The Writer's Poke

Although this isn't a silent picture, it acts like one.  I even found myself saying, "Gee, I like a movie that reads like a book." Not just because it has the place cards like a silent film, but because it has characters reading from a book. Maybe 5 or 6 times we stop and read a page out of the vampire book with the characters. Maybe this was groundbreaking information -- Who the Vampires work for, what powers they have, how to kill them, etc. -- but reading a page of text on the screen is not the best way to use the film media.  So, if you're not really into slow, 1930s pictures that don't know if they want to be silent, and don't know how to "show" more than they "tell," I wouldn't recommend this one.  As one reviewer noted, it has absolutely no action. You will barely see a vampire. You will hardly see any blood. At one point, you will see a woman give a creepy smile. That's the extent of it.  And I would be okay with that, but I...

The opening sequence is unintentionally funny and really takes me out of the rest of the movie: A woman is driving at night, probably faster than conditions call for. All of a sudden, a Detour sign pops up, and so she immediately freaks out and drives over a cliff. Miraculously, she doesn't die, but the only doctor in the entire world that can save her is Dr. Vollin (Bela Lugosi). At first, he refuses to help. Why? Is he retired? Just too evil to help? Did he get his feelings hurt by the other doctors? Whatever the case, when he learns that the other doctors say he's the only one good enough for the job, and he helps. From there, the movie seems to shift. Bateman (Karloff) enters Dr. Vollin's office, demanding at gunpoint that Vollin change his face. At this point, we don't know Vollin to be an evil man. But Bateman says something that attracts Vollin's attention: Ugly people may be more prone to acting in ugly ways. Vollin calls the idea "profound" and ag...

I just watched The Fighting Westerner aka Rocky Mountain Mystery (1935) and gave it a 1-star rating for being almost unwatchable. So, I needed to watch another movie to cleanse my palette.  Unfortunately, I went with To the Last Man (1933), which somehow managed to be even worse.  Made in 1933, which is a few years after the end of the silent picture, this picture is so "silent." I couldn't believe it. Not only no musical score at all, but every time a new character came on the screen, their credits were put underneath them. Randolph Scott' actually doesn't just the film until about minute 25, and they're still adding the credits at that point in the film. It's a classic "feud" story. And it has, what? A Montagues and Capulets romance angle? I couldn't follow why Lynn (Scott) likes Ellen (Esther Ralston). I guess the heart likes what the heart likes, but I also get really tired of movies that must somehow end with a marriage. It's such a ...

Almost unwatchable. At least that's how I felt as I tried to watch this. And so, I go immediately to user reviews to see what the heck I'm missing, because a 2- or 3-star review should give me more insight into what I'm missing here. 2 or 3 stars should say, "Hey, this movie isn't that good, but it does have X going for it." I think the main X is just that it's a Randolph Scott flick, and so we give it an extra star for that, and maybe because an early Ann Sheridan is in it, too.  That's not enough for me.  Another reviewer did note the striking "Walter Brennan-like" acting ability of Charles 'Chic' Sale, who plays the Sheriff. And I would agree. He probably is my favorite character in the story. Otherwise, I had absolutely no interest in the story. Sadly, it's one of my least favorite movies for the entire year (of the 230 or so films that I've watched so far in 2026). 

Although I'm not a big fan of John Wayne's The Big Trail (1930), I rated both versions of that film 3/5 stars. Much better than whatever this is.  So Clint (Randolph Scott) and a couple other guides are set to take a wagon train west to Oregon. Nancy (Gail Patrick) wants to join the wagon train with her four-year old son. Her husband is dead, and Clint tells her no, her equipment isn't up to the journey, and neither is she. She gets some better equipment from another guy -- it's never really explained what he wanted from her or how much he charged her. Maybe he was just being nice.  Fortunately for the wagon train, there are no buffalo around to stampede, but at least there are Indians. They attack. It's hard to tell how far the wagon train had gone by this point, but they were crossing a bigger river, like maybe the Missouri. Maybe they've made it as far as that... Clint and the others are able to chase the Indians away, and they never come back. Nor do they ha...

I never considered myself a fan of Westerns growing up. That all changed in 1993 with the release of Tombstone. Before that, I just assumed that Westerns were all more or less like, well, Buffalo Stampede What do we have here? Randolph Scott in his 30s. A much different man than in his late 1950s films, for sure. Here he plays Tom. He does a couple of cool tricks making exits off his horse and a stagecoach. He likes Milly (Judith Allen), a gal that seems to be under the control of Mr. Jett (Noah Beery). The idea of the film is that white men want to slaughter buffalo and make a killing on the killing. At one point, the buffalo stampede. I guess Milly is endanger, but she's pretty capable of taking care of herself. Some of the white people are being attacked by Indians, too, who probably don't want the white people killing all the buffalo. The Indians only kill what they need. But other white people "stampede" in and chase the Indians off. And since this movie is only ...

Directed by Edgar Ulmer -- People on Sunday (1930) and Detour (1945) -- and starring Bela Lugosi (Vitus) and Boris Karloff (Poelzig). Not to mention featuring a black freakin' cat, a modern castle built on a mass grave filled with war dead and dynamite, and home to a crazed Satanic cult leader... this movie has it all. Maybe a little too much. It's like Peter (David Manners), the self-professed crappy writer, wrote it all in a fever dream. Even the ending makes fun of what we just watched, noting (in a newspaper review of Peter's latest novel) that none of it was believable. None of it was remotely realistic.  When Vitus sees a black cat, it triggers him. In no real way, to be honest, except to be overdramatic. This is another instance of the film jabbing at itself when Poelzig tells Vitus to "stop being so overdramatic." But Vitus and Poelzig have beef. It goes back to the War and to the fact that Virus spent the past 15 years in a prison -- a kind of Hotel Calif...

This movie maybe shouldn't be that good. But here are some of the "little things" that make it pretty special: "Does she bite?" "That costs extra." *** "Profession?" Looks. Laughs. "Yes." *** "Italian!" "Danish!" "German!" *** Camera shot of the woman in the swing. *** What it doesn't do so well -- The shots of the man in an ape suit, which is only slightly better or worse than the enlarged close-ups of the Ape's "chimpanzee face." Stuff like that takes me out of the movie, to be honest. So as much as I enjoyed a lot about this movie, it has a rating ceiling. Rating: 3/5 stars

I came to this one by way of Detour (1945) because I was interested in seeing what Edgar Ulmer and Billy Wilder were up to.  What we get here is a lot of nice footage of Berlin in 1930. That's pretty cool in and of itself. I'm not sure it makes for much of a movie. But I do enjoy watching people just doing what people do on the weekend. We also get to see people cleaning the streets, washing their cars, and so on.  On Sundays, people dress up, go out on dates, eat chocolates, make phone calls. Captivating stuff.  The Criterion edition includes two different musical scores. I chose the one with the Orchestra, which was fine.  At the beach, one of the guys is looking at postcards, many of which feature fat women. Then the scene transitions and we see that many of the women at the beach are old and fat, maybe mothers. But the "stars" of film are younger couples in good shape. They've brought their record player and they're just enjoying the day.  It would be hard...

This is Lon Chaney's only non-silent film, a remake of the 1925 The Unholy Three. He would die of lung cancer at the age of 47 after the filming of this movie.  What might interest me most about this version is Charles Gemora in the Gorilla suit. In the 1925 version, they just used a monkey, and sometimes they'd play with camera distortion to make the monkey appear bigger and more dangerous. In the 1930 version, it's just Gemora in a Gorilla suit. Convincing? Not really, but the brief bio on Gemora I read was interesting.  Gemora began his movie career just by hanging around the entrance of Universal Studios. According to IMDb, the Filipino Gemora was just 5' 5", and he would have a 30-year career in film, usually uncredited in the Gorilla suit. When he wasn't the Gorilla, he was worked as a make-up artist. The list of films he worked on is quite impressive, including: Island of Lost Souls (1932), Double indemnity (1944), and The Ten Commandments (1956) as a ma...

Charles Laughton can do more with a subtle shift of his left eyeball than most actors can do with their entire faces. And as Quasimodo, most of his face is hidden behind a mask. I can only imagine how much time he must have spent in the chair each day to have the mask and body suit applied. But he still had one good eye to use, and that's all he needed. Esmerelda (Maureen O'Hara) has the "It factor," and even though she's a Gypsy, every man immediately falls in love with her. Gypsies in 15th century France are enemy #1. They are banned from even entering Paris, but her mission is to get justice for her people, and perhaps, she's so beautiful that people will listen to her. The King does, for sure, most everyone else seems to be at least partially sympathetic to her cause. Anyway, every man must fall in love with her at first sight. It's funny, because O'Hara is a beautiful woman, but all of the actors playing Gypsies are portrayed as dirty and rough lo...

Charles Laughton makes this film. His facial expressions. The small darting movements he makes with his eyes. Moreau is the prototypical mad scientist, and he seems quite calm and sane. The only way we see his insanity, other than his creations, is through Laughton's acting. Compare that to Bela Lugosi as the Law Giver. All he has to work with is his voice, and it's a great voice, but even when the camera closes in on his face, the mask he's wearing is so complete that it could be anyone underneath. In fact, although I like the close-up of the "things," and one point in the film, we go from a Lugosi closeup to an unknown actor closeup. Other than name value, it makes very little difference if Lugosi is in this film. It makes all the difference that Laughton is in the film. The plot is so simple, which makes me wonder how The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996) messed it up so badly. Not that Island of Lost Souls is perfect, but it has atmosphere. It knows how to work with...

In Snow White, the evil stepmom/queen puts her daughter to sleep. In Sleeping Beauty (1959), Maleficent attempts to kill Aurora, but the three fairy godmothers step in and change the spell from death to sleep. It's no wonder I end up getting the two films confused, because in some ways, they use the same plot. Snow White is a cute movie, but like Sleeping Beauty, it leaves a lot left unexplained. Like, where is everyone? We have two kingdoms represented, and all we ever see is the Queen, the daughter, the Woodsman, and the Prince. Where are all the people? For that matter, what happened to the King? What happened to the first Queen? I understand that a lot will be left unexplained, but sometimes in Disney movies, the plot is an afterthought. They spend 10 minutes focused on Snow White cleaning the "dollhouse" the Dwarfs live in, but nothing on backstory, nothing on the PTSD that Snow White might be experiencing being forced to run for her life. Did she not know the Queen ...

The scene that stands out to me most is when Queen Christina (Greta Garbo) is dressed as a man and has secured the last room in the Inn. Antonio (John Gilbert), the Spanish ambassador, needs a room too. He's willing to share it with the "young man" he assumes Queen Christina to be. She tries to give him the room, but in the end, they do end up sharing it, and once she removes her hat and coat, he discovers she's all woman. It's funny how Garbo has eyelashes and make-up, breasts, and yet, she was able to fool everyone into thinking she was just a young man who couldn't yet grow a mustache... The canapé bed has curtains, and so we assume that she and Antonio spend three full days in bed together during the snowstorm. That's pretty racy, but the curtains always remain closed. Even when the innkeeper comes in to offer them both chocolate, Antonio's is the only voice we hear invisibly respond. So we let ourselves logically imagine that both are in bed toget...

Interesting to pair this one with a reading or viewing of 1984, which I've been studying and teaching to students at the time I watched this one.  It's frustrating watching Ninotchka (Greta Garbo) for the first 50 minutes of the film. She's so monotone, so lifeless, so robotic. This is all on purpose, of course, but as a viewer, it's not very much fun to watch.  Ninotchka is a special Soviet agent, sent to Paris to check on three Soviet agents sent there to sell the former jewels of a Russian duchess. She arrives, and the men are surprised that Razinin (Bela Lugosi) sent a "female comrade." She tells them not to see her womanhood, and she clearly tries to see herself simply as a "comrade," not as a woman.  Nevertheless, Leon (Melvyn Douglass) immediately becomes attracted to her. He's close with the duchess, but neither he nor the duchess believe in love. Later he suggests to the duchess that he always thought love was "too middle class....

Part of me wants to look through Garbo's catalog to see what roles she played. In the last few Garbo movies I've watched, she was a courtesan, an erotic dancer, and in this one, she's a prostitute. Did she ever play a scientist or a school teacher? Must she always play "indecent" and castoff women? When Anna's (Garbo) mother died, she was only 5, and her father, a sailor from a long line of sailors, decided that she should stay with relatives in Minnesota. They were good farm people, he said, and if we are to believe him, he thought she would be much better off living on the Minnesota farm than with him on the sea. He's a sailor and doesn't think much of his profession and the lifestyle of sailors. His one hope is her, that she will marry a farmer and escape the fate of being attached to a sailor. Now 20, Anna meets her father for the first time in 15 years. Her life on the farm wasn't everything her father imagined. She was forced to flee the farm...

  Ideally, I would only watch good movies. This is, well, it's not good. Not even close to being average. It might be worth watching for historical value. but even that's a tough call. The historical value is that this is Greta Garbo in her first talkie. But boy is this movie slow, awkward, and boring. The camera shots... the cameras must be trees. They're stuck and don't move. It's a talkie, but it still uses written cards on three occasions for transitions -- when probably no "transitions" are actually necessary. Just switch to the new shot, director. It's okay. I promise the audience can follow along, especially at the turtle's pace this movie is going. And, it doesn't help that the movie is based on a Eugene O'Neill play, so that all the scenes are talk-driven and stationary. I just watched Mata Hari (1931), and I wondered in my review of that film if Garbo was still finding the proper use of her voice in talkies. Probably so, because s...

In Camille (1934), which I just watched, Greta Garbo plays an older woman. A younger man falls in love with her, and she eventually falls in love with him, even though she should know better. Well, that's essentially what happens in Mata Hari, too. This time, instead of a courtesan, she's a German spy. Set in 1917, she's "stationed" in Paris, and in flies this younger Russian airman, Lt. Alexis (Ramon Navarro). Hari wears these elaborate outfits, and when Lt. Alexis sees her at the casino, he buys a ring from another woman who needs money to gamble, and then he gives the ring to Hari, a token of his affection. Originally, you can tell that Hari knows better than to get involved with this guy, but he's persistent, and she's weak. She could have flown to Amsterdam and got away before getting caught, but she refuses to leave Paris, and that leads to her downfall. Like I said, they fall in love, but there's no way for them to be together, and unfortunately...

Some reviews on Letterboxd are essentially: I love Garbo. That's fine, but your appreciation for an actor doesn't equate to a 5-star review. I like a lot of actors, and most of them have been in movies of varying quality. When posting a review, even if it's just a sentence, my view is: it would be helpful to focus on the quality of the movie and not simply give a rating to an actor's appearance in said movie. All that said, I would agree that Garbo is an icon. She takes on roles that most actresses couldn't, and I like that as an actress, she's usually the center of the film, and not a throw-away after thought. In this film, Garbo plays Marguerite -- a kept woman, a courtesan. A quick Google search explains that a courtesan is not a prostitute but is a woman who basically "sells her favors" to a rich man so that she can live in the manner of a rich person. Favors include sex. As long as she's content living that lifestyle, no problem, but she reco...