On our meandering movie watching tour, we hit up another couple of classic Universal horror films, both from the 1940s:
The Wolf Man, from 1941, was a second go at the werewolf concept, this time starring Lon Chaney Jr as Larry Talbot, the estranged son of Sir John Talbot, the patriarch of, er, Castle Talbot in the Welsh countryside. The dad is played by Claude Rains, an English actor who played the Invisible Man in that classic.
They try to make the story something like, "Larry was successful off in America," as an explanation to why, eh, Larry is clearly a big ol' American lug, while his father is the tiny and calculated Claude Rains. Think...Channing Tatum and Derek Jacobi?
Anyway...something my mom mentioned in a comment is the rampant sexism in these (and most) of the older films. In the beginning of the Wolf Man, Larry helps his father with his telescope. Then he starts looking around the Welsh town where they live, and then peeps a lady in her room. Soon he's using information he's gotten from said peeping to ingratiate himself into her zone, and soon enough he's in love. This prompted a conversation with our kids about love and spying and real things in life, like honestly falling in love, no spying or false pretenses needed.
Bela Lugosi plays a gypsy named Bela, who gets beaten to death---as a wolf---by Larry and his silver-handled cane, but not before he bites Larry, turnign him into the next werewolf.
It's quick, breezy, and hits its mark.
The Phantom of the Opera, from 1943, was shot in Technicolor and was wildly bright and colorful, the production using the new tech to its fullest. It won an Oscar for production design, making it the only Universal horror film to be recognized by the academy in any year.
Here, Claude Rains is back playing Claudin, a violinist with the Paris Opera. His skills seem to have evaporated as his fingers on his fret hand on the violin has lost feeling. He's let go, which puts his secret payments to a singing coach for an understudy from his same village in jeapardy.
I was convinced the whole time that Claudin was the singer's grandfather, but it turned out he was only 48 (!!) (he looks 75), so then I was convinced he was secretly her father.
It turns out he was just obsessed with her, but not in a sexual way. Um...sure. Whatever you say.
Claudin tries to sell a concerto he's written, and, to cut a long story short (too late), he mistakingly thinks a jerk has stolen it, gets his face all burned up by acid, steals a master key for the Opera house (a real palace in Paris) which gives him an impossible level of access.
They filmed much of the movie on the same sound stage that they'd constructed for the famous silent Phantom from 1925, the one that stars Lon Chaney Sr.
The very last scene of the movie I enjoyed. Christine DuBois, the understudy-turned-star, has been linked to two fellas who both think they're perfect for Christine. For what it's worth, Christine has a type: the two dudes are at the top of their professions (one is a decorated military and police detective; the other is a decorated opera singer, the star of the Paris Opera), and they both have dark hair and thin mustaches.
The last scene has each guy show up to her room at the opera house trying to woo her, each having brought identical flower bouquets. Finally they tell her she needs to choose. She smiles, laughs, and walks out her door to the waiting and adoring crowd, leaving both men dejected in the room. The detective, half-joking yet half-serious, asks the singer if he wants to join him for the dinner reservation he'd made earlier for an evening with Mademoiselle DuBois. The singer accepts, and they laugh as they interlock arms and try walking out the door together.
That ending was less sexist than most of the scenes we've seen from these classics.
This movie takes a while to get going, and there is so much opera in it that it almost seems like a musical, but the sets are lavish, as are the colors splashed everywhere. It's not a bad time, for sure.
At one point, Claudin takes Christine to his underground lair, and mentions an underground lake. In reality, there is an enormous cistern under the Paris Opera house, the palace itself, that is still used today to train firefighters to swim in the dark.
And that's pretty cool.
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