays the flesh off his arch nemesis’ bones.

Even before this moment, The Black Cat had attained a truly nerve-jangling vibe for extolling human depravity. Karloff’s fey and sinister Poelzig is as disturbing as any mad man yet seen on the screen, the evil glint in his eye as he challenges Lugosi’ Werdegast in a high-stakes game of chess, allowing the audiences’ skin to crawl. Likewise, the ‘black mass’ in which Joan nearly meets with her untimely end is a truly disturbing moment that, once seen is not easily expunged from the human consciousness. Perhaps best of all, Lugosi and Karloff are playing all of their scenes ‘in their own skin’ – no prosthetics, no heavy collodion, spirit-gum and rubber applications to obscure all of the evocative twitches and turns of their miraculous, malice-riddled faces.  Charles D. Hall’s art direction transforms Hjalmar’s manor into a veritable house of horrors, borrowing inspiration from the modernists, art deco, Frank Lloyd Wright, and German expressionism. The other aspect of the picture that makes it so utterly bone-chilling is it is set, not among the Gothic ruins or Tyrolean hills of some forgotten European landscape, but in modern times with a contemporary sensibility, utterly void of the usual and anticipated supernatural influences: so, no vampires, mummies, goblins, ghosts or witches - just plainly grotesque and unadulterated human villainy run amok.  Given its radical departure from everything already established in the horror genre, it is a sincere wonder the powers-that-be at Universal allowed Ulmer to make his masterpiece unfettered by executive input at the start, or even eleventh-hour editing intervention to tone down its atrocities before the picture had its debut. Alas, in the end, Ulmer’s movie was too uber-sophisticated for most ticket buyers, and too weird for Universal to effectively market. The final cut of The Black Cat mortified Laemmle Sr. and, after its brief and catastrophic implosion, it vanished from view for decades, buried in the vaults.  

While Laemmle was perfectly willing to throw Ulmer under the proverbial ‘bus’, he was not ready to give up on the idea of a Lugosi/Karloff franchise. And so, The Raven (1935) emerged one year later – again, based on Poe, but this time directed by Louis Friedlander (a.k.a. Lew Landers), a man with zero aspirations to make ‘art’.  As depicted in David Boehm’s screenplay, a beautiful young dancer, Jean Thatcher (Irene Ware) is severely injured in a wreck. Retired surgeon, Dr. Vollin (Lugosi) is brought in to perform the life-saving operation. Through his skill, Jean is restored to perfect health. But Vollin becomes transfixed to the point of obsession with his patient and vows to take Jean for himself, even against her father, Judge Thatcher’s (Samuel S. Hinds) and fiancée, Dr. Jerry Halden’s (Lester Matthews) wishes.  As Vollin is determined to maintain an air of respectability, he instead auditions Edmond Bateman (Karloff) a notorious criminal on the run, on whom he promises to perform plastic surgery – reportedly to change his appearance and thus escape incarceration. Instead, Vollin horrifically disfigures the unwitting criminal who, thereafter, is forced to do his bidding in exchange for yet another promised ‘corrective’ surgery that will, hopefully, restore his previous looks. So, Bateman helps Vollin plot to kidnap Jean and exact a deliciously perverse revenge on the Judge and Halden.  Bateman’s surgical dungeon includes several intriguing torture devices, and a room with walls that close in, but otherwise, The Raven never does live up to its expectations for a good bone-chiller, despite Karloff and Lugosi giving it their all. While Lugosi was given the plum part, and commands it to perfection, Karloff is relegated to a sort of Frankenstein monster knock-off, which he does very well, but we have already seen him do infinitely better in that ‘other’ movie classic, made a scant 4 years earlier.

Nevertheless, The Raven was a box office hit, and Universal followed it up with The Invisible Ray (1936). The plot concocted by screenwriter, John Colton, based on an original premise from Howard Higgins and Douglas Hodges, involves astronomer, Dr. Janos Rukh (Karloff) who has built a telescope so powerful, it acts as a sort of porthole to the past events in the earth’s evolution.  Witnessing a meteorite that struck the earth a billion years ago, Janos and two other scientists, Dr. Benet (Lugosi), and Professor Meiklejohn (Frank Reicher) make their pilgrimage to the deepest Africa to locate the original crash site. Neglecting his wife, Diane (Frances Drake), Janos is inadvertently exposed to Radium X – a toxic radiation that causes his skin to glow in the dark. Whomever he touches from this moment will die of radiation poisoning. Radium X also begins to alter the chemistry of Janos’ mind. Hence, when he learns his wife intended to leave him, he fakes his own death in a plot even more insanely cruel and calculating - a revenge against both Diane and her new lover. Rewarding, chiefly for Karloff’s supremely nuanced performance as the empathetic scientist slowly going mad through no fault of his own, and Lugosi’s dashing, but compassionate best friend, desperate to save Janos from total insanity, The Invisible Ray is a skillfully imagined and psychologically complex undertaking that mostly succeeds.  The scene where Karloff’s Janos is lowered into the pit contaminated by Radium X would be reused for 1939’s The Phantom Creeps. Costar, Frances Drake would later recall how the crew played a joke on Karloff while shooting this scene, strapping the star into the suspension apparatus, but then, leaving him to dangle in mid-air while everyone else broke for lunch. According to Drake, Karloff took this prank in stride and without malice intended.

The last movie to be included herein is director, Arthur Lubin’s Black Friday (1940), derived from an original screenplay by Curt Siodmak and Eric Taylor. Given Siodmak’s affinity for noir, and Lubin’s later tenure as the debunker of horror in Abbott and Costello’s most fondly favored monster mash-ups, Black Friday’s origin is very curious indeed.  Oddly enough, Lugosi was originally slated to play Dr. Sovac, with Karloff cast in the dual role of George Kingsley/Red Cannon.  Depending on the source consulted, it is rumored either, that Karloff's interpretation of the gangster role proved so unconvincing he was immediately replaced by Stanley Ridges, or that Karloff, terrified of playing a dual role, lobbied heavily to land the other lead instead. Precisely, as to why the studio simply did not reverse these roles, instead of relegating Lugosi to the near-cameo, despite retaining second billing, remains a total mystery. Certainly, Lugosi proved he was up to the challenge, playing a split personality to perfection one year later in Monogram’s Invisible Ghost (1941). Even more paradoxically, a silent acrimony between Karloff and Lugosi began to brew on the set of Black Friday, with Karloff increasingly jealous of his co-star. In the end, although Karloff’s role was the showier of the two, neither Karloff nor Lugosi would become the actual ‘star’ of Black Friday – the screenplay devoting much of its time to the transformation of Kingsley into Cannon and thus affording co-star, Stanley Ridges his best opportunity to outshine this rivaling pair.  

Ridges is English professor, George Kingsley, due to retire from teaching. Alas, he is gravely injured during a shootout between rivaling gangsters. As Kingsley clings to life, Dr. Ernest Sovac (Karloff), elects to perform an unorthodox experiment on the wounded man’s brain, cleaving half, then inserting the other half with that of dying gangster, Red Cannon’s more vital cerebellum into his friend’s skull. Sovac’s decision is not entirely predicated on altruism to save a life, rather, to glean Cannon’s knowledge as to the whereabouts of a bounty earlier hidden, that Sovac desires to exploit for his own medical research purposes. The surgery is a success…well, almost.  Except Kingsley now experiences a sort of Jekyll and Hyde toggling between his former self and the insidious and vial Cannon; the latter, plotting revenge on those responsible for his present condition. Determined to claim the money for himself, Cannon also has competition from fellow gangster, Eric Marnay (Lugosi) who aspires to track down and murder Cannon and steal the money back. In hindsight, Black Friday is not a horror movie at all, likely due to Universal’s focus on keeping the newly anointed Production Code of Ethics at bay. The original narrative ought to have concerned a killer who murders only on a particular calendar date. Then titled, Friday the Thirteenth, the project was bandied about and endlessly rewritten, while Uni’s marketing geniuses schemed to bill the flick as yet another Karloff/Lugosi monster mash-up. Ironically, and perhaps owing to Karloff’s aforementioned animosity, the stars, both of whom took the proverbial backseat to Ridges, did not share a single scene together.  

Shout! Factory’s Scream division has assembled all four movies into a Universal Horror Collection: Vol. One. I must admit, when this set was first announced as the Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi Collection at the start of 2019 I sincerely approached it with some trepidation, not for its content, but the rather slapdash way with which Universal – the studio providing Shout! with its 1080p transfers – has been handling virtually all of their Blu-ray catalog of late. And, alas, my fears here are not only warranted, but partially realized. The Black Cat – arguably, the best (and certainly, most original) movie in this set – is cribbing from digital files at least a decade old and likely prepared with the DVD era in mind. Truly, this 1080p transfer is in very rough shape. And although the image advances over the DVD (how could it not?) it remains riddled in age-related artifacts and a thick patina of grain looking grittier than indigenous to its source. The B&W image is never crisp and only in close-up do we get marginal detail that is impressive at a glance, though again, substandard to what Blu-ray is capable of delivering. Dirt, scratches and the like are everywhere and contrast and density are all over the place. Badly done!

The outlook is rosier on The Raven, advertised as derived from a new 2K scan of ‘original elements.’ Apart from some residual softness, image clarity and depth tighten up with overall satisfying black levels and considerably less age-related damage – though, here too we get speckling and scratches. Likewise, The Invisible Ray is also from a 2K scan, only this time the source is likely a print, as black levels are severely crushed throughout. As much of the movie is heavily laden in opticals and traveling mattes, resulting in at least one full generation down from original elements, the image is much thicker and grain-heavy. That said, overall, The Invisible Ray looks about as good as I expected, if marginally murkier during heavily-processed scenes. Black Friday’s 2K transfer, also sourced from a print, is in far better shape. Blacks still crush, but overall detail improves and the image is substantially cleaner and sharper. Predictably, the audio on all 4 movies is 2.0 DTS mono with The Black Cat and The Raven sounding tinnier with minor hiss during quiescent scenes.

Shout! has tacked on some great extras: 2 audio commentaries on The Black Cat, the first starring Gregory William Mank (whom I could listen to all day), and the other, featuring producer/historian, Steve Haberman. We also get ‘A Good Game: Karloff and Lugosi at Universal – Part 1: The Black Cat’, 24-minutes of a multi-part documentary featuring Gary D. Rhodes and Mank. Dreams Within a Dream: The Classic Cinema of Edgar Allan Poe, is an hour-long documentary narrated by Doug Bradley, plus some vintage newsreel stuff and a gallery of images. The Raven also gets 2 commentaries – from Rhodes and Haberman. Part Two of ‘A Good Game’ runs 18-minutes. There is also a 13-minute audio recording of Bela Lugosi reading Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, and a stills gallery. On The Invisible Ray, we get a fun audio commentary from Tom Weaver and Randall Larson, with re-enactors Larry Blamire and Jennifer Blaire chiming in. Part 3 of A Good Game runs 17 additional minutes. Again, another stills gallery. Finally, Black Friday gets a masterful commentary from filmmaker/historian, Constantine Nasr, chocked full of intriguing back stories. Clearly, Nasr has done his homework on this one!  We also get the concluding installment of A Good Game, Part 4 covering a lot of the same ground as the commentary, and running a scant 17 minutes.  For Karloff aficionados, there is Inner Sanctum Mystery Radio’s adaptation of The Tell-Tale Heart; an original theatrical trailer and yet another gallery teeming with images, stills and publicity stuff. Bottom line: while I would have preferred Shout! and Universal put their money on spiffing up the transfer quality in general. What’s here is not awful – just disappointing. The plethora of extras marginally makes up for this oversight. So, if you love Lugosi and Karloff in their prime, then Universal Horror Collection: Volume 1 is definitely the collection for you. Judge and buy accordingly.

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

The Black Cat – 4

The Raven – 3.5

The Invisible Ray – 3.5

Black Friday – 3

VIDEO/AUDIO

The Black Cat – 2.5

The Raven – 3

The Invisible Ray – 3

Black Friday – 3.5

EXTRAS

5+