Sherlock Holmes & the Pearl of Death (USA, 1944)

 

While most aficionados tend to hold The Scarlet Claw (1944) high as the best of the Rathbone/Bruce series of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson movies, we here at a wasted life tend to bestow that honor to this entry here, the ninth of the grand total of fourteen movies Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce were to make together as the broramnce duo. It just has too much going for it, including an excellent supporting cast of favorites. And more so than The Spider Woman (1943/44) or any of the other entries, excepting The Scarlet Claw, The Pearl of Death truly has that dark, scary touch so familiar to Universal Horror films — helped in part by the appearance of one of the great icons of Universal's Golden Age of Horror, Rondo Hatton (22 Apr 1894 – 2 Feb 1946),* for the first time playing the character for which he is renown, the Creeper. Indeed, much like The Woman in Green (1945 / full movie), The House of Fear (1945 / trailer) and The Scarlet Claw, The Pearl of Death, were detection not such a relevant aspect of the plot, the movie itself could almost be considered a (non-supernatural) horror film.

* Rondo Hatton had already appeared in the background of numerous films, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939 / trailer) and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943 / trailer). Most of his appearances until this film, however, had been uncredited and with few or no lines of dialogue. It was with this film that Universal began to finally take true notice of their acromegaly-suffering contract player and began to groom the former journalist for a career as a new horror icon in such films as The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946 / trailer), House of Horrors (1946 / trailer) and the fun z-films Jungle Captive (1945 / trailer) and The Brute Man (1946 / full film). Unluckily, before his new films were released and his career could in any way take off, Hatton died from the second of two heart attacks he suffered in 1945. His death has in no way negatively affected his fame, however, for his face has long since become an oft-seen pop culture image.

Trailer to

Sherlock Holmes and the Pearl of Death:

The narrative of The Pearl of Death, more "inspired by" than "faithful to", is based ever so loosely on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's short story The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, with Bertram Millhauser (24 Mar 1892 – 1 Dec 1958) adding some new elements — such as the Creeper — to his screenplay to put some meat on the slim bones of the original short story. And meat he adds, not fat, in what is a much better and tighter script than usual. Particularly interesting is how Millhauser works Holmes's almost condescending pride in his own great intellect into the script: it is only thanks to Holmes showing off that the main villain of the movie, the thinly veiled Moriarty imitation Giles Conover (Miles Mander [14 May 1888 – 8 Feb 1946]**), can steal the titular Pearl of Death, otherwise known as the Borgia Pearl. A fall from grace that Holmes cannot abide, and which leaves only the faithful Watson by his side.

* As we mention in our review of The Spider Woman, "Here at a wasted life, we remember Millhauser primarily because he co-wrote one of the lesser Universal horror movies, The Invisible Man's Revenge (1944 / not so hot main score). Roughly a decade prior to The Spider Woman, he also wrote the script to the pre-code movie Sherlock Holmes (1932 / full film), the first sound version of Sir Doyle and William Gillette's play of the same name, which first hit Broadway in 1899. The relatively forgotten film version stars Clive Brook (1 Jun 1887 – 17 Nov 1974) as the titular detective, and includes a dearth of Dr Watson, an engaged Holmes preparing to get married, a car-destroying ray gun, Holmes in drag (as an old woman), and a oddly unnecessary child element in the form of Billy, who appears to be Sherlock's ward." Millhauser also worked on the decidedly atypical Busby Berkeley movie, They Made Me a Criminal (1939 / full film).

** As we mention in our review of The Scarlet Claw, "Miles Mander is an interesting figure: a scion of the Mander Family, the now-unsung Hollywood character actor was a pioneer aviator, an avid ballooner, captain in the military during WWI, a sheep farmer in New Zealand and more — all prior to becoming an occasional director and avid actor, first in England and then in the USA. He also wrote plays and novels, and was at one point married to an Indian princess, Prativa Sundari Devi Narayan (22 Nov 1891 – 23 Jul 1923). He appeared in over 100 films prior to his death, including numerous classics, such as Murder, My Sweet (1944 / trailer), To Be or Not To Be (1942 / trailer), Wuthering Heights (1939 / trailer), Five Graves In Cairo (1943 / trailer) and The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945 / trailer). Amidst his rather long list of other intriguing projects is the early and now lost (check your attic) non-Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes and the Missing Rembrandt (1932), the second of five oddly overlooked Sherlock Holmes movies starring Arthur Wontner (21 Jan 1875 – 10 Jul 1960) as Sherlock Holmes, the others being: Murder at the Baskervilles / Silver Blaze (1937), The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935), The Sign of the Four: Sherlock Holmes' Greatest Case (1932) and Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour / The Sleeping Cardinal (1931)."

The narrative of The Pearl of Death pivots upon the "cursed" Borgia Pearl. On a cruiser returning to England, bad gal Naomi Drake (a cast against type Evelyn Ankers [17 Aug 1918 – 29 Aug 1985]) attempts to steal it but is foiled by Holmes, who then delivers it to its intended destination, the museum. Later, in a fit of self-satisfied showing off, Holmes cuts the power to the "unbeatable" safety measures of the museum so as to prove that it would be possible to break in, thus enabling — to Holmes' immediate embarrassment — Drake's boss, bad guy Giles Conover (Mander), to pilfer it. Though caught, Conover does not have the pearl and must be released. Directly thereafter, a series of mysterious murders begin: none of the victims are in any way related to each other, but they all die violent deaths and are surrounded by the broken shards of all the crockery that had been in the room. Holmes figures out the link to hidden pearl — it is hidden in a small bust of Napoleon — and sets out to locate the right bust before Conover. Conover, in turn, is using the infamous Hoxton Creeper (Rondo Hatton) as his killing machine, his pretty assistant Naomi Drake being the carrot on the string for the infatuated monster. Can Holmes get the pearl? Can he save his ruined reputation? Can he stop the Creeper, or will the Creeper stop him? What do you think? (Still, this is perhaps the only Rathbone/Bruce Holmes film in which the face of the great detective, at one point, truly reveals utter fear — as in fear of death.)

* An often vocally exuberant B-movie regular, Ms. Ankers had previously appeared in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942). She pretty much retired from acting in 1950 at the age of 32 to play housewife for studmuffin and sci-fi film regular Richard Denning (27 Mar 1914 – 11 Oct 1998), seen below, and died of ovarian cancer on Maui in 1985.

An additional fun aspect to The Pearl of Death is the amount of disguises used in the movie, with more than one character giving Ethan Hunt a good run for his money. Holmes shows up as an elderly clergyman and the possible fourth victim Dr. Boncourt,* while bad guy Conover, when not the ruthless leader, is seen both as a bibliophile and a museum workman. Ms Drake, in turn, makes appearances as a matchgirl, a shopgirl, and a kitchen helper.

* Prior to Holmes disguising himself as Dr Boncourt, the good doctor is played by an uncredited and unremembered John Merkyl (2 Jun 1885 – 1 May 1954). As Wilmuth Merkyl, he had two or three successful years in the Silents, but soon after his uncredited appearance as a jeweler in the silent version of The Unholy Three (1926 / full film) his career became that of an uncredited background filler with limited dialogue.

As mentioned before, the script is tight and zooms along quickly, amply helped by the moody cinematography and strong direction. There seems to be one big hole in the script, but it is actually "stuffed" by Holmes speech to Conover in which he castigates the criminal as being an evil psycho who kills just for the fun of it. This speech is needed to explain why the thieves simply don't steal the various busts instead of killing all the owners — had they not been kill-happy and committed the strange murders, Holmes would've had no way to catch onto the plaster-bust aspect and in all likelihood Conover could have got away with his crime. (Spoiler!) In typical Universal horror film manner, the bad guy gets killed by his monster, who anticlimactically enough is simply shot to death by Holmes... Not that it stopped the Creeper from returning. But then, the Creeper lives forever.

In The Pearl of Death, The Creeper's actual screen time is limited to perhaps a total of five minutes, but the terrifying presence of the mad killer haunts the entire movie due to the effective way Neill continually uses his looming shadow or lets his large, gloved hands be briefly seen. If director Neill finally really began to hit his stride in The Scarlet Claw, The Pearl of Death shows him striding assuredly onward artistically. Nevertheless, some credit must be given to the cinematographer Virgil Miller* (20 Dec 1886 – 5 Oct 1974), who does a solid job of recreating the dark and moody lighting, sense of shadowy depth and smoothly mobile camera work that George Robinson introduced in The Scarlet Claw.

* Miller had been active in films since 1917, doing everything from B and Z to A films. He was nominated for an Oscar for his work on the documentary-like drama Navajo (1952), but here at a wasted life we view his greatest achievement as the classic 1925 version of The Phantom of the Opera (full film), but other projects of note include numerous Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto programmers and fun stuff like Dr Renault's Secret (1942 / trailer), The Mummy's Curse (1944 / trailer), Weird Woman (1944 / trailer) and Calling Dr Death (1943/ trailer).

All in all, The Pearl of Death is another top of the line, truly entertaining entry in the franchise and makes for good viewing. Two (ceramic) thumbs up.

Dark Stories to Survive the Night (France, 2021)

A French portmanteau of five tales plus wrap-around segment, Dark Stories to Survive the Night is cut together from episodes that were originally aired on a French TV series roughly two years earlier. The driving creative forces behind the series and compilation film seem to be directors François Descraques (dir. of The Visitor from the Future [2022 / trailer]) and Guillame Lubrano. They never combine forces on an episode, or at least aren't credited as having done so, but each does direct every other episode and usually co-wrote the given segment as well.

German trailer to

Dark Stories to Survive the Night:

The wrap-around, after an oddly sci-fi and out-of-the-blue opening scene that makes little sense until the closing scene of the movie, concerns MILF Christine (the decidedly not French Kristanna Loken of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines [2003 / trailer], BloodRayne [2005 / trailer], Bounty Killer [2013 / trailer] and Darkness of Man [2024 / trailer]), who is confronted by a murderous, evil puppet and ends up bound to a chair. To buy time and distract the puppet, Christine start telling horror stories, ultimately spinning five tales of varying effectiveness.

Personally, we find the wrap-around the weakest tale of the movie: the acting and direction is more than competent, but the many aspects of the narrative are a tad too cheesy and the cheapness of the staging of the killer puppet — it is never shown moving, just in new positions and with new expressions — sorely undermines the scares. But seeing that they (Seriously!) didn't even bother to hire a real person to play Christine's son asleep in bed — the use of a dummy is a tick too obvious — the project was obviously hampered by a low budget (not that the special effects of later episodes were in any way even half as shabby). The tales vary from scary to funny to suspenseful to tragic, with most almost open-ended despite any given final resolution.

In the first tale, to save her pre-teen son a no-nonsense professional curator (Delphine Chanéac of Splice [2009 / trailer], The Big Black [2011 / trailer], Kickback [2015 / trailer] and Stranger in the Dunes [2016 / trailer]) has to team up with a museum guard (Julien Pestel) to fight human-eating demons that reside in the exhibition paintings. The narrative offers some surprises and good laughs, and is strong enough of a tale to not be completely undermined by the crappy CGI of the demons.

The next story — Spoilers! — of woman jogger in the park, is definitely horrific and tragic, but relies a bit too much on things that don't ring true. For one, contemporary women like the jogger Sophie (Dorylia Calmel of The Bloodettes [2005 / trailer] and Let the Corpses Tan [2017]) probably won't drink out of a bottle of water offered to them from a nice stranger (John Robinson of Something Wicked [2014 / trailer] and Seraphim Falls [2006 / trailer]) without at least first checking whether the seal is broken; secondly, it goes from day to night too quickly and no woman would wait that long in an emptying park, especially if she starts feeling dizzy, for a stranger to come back; thirdly, drugged or not, assuming that she jogs there every day, she proves amazingly incapable of finding the path(s) out of the park; and lastly, despite the horrors of the ghosts, she would have to be simple in the head not to have realized that the water was drugged, so to run so gladly to the guy who gave her the water is beyond belief. 

The third story, one of the best, concerns a man (Sébastien Lalanne) who awakens as a super-powerful zombie and comes to realize that there are some nasty situations that he needs to correct. Opening with a splat, the segment has a lot of on-the-spot humor, interesting characterization, emotional resonance and action, and works its way to a satisfying conclusion that ultimately cannot be described as happy. The next episode, about a frightened young woman (Tiphaine Daviot of Goal of the Dead [2014 / trailer] and Girls with Balls [2018 / trailer]) haunted by a killer jinn, is the scariest and least humorous of the bunch, in contrast to that tale that follows, perhaps the most tightly scripted and humorous and scary and bloody of the five, which is about two young filmmakers who travel to a falling-apart farm to make a documentary about an apparently unhinged man (Dominique Pinon of Diva [1981 / trailer], Delicatessen [1991 / trailer], Dante 01 [2008] and our Short Film of the Month for August, 2016, Le Queloune [2008]) who claims that aliens have anointed him the new messiah.

While some episodes reveal the limitations of their budget more so than others, some are amazing examples of overcoming one's financial limitations. In general, the acting is convincing and the direction tight, and but for the tale about the jogger, the stories remain engaging and as "plausible" as a ghost/zombie/jinn/demon tale might be able to be. The sleaze factor is low, generally lacking in any of the nudity or gore excesses found on either the great portmanteau films of yesterday or today's pay-TV anthology horrors, but as is typical of the genre all episodes work towards and end with an EC Comics-like twist.

If you like portmanteau horror films, you can easily do a lot worse and would have some difficulty doing better. Dark Stories to Survive the Night ticks all the right boxes and makes for a good evening's entertainment; if you like the genre or the format, you should give it a go. And seeing that the movie is all violence and blood and no sex or nudity, it is perfect fodder for today's children in the USA.

White Zombie (USA, 1932)

"Your driver believed he saw dead men... walking."
Dr. Bruner (Joseph Cawthorn)

 

This independently produced 1932 pre-Code horror film, eight years shy of a century old at the time of the writing of this entry, is a flawed but wonderful little gem that is unarguably of greater importance historically than it is watchable for those who are not partial to films of such age. (We here at a wasted life, we admit freely, are rather partial to good or noteworthy films of the past.)

Trailer to

White Zombie:

If Night of the Living Dead (1968) is the acknowledged progenitor of the genre staple that is the flesh-eating zombie, this movie here, White Zombie, deserves acknowledgement as the progenitor of the zombie genre, as it is the earliest (known and surviving) feature-length movie to feature zombies at all.* For that, however, the movie sticks far closer to the underlying if normally overlooked truth behind traditional, non-flesheating, beast-of-burden zombies so entwined in the religious lore of Voodoo: the thing truly to be feared is less the mindless, abulic and enslaved creature shambling your way than the person who has created and controls it.

* Okay, there were the dead soldiers returning in Abel Glance's anti-war film J'accuse [1918], but technically they weren't zombies.

"It's a funeral, ma'm'selle. They're afraid of the men who steal dead bodies, so they dig the graves in the middle of the road where people pass all the time."
Coach Driver (Clarence Muse)

In White Zombie, for all the (traditional, mindless but not flesh-eating) zombies seen, the true threat of the movie is the man whose commands they follow and whose name is never uttered once throughout the movie (nor given in the credits), but whose presence dominates even when he isn't in a scene: the zombie master Murder Legendre, played by the great Bela Lugosi (20 Oct 1882 – 16 Aug 1956) in his prime. For whatever reason, and perhaps indicative of his future as an actor, Lugosi followed up his star-making turns in the financial and critical mainstream studio hits Dracula (1931 / trailer) and Murder on the Rue Morgue (1932 / trailer)* with the lead part in this decidedly low-rent independent project.** The rest of the cast, but for one exception, the then-popular comic actor Joseph Cawthorn (29 Mar 1868 – 21 Jan 1949),*** who plays the reverend Dr. Brunner, consists primarily of former silent film names whose fame and/or popularity was already waning when the film was cast. And when one considers the general thespian ineptitude most of them display, it is easy to understand why their careers dwindled with the advent of sound.

* In his later years, Lugosi was known to complain that he was seriously underpaid for the part, as he took a one-off payment instead of residuals, but documentation exists that indicate that he was paid a respectable $5,000 (approximately $115,000 in today's money) and not the measly $800 (approx. $18,500 in today's money) he tended to claim.

** The production company, Halperin Productions, consisted of the brothers Victor and Edward Halperin (12 May 1898 – 2 Mar 1981). Edward did the production duties, while Victor Halperin (24 Aug 1895 – 17 May 1983) the direction. The duo had worked together and alone as producers for other independent productions (e.g., She Goes to War [1929 / full short version]) prior to forming Halperin Productions. The company seems to have dissolved soon after White Zombie, as the firm apparently produced only two other movies thereafter, the loose sequel Revolt of the Zombies (1936 / trailer bottom of page) and Nation Aflame (1937 / full movie). Edward seems to have slowly drifted away, eventually to Rancho Mirage, while Victor, who had been a successful Broadway producer and director prior to entering the movie biz, continued making movies until 1942, when he retired to Benton, Arkansas. None of Halperin's other directorial efforts are as good as this one, though Supernatural (1933 / trailer below) comes close and both the confusing Torture Ship (1939 / film) and Revolt of the Zombies (1936) are at least watchable.

*** A now more or less forgotten name and face, Cawthorn, like Lugosi, was at the height of his fame when he made this movie. While he treats his role and the film completely serious, he nevertheless offers moments of dry comedy that indicate his comedy background.

Trailer to

Supernatural (1933):

Inspired by the popularity of Kenneth S. Webb's (16 Oct 1885 – 6 Mar 1966) current Broadway hit Zombie, the two Halperins decided to make a horror movie around the legendary Caribbean creatures — and were even later sued by the playwright for supposed plagiarism. (Webb lost the case.) Be what it may, however, like Webb the Halperin Brothers turned to cannibal William Seabrook's (22 Feb 1884 – 20 Sept 1945) once-forgotten "non-fiction" book The Magic Island for the inspiration of their story, the screenplay of which was supplied by Garnett Weston (27 Jun 1890 – 4 Oct 1980).

"Just a pinpoint monsieur. In a flower. Or perhaps in a glass of wine."
Legendre (Bela Lugosi)

The narrative that Weston came up with has some truly odd aspects and leaves many things unexplained, like why the young couple, blonde Betty Boop clone Madeline Parker (Madge Bellamy [30 Jun 1899 – 24 Jan 1990]*) and bank employee Neil Parker (John Harron [31 Mar 1904 – 24 Nov 1939]), even come to Haiti to marry. Once Madeline reaches Haiti, however, she and her fiancée take up the invitation to conduct the marriage at the home of the rich plantation owner Charles Beaument (Robert Frazer [29 Jun 1891 – 17 Aug 1944]), whom she met on the boat over, because he has promised her to find employment for Neil in New York. But despite the boat trip together, she is apparently ignorant of the fact that Charles is in love with her (vociferations of which he later exclaims as he plays best man at the wedding). Charles, in turn, is more than willing to make a bargain with the devil to get her in his hands — including making her zombie.

* Bellamy, born Margret Derden Philpott in Hillsboro, Planet Texas, received a star on the Walk of Stars (at 6517 Hollywood Blvd) in 1960, long after her career ended and she was more or less forgotten. An extremely popular star of the silent screen, she worked with names as illustrious as Thomas Ince, King Vidor, John Ford and Maurice Tourneur — by 1924's The White Sin (film), she was enough of a name draw to be the biggest name on the poster. Fox even chose her to be the star of their first-ever (and now lost) talkie, Mother Knows Best (1928). She was also famously difficult and demanding and ill-tempered — her 1928 marriage to stockbroker Logan Metcalf, for example, survived less than three days — and with the advent of sound her career nose-dived. She was forced to go independent and, with White Zombie, the only horror movie she ever made, she entered the realm of Poverty Row productions. Her performance, justifiably, was panned and by 1935 she was doing uncredited parts. The scandal that arose as of 20 January 1943, when she fired three .32 calibre revolver shots at her former lover, the married lumber executive Albert Stanwood Murphy (13 Jul 1892 – 9 Apr 1963), on an open street in San Francisco, put the final nail in the coffin of her already dead career. Her autobiography, A Darling of the Twenties, came out a month after she died, at the age of 90, of heart failure on 24 January 1990. (Trivia: Regarding Logan Metcalf, if he is remembered today at all for anything other than his short marriage to Madge, then it is for being the subsequently caught hit-and-run driver that almost killed Basil Rathbone (of Voyage to a Prehistoric Planet [1965], Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror [1942], Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon [1942], The Spider Woman [1943/44], The Scarlet Claw [1924] and so much more) on 15 January 1937 and did kill the actor John Milton (13 Jul 1870 – 15 Jan 1937).

"I kissed her as she lay there in the coffin; and her lips were cold."
Neil Parker (John Harron*)

 

* John Harron, whose performance in White Zombie is as equally inept as that of Ms. Bellamy, was a busy actor as of his second film, Through the Back Door (1921 / full film), up until he died of spinal meningitis in 1940. His roles substantially diminished in size with the advent of sound, many not even being credited. Some claim that the start of his career had less to do with thespian talent than the publicity of the "mysterious" shooting death of his then far more famous and successful brother Robert "Bobby" Harron (12 Apr 1893 – 5 Sep 1920). While some claim it suicide, Harron's death may have simply been bad luck (re: stupidity): unpacking in a hotel, his loaded gun dropped from his suitcase and shot him in the chest. Look hard and you might see John Harron in The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938 / trailer), They Made Me a Criminal (1939 / trailer) and The Return of Dr X (1939 / trailer).

As appropriate to the times it was made, White Zombie is one of those films that involves an almost totally white cast despite being set in an Afro-Caribbean country — the only Black cast member to have any dialogue is the coachman played by Clarence Muse (14 Oct 1889 – 13 Oct 1979),* while the only other "Black" character of note, the witch doctor Piere, is played by a black-faced Dan Crimmins ([18 May 1863 – 12 Jul 1945] of Seven Footprints to Satan [1929 / reconstruction]). In theory, a few of Legendre's zombies could be of mixed or Afro-Caribbean blood — for example, Ledot (John T. Prince [11 Sept 1871 – 23 Dec 1937]), the zombiefied former witch doctor that was once Legendre's master, or Chauvin (Frederick Peters [30 Jun 1884 – 23 Apr 1963]), the former high executioner — but none truly look it. But when they and their like stumble forwards, unfeeling and unthinking and unstoppable, they do (usually) manage to make an unpleasantly dire and dreadful appearance. (Although, actually, Chauvin might have been far more effective had he not been played with such a ridiculous facial expression.) Black or white or race undetermined, Bela Lugosi excels as the suave voodoo master Legendre, at times dripping contempt, superciliousness, fury, resentment, power, evilness and narcissism.As florid as his performance sometimes is, it never devolves into caricature.

* Muse was the first African American to appear in a starring role in a talkie, 1929's Hearts in Dixie, which is also considered the first all-Black sound film. ("Hearts in Dixie unfolds as a series of sketches of life among American blacks. Although the characters are not slaves they are nevertheless racial stereotypes in terms of the contemporary white images of the period.") Steadily employed till his death, he can be found (if often briefly) in movies as diverse as Sternberg's Blonde Venus (1932 / trailer), Roy William Neill's underappreciated Black Moon (1934 / full film) and far-less-interesting Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943 / full movie), Invisible Ghost (1941 / trailer), Lang's Scarlet Street (1945 / trailer), Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943 / trailer), Buck and the Preacher (1972 / trailer) and Car Wash (1976 / trailer).

Roy William Neill's Black Moon:

 

"I thought that beauty alone would satisfy. But the soul is gone. I can't bear those empty, staring eyes."
Charles Beaumont (Robert Frazer*)

* Like John Harron, Robert Frazer died of unlucky and unpredictable bad health: at the age of 53, he died of leukaemia in Los Angeles, California. The first person known to have played Robin Hood on screen (in Robin Hood [1912]) and, possibly, Jesus Christ (in the lost 1912 short, The Holy City), he was never a major player at the majors but, until he became ill, he was busy throughout his career, if usually in supporting parts and as "the bad guy" after the advent of sound. His movies include Black Dragons (1942), the classic Vampire Bat (1933), Condemned to Live (1935 / full movie), the exploiter Gambling with Souls (1936 / full movie), and Found Alive (1933 / scene). A somewhat stoic actor, he fares better in White Zombie than either Harron or Bellamy.

Halperin's direction is oddly inconsistent but often notably experimental and moody. If he initially resorts (and occasionally returns) to some dull unmoving camera shots, he also uses some pretty wild wipes and split screen shots, not to mention some inspired placement of the camera (none so effective as those in the crypt and in Legendre's mill). The scene in which Neil is drowning his widowed sorrows in a bar populated only by music and shadows is a visual treat that works well at overcoming the obvious budget limitations that probably inspired it. Halperin often achieves a notable eerie moodiness and sense of dread and/or despair, particularly during Beaumont's initial visit to Legendre's sugar mill manned only by zombies and after Madeline has been zombified. If Halperin is obviously lacking in the ability of directing actors, he must be given credit for his ability to create atmosphere. (Aside from Lugosi and Cawthorn, the only other actor to give a halfway nuanced and/or professional performance is Brandon Hurst [30 Nov 1866 – 15 Jul 1947], who plays Silver, Beaumont's loyal butler whose loyalty is rewarded with an unpleasant death.) It is initially a bit odd, of course, when the setting turns to a European-looking castle set high on a cliff (in Haiti?), but the gothic setting and interior work well with the overall otherworldliness of the film.

"Surely you don't think she's alive, in the hands of natives. Oh no! Better dead than that."
Neil Parker (John Harron)

Basically, White Zombie is a good movie despite itself. More creepy and atmospheric than truly scary, occasional flashes of visual brilliance give the often static movie some memorable scenes. Still, White Zombie is noticeably creaky and a bit slow moving, while the acting is mostly wanting and the script woozy, but despite all its obvious limitations the historically important movie remains highly watchable despite itself and ultimately offers a fun ride, especially in the restored form currently available. (The copy we saw was screened as part of the exhibition "Zombies: Death Is Not the End?" at the Musee du Quai Brany in Paris in October of 2024.) We give the movie four out of five voodoo dolls, and not just because of the for-the-time racy (and subsequently often cut) but now rather tame scene of Madeline walking around her bedroom in her white knickers.

Trailer to the loose sequel,

Revolt of the Zombies (1936):

Iron Sky: The Coming Race (Finland, 2019)

Donald "The Fascist" Trump and

Iron Sky II – The Coming Race:

If you haven't seen Iron Sky (2012 / trailer), the movie that preceded this one, do so. Wonderfully tasteless, at times sweet, still timely (in reflecting American political bent), broadly but generally well-acted and funny as hell, the Finnish film deserved to be the hit that it was and can easily be re-watched time and again. We did so recently for [only] the third time, but then, we caught it the first time during its initial cinema run over a decade ago.

 

Jesus never made it into the movie*:

* For that, seven year's earlier, in 2012, he did fight zombies in Fist of Jesus. 

As to be expected when a movie is a hit, it wasn't long before a sequel was announced. What took a lot longer was getting the sequel, Iron Sky: The Coming Race, made and released, as the production suffered endless delays and problems. It ended up taking seven years before The Coming Race hit the screens — unluckily without Jesus — and then, unlike its predecessor, it tanked. And it bombed so badly that the main production company, Blind Spot Pictures, and Iron Sky Universe, the owners of the franchise itself, both subsequently declared bankruptcy. Thus, one can pretty much rest assured that neither Iron Sky 3: The Ark (uninteresting teaser), announced online, or Iron Sky: The End Game (the narrative of which is teased in The Coming Race's end credits sequence) will ever see the light of day.

First trailer to

Iron Sky – The Coming Race:

The Coming Race transpires 29 years after the events in Iron Sky, which (Spoiler!) ends with the Earth falling to nuclear war, the only survivors being those humans on the Nazi base on the dark side of the moon, the heroes and nice couple of that movie, Afro American model cum astronaut James Washington (Christopher Kirby of Daybreakers [2009], Upgrade [2018 / trailer], and Blood Vessel [2019 / trailer]) and good gal reformed Nazi Renate Richter (Julia Dietze also of Monrak [2017 / trailer], Bullet [2014 / trailer] and the pointless and pointlessly pimped out remake of Room 205 [2007], 205: Room of Fear [2011/ trailer]) smooching away amidst the ruins of the moonbase as the nuclear bombs crisscross the Earth. (Causing an older German woman to stand up and ask, "Are you aware you are kissing a Black man?")

 

In 2047, James is gone, and the old and ill and disillusioned Renate, appears to be the head of the now overpopulated and falling-apart moonbase, which is under the sway of Jobsism, a religion based on the words and wisdom of Steve Jobs and Apple led by the Jobs-clone Donald (Drew Barrymore's ex-husband Tom Green of Freddy Got Fingered [2001 / trailer] and Bethany [2017 / trailer]). When Obi Washington (Lara Rossi of You (Us) Me [2014 / trailer] and Robin Hood [2018 / trailer]), the daughter of James and Renate, and the base's all-purpose handywoman, helps save an incoming Russian refugee ship, she subsequently meets a few of the passengers, including Iron Sky's Wolfgang Kortzfleisch (Euro-actor icon Udo Kier of Shamlos (1968 / scene), Mark of the Devil (1970 / trailer), Flesh for Frankenstein (1973 / trailer), Blood for Dracula (1974 / trailer), Trauma (1976 / trailer), Spermula (1976 / French trailer), Insel der blutigen Plantage (1983 / trailer), Europa [1991 / trailer], Blade [1998] and so much more), the moombase's long presumed dead previous Fuehrer, who ultimately reveals that he is a Vril, one of the alien reptilian race that inhabit the Earth's hollow core...

 

Long story short: Obi, refugee-ship pilot Sasha (Vladimir Burlakov of The Darker the Lake [2022 / trailer]), security office Malcolm ("martial arts expert, fashion designer, gay activist, OnlyFans male monster" Kit Dale [YouTube]") and some of the Jobsists fly to the underground city of Agartha to steal the Holy Grail, the vessel of the city's never-ending energy supply, Vrilia, in the hope of saving their moon colony. Naturally, the shit hits the fan everywhere, all the time.

 

As bizarre and over-the-top as Iron Sky is, it is also a well-made movie that successfully satirizes numerous aspects of American culture, politics, sexual politics, concepts and thought patterns, taking the piss out of everything with a continuous series of grotesqueries and hilarious jabs, many of which remain valid today. For all its stupidity, it is also an amazingly insightful movie. Unluckily, the same cannot be said of the sequel — which doesn't mean The Coming Race isn't enjoyable on its own terms.

The Coming Race replaces the contemporary political subtexts of Iron Sky with one of the more popular conspiracy theories currently, that of an alien reptilian race that pulls all the strings — a fictional concept originally introduced in 1871 in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel Vril: The Power of the Coming Race that has since come to be taken as true by many, especially those US Americans who vote Republican — to create a fun, joke-filled and kinetic action movie. The narrative uses a lot of tweaked but timeworn movie clichés, which makes the movie comes across almost like a contemporary reboot of any number of hollow-Earth movies, like At the Earth's Core (1976 / trailer) or Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959 / trailer or 2008 / trailer) or — to a far lesser extent — What Waits Below (1984 / trailer).

Structurally, once too often it relies on voiceover to keep the viewer informed about things, past and present and relevant and irrelevant, which conveys the feeling that the budgetary problems the production faced cost the movie some scenes. The scattershot script pretty much takes everything and puts it in the blender, which means that a lot happens quickly and there are a lot of throwaway jokes.

In that sense, although it really doesn't throw everything at the wall like, say, Airplane! (1980 / trailer) or the a wasted life fave Top Secret (1984 / trailer) does, the scriptwriter Dalan Musson obviously found no joke too stupid to be included. The three leads don't embarrass themselves as actors and make a likable trio, while Udo Kier, as perhaps to be expected, is spot-on as the duplicitous Kortzfleisch and his far more evil Vril twin brother, Adolf Hitler. Unlike in the first movie but appropriate to her character, Julia Dietze is rather drab and lacking in that special aura she exuded in Iron Sky, but is truly is fun to see her attack a tyrannosaurus rex with her high heels. In regards to the CGI, like the first movie it varies in quality and effectiveness, but works on the whole.

The Coming Race pales in every way when compared to Iron Sky, but at the same time it is a bit more fun in an almost kiddy-film way. Kids who like over-the-top and ridiculous movies will probably enjoy the movie as much as any given adult, especially since it basically moves from action scene to action scene without pausing to breathe. Stupid, The Coming Race might be, but it is also action- and laugh-packed, so it has everything needed for an evening's entertainment. About the only thing we here at a wasted life could think of that the movie truly lacks is a nude full frontal of the dim but buff Kit Dale, whom we would bend over for any day.

Director Timo Vuorensola has since gone on to direct Jeepers Creepers: Reborn (2022 / trailer), the latest and most pointless entry in a franchise created by a pedophile, and the bucket of clichés that is 97 Minutes (2023 / trailer). One hopes that he might one day do something really great again.