October 29, 2024 • 65 mins
We get spooky in our Halloween special featuring the expertise of George Feltenstein from the Warner Archive, alongside the sharp insights of film historians and audio commentary contributors Dr. Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr.
Ever wondered why Jack Warner, a known skeptic of horror, decided to produce some of the eeriest films of the 1930s and 40s? We unearth these mysteries and celebrate the restoration of iconic films "The Walking Dead" starring Boris Karloff and directed by Michael Curtis, "The Return of Dr. X" starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by Vincent Sherman, and "The Beast with Five Fingers" starring Peter Lorre and directed by Robert Florey. We shed light on their production, the HD restoration details and included extras, and the unique elements that make these horror films enduring classics.
Blu-ray purchase links:
THE WALKING DEAD (1936)
THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X (1939)
THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946)
REVIEW - THE DAY THE EARTH BLEW UP: A LOONEY TUNES MOVIE with Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast.
The Extras Facebook page
The Extras Twitter
Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog Group
As an Amazon Affiliate, The Extras may receive a commission for purchases through our purchase links. There is no additional cost to you, and every little bit helps us in the production of the podcast. Thanks in advance.
Otaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. tim@theextras.tv
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, we have a fun, spooky Halloween episode here
today and I have three veryspecial guests.
I'm very excited to have GeorgeFeldstein on from the Warner
Archive, dr Steve Haberman andConstantine Nasser, who are both
writers, producers and filmhistorians, so I hope you'll
enjoy our special Halloweenepisode.
On the Extras Hi guys, hi, howare you doing?
(00:34):
Hello?
So, george, you have a greatmonth.
You have three classic horrorreleases coming from the Warner
Archive this month.
That feels like more than it'sbeen for a while.
So how'd that all come together?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Fan demand.
Everybody was asking for thesefilms and I made sure well in
advance that we'd be able tobring in the camera negatives
from Library of Congress and doa full restoration with 4K scans
, and they look phenomenal.
And thank you to thesegentlemen who've been so
(01:12):
integral in helping to supportnot only these releases but, of
course, releases in past years.
You guys are my heroes and I'meternally grateful to you.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Back at you, george.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Well, and just for those who don't know, this is
our third Halloween podcast,talking about your commentaries
that you guys have done oncertain different releases,
which is a lot of fun, Steve, wewere just talking earlier.
This is becoming a yearly habitand I said, yeah, let's do it
each year.
That's terrific fun.
Why not?
So well, let's talk about we'lltalk about all three films that
(01:52):
are releasing from the WarnerArchive this month, but let's
start with the Beast with FiveFingers from 1946, because I
know Constantine, you and Stevecreated and recorded an all new
commentary for it.
And, Steve, maybe we'll startwith you.
Maybe you can provide a littlebackground on the origins of the
film.
I know there's a lot ofinteresting stuff leading up to
(02:13):
it.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Well, you know it's based on a short story by WH
Harvey which is very, very wellregarded, you know, anthologized
from the early 20th century,and Warner Brothers was not too
prolific with horror films ever,even in the 30s.
Really, they only made, youknow, four or five in the 30s
(02:36):
and they only made if you don'tcount Arsenic and Old Lace as a
horror film.
They only made one in the 40sand it was the Beast with Five
Fingers, because Jack Warnerwasn't particularly excited
about that genre but it almostwould have been commercial
malpractice had they not atleast tried to make a horror
(02:57):
film during the horror boombetween 1931 and 1946 or so.
So the one they made late inthe game was the Beast with Five
Fingers, as I said, based onthis short story by Harvey, and
he wisely had Kurt Siadmak dothe screenplay.
And Kurt Siadmak had writtensome stuff for Universal like
the Wolfman and Black Friday,and he also wrote the first
(03:21):
draft of I Walk With a Zombie,which was wrote the first draft
of I Walk With a Zombie, whichwas basically rewritten by
Ardell Ray.
But he was very into, kind oflike Roger Corman later in the
1960s, he was into thepsychology of the protagonists
of horror.
I mean especially, obviously,in the Wolfman.
(03:42):
As a matter of fact, hisoriginal script of the Wolfman
didn't show the Wolfman.
As a matter of fact, hisoriginal script of the Wolfman
didn't show the Wolfman.
It was all about the sufferingof Lawrence Talbot.
So he was probably the guy topick to do the screenplay for
Beasts with Five Fingers and heworked on it for a good long
time.
We have notes from him as farback as 1942, working on it, and
he made it a movie about, uh,working on it and uh, he, he
(04:02):
made it uh a movie about, uh,castration anxiety, and I go
into that in great detail in thein the commentary I may say the
word penis one or two too manytimes.
Uh, I don't want to give itaway, but it's kind of obvious.
It's about a guy who, who, uh,cuts the hand off of somebody
else.
That is his father figure.
So you do the math.
(04:23):
It's very Freudian.
What he did was he made an hourand 26 minute brilliant gothic
horror film, dark, brilliantpsychological mystery horror
film, and Warner Brothers tackedon a one minute cringy comedy
epilogue at the very end.
(04:43):
But it doesn't ruin the movie.
However, it's quite confusingwhen you go through the hour and
26 minutes of gothic horror andat the end it becomes this
farce for one minute.
But anyway, that's what we did.
That's how we approached theBeast with Five Fingers.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Constantine, maybe you can pick up on that.
What were some of theinteresting things that you
found in doing the research forthe commentary?
Can pick up on that.
What were some of theinteresting things?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
that you found in doing the research for the
commentary.
Well, I think that there wassome opportunity to go back and
read a little bit of what waswritten prior to I think like
the declining years of thehorror film which you know we're
talking about.
The movie that kind of ended itright before, you know, abbott
(05:26):
and Costello met Frankensteinand really ended it.
But unfortunately there wasn'ta lot of access to what I liked.
Steve and I both like to goback to the original script and
script notes.
This was a hard one too.
We didn't have the time andalso like the ability to find
the access at, probably at theUSC archives.
So I think, just going back andtrying to have a better
(05:49):
understanding of Flory's intentyou know Flory as a filmmaker to
me, watching some of hisearlier work and then also kind
of digging back into the careerof Peter Lorre at that time and
Warner Brothers, who was also,you know, kind of like waning in
the.
I guess you know Jack Warnerwasn't exactly appreciative of
(06:13):
Peter Lorre in the mid 40s and alot of that had to do with his
political feelings, right.
So kind of for me going back andunderstanding the people who
made the film and and then alsorealizing that that Kurt Siadmak
, as Steve was saying, was sucha critical figure.
(06:35):
He pretty much, from a writer'sperspective, ruled the 1940s.
When you look at all the filmshe had a hand in, things might
(07:08):
have been adjusted along the way, but particularly when you look
at his involvement withUniversal and then with Val
Lewton, in a movie like this, ciMack was all over the place in
a way as an independent writerthat I think was really
impressive and a lot of it hadto do with a very psychological
impact.
And it was no coincidence that,of course, at this time film
noir was so strong that thoseGerman expressionist ideas of
the mind also informed the waythe thematics of the films of
the 1940s went concurrently withthe horror film, including a
(07:31):
movie that we all love, like Sonof Dracula, which was a C Aud
Mack experience.
So I think that to me was themost interesting part, and
really looking back on a moviethat I hadn't kind of watched in
quite a while, hoping thatGeorge is going to get to it,
and he got to it, like with twoother great films, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So yeah Well, george, why don't we throw that to you
then and you can talk a littlebit about the film and what's
made it so popular over theyears, and kind of how the
restoration process cametogether, kind of how the
restoration process cametogether Well.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
This is particularly gratifying because I would say
maybe 10 years ago, maybe more,we did remaster the film for DVD
.
That wasn't a restoration, thatwas a new master, because what
had been existing before waslike 30 years old at that time
(08:25):
and looked really awful, but wedidn't have access to the
original negative.
A new fine grain was made andthat master did not look very
good and I was disappointed inthe quality.
Because you want it.
It was so beautifully shot.
You want to have thepresentation be up to the par of
(08:45):
what the creators intended.
So to be able to get theapproval, to go for it and do
something that was reallydefinitive scanning the nugget
4K coming out with this newBlu-ray that is really pristine.
This is incredibly rewardingbecause the fan base for certain
(09:08):
films and this is one of themthey were very vocal.
We want this on Blu and I hearthat about 4,000 or 5,000 films
all the time, because everybodyhas their favorite.
But this is definitely a keeper.
It's really important in thestudio's history and it
(09:29):
maintains its ability toentertain and fascinate,
especially because, as you guysjust pointed out, this was not a
genre that Warner Brothersreally looked into very much.
There were some B pictures inthe early 40s, like the Hidden
Hand and the Mysterious Doctorand so forth, that were like no,
(09:50):
they weren't really horrorfilms, but they were exploring
mystery.
This was more blatant horrorand is to be treasured for that
reason.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, I recall in listening to your audio
commentary guys and looking atthe images you talked a lot
about the influence of GermanExpressionism and the way it's
filmed.
Maybe you can talk a little bitabout that, because in this
restoration I think that reallyhelps George with this kind of
filmmaking to really see theblacks and the contrast and
(10:19):
everything.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Precisely.
Yeah, robert Flory wanted it tobe more expressionistic.
His idea to this is not reallya movie he wanted to do, but
once they made him do it hereally got into it and he said I
got excited about it.
And what he wanted to do is hewanted to make it from the Peter
Lorre character's point of viewand he's mad.
So he was really trying to do aDr Caligari type thing where we
(10:46):
would find out this was all thevision of a madman at the end.
And he was going to go for notjust expressionistic lighting
and camera angles butexpressionistic sets.
But the producer said thatwould be commercial suicide.
We're not doing that.
So they didn't.
But I think the movie isstronger for that because it
really it's naturalistic butit's gothic.
(11:08):
As you said, the lighting isvery high contrast, use of
shadows, use of moving cameraand radical angles and so forth.
And it gets more so as thenarrative progresses and the
narrative forces you into thePeter Lorre character's head in
the last act.
And then Robert Flory has morefun with extreme angles and with
(11:33):
the strange lighting and music.
Max Steiner's score is fabulousin this and with
expressionistic sound effects.
You know he does wonders withlike a mandolin string breaking
and the sound of wind comingdown a chimney and things like
that Wonderful stuff when itgets very expressionistic but
yet it's still in a naturalisticenvironment.
(11:55):
It's just what the camera andthe sound effects and the
performance.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Peter Lorre goes full out expressionistic as a German
actor you know from that knewwhat he was doing, so he does a
lot of you know from that, knewwhat he was doing.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
So he does a lot of you know stuff.
So it has that quality to it,but within a naturalistic
framework and I think it worksextremely well.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, I mean, they do a lot of closeups on him when
he's when he's in those modes.
But let's talk about PeterLorre for a second Constantine.
What did you learn about PeterLorre in some of this research,
or what are just some of yourthoughts on his performance in
this film?
Speaker 4 (12:29):
Well, I think that it starts off in a way where Peter
Lorre is he's not a backgroundcharacter but he's not presented
as the main character and Ilike how the film progresses
that he as the main characterand I like how the film
progresses that he, as Stevesaid, he kind of just starts
(12:50):
unraveling and he goes full onGothic German expressionism by
the end.
So I think he hadn't really hadthat opportunity for the genre.
Not that he was looking to do ahorror film, certainly at that
time.
I just found it to be one ofhis more compelling films of the
period because he was oftenused, always really good, that's
(13:13):
the thing you watch a PeterLorre film from, really any of
his films.
He's a good, very good, strongsupporting player.
But he expected to have betterroles and Warner Brothers just
didn't give him any.
Anything that was like like theone of the last great leading
roles he had was with RobertFlory with the face behind the
(13:35):
mask in 1930.
Steve, is it 1940?
1940.
Yeah, columbia, yeah, it wasColumbia, yeah, but 1940.
So so he's, he's got five yearswhere, yeah, he's, he's Maltese
Falcon, memorable, and he'smemorable in Casablanca and the
Curtiz films.
I was just watching Arsenic andOld Lace, another great Warner
(13:55):
Brothers Halloween film.
That Criterion put out what.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
I said not quite a horror film, almost a horror
film.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
Almost.
But it's a Halloween film.
We're at Halloween and I've gotto thank George for helping
make that happen.
Beautiful, beautiful and youknow.
But you're like, well, you knowwhere's Peter Lorre?
Like cutting loose, and thiswas the movie where he gets to
cut loose and it's not asdimensional as the Face Behind
the Mask.
That really is a wonderful, sadmovie, less a horror film than
(14:27):
just it's a tragic film.
And obviously he had a greatexperience working with Robert
Flory period in the mid 1940sbefore the genre just again just
(14:48):
gets shunted away.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, some of the things that I learned that I
wanted to just mention, andwe're not going to talk about
the commentary, because peopleneed to watch the movie, see it
in its brilliance first.
I mean this new Blu-ray.
To your point, george, whenthese films go from DVD to
Blu-ray, the reason everybody'sasking for those is because
(15:12):
that's the huge jump.
Right, it's that DVD to Blu-ray.
That's the huge jump in termsof quality.
And, steve, you mentioned theMax Steiner score.
So then the audio as well.
You know, to get that, the fullcomposition, the orchestration
in this one specifically behindthis great visual, really makes
(15:34):
the viewing experience a totallynew experience really for
people.
So they need to see that firstand then when they can come in
and view it again with youraudio commentary so much, you
guys put in there nuggets ofinformation and everything.
But here we are talking aboutPeter Lorre and of course he's
not even the lead in the film,but he's so memorable in this.
(15:55):
The other cast members, robertAlda, andrea King you guys talk
about a lot Talk about some ofthe other performances and of
course I want to about a lotTalk about some of the other
performances and of course Iwant to talk about the Hand
itself a little bit.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Well, the Hand is the star, of course, yeah, and the
special effects are fantastic,you know, I mean, everybody
talks about that Peter Lorremovie with the Hand Right and
there's two movies that could be.
That could be Peter Lorre'sfirst American movie, which is
Mad Love, where that's a remakeof the Hands of Orlok, which was
a novel, and then a silentmovie in Germany with Conrad
(16:29):
Veidt, and Peter Lorre did it inAmerica in 1935.
Carl Freund directed it and heplays a mad doctor who has to
remove the damaged hands of aconcert pianist and graft on the
hands of a knife murderer tosave the man's hands, you know,
as one does, and of course thehands of the knife murderer have
(16:53):
a will of their own.
At least Peter Lorre wants totalk Colin Clive, the poor
pianist, into thinking so.
So that was the one hand, thefirst hand movie of Peter Lorre.
But this is really the handmovie.
You know, first of all this isthe first disembodied hand
(17:13):
feature.
It became kind of a horrormovie trope later on.
The amicus films from Englandin the 60s liked to have hand
short stories.
But this is the hand movie, theclassic first hand movie, and
Peter Lorre the fact that he'snot in the first two acts as
much as he's in the third act.
Doesn't matter, because whatpeople take home from this movie
is the actual basis of themovie, which is a crawling hand
(17:37):
short story.
The short story itself is notas much of a horror story as
Kurt Siadmak made the movie.
It's got horrible things in it.
It's a creepy, eerie sort ofidea, but it has a kind of
British understatement in thecharacter's reactions to the
crawling hand that keeps it frombeing full.
(17:58):
But this movie, peter Lorre, ifthere were no hand in this
movie, his reactions would makeit a horror movie because he's
so bipolar in it.
You know how, peter Lorre, ifthere were no hand in this movie
, his reactions would make it ahorror movie Because he's so
bipolar in it.
You know how Peter Lorre likesto get very excited A lot in
this movie, you know, and that'swhat people remember.
Oh, but the hand, though.
They did the hand a number ofdifferent ways.
(18:20):
They had a couple of mechanicalhands, they had a non-moving
wax hand and they also did thehand with a real concert pianist
who was doing a Bach piece forone hand that had actually been
rejiggered for one hand on piano, and what they did is they did
(18:42):
it like they did Claude Rains inthe Invisible man.
The pianist was wrapped all inblack velvet and just the hand
and the piano were shot againstblack and then that was matted
into the set, in which then theycovered up the hand and the
(19:03):
piano, so that could be.
That was made into a shadow.
The optical printer does this.
It's many different steps andit all has to be, you know,
compounded with an opticalprinter, but they did it exactly
the way they did Claude Rainsin the Invisible man, with black
velvet doing the invisibleparts, and it works beautifully.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I mean, the special effects in this movie are
without CGI, they're by far thebest crawling hand special
effects you'll ever see in amovie.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it fascinated me hearingyou guys talking about that, the
effects that you just wentthrough over there with the hand
.
But the question that stickswith me is why did Jack Warner,
(19:43):
when he didn't care for horror,I mean, why did the studio buy
the short story rights and whydid they develop that?
I mean, like they did, and andyou mentioned that it's like the
last of that horror period,classical horror period but why?
I mean, why did he do it?
Well, like, why why do oneright here at the end?
Speaker 3 (20:03):
He wanted a piece of the pie.
People were making a lot ofmoney on horror films, sure took
him a while.
Yeah, it took him a while, butyou know what?
The next horror film he madewas House of Wax in 1953.
And that was a huge hit.
Again, I think he finallylearned his lesson, because then
he made the Bad Seed and thenhe picked up the distribution
rights for Curse of Frankenstein.
(20:23):
Every time he decided to make ahorror movie or distribute a
horror movie, it was a hit.
So I don't know why he didn'tlike the genre.
Maybe it tapped into somethingthat he didn't want to face.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
It's just financial, you're saying, is the reason why
they did the Beast.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
I think so Because you know what, every time Jack
Warner, especially in the earlydays with Dr X and Mystery of
the Wax Museum and Return of DrX and the Beast with Five
Fingers and even House of Wax healways has, even when he makes
a real gothic masterpiece, inthe end he will have a comic
scene, as if to tell theaudience we were just kidding,
(21:03):
go home, forget about it, don'tworry about it.
It's particularly egregious inthis picture, in the piece with
five fingers, because it's sucha dark, disturbing movie on a
subconscious level.
I told you it's aboutcastration, anxiety, which of
course everybody can enjoy.
But at the end he tries tosoften the blow, if you'll
(21:25):
pardon the expression, with thiscomedy scene saying oh, we were
just kidding us all, don'tworry about it.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Well, I mean, when I think of the history of Warner
Brothers, I think of a lot ofgreat horror films over the last
hundred years and, of course,in the 30s.
We're going to be talking abouta couple of them in a few
minutes, but I just found thatinteresting because this one is
so good.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
I really saw this as an opportunity to make something
that would be a commercial hit,and that's what Jack Warner was
always looking for was successat the box office.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
And was it a hit, George?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I think it made back its money.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
No, it did better than that it did okay, it did
pretty well.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah, I mean it wasn't a blockbuster, but it was
a profitable picture, Right,and that's the most important
thing and it was an expensivepicture.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I mean, that was an expensive little movie.
It had a 52-day schedule and itcost about half a million bucks
.
That was a lot of money in 1946.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
And they had confidence in it.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, well, it was.
You know that was a tried andtrue genre.
In the 40s it was a little bitmore well, you know it went two
ways.
There were the very dark,psychological, adult, rko, val
Luton films which by and largemostly were hits, and then there
were the sort of more juvenilemonster movies from Universal.
I mean, of course that genrestarted as an adult genre in the
(22:58):
30s but by the time they weremaking them during the war in
the 1940s they had, you know,they'd sort of gone down the IQ
scale a little bit in pictureslike House of Frankenstein and
House of Dracula and pictureslike that where they became kind
of monsterodger and HangoverSquare and Dragonwick at Fox.
(23:33):
Those movies were consideredhorror movies and they were very
psychological, they were veryexpensive, they were very gothic
, and so you know that genre hada big spread in the 40s.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
You know what I wanted to say.
You asked me before what did Ilearn or what did I come to
appreciate?
I had spent a lot of time manyyears ago studying Robert Flory
(24:11):
around between Columbia andindependent studios, as well as
doing a series of WarnerBrothers films like God is my
Co-Pilot and the Desert Song acouple of memorable films for
the 40s and discovering that hewas a guy who really tried to
buck the system whenever hecould.
If he didn't like something,he'd just be like all right, I'm
not going to take that job, andhe's going to go gallivanting
(24:31):
across Europe and come back andthe job might still be there
because somebody else might haveturned it down.
He was not somebody that justtook the job that Jack Warner
would give him, but in thisparticular case, I think even
after he turned it down, it wasstill still there and he found a
way to tune into it and it was.
(24:53):
It was definitely the rightfilm for him and for peter lorry
.
But it was interesting that youknow he's a guy that, uh, often
is forgotten.
He's he's remembered for beingthe guy who almost made
frankenstein, but he made anumber of really strong films
and he made a number of films,um, as we mentioned, uh, the
(25:16):
face behind the mask being afilm that was.
I don't know the budget of thatfilm, but it certainly was a
fraction of what he had when hewas working for Warner brothers
and doing a movie like this.
So, um, I I think, if you lookat back at at at this film, it's
worth taking a look at some ofthe other films that Flory had
done and giving a director and awriter like the multi-hyphenate
(25:38):
filmmaker that Flory wasanother chance, especially when
you see what he was able to dowith what was a decent budget
but arguably not anythingspecial for Warner Brothers at
that time.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Well, there are a couple other extras you put on
here, George.
I'll just mention you got theclassic cartoons, the Foxy
Duckling and the Gain and Tease,and the theatrical trailer.
So altogether this is a greatrelease.
It's got the new commentarywith you guys there, which is
just load, you guys just loadyour commentaries with
information.
It's fascinating.
New commentary with you guysthere, which is just load, you
guys just load your commentarieswith information.
(26:12):
It's fascinating.
I love it.
So this is a great package.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Thank you.
What's also great is you know,these three that George released
are all Warner Brothers films.
It's not an RKO film.
It's not an MGM film LikeGeorge.
Like laid it.
Like here's Warner Horror 1940s.
Enjoy that an MGM film, georgelaid it.
Here's Warner Horror 1940s injoy.
That was exactly the objective.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
I've never seen Beasts with Five Fingers look
this good Right off the camera.
Negative oh my god, it isbeautiful.
Looks like it was shotyesterday.
The fans are going to go nutsfor this.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah, that is what I'm most excited is for people
to actually see it.
You guys have seen it, very fewpeople have, and so when people
finally see this, compared tothe difference on Beast with
Five Fingers is substantial,yeah, but when you get to
Walking Dead, it's ginormousbecause that had only existed in
(27:10):
a.
An ancient master made off asixth generation film element,
so when you're coming off thenegative, it's like a different
film, right, and that's why I'mso excited about this trio well,
why don't we just dive into thewalking dead, since you?
Speaker 1 (27:24):
you kind of already started that, george, and tell
us a little bit about thisrestoration?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Well once again.
Thankfully the originalnegative was well maintained.
Most of the pre-49 Warnerfeature negatives are under the
care of the Library of Congressand we have like a partnership
with the Library of Congresswhere we basically help to
(27:51):
support those effortsfinancially because that's a lot
of maintenance work and thesestones were deposited there
decades ago.
But what they do in terms oftheir care for nitrate negatives
is impeccable, of their carefor nitrate negatives is
impeccable, and the same can besaid of several other archives
(28:13):
in this country as well as inEurope where there is this
fastidious care of nitrate andthey're preserving our cinematic
legacy.
And to bring in the negativefor Walking Dead, I don't think
anyone had touched that negativesince they had to make print
downs for the television salesin 1956.
(28:35):
I don't think it had beentouched since then.
I could be wrong.
The Library of Congress mighthave done something on their own
but happily it was scanned hereat Warner Brothers Motion
Picture Imaging and ourwonderful artisans in the color
bay did a fantastic job Not onlywith the picture at MPI but
(28:57):
also our archival sound team dida beautiful cleanup on the
audio so that you have fullfrequency response up on the
audio, so that you have fullfrequency response.
You don't feel any high end hasbeen cut off and you hear the
full width and breadth of thesoundtrack.
And I've always said WarnerBrothers soundtracks had a
(29:18):
unique studio style.
I can't verbalize what that is,but you hear it from the mid
thirties all the way up throughmovies like Bonnie and Clyde.
To see Curtiz once again takeup the horror mantle and Karloff
in this film to me gives one ofhis greatest performances.
I don't know if you gentlemenagree, but I would love to hear
(29:40):
your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
When did he give a bad performance?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
He was even good on the Girl from UNCLE.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Yeah, he was great on that.
I mean, that would be theanomaly if you saw boris karloff
performance, you know.
Wow, he really wasn't into that, was he?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
no, he was always wonderful, yeah, and it is
always, uh, a sadness becauseyou mentioned arsenic and old
lays before.
Yeah, it's like the heartbreakof all time that he didn't get
to recreate that stage role.
Raymond massey's great in thefilm, but to have Karloff in
that film would have beennirvana.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Karloff and shooting Cary Grant with a tranquilizer
dart.
Those are the two things thatneeded to happen on the set of
Arsenic and Ole Larris.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Well, just to be clear for people out there,
we're of course, talking aboutthe Walking Dead from 1936.
Yes, this is not Daryl Dixonand Rick Grant.
Be clear for people out there.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
We're of course talking about the walking dead
from 1936?
Yes, this is not.
Uh uh, daryl dixon and rickgrime I also worked on I was
curious.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah, I was curious.
Uh, that's true, constantine,you have a thread there.
But uh, george, this one wasdirected by curtis.
He didn't do too many horrorfilms, but of course he's well
known for being able to do anygenre like just he could do it
all.
But how did he kind of getinvolved with this?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
he was one of those few, not unlike vincent minnelli
very different directors, butthey could master virtually any
genre.
And yes that he directed.
He directed Mystery of the WaxMuseum, dr X and the Walking
Dead.
That's why we put the greatdocumentary about the greatest
director you've never heard of,which we originally created for
(31:20):
the Casablanca anniversary backin 2012.
That piece is on this disc aswell, so that people can
understand, if they haven't seenit already, how incredibly
versatile and talented mr curtiswas.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, maybe one of you guys can dive in a little
bit and talk a little bit aboutthe this movie in terms of the
storyline or the origins.
But you mentioned boris karloffalready.
He's a man who comes back fromthe dead seeking revenge on the
gangsters who framed him for themurder of the judge who first
(31:56):
jailed him.
How did he become involved?
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Well, he had signed a contract.
The Warners went after him.
They were trying to developproperties for him and this
seemed like a good fit.
They were absolutely rightabout that.
And you know, I mean it's akind of strange movie because
it's part gangster movie, whichyou would expect from Warner
Brothers, and part horror film.
(32:20):
But the horror film is veryspiritual.
The whole idea of this movie isthat Karloff, after he's been
executed and brought back tolife, is in touch with some kind
of spiritual power that'sallowing him to be a force of
God.
You know, he's becoming aninstrument of God's wrath to
(32:43):
these people who had framed himfor a crime and in that way
framed him for a crime and inthat way.
See, universal didn't do stufflike that.
Even when it's a story that hasan obvious spiritual quality,
like Dracula for example, theykind of underplayed it.
They were more into sciencefiction.
I think they were morecomfortable with Frankenstein
and the Invisible man and theInvisible Ray and stuff like
(33:07):
that or just cruelty.
But in terms of a spiritualquality, unless it's done in a
somewhat parodic style, likeJames Whale did it like in Bride
of Frankenstein, it's not inyour face, like it later will be
in the Hammer films of TerrenceFisher.
(33:28):
But in this film the verynarrative is based on the fact
that Karloff becomes aninstrument of God's vengeance,
and he's aware of it.
Karloff is aware of it, theliving dead creature that he is,
you know, and that makes itvery unique.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
There was a commentary already on here,
right, Constantine.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah, can you?
Speaker 1 (33:49):
talk a little bit about that one and the other new
one you created.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
So we put this out.
Well, actually, what'sinteresting is just thinking
about this when everyone'stalking collectively.
Many of these films that Georgehas put out had been on DVD
before, with the exception ofBeast with Five Fingers Right,
george Beast with Five Fingerscame out more recently, like
(34:15):
2012 or so.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Remastered for DVD only by the Warner Archive.
It never had a retail releaseRight right.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
So when all these films were coming out at the
height of, like classic films ondisc, we were buying stores,
yeah, and they and they werepart of these collections.
Um, legends of horror, I thinkthat's the one where we had mad
love and Fu Manchu and and, uh,dr X and return of Dr X came out
(34:46):
together on that release andthat was oh five, I think 06.
06.
06, okay, and that's when wewere able to get Steve to do an
interview.
We went out to I'm jumpingahead to Return of Dr X but
meeting Vincent Sherman at theMotion Picture Home, and that
was quite a nice afternoon.
And then we did the WalkingDead, which is part of this
(35:09):
Lugosi-Karloff set.
So on one hand it was likeFrankenstein 1970 and Walking
Dead and we had gotten at thattime Greg Mank to do the audio
commentary.
Greg, of course, is a premierbiographer and historian,
karloff and Lugosi biographer,and I mean you name it, he's
written about it.
It's a very, very, very goodcommentary and I also, like when
(35:34):
George brought this up, I justthought well, from a Michael
Curtiz perspective, there mightbe more to dig into, because it
seems like there's been a Curtizrenaissance.
George has mentioned thedocumentary that was made.
George was very gracious inallowing me to do a little
documentary a few years ago onthe horror films of Michael
(35:55):
Curtiz and there's a lot ofCurtiz love going around.
So I asked well, georgeapproved it and we went out to
Alan K Rohde to do an interview.
He agreed to do aCurtiz-centric commentary and
then the idea was how do yousave the commentary that Greg
(36:17):
Mank made?
This is a technical bit becauseI think it's important to share
that when we recorded thesethings many years ago, dvd was
not at the same frame rate as aBlu-ray, as a HD master the
sources and the time codes andeverything kind of, in order for
it to sync.
It's got to sync exactly,Otherwise audio's off and
(36:38):
people's lips and it's just it'sa mess to watch.
So we worked at trying to syncGreg's commentary from nearly 20
years ago to the new master andwhat what I discovered?
And I was like texting georgein between each discovery.
I think I was annoying him, I'mnot sure, but I was realizing
(36:59):
there was like a record.
It wasn't, it wasn't sinking,because all of a sudden I was
finding like an extra frame ortwo or an extra shot or two.
And so when George is sayingthat nobody has seen this, uh,
this negative since the fifties,perhaps I don't know which
(37:19):
print, uh, the, the, the, thelatest version was struck from,
but uh, this is a film that maybe 15 seconds longer than the
version of the Walking Dead thathas been seen.
There's more.
There's a couple of fades,there's a couple lines of
dialogue and you know I'msitting there getting very
(37:40):
excited, struggling to sink itin.
I was like mad at like the hardwork I was dealing with.
But I'm very excited becausethis is truly an uncut version
of the movie, the extended.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
We all right.
We we have run into thisseveral times where we're doing
new scans off the originalnegative and we have an archival
commentary that came from asecondary or third or fourth
generation element that wasmissing footage or missing
frames, and that's what we'vebeen living with for decades.
(38:16):
And then we go back and try tosync the commentary and it
wouldn't always sync and that'swhy on some of our discs we've
had to put the commentary with astandard definition version as
an extra, which is not ideal,and thankfully, thanks to
(38:36):
Constantine's dedication andskill and acumen, he was able to
get Greg's commentary to syncdespite the extra footage.
So bravo, constantine.
As always, yes, very good.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
Thank you, it was fun .
You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Thank you so just to be clear, this is an extended
version.
I mean, because of that, by 15seconds or so.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
But that was the most important 15 seconds in the
movie and nobody's seen it forthe last 70 years.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
It was one of the best musical numbers.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
Let's see if those eagle-eyed fans can figure out
which 15 seconds across theboard they are.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
George, we should laugh because, of course, any
time you're off by one secondand any other movie or TV show,
people just come out of theweeds.
Or TV show, people just comeout of the weeds to hold you to
the.
So I mean I just want to beclear hey, we found extra on
this one and people should.
Okay, let's have a clap herefor George.
(39:39):
Oh man, Anyway, we kid a littlebit, but that's really neat
because you're going back tothis original nitrate to make
this scan.
So that's pretty cool.
So not only does it look greatand it's a fun film, but you
also have the Greg Mankcommentary and you have the new
(40:01):
Alan K Rohde commentary, that is, Michael Curtiz-centric, so to
speak, to bring a new angle tothe commentary.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
So you've got what's really terrific about that is
they're very differentapproaches, and although he's
not on the microphones with ustoday, I can say that Greg
Mank's commentaries over theyears have been treasures, just
as Constantine and Steve's are.
I was introduced to Greg by ourmutual friend Tom Weaver.
(40:30):
I think one of the mostfortuitous opportunities was
when Greg was able to add hiscommentary to several of our
releases of which we're veryproud, and he's delighted that
this commentary from almost 20years ago is having new life.
So all the more excitement thatmakes for a better Blu-ray disc
(40:53):
experience.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
You know we really cared about these and we still.
We still do.
But all of the commentariesthat I've been very fortunate to
record for Warner Brothers, inparticular for Hyde, never
intends to take away the sort ofbar that was set really, really
(41:23):
high by people like Greg.
So I just wanted to.
You know I haven't talked toGreg about this, but hey, thank
you very much, greg and to allthose people who've, I think,
created great work out therethat you know you shouldn't be
throwing out your DVDs anyway.
You know you can upgrade, butjust make sure the excellent
work out there that youshouldn't be throwing out your
DVDs anyway.
You can upgrade, but just makesure the excellent work out
there is not forgotten, even ifit is 10 or 20 years old.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
That's why we try to include everything that was on a
DVD on the Blu-ray if we can,if it's still legally clear, so
that there is no reason that youhave to keep the DVD.
But sometimes it doesn't workout that we can keep everything.
In this case we were able to dothat and it's very, very
(42:09):
gratifying, especiallycommentaries.
We don't usually run intoproblems where we can't reuse a
commentary.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
You do have a couple of classic cartoons on here For
those who want to know what allthe extras are the Cat came back
and Let it Be Me and theoriginal theatrical trailer, you
know.
Plus, you already mentionedthat documentary on Michael
Curtiz.
So it's a robust, robust amountof extras.
And I think that's one thingthat sets our discussion apart
this year, george, with thesethree, is that you were able to
(42:39):
get all of these new, uh, newextras on these releases.
So there's, uh, the obviousupgrade and restoration and then
just a great package that youhave for every fan out there.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
So I don't want to make anybody blush, but I feel
so fortunate and honored thatSteve and Constantine led their
gifts, talents and knowledge toworking on making these really,
really superb releases.
It sets a different standardand I'll just be very
(43:17):
unabashedly grateful for whatthey not only contributed to
these releases, but many of theother recent releases in the
past.
Thank you, George.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
Recent past.
Thank you, it's, it's all like.
I've said it a million times,george, when you call I will
answer the phone.
So there's, there's more than Ican, what.
So there's so much that I thinkthat the Warner Archives have
done that, I think, is criticalin this time when anybody else
(43:51):
would overlook what you've beendoing.
I'm just really, really excitedto offer whatever time and
skill and technical ability wecan offer.
I can offer, and then Stevejoins in and of course, alan.
Alan Rohde was willing to givean excellent, you know, very
(44:12):
studied, very expertly craftedtrack on on Curtiz for the
Walking Dead, drafted, uh, trackon on Curtiz for the walking
dead.
And just like, just when youthink you've learned enough or
you know enough, you knowsomebody comes in and educate
you.
But those opportunitieswouldn't be there if Georgie
didn't call.
And you know, years ago, two,three years ago, when we were
doing Dr X, there was a.
(44:33):
There was a question about will, will the walking dead ever
come out?
And you had told me that thatthere was such damage done and
you weren't sure when you weregoing to have the funds.
When you called and said theWalking Dead not only was going
to be done, but it was done.
I almost fell out of my chairso I was so excited.
You keep those cards close toyour vest and then when you
(44:54):
choose to reveal them, they'rereally them.
There's not one release you'vedone.
That, I think, has not been ofvalue to not just the fans but
to preserving film history andthe Warner Brothers legacy, and
that goes to Warner Brothers andMGM and RKO and Allied Artists.
So thank you very much for theopportunity and just keep us
posted when the next one's ready.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, we're waiting Will do my friend one's ready.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, we're waiting, will do, my friend.
And just a little explanationfor those listening who maybe
don't know why we chose Alan KRohde, but he literally wrote
the book on Michael Curtiz andhis book is fantastic.
Those of you who have listenedto the podcast, he's a friend of
the podcast and has been onmany times.
But for those who maybe arenewer, friend of the podcast and
has been on many times.
(45:42):
But for those who maybe arenewer, that's why his take on
the movie from a Michael Curtizpoint of view is going to be so
interesting and I'm lookingforward to watching and
listening to that.
Well, we have one more movieand you mentioned Dr X
Constantine and the movie nowwe're going to talk about is the
Return of Dr X from 1939.
And, steve, you have a threadgoing back to the original
(46:07):
commentary that was done withdirector Vincent Sherman on this
for the DVD.
Maybe you can kind of take usback to when you did that and
working and doing thatcommentary with him and your
thoughts on that process and thefilm.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Okay, well, that was an unforgettable experience
because Vincent Sherman was ahundred years old, a hundred,
and we went out, constantine andthe crew and me, and we went
out to Woodland Hills and we metwith him and he was in a
three-piece suit with a cane anda bow tie, and he was quite
(46:46):
lovely and, you know, still ahandsome, handsome guy.
You know, he had quite thereputation of being a dog in his
great years.
You know names like JoanCrawford in his great years.
You know names like JoanCrawford and he, he was not shy
about, you know, mentioning iton the, on the, on the low down.
(47:06):
But he had a great career withfamous actresses and he was not
a, you know, an auteur by anystretch of the imagination.
He was a great craftsman.
He did many different genres.
He worked a lot with HumphreyBogart.
He did many different genres.
He worked a lot with HumphreyBogart.
He did a lot of women'spictures when there was such a
thing, and he was just apleasure Articulate.
(47:26):
His memory was sharp.
This was his first feature thathe ever did.
He had been a screenwriter andhe'd been an actor.
Actually, he was a good-lookingenough guy to be an actor, so
he drew the straw and had to dothis contract horror movie, the
(47:46):
Return of Dr X.
The reason the movie was madewas that the horror genre had
come to an end really with theBeast with Five Fingers for its
first period, and the reason wasbecause in England, which was a
big market for horror films inthe early 30s, the British Board
of Censors was very offended bya lot of the stuff in horror
(48:07):
films because horror films werequite transgressive for the time
and for now.
They weren't graphic, they werereticent, but they were quite
transgressive in terms of themes.
I'm thinking about movies likeIsland of Lost Souls, which
dealt with bestiality as asubtext and other topics that
were unsavory.
Even Paramount's Dr Jekyll andMr Hyde.
(48:30):
Oscar Wilde always said aboutthe picture of Dorian Gray he
didn't want to say what DorianGray was doing to corrupt him.
He wanted the reader to thinkthat Dorian's sins were your
sins, were the reader's sins.
And they didn't have thatattitude at Paramount when they
made Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in1931.
(48:51):
They showed what Mr Hyde's sinswere and they were pretty
unsavory at the time, you know.
So anyway, the British Board ofCensors got pretty fed up around
1935 with a couple of moviesMad Love, the aforementioned Mad
Love and the Raven, especiallya universal picture which was
just about a sadist, about adoctor who's obsessed with Edgar
Allan Poe and he'sreconstructed Edgar Allan Poe's
(49:13):
torture devices and uses them onpeople he hates.
It was a very sadistic movieand England said that's it, no
more horror movies.
We're not going to forget it.
We're not going to import anymore horror movies.
So Universal and the otherstudios stopped making horror
movies and then a theater in Ibelieve it was in Beverly Hills
(49:34):
in 1937 or 38, got a couple ofbattered prints of Dracula and
Frankenstein and, I think, theSon of Kong or something, and
they started showing these as asecond or third run theater and
the lines were around the block.
There hadn't been a new horrorfilm in a couple of years and
people wanted to see that and soUniversal struck new prints of
(49:55):
Dracula and Frankenstein, rere-released it, made a big
budget sequel, son ofFrankenstein, and horror was
back.
So even Jack Warner Jack Warner, who had an antipathy for the
genre, said well, I guess we'vegot to make a horror film, we've
got to get a piece of this pie.
So they decided to make thismovie.
It was based on a short storywhich had nothing to do with
(50:17):
their original Dr X movie from1932.
And they did many drafts of thescript.
At one point they were going tocast Boris Karloff, who was
under contract, owed them apicture, and Bela Lugosi, who
you could easily see BorisKarloff in Humphrey Bogart's
part and Bela Lugosi in JohnLittell's part and it would have
(50:39):
been fine.
But they decided not to spendthe money just to use contract
actors.
So it was Humphrey Bogart inthe part that they thought
Karloff would have been good forand John Littell, as I said, in
Bela Lugosi's part.
At one point they were going tohave Claude Rains play what
John Littell ended up playingAnyway.
So they made this little movieand they gave it to Vincent
(50:59):
Sherman.
It was his first picture and heliked to emphasize the comedy,
which was, I'm sure, fine withJack Warner, because if you look
at Dr X and Mystery of the WaxMuseum not Walking Dead, but Dr
X and Mystery of the Wax Museumthere's a lot of 1930s patter
and there's always awisecracking reporter who's your
(51:20):
protagonist that's taking youthrough all this unsavory
material.
And they did the same thing.
That formula worked for themand so they did it with Return
of Dr X.
It's actually a pretty goodmystery.
It's pretty intriguing,especially the first two acts.
Before you know what's going on, you're wondering what kind of
movie is this exactly?
At least there's no gangstersinvolved this time.
(51:42):
There's a wisecracking reporter, but there's also a very
serious.
Wayne Morris plays thewisecracking reporter and Dennis
Morgan plays a very seriousdoctor who's very disturbed by
some of these vampire goings-onthat seem to be happening in
Manhattan, in modern Manhattan,modern as of 1939.
(52:02):
So that's the story.
And Humphrey Bogart, much to hischagrin, was cast as the
monster Dr X, dr Xavier, who wasexecuted for doing experiments
on children where he wanted tosee how long he could starve
them, and he loses a child, andso they try him and they execute
(52:27):
him for this.
And Dr Littell John Littell,the doctor that he plays, has a
way of bringing the dead back tolife.
That involves electricity andyou know, fortunately Humphrey
Bogart had been electrocuted,and so he brings Humphrey Bogart
back to life.
There's only one caveat heneeds to have blood and it has
(52:50):
to be his specific blood type,which is type one.
You know they had four types inthose days, and category one is
what Humphrey Bogart had whenhe was alive.
So he has to go around killingpeople and draining them of
blood so that John Littell couldput it in him.
So it's pretty unsavory, like DrX and Mystery of the Wax Museum
, but it's done in this 1930s,fast-talking, you know reporter
(53:14):
style, and Vincent Shermanemphasized the comedy part of it
more than the horror, I think,and it turned out to be.
It got great reviews when itcame out and it made money.
It was a very inexpensivepicture.
They shot it in three weeks andthat's the return of Dr X.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
George, I know you mentioned it a little bit when
we did the announcement for this, but tell us a little bit about
how Humphrey Bogart felt aboutstarring in this film.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
He was not happy.
He was under contract.
He did what they told him to dountil he had his big
breakthrough, a little bit, withDay Drive by Night, followed by
High Sierra, that catapultedinto, you know, basically
leading man.
(54:00):
Maltese Falcon cemented that.
But up until those films he wasdoing all sorts of roles, a lot
of which he didn't like.
In Virginia City, which is 1940, he plays a Mexican bandito,
you know, I mean, his accent isembarrassing.
In Dark Victory he's an Irishhorse trainer, I think you know
(54:26):
they just had him do anythingwhere oh, let's use Bogart for
this he wasn't appreciated forhis gifts and his talents.
Finally he broke through and ofcourse, I think if anybody
thinks about Warner Brothers andclassic leading men, if they're
not thinking Cagney, they'rethinking Bogart.
Usually Bogart is number one,yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3 (54:51):
He wasn't bad, by the way, as Dr X in this movie.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
Oh no, he's terrific.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
Yeah, he's actually quite good in it.
I mean his cynicism and hislittle lisp and his gravelly
voice.
It works extremely well andthey make him up.
I mean it's almost a parody ofa vampire makeup, but it's quite
effective on him and he'sgenuinely scary in it.
He didn't phone me.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
He had the hair for it.
What did you say, George?
I said he was fully committedto the work he was doing.
Speaker 3 (55:23):
Yeah right, he was.
I mean, he bitched andcomplained and then he went and
did it, but he was very chillingin it.
He could have had, you know, ifhe hadn't made it as a gangster
, he could have made it as ahorror actor, all without
question as a horror actor, allwithout question, the mind
boggles at the thought.
Speaker 4 (55:39):
Right, but this, yeah , this is his only one and you
kind of again you wonder if ithad done better than it was.
But it was a, you said,three-week shoot.
It was a Brian Foy productionand it was a B unit production.
Why did they choose to do itand then not follow through?
Obviously there was the horrorresurrection in the late 30s,
(56:02):
but why did Jack wait?
Why was there not any otherattempt in the 40s until Beast
with Five Fingers?
I mean, it took a few years forthem even to get the Harvey
novel or the Harvey short story.
But yeah, actually at I mean,george, do you have any thoughts
(56:22):
on that?
Speaker 2 (56:24):
I think it just really was a matter of it not
being amongst Jack's personaltaste, because he was, you know,
he oversaw all production, hehad people working under him,
but he ultimately made thedecisions and it wasn't his cup
of tea.
Speaker 3 (56:43):
Yeah, they weren't looking for horror properties.
They had no, you know, exceptfor Peter Lorre who occasionally
was a horror star.
They didn't really have anybodyset up there for horror.
He didn't like horror.
I don't think they were lookingfor the properties.
I don't know how they stumbledon the short story of beast with
five fingers.
Somebody liked it at warnerbrothers it.
Speaker 4 (57:03):
It's.
It seems like you know if, iffoy had produced uh invisible
menace right and uh west ofshanghai, these were all his his
thing.
But so by the time it wasn'tgoing to be a karloff film, they
just they were like it's tootoo far into production to stop.
Just Just get the thing made,just get it out.
It's a B programmer, let it go.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
Yeah, but but Vincent Sherman was, he was very
dedicated to it.
I mean he did in his very, inhis short sketch he uh, what's
his name?
Hickox?
Was the uh DP.
Excellent, excellent movingcamera stuff, excellent deep
focus stuff.
Nice little simple, low budgetyou know scene where John
(57:45):
Littell brings a rabbit back tolife.
You know, I mean it wasn't bad,it wasn't bad at all.
It was better than much of thesort of lower grade universal
work in the 40s.
I think the best thing about itis it really did have a good
mystery.
The hook of it was veryinteresting and very morbid, so
(58:06):
I'm sure it appealed to the fansat the time.
Speaker 4 (58:09):
And then he went on to a lot of great films in the
1940s, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 3 (58:14):
Yeah, he was a good director.
Speaker 2 (58:18):
Well.
George, in terms of this, thisrestoration, same kind of as the
others, the yes all three filmshave this in common we were
able to retrieve the originalcamera negatives from the
Library of Congress.
There were some shots in someof the films where there was a
(58:45):
hint of nitrate decompositionand we substituted a shot from a
second-generation nitrate finegrain, but this was very, very
rare.
What we used to do was we wouldbring in the camera negative,
we would make a new fine grain.
That's what we would masterfrom.
(59:07):
And if there was damage in thecamera negative, people who were
here at the time weren't reallymaking sure that, oh, that bad
section or that bad frame, youknow that could be improved.
No, they just went ahead anddid things as they are.
We are much more dedicated inthe current team that we have
(59:28):
here.
So we will analyze the filmelements, analyze the negative
and if we find that there's adeficiency, we'll look for a
backup element, even if it'sonly to fix a few shots.
That's the kind of meticulouswork that goes on at Warner
Brothers Motion Picture Imaging.
So I always say great thingsabout them and I blush when I
(59:52):
say them, because we're so luckyto have such dedicated
colleagues, have such dedicatedcolleagues and they make our
jobs much easier because we'rebringing something to the
consumer that they can reallyappreciate as collectors.
Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
One question for you, konstantin.
Did you have to do a little bitof that same magic work on
syncing this one up as well, anddid you find any extra seconds
or frames, and did you?
Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
find any extra seconds or frames.
Actually, yeah, I did have todo the same thing, but in this
particular case I did not runacross the problems good
problems that we ran across withWalking Dead.
So everyone's seen, I guess,the original and only version of
the Return of Doctor.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Who.
There are a couple other extrason here Classic cartoons,
doggone, modern and Porky'sHotel, and the theatrical
trailer.
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
It's nice that these all have the trailer, George,
because they're Warner Brothersfilms, and I want to point out
that we did not have a filmelement on the trailer of the
Walking Dead very unusual post1932 or so that we wouldn't have
(01:01:08):
some kind of a trailer elementon a Warner film.
We're very good on trailers forWarner and MGM, For RKO it's a
rarity and when you get deeper,like for monogram films, it's
almost impossible.
But strangely there was no filmelement on the Walking Dead
trailer and thankfully, agentleman who's been a friend of
(01:01:28):
mine since high school happenedto have a 16 millimeter print
of the trailer because he is ameticulous collector and he was
kind enough to send it our wayso that we could include it on
the disc.
It doesn't look great, but it'sthe trailer and we're so lucky
to have it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Well, thanks guys for coming on and taking us through
these.
Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
Thank you, Tim Tim, as always.
Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
Happy Halloween.
Happy Halloween everyone.
Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
As always, there are purchase links in the podcast
show notes for the films that wetalked about today, so if
you're interested in purchasingthose, you can look for those
there, and if you're enjoyingthese podcasts, please think
about following the show orleaving us a review wherever you
listen.
Until next time you've beenlistening to Tim Millard, stay
slightly obsessed Music.
Hey, we have a fun, spooky Halloween episode here
today and I have three veryspecial guests.
I'm very excited to have GeorgeFeldstein on from the Warner
Archive, dr Steve Haberman andConstantine Nasser, who are both
writers, producers and filmhistorians, so I hope you'll
enjoy our special Halloweenepisode.
On the Extras Hi guys, hi, howare you doing?
(00:34):
Hello?
So, george, you have a greatmonth.
You have three classic horrorreleases coming from the Warner
Archive this month.
That feels like more than it'sbeen for a while.
So how'd that all come together?
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Fan demand.
Everybody was asking for thesefilms and I made sure well in
advance that we'd be able tobring in the camera negatives
from Library of Congress and doa full restoration with 4K scans
, and they look phenomenal.
And thank you to thesegentlemen who've been so
(01:12):
integral in helping to supportnot only these releases but, of
course, releases in past years.
You guys are my heroes and I'meternally grateful to you.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Back at you, george.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Well, and just for those who don't know, this is
our third Halloween podcast,talking about your commentaries
that you guys have done oncertain different releases,
which is a lot of fun, Steve, wewere just talking earlier.
This is becoming a yearly habitand I said, yeah, let's do it
each year.
That's terrific fun.
Why not?
So well, let's talk about we'lltalk about all three films that
(01:52):
are releasing from the WarnerArchive this month, but let's
start with the Beast with FiveFingers from 1946, because I
know Constantine, you and Stevecreated and recorded an all new
commentary for it.
And, Steve, maybe we'll startwith you.
Maybe you can provide a littlebackground on the origins of the
film.
I know there's a lot ofinteresting stuff leading up to
(02:13):
it.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
Well, you know it's based on a short story by WH
Harvey which is very, very wellregarded, you know, anthologized
from the early 20th century,and Warner Brothers was not too
prolific with horror films ever,even in the 30s.
Really, they only made, youknow, four or five in the 30s
(02:36):
and they only made if you don'tcount Arsenic and Old Lace as a
horror film.
They only made one in the 40sand it was the Beast with Five
Fingers, because Jack Warnerwasn't particularly excited
about that genre but it almostwould have been commercial
malpractice had they not atleast tried to make a horror
(02:57):
film during the horror boombetween 1931 and 1946 or so.
So the one they made late inthe game was the Beast with Five
Fingers, as I said, based onthis short story by Harvey, and
he wisely had Kurt Siadmak dothe screenplay.
And Kurt Siadmak had writtensome stuff for Universal like
the Wolfman and Black Friday,and he also wrote the first
(03:21):
draft of I Walk With a Zombie,which was wrote the first draft
of I Walk With a Zombie, whichwas basically rewritten by
Ardell Ray.
But he was very into, kind oflike Roger Corman later in the
1960s, he was into thepsychology of the protagonists
of horror.
I mean especially, obviously,in the Wolfman.
(03:42):
As a matter of fact, hisoriginal script of the Wolfman
didn't show the Wolfman.
As a matter of fact, hisoriginal script of the Wolfman
didn't show the Wolfman.
It was all about the sufferingof Lawrence Talbot.
So he was probably the guy topick to do the screenplay for
Beasts with Five Fingers and heworked on it for a good long
time.
We have notes from him as farback as 1942, working on it, and
he made it a movie about, uh,working on it and uh, he, he
(04:02):
made it uh a movie about, uh,castration anxiety, and I go
into that in great detail in thein the commentary I may say the
word penis one or two too manytimes.
Uh, I don't want to give itaway, but it's kind of obvious.
It's about a guy who, who, uh,cuts the hand off of somebody
else.
That is his father figure.
So you do the math.
(04:23):
It's very Freudian.
What he did was he made an hourand 26 minute brilliant gothic
horror film, dark, brilliantpsychological mystery horror
film, and Warner Brothers tackedon a one minute cringy comedy
epilogue at the very end.
(04:43):
But it doesn't ruin the movie.
However, it's quite confusingwhen you go through the hour and
26 minutes of gothic horror andat the end it becomes this
farce for one minute.
But anyway, that's what we did.
That's how we approached theBeast with Five Fingers.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Constantine, maybe you can pick up on that.
What were some of theinteresting things that you
found in doing the research forthe commentary?
Can pick up on that.
What were some of theinteresting things?
Speaker 4 (05:05):
that you found in doing the research for the
commentary.
Well, I think that there wassome opportunity to go back and
read a little bit of what waswritten prior to I think like
the declining years of thehorror film which you know we're
talking about.
The movie that kind of ended itright before, you know, abbott
(05:26):
and Costello met Frankensteinand really ended it.
But unfortunately there wasn'ta lot of access to what I liked.
Steve and I both like to goback to the original script and
script notes.
This was a hard one too.
We didn't have the time andalso like the ability to find
the access at, probably at theUSC archives.
So I think, just going back andtrying to have a better
(05:49):
understanding of Flory's intentyou know Flory as a filmmaker to
me, watching some of hisearlier work and then also kind
of digging back into the careerof Peter Lorre at that time and
Warner Brothers, who was also,you know, kind of like waning in
the.
I guess you know Jack Warnerwasn't exactly appreciative of
(06:13):
Peter Lorre in the mid 40s and alot of that had to do with his
political feelings, right.
So kind of for me going back andunderstanding the people who
made the film and and then alsorealizing that that Kurt Siadmak
, as Steve was saying, was sucha critical figure.
(06:35):
He pretty much, from a writer'sperspective, ruled the 1940s.
When you look at all the filmshe had a hand in, things might
(07:08):
have been adjusted along the way, but particularly when you look
at his involvement withUniversal and then with Val
Lewton, in a movie like this, ciMack was all over the place in
a way as an independent writerthat I think was really
impressive and a lot of it hadto do with a very psychological
impact.
And it was no coincidence that,of course, at this time film
noir was so strong that thoseGerman expressionist ideas of
the mind also informed the waythe thematics of the films of
the 1940s went concurrently withthe horror film, including a
(07:31):
movie that we all love, like Sonof Dracula, which was a C Aud
Mack experience.
So I think that to me was themost interesting part, and
really looking back on a moviethat I hadn't kind of watched in
quite a while, hoping thatGeorge is going to get to it,
and he got to it, like with twoother great films, yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
So yeah Well, george, why don't we throw that to you
then and you can talk a littlebit about the film and what's
made it so popular over theyears, and kind of how the
restoration process cametogether, kind of how the
restoration process cametogether Well.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
This is particularly gratifying because I would say
maybe 10 years ago, maybe more,we did remaster the film for DVD
.
That wasn't a restoration, thatwas a new master, because what
had been existing before waslike 30 years old at that time
(08:25):
and looked really awful, but wedidn't have access to the
original negative.
A new fine grain was made andthat master did not look very
good and I was disappointed inthe quality.
Because you want it.
It was so beautifully shot.
You want to have thepresentation be up to the par of
(08:45):
what the creators intended.
So to be able to get theapproval, to go for it and do
something that was reallydefinitive scanning the nugget
4K coming out with this newBlu-ray that is really pristine.
This is incredibly rewardingbecause the fan base for certain
(09:08):
films and this is one of themthey were very vocal.
We want this on Blu and I hearthat about 4,000 or 5,000 films
all the time, because everybodyhas their favorite.
But this is definitely a keeper.
It's really important in thestudio's history and it
(09:29):
maintains its ability toentertain and fascinate,
especially because, as you guysjust pointed out, this was not a
genre that Warner Brothersreally looked into very much.
There were some B pictures inthe early 40s, like the Hidden
Hand and the Mysterious Doctorand so forth, that were like no,
(09:50):
they weren't really horrorfilms, but they were exploring
mystery.
This was more blatant horrorand is to be treasured for that
reason.
Speaker 1 (09:59):
Yeah, I recall in listening to your audio
commentary guys and looking atthe images you talked a lot
about the influence of GermanExpressionism and the way it's
filmed.
Maybe you can talk a little bitabout that, because in this
restoration I think that reallyhelps George with this kind of
filmmaking to really see theblacks and the contrast and
(10:19):
everything.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Precisely.
Yeah, robert Flory wanted it tobe more expressionistic.
His idea to this is not reallya movie he wanted to do, but
once they made him do it hereally got into it and he said I
got excited about it.
And what he wanted to do is hewanted to make it from the Peter
Lorre character's point of viewand he's mad.
So he was really trying to do aDr Caligari type thing where we
(10:46):
would find out this was all thevision of a madman at the end.
And he was going to go for notjust expressionistic lighting
and camera angles butexpressionistic sets.
But the producer said thatwould be commercial suicide.
We're not doing that.
So they didn't.
But I think the movie isstronger for that because it
really it's naturalistic butit's gothic.
(11:08):
As you said, the lighting isvery high contrast, use of
shadows, use of moving cameraand radical angles and so forth.
And it gets more so as thenarrative progresses and the
narrative forces you into thePeter Lorre character's head in
the last act.
And then Robert Flory has morefun with extreme angles and with
(11:33):
the strange lighting and music.
Max Steiner's score is fabulousin this and with
expressionistic sound effects.
You know he does wonders withlike a mandolin string breaking
and the sound of wind comingdown a chimney and things like
that Wonderful stuff when itgets very expressionistic but
yet it's still in a naturalisticenvironment.
(11:55):
It's just what the camera andthe sound effects and the
performance.
Speaker 4 (11:58):
Peter Lorre goes full out expressionistic as a German
actor you know from that knewwhat he was doing, so he does a
lot of you know from that, knewwhat he was doing.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
So he does a lot of you know stuff.
So it has that quality to it,but within a naturalistic
framework and I think it worksextremely well.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Yeah, I mean, they do a lot of closeups on him when
he's when he's in those modes.
But let's talk about PeterLorre for a second Constantine.
What did you learn about PeterLorre in some of this research,
or what are just some of yourthoughts on his performance in
this film?
Speaker 4 (12:29):
Well, I think that it starts off in a way where Peter
Lorre is he's not a backgroundcharacter but he's not presented
as the main character and Ilike how the film progresses
that he as the main characterand I like how the film
progresses that he, as Stevesaid, he kind of just starts
(12:50):
unraveling and he goes full onGothic German expressionism by
the end.
So I think he hadn't really hadthat opportunity for the genre.
Not that he was looking to do ahorror film, certainly at that
time.
I just found it to be one ofhis more compelling films of the
period because he was oftenused, always really good, that's
(13:13):
the thing you watch a PeterLorre film from, really any of
his films.
He's a good, very good, strongsupporting player.
But he expected to have betterroles and Warner Brothers just
didn't give him any.
Anything that was like like theone of the last great leading
roles he had was with RobertFlory with the face behind the
(13:35):
mask in 1930.
Steve, is it 1940?
1940.
Yeah, columbia, yeah, it wasColumbia, yeah, but 1940.
So so he's, he's got five yearswhere, yeah, he's, he's Maltese
Falcon, memorable, and he'smemorable in Casablanca and the
Curtiz films.
I was just watching Arsenic andOld Lace, another great Warner
(13:55):
Brothers Halloween film.
That Criterion put out what.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
I said not quite a horror film, almost a horror
film.
Speaker 4 (14:02):
Almost.
But it's a Halloween film.
We're at Halloween and I've gotto thank George for helping
make that happen.
Beautiful, beautiful and youknow.
But you're like, well, you knowwhere's Peter Lorre?
Like cutting loose, and thiswas the movie where he gets to
cut loose and it's not asdimensional as the Face Behind
the Mask.
That really is a wonderful, sadmovie, less a horror film than
(14:27):
just it's a tragic film.
And obviously he had a greatexperience working with Robert
Flory period in the mid 1940sbefore the genre just again just
(14:48):
gets shunted away.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Yeah, some of the things that I learned that I
wanted to just mention, andwe're not going to talk about
the commentary, because peopleneed to watch the movie, see it
in its brilliance first.
I mean this new Blu-ray.
To your point, george, whenthese films go from DVD to
Blu-ray, the reason everybody'sasking for those is because
(15:12):
that's the huge jump.
Right, it's that DVD to Blu-ray.
That's the huge jump in termsof quality.
And, steve, you mentioned theMax Steiner score.
So then the audio as well.
You know, to get that, the fullcomposition, the orchestration
in this one specifically behindthis great visual, really makes
(15:34):
the viewing experience a totallynew experience really for
people.
So they need to see that firstand then when they can come in
and view it again with youraudio commentary so much, you
guys put in there nuggets ofinformation and everything.
But here we are talking aboutPeter Lorre and of course he's
not even the lead in the film,but he's so memorable in this.
(15:55):
The other cast members, robertAlda, andrea King you guys talk
about a lot Talk about some ofthe other performances and of
course I want to about a lotTalk about some of the other
performances and of course Iwant to talk about the Hand
itself a little bit.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Well, the Hand is the star, of course, yeah, and the
special effects are fantastic,you know, I mean, everybody
talks about that Peter Lorremovie with the Hand Right and
there's two movies that could be.
That could be Peter Lorre'sfirst American movie, which is
Mad Love, where that's a remakeof the Hands of Orlok, which was
a novel, and then a silentmovie in Germany with Conrad
(16:29):
Veidt, and Peter Lorre did it inAmerica in 1935.
Carl Freund directed it and heplays a mad doctor who has to
remove the damaged hands of aconcert pianist and graft on the
hands of a knife murderer tosave the man's hands, you know,
as one does, and of course thehands of the knife murderer have
(16:53):
a will of their own.
At least Peter Lorre wants totalk Colin Clive, the poor
pianist, into thinking so.
So that was the one hand, thefirst hand movie of Peter Lorre.
But this is really the handmovie.
You know, first of all this isthe first disembodied hand
(17:13):
feature.
It became kind of a horrormovie trope later on.
The amicus films from Englandin the 60s liked to have hand
short stories.
But this is the hand movie, theclassic first hand movie, and
Peter Lorre the fact that he'snot in the first two acts as
much as he's in the third act.
Doesn't matter, because whatpeople take home from this movie
is the actual basis of themovie, which is a crawling hand
(17:37):
short story.
The short story itself is notas much of a horror story as
Kurt Siadmak made the movie.
It's got horrible things in it.
It's a creepy, eerie sort ofidea, but it has a kind of
British understatement in thecharacter's reactions to the
crawling hand that keeps it frombeing full.
(17:58):
But this movie, peter Lorre, ifthere were no hand in this
movie, his reactions would makeit a horror movie because he's
so bipolar in it.
You know how, peter Lorre, ifthere were no hand in this movie
, his reactions would make it ahorror movie Because he's so
bipolar in it.
You know how Peter Lorre likesto get very excited A lot in
this movie, you know, and that'swhat people remember.
Oh, but the hand, though.
They did the hand a number ofdifferent ways.
(18:20):
They had a couple of mechanicalhands, they had a non-moving
wax hand and they also did thehand with a real concert pianist
who was doing a Bach piece forone hand that had actually been
rejiggered for one hand on piano, and what they did is they did
(18:42):
it like they did Claude Rains inthe Invisible man.
The pianist was wrapped all inblack velvet and just the hand
and the piano were shot againstblack and then that was matted
into the set, in which then theycovered up the hand and the
(19:03):
piano, so that could be.
That was made into a shadow.
The optical printer does this.
It's many different steps andit all has to be, you know,
compounded with an opticalprinter, but they did it exactly
the way they did Claude Rainsin the Invisible man, with black
velvet doing the invisibleparts, and it works beautifully.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I mean, the special effects in this movie are
without CGI, they're by far thebest crawling hand special
effects you'll ever see in amovie.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, it fascinated me hearingyou guys talking about that, the
effects that you just wentthrough over there with the hand
.
But the question that stickswith me is why did Jack Warner,
(19:43):
when he didn't care for horror,I mean, why did the studio buy
the short story rights and whydid they develop that?
I mean, like they did, and andyou mentioned that it's like the
last of that horror period,classical horror period but why?
I mean, why did he do it?
Well, like, why why do oneright here at the end?
Speaker 3 (20:03):
He wanted a piece of the pie.
People were making a lot ofmoney on horror films, sure took
him a while.
Yeah, it took him a while, butyou know what?
The next horror film he madewas House of Wax in 1953.
And that was a huge hit.
Again, I think he finallylearned his lesson, because then
he made the Bad Seed and thenhe picked up the distribution
rights for Curse of Frankenstein.
(20:23):
Every time he decided to make ahorror movie or distribute a
horror movie, it was a hit.
So I don't know why he didn'tlike the genre.
Maybe it tapped into somethingthat he didn't want to face.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
It's just financial, you're saying, is the reason why
they did the Beast.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
I think so Because you know what, every time Jack
Warner, especially in the earlydays with Dr X and Mystery of
the Wax Museum and Return of DrX and the Beast with Five
Fingers and even House of Wax healways has, even when he makes
a real gothic masterpiece, inthe end he will have a comic
scene, as if to tell theaudience we were just kidding,
(21:03):
go home, forget about it, don'tworry about it.
It's particularly egregious inthis picture, in the piece with
five fingers, because it's sucha dark, disturbing movie on a
subconscious level.
I told you it's aboutcastration, anxiety, which of
course everybody can enjoy.
But at the end he tries tosoften the blow, if you'll
(21:25):
pardon the expression, with thiscomedy scene saying oh, we were
just kidding us all, don'tworry about it.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Well, I mean, when I think of the history of Warner
Brothers, I think of a lot ofgreat horror films over the last
hundred years and, of course,in the 30s.
We're going to be talking abouta couple of them in a few
minutes, but I just found thatinteresting because this one is
so good.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
I really saw this as an opportunity to make something
that would be a commercial hit,and that's what Jack Warner was
always looking for was successat the box office.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
And was it a hit, George?
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (22:05):
I think it made back its money.
Speaker 3 (22:07):
No, it did better than that it did okay, it did
pretty well.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah, I mean it wasn't a blockbuster, but it was
a profitable picture, Right,and that's the most important
thing and it was an expensivepicture.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
I mean, that was an expensive little movie.
It had a 52-day schedule and itcost about half a million bucks
.
That was a lot of money in 1946.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
And they had confidence in it.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, well, it was.
You know that was a tried andtrue genre.
In the 40s it was a little bitmore well, you know it went two
ways.
There were the very dark,psychological, adult, rko, val
Luton films which by and largemostly were hits, and then there
were the sort of more juvenilemonster movies from Universal.
I mean, of course that genrestarted as an adult genre in the
(22:58):
30s but by the time they weremaking them during the war in
the 1940s they had, you know,they'd sort of gone down the IQ
scale a little bit in pictureslike House of Frankenstein and
House of Dracula and pictureslike that where they became kind
of monsterodger and HangoverSquare and Dragonwick at Fox.
(23:33):
Those movies were consideredhorror movies and they were very
psychological, they were veryexpensive, they were very gothic
, and so you know that genre hada big spread in the 40s.
Speaker 4 (23:45):
You know what I wanted to say.
You asked me before what did Ilearn or what did I come to
appreciate?
I had spent a lot of time manyyears ago studying Robert Flory
(24:11):
around between Columbia andindependent studios, as well as
doing a series of WarnerBrothers films like God is my
Co-Pilot and the Desert Song acouple of memorable films for
the 40s and discovering that hewas a guy who really tried to
buck the system whenever hecould.
If he didn't like something,he'd just be like all right, I'm
not going to take that job, andhe's going to go gallivanting
(24:31):
across Europe and come back andthe job might still be there
because somebody else might haveturned it down.
He was not somebody that justtook the job that Jack Warner
would give him, but in thisparticular case, I think even
after he turned it down, it wasstill still there and he found a
way to tune into it and it was.
(24:53):
It was definitely the rightfilm for him and for peter lorry
.
But it was interesting that youknow he's a guy that, uh, often
is forgotten.
He's he's remembered for beingthe guy who almost made
frankenstein, but he made anumber of really strong films
and he made a number of films,um, as we mentioned, uh, the
(25:16):
face behind the mask being afilm that was.
I don't know the budget of thatfilm, but it certainly was a
fraction of what he had when hewas working for Warner brothers
and doing a movie like this.
So, um, I I think, if you lookat back at at at this film, it's
worth taking a look at some ofthe other films that Flory had
done and giving a director and awriter like the multi-hyphenate
(25:38):
filmmaker that Flory wasanother chance, especially when
you see what he was able to dowith what was a decent budget
but arguably not anythingspecial for Warner Brothers at
that time.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Well, there are a couple other extras you put on
here, George.
I'll just mention you got theclassic cartoons, the Foxy
Duckling and the Gain and Tease,and the theatrical trailer.
So altogether this is a greatrelease.
It's got the new commentarywith you guys there, which is
just load, you guys just loadyour commentaries with
information.
It's fascinating.
New commentary with you guysthere, which is just load, you
guys just load your commentarieswith information.
(26:12):
It's fascinating.
I love it.
So this is a great package.
Speaker 4 (26:16):
Thank you.
What's also great is you know,these three that George released
are all Warner Brothers films.
It's not an RKO film.
It's not an MGM film LikeGeorge.
Like laid it.
Like here's Warner Horror 1940s.
Enjoy that an MGM film, georgelaid it.
Here's Warner Horror 1940s injoy.
That was exactly the objective.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
I've never seen Beasts with Five Fingers look
this good Right off the camera.
Negative oh my god, it isbeautiful.
Looks like it was shotyesterday.
The fans are going to go nutsfor this.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
Yeah, that is what I'm most excited is for people
to actually see it.
You guys have seen it, very fewpeople have, and so when people
finally see this, compared tothe difference on Beast with
Five Fingers is substantial,yeah, but when you get to
Walking Dead, it's ginormousbecause that had only existed in
(27:10):
a.
An ancient master made off asixth generation film element,
so when you're coming off thenegative, it's like a different
film, right, and that's why I'mso excited about this trio well,
why don't we just dive into thewalking dead, since you?
Speaker 1 (27:24):
you kind of already started that, george, and tell
us a little bit about thisrestoration?
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Well once again.
Thankfully the originalnegative was well maintained.
Most of the pre-49 Warnerfeature negatives are under the
care of the Library of Congressand we have like a partnership
with the Library of Congresswhere we basically help to
(27:51):
support those effortsfinancially because that's a lot
of maintenance work and thesestones were deposited there
decades ago.
But what they do in terms oftheir care for nitrate negatives
is impeccable, of their carefor nitrate negatives is
impeccable, and the same can besaid of several other archives
(28:13):
in this country as well as inEurope where there is this
fastidious care of nitrate andthey're preserving our cinematic
legacy.
And to bring in the negativefor Walking Dead, I don't think
anyone had touched that negativesince they had to make print
downs for the television salesin 1956.
(28:35):
I don't think it had beentouched since then.
I could be wrong.
The Library of Congress mighthave done something on their own
but happily it was scanned hereat Warner Brothers Motion
Picture Imaging and ourwonderful artisans in the color
bay did a fantastic job Not onlywith the picture at MPI but
(28:57):
also our archival sound team dida beautiful cleanup on the
audio so that you have fullfrequency response up on the
audio, so that you have fullfrequency response.
You don't feel any high end hasbeen cut off and you hear the
full width and breadth of thesoundtrack.
And I've always said WarnerBrothers soundtracks had a
(29:18):
unique studio style.
I can't verbalize what that is,but you hear it from the mid
thirties all the way up throughmovies like Bonnie and Clyde.
To see Curtiz once again takeup the horror mantle and Karloff
in this film to me gives one ofhis greatest performances.
I don't know if you gentlemenagree, but I would love to hear
(29:40):
your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (29:42):
When did he give a bad performance?
Speaker 2 (29:45):
He was even good on the Girl from UNCLE.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
Yeah, he was great on that.
I mean, that would be theanomaly if you saw boris karloff
performance, you know.
Wow, he really wasn't into that, was he?
Speaker 2 (29:54):
no, he was always wonderful, yeah, and it is
always, uh, a sadness becauseyou mentioned arsenic and old
lays before.
Yeah, it's like the heartbreakof all time that he didn't get
to recreate that stage role.
Raymond massey's great in thefilm, but to have Karloff in
that film would have beennirvana.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Karloff and shooting Cary Grant with a tranquilizer
dart.
Those are the two things thatneeded to happen on the set of
Arsenic and Ole Larris.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
Well, just to be clear for people out there,
we're of course, talking aboutthe Walking Dead from 1936.
Yes, this is not Daryl Dixonand Rick Grant.
Be clear for people out there.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
We're of course talking about the walking dead
from 1936?
Yes, this is not.
Uh uh, daryl dixon and rickgrime I also worked on I was
curious.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah, I was curious.
Uh, that's true, constantine,you have a thread there.
But uh, george, this one wasdirected by curtis.
He didn't do too many horrorfilms, but of course he's well
known for being able to do anygenre like just he could do it
all.
But how did he kind of getinvolved with this?
Speaker 2 (30:57):
he was one of those few, not unlike vincent minnelli
very different directors, butthey could master virtually any
genre.
And yes that he directed.
He directed Mystery of the WaxMuseum, dr X and the Walking
Dead.
That's why we put the greatdocumentary about the greatest
director you've never heard of,which we originally created for
(31:20):
the Casablanca anniversary backin 2012.
That piece is on this disc aswell, so that people can
understand, if they haven't seenit already, how incredibly
versatile and talented mr curtiswas.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, maybe one of you guys can dive in a little
bit and talk a little bit aboutthe this movie in terms of the
storyline or the origins.
But you mentioned boris karloffalready.
He's a man who comes back fromthe dead seeking revenge on the
gangsters who framed him for themurder of the judge who first
(31:56):
jailed him.
How did he become involved?
Speaker 3 (32:00):
Well, he had signed a contract.
The Warners went after him.
They were trying to developproperties for him and this
seemed like a good fit.
They were absolutely rightabout that.
And you know, I mean it's akind of strange movie because
it's part gangster movie, whichyou would expect from Warner
Brothers, and part horror film.
(32:20):
But the horror film is veryspiritual.
The whole idea of this movie isthat Karloff, after he's been
executed and brought back tolife, is in touch with some kind
of spiritual power that'sallowing him to be a force of
God.
You know, he's becoming aninstrument of God's wrath to
(32:43):
these people who had framed himfor a crime and in that way
framed him for a crime and inthat way.
See, universal didn't do stufflike that.
Even when it's a story that hasan obvious spiritual quality,
like Dracula for example, theykind of underplayed it.
They were more into sciencefiction.
I think they were morecomfortable with Frankenstein
and the Invisible man and theInvisible Ray and stuff like
(33:07):
that or just cruelty.
But in terms of a spiritualquality, unless it's done in a
somewhat parodic style, likeJames Whale did it like in Bride
of Frankenstein, it's not inyour face, like it later will be
in the Hammer films of TerrenceFisher.
(33:28):
But in this film the verynarrative is based on the fact
that Karloff becomes aninstrument of God's vengeance,
and he's aware of it.
Karloff is aware of it, theliving dead creature that he is,
you know, and that makes itvery unique.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
There was a commentary already on here,
right, Constantine.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah, can you?
Speaker 1 (33:49):
talk a little bit about that one and the other new
one you created.
Speaker 4 (33:55):
So we put this out.
Well, actually, what'sinteresting is just thinking
about this when everyone'stalking collectively.
Many of these films that Georgehas put out had been on DVD
before, with the exception ofBeast with Five Fingers Right,
george Beast with Five Fingerscame out more recently, like
(34:15):
2012 or so.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Remastered for DVD only by the Warner Archive.
It never had a retail releaseRight right.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
So when all these films were coming out at the
height of, like classic films ondisc, we were buying stores,
yeah, and they and they werepart of these collections.
Um, legends of horror, I thinkthat's the one where we had mad
love and Fu Manchu and and, uh,dr X and return of Dr X came out
(34:46):
together on that release andthat was oh five, I think 06.
06.
06, okay, and that's when wewere able to get Steve to do an
interview.
We went out to I'm jumpingahead to Return of Dr X but
meeting Vincent Sherman at theMotion Picture Home, and that
was quite a nice afternoon.
And then we did the WalkingDead, which is part of this
(35:09):
Lugosi-Karloff set.
So on one hand it was likeFrankenstein 1970 and Walking
Dead and we had gotten at thattime Greg Mank to do the audio
commentary.
Greg, of course, is a premierbiographer and historian,
karloff and Lugosi biographer,and I mean you name it, he's
written about it.
It's a very, very, very goodcommentary and I also, like when
(35:34):
George brought this up, I justthought well, from a Michael
Curtiz perspective, there mightbe more to dig into, because it
seems like there's been a Curtizrenaissance.
George has mentioned thedocumentary that was made.
George was very gracious inallowing me to do a little
documentary a few years ago onthe horror films of Michael
(35:55):
Curtiz and there's a lot ofCurtiz love going around.
So I asked well, georgeapproved it and we went out to
Alan K Rohde to do an interview.
He agreed to do aCurtiz-centric commentary and
then the idea was how do yousave the commentary that Greg
(36:17):
Mank made?
This is a technical bit becauseI think it's important to share
that when we recorded thesethings many years ago, dvd was
not at the same frame rate as aBlu-ray, as a HD master the
sources and the time codes andeverything kind of, in order for
it to sync.
It's got to sync exactly,Otherwise audio's off and
(36:38):
people's lips and it's just it'sa mess to watch.
So we worked at trying to syncGreg's commentary from nearly 20
years ago to the new master andwhat what I discovered?
And I was like texting georgein between each discovery.
I think I was annoying him, I'mnot sure, but I was realizing
(36:59):
there was like a record.
It wasn't, it wasn't sinking,because all of a sudden I was
finding like an extra frame ortwo or an extra shot or two.
And so when George is sayingthat nobody has seen this, uh,
this negative since the fifties,perhaps I don't know which
(37:19):
print, uh, the, the, the, thelatest version was struck from,
but uh, this is a film that maybe 15 seconds longer than the
version of the Walking Dead thathas been seen.
There's more.
There's a couple of fades,there's a couple lines of
dialogue and you know I'msitting there getting very
(37:40):
excited, struggling to sink itin.
I was like mad at like the hardwork I was dealing with.
But I'm very excited becausethis is truly an uncut version
of the movie, the extended.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
We all right.
We we have run into thisseveral times where we're doing
new scans off the originalnegative and we have an archival
commentary that came from asecondary or third or fourth
generation element that wasmissing footage or missing
frames, and that's what we'vebeen living with for decades.
(38:16):
And then we go back and try tosync the commentary and it
wouldn't always sync and that'swhy on some of our discs we've
had to put the commentary with astandard definition version as
an extra, which is not ideal,and thankfully, thanks to
(38:36):
Constantine's dedication andskill and acumen, he was able to
get Greg's commentary to syncdespite the extra footage.
So bravo, constantine.
As always, yes, very good.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
Thank you, it was fun .
You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Thank you so just to be clear, this is an extended
version.
I mean, because of that, by 15seconds or so.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
But that was the most important 15 seconds in the
movie and nobody's seen it forthe last 70 years.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
It was one of the best musical numbers.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
Let's see if those eagle-eyed fans can figure out
which 15 seconds across theboard they are.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
George, we should laugh because, of course, any
time you're off by one secondand any other movie or TV show,
people just come out of theweeds.
Or TV show, people just comeout of the weeds to hold you to
the.
So I mean I just want to beclear hey, we found extra on
this one and people should.
Okay, let's have a clap herefor George.
(39:39):
Oh man, Anyway, we kid a littlebit, but that's really neat
because you're going back tothis original nitrate to make
this scan.
So that's pretty cool.
So not only does it look greatand it's a fun film, but you
also have the Greg Mankcommentary and you have the new
(40:01):
Alan K Rohde commentary, that is, Michael Curtiz-centric, so to
speak, to bring a new angle tothe commentary.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
So you've got what's really terrific about that is
they're very differentapproaches, and although he's
not on the microphones with ustoday, I can say that Greg
Mank's commentaries over theyears have been treasures, just
as Constantine and Steve's are.
I was introduced to Greg by ourmutual friend Tom Weaver.
(40:30):
I think one of the mostfortuitous opportunities was
when Greg was able to add hiscommentary to several of our
releases of which we're veryproud, and he's delighted that
this commentary from almost 20years ago is having new life.
So all the more excitement thatmakes for a better Blu-ray disc
(40:53):
experience.
Speaker 4 (40:55):
You know we really cared about these and we still.
We still do.
But all of the commentariesthat I've been very fortunate to
record for Warner Brothers, inparticular for Hyde, never
intends to take away the sort ofbar that was set really, really
(41:23):
high by people like Greg.
So I just wanted to.
You know I haven't talked toGreg about this, but hey, thank
you very much, greg and to allthose people who've, I think,
created great work out therethat you know you shouldn't be
throwing out your DVDs anyway.
You know you can upgrade, butjust make sure the excellent
work out there that youshouldn't be throwing out your
DVDs anyway.
You can upgrade, but just makesure the excellent work out
there is not forgotten, even ifit is 10 or 20 years old.
Speaker 2 (41:47):
That's why we try to include everything that was on a
DVD on the Blu-ray if we can,if it's still legally clear, so
that there is no reason that youhave to keep the DVD.
But sometimes it doesn't workout that we can keep everything.
In this case we were able to dothat and it's very, very
(42:09):
gratifying, especiallycommentaries.
We don't usually run intoproblems where we can't reuse a
commentary.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
You do have a couple of classic cartoons on here For
those who want to know what allthe extras are the Cat came back
and Let it Be Me and theoriginal theatrical trailer, you
know.
Plus, you already mentionedthat documentary on Michael
Curtiz.
So it's a robust, robust amountof extras.
And I think that's one thingthat sets our discussion apart
this year, george, with thesethree, is that you were able to
(42:39):
get all of these new, uh, newextras on these releases.
So there's, uh, the obviousupgrade and restoration and then
just a great package that youhave for every fan out there.
Speaker 2 (42:52):
So I don't want to make anybody blush, but I feel
so fortunate and honored thatSteve and Constantine led their
gifts, talents and knowledge toworking on making these really,
really superb releases.
It sets a different standardand I'll just be very
(43:17):
unabashedly grateful for whatthey not only contributed to
these releases, but many of theother recent releases in the
past.
Thank you, George.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
Recent past.
Thank you, it's, it's all like.
I've said it a million times,george, when you call I will
answer the phone.
So there's, there's more than Ican, what.
So there's so much that I thinkthat the Warner Archives have
done that, I think, is criticalin this time when anybody else
(43:51):
would overlook what you've beendoing.
I'm just really, really excitedto offer whatever time and
skill and technical ability wecan offer.
I can offer, and then Stevejoins in and of course, alan.
Alan Rohde was willing to givean excellent, you know, very
(44:12):
studied, very expertly craftedtrack on on Curtiz for the
Walking Dead, drafted, uh, trackon on Curtiz for the walking
dead.
And just like, just when youthink you've learned enough or
you know enough, you knowsomebody comes in and educate
you.
But those opportunitieswouldn't be there if Georgie
didn't call.
And you know, years ago, two,three years ago, when we were
doing Dr X, there was a.
(44:33):
There was a question about will, will the walking dead ever
come out?
And you had told me that thatthere was such damage done and
you weren't sure when you weregoing to have the funds.
When you called and said theWalking Dead not only was going
to be done, but it was done.
I almost fell out of my chairso I was so excited.
You keep those cards close toyour vest and then when you
(44:54):
choose to reveal them, they'rereally them.
There's not one release you'vedone.
That, I think, has not been ofvalue to not just the fans but
to preserving film history andthe Warner Brothers legacy, and
that goes to Warner Brothers andMGM and RKO and Allied Artists.
So thank you very much for theopportunity and just keep us
posted when the next one's ready.
Speaker 2 (45:16):
Yeah, we're waiting Will do my friend one's ready.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, we're waiting, will do, my friend.
And just a little explanationfor those listening who maybe
don't know why we chose Alan KRohde, but he literally wrote
the book on Michael Curtiz andhis book is fantastic.
Those of you who have listenedto the podcast, he's a friend of
the podcast and has been onmany times.
But for those who maybe arenewer, friend of the podcast and
has been on many times.
(45:42):
But for those who maybe arenewer, that's why his take on
the movie from a Michael Curtizpoint of view is going to be so
interesting and I'm lookingforward to watching and
listening to that.
Well, we have one more movieand you mentioned Dr X
Constantine and the movie nowwe're going to talk about is the
Return of Dr X from 1939.
And, steve, you have a threadgoing back to the original
(46:07):
commentary that was done withdirector Vincent Sherman on this
for the DVD.
Maybe you can kind of take usback to when you did that and
working and doing thatcommentary with him and your
thoughts on that process and thefilm.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Okay, well, that was an unforgettable experience
because Vincent Sherman was ahundred years old, a hundred,
and we went out, constantine andthe crew and me, and we went
out to Woodland Hills and we metwith him and he was in a
three-piece suit with a cane anda bow tie, and he was quite
(46:46):
lovely and, you know, still ahandsome, handsome guy.
You know, he had quite thereputation of being a dog in his
great years.
You know names like JoanCrawford in his great years.
You know names like JoanCrawford and he, he was not shy
about, you know, mentioning iton the, on the, on the low down.
(47:06):
But he had a great career withfamous actresses and he was not
a, you know, an auteur by anystretch of the imagination.
He was a great craftsman.
He did many different genres.
He worked a lot with HumphreyBogart.
He did many different genres.
He worked a lot with HumphreyBogart.
He did a lot of women'spictures when there was such a
thing, and he was just apleasure Articulate.
(47:26):
His memory was sharp.
This was his first feature thathe ever did.
He had been a screenwriter andhe'd been an actor.
Actually, he was a good-lookingenough guy to be an actor, so
he drew the straw and had to dothis contract horror movie, the
(47:46):
Return of Dr X.
The reason the movie was madewas that the horror genre had
come to an end really with theBeast with Five Fingers for its
first period, and the reason wasbecause in England, which was a
big market for horror films inthe early 30s, the British Board
of Censors was very offended bya lot of the stuff in horror
(48:07):
films because horror films werequite transgressive for the time
and for now.
They weren't graphic, they werereticent, but they were quite
transgressive in terms of themes.
I'm thinking about movies likeIsland of Lost Souls, which
dealt with bestiality as asubtext and other topics that
were unsavory.
Even Paramount's Dr Jekyll andMr Hyde.
(48:30):
Oscar Wilde always said aboutthe picture of Dorian Gray he
didn't want to say what DorianGray was doing to corrupt him.
He wanted the reader to thinkthat Dorian's sins were your
sins, were the reader's sins.
And they didn't have thatattitude at Paramount when they
made Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in1931.
(48:51):
They showed what Mr Hyde's sinswere and they were pretty
unsavory at the time, you know.
So anyway, the British Board ofCensors got pretty fed up around
1935 with a couple of moviesMad Love, the aforementioned Mad
Love and the Raven, especiallya universal picture which was
just about a sadist, about adoctor who's obsessed with Edgar
Allan Poe and he'sreconstructed Edgar Allan Poe's
(49:13):
torture devices and uses them onpeople he hates.
It was a very sadistic movieand England said that's it, no
more horror movies.
We're not going to forget it.
We're not going to import anymore horror movies.
So Universal and the otherstudios stopped making horror
movies and then a theater in Ibelieve it was in Beverly Hills
(49:34):
in 1937 or 38, got a couple ofbattered prints of Dracula and
Frankenstein and, I think, theSon of Kong or something, and
they started showing these as asecond or third run theater and
the lines were around the block.
There hadn't been a new horrorfilm in a couple of years and
people wanted to see that and soUniversal struck new prints of
(49:55):
Dracula and Frankenstein, rere-released it, made a big
budget sequel, son ofFrankenstein, and horror was
back.
So even Jack Warner Jack Warner, who had an antipathy for the
genre, said well, I guess we'vegot to make a horror film, we've
got to get a piece of this pie.
So they decided to make thismovie.
It was based on a short storywhich had nothing to do with
(50:17):
their original Dr X movie from1932.
And they did many drafts of thescript.
At one point they were going tocast Boris Karloff, who was
under contract, owed them apicture, and Bela Lugosi, who
you could easily see BorisKarloff in Humphrey Bogart's
part and Bela Lugosi in JohnLittell's part and it would have
(50:39):
been fine.
But they decided not to spendthe money just to use contract
actors.
So it was Humphrey Bogart inthe part that they thought
Karloff would have been good forand John Littell, as I said, in
Bela Lugosi's part.
At one point they were going tohave Claude Rains play what
John Littell ended up playingAnyway.
So they made this little movieand they gave it to Vincent
(50:59):
Sherman.
It was his first picture and heliked to emphasize the comedy,
which was, I'm sure, fine withJack Warner, because if you look
at Dr X and Mystery of the WaxMuseum not Walking Dead, but Dr
X and Mystery of the Wax Museumthere's a lot of 1930s patter
and there's always awisecracking reporter who's your
(51:20):
protagonist that's taking youthrough all this unsavory
material.
And they did the same thing.
That formula worked for themand so they did it with Return
of Dr X.
It's actually a pretty goodmystery.
It's pretty intriguing,especially the first two acts.
Before you know what's going on, you're wondering what kind of
movie is this exactly?
At least there's no gangstersinvolved this time.
(51:42):
There's a wisecracking reporter, but there's also a very
serious.
Wayne Morris plays thewisecracking reporter and Dennis
Morgan plays a very seriousdoctor who's very disturbed by
some of these vampire goings-onthat seem to be happening in
Manhattan, in modern Manhattan,modern as of 1939.
(52:02):
So that's the story.
And Humphrey Bogart, much to hischagrin, was cast as the
monster Dr X, dr Xavier, who wasexecuted for doing experiments
on children where he wanted tosee how long he could starve
them, and he loses a child, andso they try him and they execute
(52:27):
him for this.
And Dr Littell John Littell,the doctor that he plays, has a
way of bringing the dead back tolife.
That involves electricity andyou know, fortunately Humphrey
Bogart had been electrocuted,and so he brings Humphrey Bogart
back to life.
There's only one caveat heneeds to have blood and it has
(52:50):
to be his specific blood type,which is type one.
You know they had four types inthose days, and category one is
what Humphrey Bogart had whenhe was alive.
So he has to go around killingpeople and draining them of
blood so that John Littell couldput it in him.
So it's pretty unsavory, like DrX and Mystery of the Wax Museum
, but it's done in this 1930s,fast-talking, you know reporter
(53:14):
style, and Vincent Shermanemphasized the comedy part of it
more than the horror, I think,and it turned out to be.
It got great reviews when itcame out and it made money.
It was a very inexpensivepicture.
They shot it in three weeks andthat's the return of Dr X.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
George, I know you mentioned it a little bit when
we did the announcement for this, but tell us a little bit about
how Humphrey Bogart felt aboutstarring in this film.
Speaker 2 (53:40):
He was not happy.
He was under contract.
He did what they told him to dountil he had his big
breakthrough, a little bit, withDay Drive by Night, followed by
High Sierra, that catapultedinto, you know, basically
leading man.
(54:00):
Maltese Falcon cemented that.
But up until those films he wasdoing all sorts of roles, a lot
of which he didn't like.
In Virginia City, which is 1940, he plays a Mexican bandito,
you know, I mean, his accent isembarrassing.
In Dark Victory he's an Irishhorse trainer, I think you know
(54:26):
they just had him do anythingwhere oh, let's use Bogart for
this he wasn't appreciated forhis gifts and his talents.
Finally he broke through and ofcourse, I think if anybody
thinks about Warner Brothers andclassic leading men, if they're
not thinking Cagney, they'rethinking Bogart.
Usually Bogart is number one,yeah absolutely.
Speaker 3 (54:51):
He wasn't bad, by the way, as Dr X in this movie.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
Oh no, he's terrific.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
Yeah, he's actually quite good in it.
I mean his cynicism and hislittle lisp and his gravelly
voice.
It works extremely well andthey make him up.
I mean it's almost a parody ofa vampire makeup, but it's quite
effective on him and he'sgenuinely scary in it.
He didn't phone me.
Speaker 2 (55:15):
He had the hair for it.
What did you say, George?
I said he was fully committedto the work he was doing.
Speaker 3 (55:23):
Yeah right, he was.
I mean, he bitched andcomplained and then he went and
did it, but he was very chillingin it.
He could have had, you know, ifhe hadn't made it as a gangster
, he could have made it as ahorror actor, all without
question as a horror actor, allwithout question, the mind
boggles at the thought.
Speaker 4 (55:39):
Right, but this, yeah , this is his only one and you
kind of again you wonder if ithad done better than it was.
But it was a, you said,three-week shoot.
It was a Brian Foy productionand it was a B unit production.
Why did they choose to do itand then not follow through?
Obviously there was the horrorresurrection in the late 30s,
(56:02):
but why did Jack wait?
Why was there not any otherattempt in the 40s until Beast
with Five Fingers?
I mean, it took a few years forthem even to get the Harvey
novel or the Harvey short story.
But yeah, actually at I mean,george, do you have any thoughts
(56:22):
on that?
Speaker 2 (56:24):
I think it just really was a matter of it not
being amongst Jack's personaltaste, because he was, you know,
he oversaw all production, hehad people working under him,
but he ultimately made thedecisions and it wasn't his cup
of tea.
Speaker 3 (56:43):
Yeah, they weren't looking for horror properties.
They had no, you know, exceptfor Peter Lorre who occasionally
was a horror star.
They didn't really have anybodyset up there for horror.
He didn't like horror.
I don't think they were lookingfor the properties.
I don't know how they stumbledon the short story of beast with
five fingers.
Somebody liked it at warnerbrothers it.
Speaker 4 (57:03):
It's.
It seems like you know if, iffoy had produced uh invisible
menace right and uh west ofshanghai, these were all his his
thing.
But so by the time it wasn'tgoing to be a karloff film, they
just they were like it's tootoo far into production to stop.
Just Just get the thing made,just get it out.
It's a B programmer, let it go.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
Yeah, but but Vincent Sherman was, he was very
dedicated to it.
I mean he did in his very, inhis short sketch he uh, what's
his name?
Hickox?
Was the uh DP.
Excellent, excellent movingcamera stuff, excellent deep
focus stuff.
Nice little simple, low budgetyou know scene where John
(57:45):
Littell brings a rabbit back tolife.
You know, I mean it wasn't bad,it wasn't bad at all.
It was better than much of thesort of lower grade universal
work in the 40s.
I think the best thing about itis it really did have a good
mystery.
The hook of it was veryinteresting and very morbid, so
(58:06):
I'm sure it appealed to the fansat the time.
Speaker 4 (58:09):
And then he went on to a lot of great films in the
1940s, for sure, yeah.
Speaker 3 (58:14):
Yeah, he was a good director.
Speaker 2 (58:18):
Well.
George, in terms of this, thisrestoration, same kind of as the
others, the yes all three filmshave this in common we were
able to retrieve the originalcamera negatives from the
Library of Congress.
There were some shots in someof the films where there was a
(58:45):
hint of nitrate decompositionand we substituted a shot from a
second-generation nitrate finegrain, but this was very, very
rare.
What we used to do was we wouldbring in the camera negative,
we would make a new fine grain.
That's what we would masterfrom.
(59:07):
And if there was damage in thecamera negative, people who were
here at the time weren't reallymaking sure that, oh, that bad
section or that bad frame, youknow that could be improved.
No, they just went ahead anddid things as they are.
We are much more dedicated inthe current team that we have
(59:28):
here.
So we will analyze the filmelements, analyze the negative
and if we find that there's adeficiency, we'll look for a
backup element, even if it'sonly to fix a few shots.
That's the kind of meticulouswork that goes on at Warner
Brothers Motion Picture Imaging.
So I always say great thingsabout them and I blush when I
(59:52):
say them, because we're so luckyto have such dedicated
colleagues, have such dedicatedcolleagues and they make our
jobs much easier because we'rebringing something to the
consumer that they can reallyappreciate as collectors.
Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
One question for you, konstantin.
Did you have to do a little bitof that same magic work on
syncing this one up as well, anddid you find any extra seconds
or frames, and did you?
Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
find any extra seconds or frames.
Actually, yeah, I did have todo the same thing, but in this
particular case I did not runacross the problems good
problems that we ran across withWalking Dead.
So everyone's seen, I guess,the original and only version of
the Return of Doctor.
Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Who.
There are a couple other extrason here Classic cartoons,
doggone, modern and Porky'sHotel, and the theatrical
trailer.
Speaker 2 (01:00:46):
It's nice that these all have the trailer, George,
because they're Warner Brothersfilms, and I want to point out
that we did not have a filmelement on the trailer of the
Walking Dead very unusual post1932 or so that we wouldn't have
(01:01:08):
some kind of a trailer elementon a Warner film.
We're very good on trailers forWarner and MGM, For RKO it's a
rarity and when you get deeper,like for monogram films, it's
almost impossible.
But strangely there was no filmelement on the Walking Dead
trailer and thankfully, agentleman who's been a friend of
(01:01:28):
mine since high school happenedto have a 16 millimeter print
of the trailer because he is ameticulous collector and he was
kind enough to send it our wayso that we could include it on
the disc.
It doesn't look great, but it'sthe trailer and we're so lucky
to have it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Well, thanks guys for coming on and taking us through
these.
Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
Thank you, Tim Tim, as always.
Speaker 4 (01:02:05):
Happy Halloween.
Happy Halloween everyone.
Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
As always, there are purchase links in the podcast
show notes for the films that wetalked about today, so if
you're interested in purchasingthose, you can look for those
there, and if you're enjoyingthese podcasts, please think
about following the show orleaving us a review wherever you
listen.
Until next time you've beenlistening to Tim Millard, stay
slightly obsessed Music.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com