Recently I’ve taken in a handful of movies from the Criterion Channel’s Pre-Code Horror collection. These movies are loose and salacious, from what I consider sound film’s “Carnie Period.” They were being churned out rapidly on a factory model and the advertising strategy was to push the envelope of the acceptable, promising horrifying sights and sounds, shocks to common decency, “You’ll never believe what’s behind these doors!” etc.
By the time the Hayes Code started being enforced sound film was entrenched enough that it no longer had to sweat so hard and it could dial back the sex, horror, and outrage angle and start to pretend it was classy. But with these films it was still barking on the midway, promising and delivering the strange and upsetting and in its rush to make things fast and make things weird, story and character often got short changed.

Old Dark House- 1932

I started with this one because it was directed by James Whale who also did Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. After seeing it I came to refer to it as, “Cliche Melee.” It is made entirely of predictable pieces but it moves so fast and swings so wildly from one thing to another that I cannot call it, “predictable.”
The title itself is a cliche. As a scene heading it might make you roll your eyes, but as a movie title it lets you know you are in for a bucket-of-parts kind of movie where all the spare pieces that have fallen off of better planned films are gathered together and forced into seventy minutes of loosely constructed story telling.
I 100% believe James Whale was given a cast, a set, costumes, and two weeks and told to deliver a movie. It careens through old-movie cliches like the mysterious stranger, the stormy night, the lightning strike love affair, the tragic demise, and unforeseen deliverance. I love it for its energy and aplomb. Everyone commits a thousand percent and it is never less than completely ridiculous.

Murders in the Zoo-1933

This movie is terrible. It has some fun stylistic elements and revels in some sinister turns. But the “comic relief” by Charlie Ruggles is unbearable. And the scenes of animal cruelty make it entirely unwatchable. Avoid unless you like shrill and bumbling slapstick punctuated by mal-treated animals let loose to savage each other.

Mystery of the Wax Museum — 1933

This was another one I had high hopes for based on its director, Michael Curtiz who made the Errol Flynn Robin Hood and Casablanca. It did not disappoint. Of the three this one is the show piece and it was clearly treated as such at the time. The other two were lower card properties likely churned out to fill time before main features. This one though is well constructed with a script that was clearly written beforehand and not a first draft delivered piece by piece as it was shot. It is very well designed with a terrific art-deco inspired mad-scientist’s lab and a lot of German Expressionist touches splashed about.

They also make very creative use of the rarely seen two strip Technicolor process whereby two monochrome film strips of two different hues are shot simultaneously and then combined in the print to produce an early simulacrum of color (the three strip process would be perfected in the thirties. Think of the OZ portion of Wizard of OZ). The Mystery of The Wax Museum makes an occasional case for the two strip process, for instance turning the lowering shadows of the villains stronghold an eerie monolithic green. Mostly though the color cinematography is a curiosity and historic artifact that distracts from as much as it aids the story. Expressive monochrome would’ve done just as well or better for what the movie accomplished.

The main character is a female reporter for a paper in New York. She is unique in the history of Hollywood because she is not penalized at all by the filmmakers or the story for being a woman. Her colleagues, friends, and even the police just treat her like a journalist, not a “Woman Journalist.” That would even be unique now. A more current movie would likely want to single her out as a trailblazer or hero. Here she is just a dynamic driver of the plot. She speaks in the rapid fire Hollywood vernacular associated with gangsters and newspaper movies of the 1930s. She is a spiritual predecessor of Rosalind Russel in His Girl Friday. The last story beat is utterly baffling and I have to wonder if it wasn’t born of Michael Curtiz’s sarcastic reaction to a stupid studio note saying something like, “We don’t care who, she just needs to end up with one of the guys!” There is a lot to recommend this movie if you’re a fan of old Hollywood. The production design, energy, and over-the-top “Mmyeah-see” dialogue is entirely worth it for my money.