BRING BACK B MOVIES! — column from 1997

I recently watched a pair of movies that gave me great pleasure.  The movies themselves weren’t great, but the experience of watching them was.  Together they ran two hours and six minutes—less than any one of this summer’s overstuffed blockbusters.  What’s more, these were much more fun to digest.

Evelyn Ankers and Lon Chaney Jr. in The Frozen Ghost.

If you’re still puzzled about films that last little more than an hour, let me explain.  These were B movies, a term which has been much misused in recent years.  Back in the 1930s and 40s, B movies were specifically designed to play on the bottom half of double-features.  Thus, they were deliberately kept short, and, of course, they were made on a shoestring.

Double-features became a nationwide craze in the 1930s, when Depression audiences were fed the idea that they were getting more for their money.  This was long before television provided hours of free entertainment every night; in those days, neighborhood theaters often changed their programs three times a week, and millions of people attended the movies on a regular basis. 

The studios responded by establishing B-picture units which ground out these cheapies on a regular basis, making the most of the studio personnel and facilities at hand.  Shooting scenes on a handsome set already built for an A picture was one way of economizing.  Warner Bros’ producer Bryan Foy was famous for recycling old scripts—freshening them by changing the locale and the characters’ names. 

The B movie units also served as a training ground for young writers, directors, and actors, many of whom were placed under contract and brought up through the ranks.   John Wayne graduated from the Bs; so did directors like Fred Zinnemann. 

The young tyros had a stake in making their films as good as they could be; old-timers who were mired in the B units didn’t work quite so hard, however.  Their mission was simply to bring them in on schedule. 

Every now and then, a B movie turned out so well that it made waves, with newspaper critics and the public.  But by and large, these films were part of an assembly line—a well-oiled one, to be sure.  The Inner Sanctum films were grist for the mill at Universal in the 1940s, where Bs were the rule, not the exception.  They were also a showcase for the talents of their star, Lon Chaney Jr.

Lon Chaney Jr. strikes an agonized pose in Calling Dr. Death, one of the Inner Sanctum Mysteries.

Chaney, whose much-maligned career is celebrated in a handsome and informative new book from Midnight Marquee press, was not an actor of tremendous range, but he was without parallel at portraying tortured souls, and he did that to perfection in most of the Inner Sanctum mysteries.

In Weird Woman, arguably the best of the bunch (based on a novel by Fritz Leiber, “Conjure Wife,” which was later remade as the excellent chiller Burn, Witch, Burn!), Chaney plays a college professor, writing a book called “Superstition Versus Reason and Face,” who ventures into the jungle and brings back not only artifacts, but a bride.  She’s lovely and innocent, but she’s also a prisoner of her upbringing, based on voodoo witchcraft; in the foreign setting of a university, she finds herself scorned and victimized.  Worst of all, her husband doesn’t believe in the talisman she has cherished all this time, which she believes has kept them both safe from harm. 

What’s amazing about this film—simplistic as it may be—is that it pulls you in, and has you fearful of the outcome when Chaney dares to defy the simple wisdom of his wife.

The Frozen Ghost is just plain silly, but it’s still fun to watch.  Chaney plays a stage mentalist who’s convinced that he has willed a man dead.  Forsaking his career, he seeks rest and relaxation in a mansion owned by a female friend who operates a creepy wax museum!  Here, a jealous sculptor resents his intrusion, especially when he suspects that the owner’s pretty young niece is falling in love with Lon. 

Even given the patent absurdity of the story, I still found this very watchable.  Why?  It’s short, and it moves along.  It has an interesting cast, including perennial movie Nazi Martin Kosleck as the mad sculptor, polished Evelyn Ankers as Chaney’s jilted fiancee, and Milburn Stone as Lon’s manager and friend.  Douglass Dumbrille, normally a bad guy or a red herring in Charlie Chan movies, is cast against type as a cynical police detective—and his performance is one of the picture’s strongest assets.

The point is, these B movies didn’t have to be great.  But they did have to tell a story—with a beginning, a middle, and an end.   It’s that professionalism---in the casting, photography, art direction, and most of all the storytelling---that keeps them entertaining today.  (Another good one in the series is Dead Man’s Eyes, in which Chaney plays an artist who loses his sight in an accident.)

Nowadays, every major studio release is a big deal.  We’re living in the age of the blockbuster, and we see the results on-screen this summer:  a lot of expensive junk.            

The current situation makes me pine for the days of B movies, when every film didn’t have to be an Event, and screenwriters knew how to tell a story, even in a low-budget film that would likely be forgotten a week or two after its release.
 

***  Lon Chaney, Jr. is the latest in Midnight Marquee’s Actors Series, edited by Gary J. and Susan Svehla.   It sells for $23 postpaid from Midnight Marquee Press, 9721 Britinay Lane, Baltimore, MD 21234.