Still by far the best adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson story, Paramount’s glossy pre-Code is also one of the most prestigious horror shows on record. Fredric March won an acting Oscar and it’s one of Miriam Hopkins’ best performances. The film is sexually daring and technically astute — with the help of cameraman Karl Struss director Rouben Mamoulian makes use of every cinematic trick he can conjure. The horrible Mr. Hyde is conceived as a near-simian primitive man, equating unrestrained lust and desire as something ‘society’ must repress. The disc packaging says it’s two minutes longer than the 2004 Warner DVD . . . but it’s not.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1931 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 98 min. / Available at Amazon.com / General site Wac-Amazon / Street Date October 25, 2022 / 21.99
Starring: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert, Halliwell Hobbes, Edgar Norton, Tempe Pigott, Douglas Walton.
Cinematography: Karl Struss...
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Blu-ray
Warner Archive Collection
1931 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 98 min. / Available at Amazon.com / General site Wac-Amazon / Street Date October 25, 2022 / 21.99
Starring: Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Rose Hobart, Holmes Herbert, Halliwell Hobbes, Edgar Norton, Tempe Pigott, Douglas Walton.
Cinematography: Karl Struss...
- 10/15/2022
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
After the success of Dracula in early 1931, several studios large and small rushed into production on their own macabre features. With the early thirties being the depths of the Great Depression, these studios were eager to make films on low budgets that could turn large profits. As has continued to be the case even to this day, horror films were the prime candidate. Besides Universal, the studio with one of the strongest track records in the genre during this time was Paramount. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) had been a financial and critical success, winning its star Frederic March an Academy Award for his dual role. The studio decided to return to the well of literature for its follow-up, adapting H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau into Island of Lost Souls (1932), which remains an important and effective example of early science fiction/horror.
The film stars Charles Laughton as Dr.
The film stars Charles Laughton as Dr.
- 8/18/2022
- by Brian Keiper
- bloody-disgusting.com
The Cat and the Canary
& The Ghost Breakers
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1939, 1940 / 72, 83 min.
Starring Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard
Cinematography by Charles B. Lang
Directed by Elliott Nugent, George Marshall
Bob Hope’s brand of comedy may have been extinct by the sixties but it was alive and kicking in the pages of God Save the Mark, Donald E. Westlake’s comic crime novel about a schnook on the run for a murder he didn’t commit. Published in 1967, Westlake’s farce resembles one of Hope’s own movies; the pace is frenetic and the patter is as snappy as the comedian’s in his prime—a golden age exemplified by his one-two punch from 1939 and 1940, The Cat and the Canary and The Ghost Breakers. Those films present Hope in excelsis but in the hands of directors Elliott Nugent and George Marshall they serve as master classes in the tricky art of the scare comedy.
& The Ghost Breakers
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1939, 1940 / 72, 83 min.
Starring Bob Hope, Paulette Goddard
Cinematography by Charles B. Lang
Directed by Elliott Nugent, George Marshall
Bob Hope’s brand of comedy may have been extinct by the sixties but it was alive and kicking in the pages of God Save the Mark, Donald E. Westlake’s comic crime novel about a schnook on the run for a murder he didn’t commit. Published in 1967, Westlake’s farce resembles one of Hope’s own movies; the pace is frenetic and the patter is as snappy as the comedian’s in his prime—a golden age exemplified by his one-two punch from 1939 and 1940, The Cat and the Canary and The Ghost Breakers. Those films present Hope in excelsis but in the hands of directors Elliott Nugent and George Marshall they serve as master classes in the tricky art of the scare comedy.
- 9/19/2020
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Alice in Wonderland
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1933 / 1.33:1/ 76 min.
Starring Charlotte Henry, W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper
Cinematography by Bert Glennon, Henry Sharp
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Written by Harvey Kurtzman with art by Jack Davis, Mad‘s 1954 parody of Alice in Wonderland stands as a succinct critique of Paramount Pictures’s 1933 adaptation. The film stars crowd pleasing performers like Cary Grant and W.C. Fields yet manages to be one of the most uniquely disturbing studio pictures ever made.
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod and written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies, the movie began production in 1932, the centennial of Lewis Carroll’s birth. Carroll’s classic was ripe for Paramount – the studio on Melrose was ground zero for absurdist humor in the early ’30s. McLeod had just wrapped the Marx Brothers’ sublime Horse Feathers while the Mankiewicz-scripted Million Dollar Legs was released the same year – both...
Blu ray
Kino Lorber
1933 / 1.33:1/ 76 min.
Starring Charlotte Henry, W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper
Cinematography by Bert Glennon, Henry Sharp
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
Written by Harvey Kurtzman with art by Jack Davis, Mad‘s 1954 parody of Alice in Wonderland stands as a succinct critique of Paramount Pictures’s 1933 adaptation. The film stars crowd pleasing performers like Cary Grant and W.C. Fields yet manages to be one of the most uniquely disturbing studio pictures ever made.
Directed by Norman Z. McLeod and written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and William Cameron Menzies, the movie began production in 1932, the centennial of Lewis Carroll’s birth. Carroll’s classic was ripe for Paramount – the studio on Melrose was ground zero for absurdist humor in the early ’30s. McLeod had just wrapped the Marx Brothers’ sublime Horse Feathers while the Mankiewicz-scripted Million Dollar Legs was released the same year – both...
- 6/6/2020
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
I owe much of my love of horror to 1931’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Before I was old enough to have access to many of the movies I would one day love, I was going to the public library and checking out books about classic monster movies. The Crestwood House series were staples and in constant rotation, but the one I would read and re-read more than any other was called Movie Monsters by Thomas G. Ayelsworth. This was where I first fell in love with Lugosi's Dracula and Karloff's monster, where I learned the difference between the Lon Chaney Wolf Man and Henry Hull in Werewolf of London. In many cases, it would be years before I would ever see these movies, but I had the titles and stars of all of them memorized by the time I was eight years old. It is this book, more than anything else,...
- 10/7/2019
- by Patrick Bromley
- DailyDead
For years now Island Of Lost Souls has been DVD’s most glaring omission from the Golden Age of Horror. It won the Rondo Award several times for Film Most in Need of DVD Released or Restoration , but last October, classic horror fans rejoiced when Criterion finally released the film. They were not disappointed and this year, not surprisingly, Island Of Lost Souls won the Rondo for Best Classic DVD.
Island Of Lost Souls (1932), the first adaption of H.G.Well’s 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau was one several shocking horror films from the early 30′s that helped advance the enforcement of the Hays Code, Hollywood’s self-censoring rules deeming “no picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it.”. It wasn’t Island Of Lost Souls’s radical scenes of horror (like Freaks) or the deviant sexuality (like the Frederick March version of Dr.
Island Of Lost Souls (1932), the first adaption of H.G.Well’s 1896 novel The Island of Dr. Moreau was one several shocking horror films from the early 30′s that helped advance the enforcement of the Hays Code, Hollywood’s self-censoring rules deeming “no picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it.”. It wasn’t Island Of Lost Souls’s radical scenes of horror (like Freaks) or the deviant sexuality (like the Frederick March version of Dr.
- 8/28/2012
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Island Of Lost Souls (1932), the first adaption of H.G.Well’s 1896 novel ‘The Island of Dr. Moreau’, was one several shocking horror films from the early 30’s that helped advance the enforcement of the ‘Hays Code’, Hollywood’s self-censoring rules deeming “no picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it”. It wasn’t Island Of Lost Souls’s radical scenes of horror (like Freaks) or the deviant sexuality (like the Frederick March version of Dr. Jekyll And Mr Hyde) that offended but its allegory premise that Man could play God and create Man through surgery by splicing together the flesh of various living animals (….and I’m sure the hints of bestiality didn’t help). Island Of Lost Souls is a movie that hasn’t lost its power to shock and disturb almost 80 years later, but it’s one that is Not available on DVD.
- 4/29/2010
- by Tom
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
By Scott Essman
In the history of the modern American cinema, there are but few legacies of makeup artists. While the legendary Burman and Dawn names each include three generations of makeup artists, there is but one lasting family that features four working generations: the Westmores of Hollywood. With ties to virtually every studio in the annals cinema, the Westmores have created classic makeups in top contemporary film and TV shows back to the earliest years of silent film.
George Westmore, the patriarch of the Westmore clan at the turn of the century, worked as a wigmaker in his native England — where he was born in 1879 — and gave birth to sons Mont (born in 1902), twins Perc and Ern (born in 1904), Wally (born in 1906), and a daughter, Dorothy (born in 1907). The young family traveled to the U.S. to seek better opportunities and maintained a wig-making and beauty salon business which floated amongst various cities,...
In the history of the modern American cinema, there are but few legacies of makeup artists. While the legendary Burman and Dawn names each include three generations of makeup artists, there is but one lasting family that features four working generations: the Westmores of Hollywood. With ties to virtually every studio in the annals cinema, the Westmores have created classic makeups in top contemporary film and TV shows back to the earliest years of silent film.
George Westmore, the patriarch of the Westmore clan at the turn of the century, worked as a wigmaker in his native England — where he was born in 1879 — and gave birth to sons Mont (born in 1902), twins Perc and Ern (born in 1904), Wally (born in 1906), and a daughter, Dorothy (born in 1907). The young family traveled to the U.S. to seek better opportunities and maintained a wig-making and beauty salon business which floated amongst various cities,...
- 1/12/2010
- by Jesse
- FamousMonsters of Filmland
Hollywood's first family of movie make-up is to be honoured with a star on the Walk of Fame.
Marvin and Michael Westmore will unveil the 2,370th star near the corner of Los Angeles' Hollywood and Vine on behalf of the Westmore Family on Friday.
The Westmores are make-up artists who have defined beauty and glamour, setting trends over the decades.
George Westmore and his six sons, Monte, Ern, Perc, Wally, Bud, and Frank "changed the face of Hollywood, literally", according to a Walk of Fame spokeswoman.
The representative adds, "The Westmores not only created, but they defined the role of make-up artists in Motion Pictures. George Westmore opened the very first make-up department at Selig Studios in 1917... and the brothers were responsible for creating the signature looks for stars like Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn and even the teenage fashion doll, Barbie."
Ern Westmore became the first make-up artist recipient of the Academy Cup in 1931 for his work on Cimarron starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, while Monte wowed Hollywood with his styling skills on movie epic Gone with the Wind - he made Vivien Leigh's hazel eyes appear green at the request of director David O. Selznick.
And when Paul Muni won the Best Actor Oscar for The Story of Louis Pasteur in 1936, he thanked only one person, Perc Westmore, in his acceptance speech.
Other family claims to fame include Bud Westmore's molded foam rubber suit in The Creature from the Black Lagoon and his make-up expertise on TV show The Munsters and youngest brother Frank's work on cult show Kung Fu, for which he became the first Westmore to receive an Emmy Award.
The family continues to pursue excellence on the big and small screen - Monte's son, Michael, received an Oscar and a British Academy Award nomination in 1986 for his artistry on Mask. He has also picked up nine Emmy statuettes and an impressive 42 Emmy nominations over the course of his career. He holds the record for more Emmy nominations than any other make-up artist.
Marvin and Michael Westmore will unveil the 2,370th star near the corner of Los Angeles' Hollywood and Vine on behalf of the Westmore Family on Friday.
The Westmores are make-up artists who have defined beauty and glamour, setting trends over the decades.
George Westmore and his six sons, Monte, Ern, Perc, Wally, Bud, and Frank "changed the face of Hollywood, literally", according to a Walk of Fame spokeswoman.
The representative adds, "The Westmores not only created, but they defined the role of make-up artists in Motion Pictures. George Westmore opened the very first make-up department at Selig Studios in 1917... and the brothers were responsible for creating the signature looks for stars like Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Audrey Hepburn and even the teenage fashion doll, Barbie."
Ern Westmore became the first make-up artist recipient of the Academy Cup in 1931 for his work on Cimarron starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne, while Monte wowed Hollywood with his styling skills on movie epic Gone with the Wind - he made Vivien Leigh's hazel eyes appear green at the request of director David O. Selznick.
And when Paul Muni won the Best Actor Oscar for The Story of Louis Pasteur in 1936, he thanked only one person, Perc Westmore, in his acceptance speech.
Other family claims to fame include Bud Westmore's molded foam rubber suit in The Creature from the Black Lagoon and his make-up expertise on TV show The Munsters and youngest brother Frank's work on cult show Kung Fu, for which he became the first Westmore to receive an Emmy Award.
The family continues to pursue excellence on the big and small screen - Monte's son, Michael, received an Oscar and a British Academy Award nomination in 1986 for his artistry on Mask. He has also picked up nine Emmy statuettes and an impressive 42 Emmy nominations over the course of his career. He holds the record for more Emmy nominations than any other make-up artist.
- 9/29/2008
- WENN
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