October 21: His Brother's Keeper (1921)

 

His Brother's Keeper was principally a crime film with strong horror elements from 1921. It is yet another lost film with enough extant information and materials to know most of the action of the entire film. The plot was an odd combination of corporate fraud mixed with mesmerizism/hypnoisis.  The following description from on October 1921 print ad taken out in a Poughkeepsie newspaper gives a good description of how this, an early thriller, was marketed:

Can one man compel another, by the force of mental suggestion to murder a third man? It is upon this question that N. Brewster Morse has constructed that greatest drama since the days of "Trilby" and "The Corsican Brothers." [from the Poughkeepsie Eagle-News]

Principally the main plot behind the motivation to commit the murder is a bit beside the point. The point is that somehow a mere mortal man has the power to compel another innocent person to murder a man for him. Hypnotism was a popular "supernatural" trope in films of the time; it had strong connections to spiritualism, but it was also just as connected to the new science of psychology. It was both weird and wonderful; new, but possibly...just possibly, very old. It would also go on to be a popular vehicle in mad scientist films for the 1930's, 40's and 50's; so we find that concept in its infancy in films like this. Even today, we have vampire films and series that use hypnosis as a power that the creatures inherently possess in some form. What was truly frightening about His Brother's Keeper is that the mesmerized murderer is arrested; the audience knew that meant capital punishment. Pretty horrifying stuff. Of course, this is Hollywood, and we can't have the bad guy getting away with it. We have an investigation undertaken by a character named (I kid you not!) John Bonham and the culprit is exposed. As for justice, the film has him then promptly, and conveniently, doing away with himself.  Other than a complete plot description and a poster, there are no other materials on this film for now. 

October 20: One Glorious Day (1922)

 

One Glorious Day is a lost Paramount production directed by James Cruze starring Will Rogers and released in early 1922.  Judging from the surviving materials, it was probably quite the strange little comedy. Frankly most of the stills show that the "spirit" Ek, an entity featured in the film only briefly in his original form, look far scarier than the film likely intended, this was a comedy after all. 

Rogers plays Professor Ezra Botts a scientist, who dabbles in psychic experiments. Ek is a mischievous little spirit who is waiting his turn for a body to inhabit (is this a story of reincarnation??), but sneaks off to the earthly plane to find a vessel for himself. In other words, he skips the queue. Owed to his experiments, professor Botts makes himself vulnerable to "inhabitation" and Ek takes advantage of this. In the meantime, Botts' actual spirit finds itself wandering the astral plane, disembodied and confused. He must wait until the little spirit Ek has enough of it's antics in Botts' body and leaves, to re-inhabit his own body. Apparently all kinds of physical comedy ensues. From the descriptions that survive of the film, it sounds like a cross between the drunken nightmare in Dream of a Rarebit Fiend in Edwin S. Porter film from 1906 and a slapstick comedy from the 1910's such as one finds in an Arbuckle/St. John/Keaton film.

And, in fact, the film was actually intended to be a vehicle for Roscoe Arbuckle; Will Rogers only took his place as the protagonist after the Virginia Rappe scandal broke early in the film's production.  Arbuckle had been the main creative force behind the project; he had contributed the lion's share of the film's concept. The rest of the cast was little changed and included Lila Lee as the love interest, and Alan Hale Sr. Child actor John Fox was mocked up as Ek, who I am sure was thought to be silly by the make-up crew...but, really, come on, it comes off quite creepy today! Even by the standards of the day, Ek made an impression; and for a lost film, the image is pretty famous, making regular rounds on the social media sites every year around Halloween.  Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine founder Forrest J. Ackerman, who is a GIANT in the science fiction (and horror) community, and is credited the coining "Sci-Fi" as a phrase, claimed that this was the film that sparked is life long love of both the science fiction and horror/monster genres. Some sources have it as the first film that he actually ever saw as a child. 

Suviving photo from the set of the film (wikimedia commons)

As far as what the film might have been up to in regards to the supernatural, one of it's working titles, Souls Before Birth, gives a hint that Ek is indeed some sort of "pre-born" or even reiencarnated spirit. His incarnating within the body of the professor (taking temporary possession of) also seems to be a kind of precursor to "possession" films that we all so familiar with today; the most famous of which remains The Exorcist. 

Below are a couple of lobby cards from the film.

[Images in public domain, from Wikimedia and IMDb film photos]

October 7: A Blind Bargain (1922)

 

Tod Browning's London After Midnight is not the only lost Lon Chaney horror silent from the 1920's that would cause a stir if a copy where ever found. Goldwyn's 1922 A Blind Bargain was directed by Wallace Worsley, who had previously directed Chaney in The Penalty (1920) and would direct him the following year in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of the most famous surviving films of the 1920's. A Blind Bargain was based on a story that had similar premise as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with a little H.G. Wells thrown in. It was based on a novel by British writer/humorist Barry Pain.  The film sported your standard mad scientist, complete with a hunchback assistant (who is one of Dr. Lamb's failed experiments); both of these parts were played by Chaney (applying, as was his custom, his own makeup). The main protagonist of the film is a down-on-his-luck writer and desperate for money; the part of Robert Sandell was played by Raymond McKee, whose performance was over-shadowed in the reviews by Chaney's dual monster performances. Sandell winds up under the sway of the mad surgeon Lamb after agreeing to an unspecified "bargain" that the doctor will operate on his sickly mother. Turns out that "blind bargain" is an agreement to be experimented on. The film also featured a full ape man--who was likely NOT Chaney. There are been persistent rumours that the man in ape suit was in fact Wallace Beery, but there is a high likelihood that this will never be proven one way or the other. The film had trouble overing the censors of the time delaying it's release for more than a year.  In the end, the film was cut from six reels to five over objections to the subject matter of creating life aka playing god. But nevertheless, it received a standing ovation on it's eventual opening night.  We know that the film was tinted throughout and one section was colored using a hand stenciling process. The last known print perished in the same fire in the mid-1960s that burned the last print of London After Midnight. Now all that remains of it (for now) are a few stills and some beautifully produced lobby cards.  

Spooktober 28: The Terror (1928)

 

Warner Brother's The Terror is without a doubt the world's very first "all talking" horror feature film; released in 1928 when most theaters were in no way equipped for sound (even synchronized sound from disc as was the case here). As a result, this widely distributed crime thriller based on an Edgar Wallace play was also, and primarily, released as a silent film. Warners gave the film two separate release/premiere dates, with the sound version premiering a month and a half before the silent version. Directed by Roy Del Ruth, it starred May McAvoy and Edward Everett Horton, with the sound version utilizing the clunky Vitaphone on disc sound system, and the discs are the only portion of the film known to survive, despite it's wide distribution. UCLA's Film and Television Archive houses the only known copies of said discs that are thought to be in relatively good condition, though they do not seem to have been restored and released (UCLA is also rumored to have a copy of the print in some condition...though the condition of the print, if it exists at all, is not known). There are plenty of stills and lobby cards that do still exist and give a general idea of the creepy nature of the film. Basically an "old dark house" affair (of which Wallace excelled), the film was quite similar in story to other crime horrors of the 1920's such as The Bat and The Cat and the Canary, with the notable exception of the inclusion of a creepy old organ--making it the source of the old haunted house film trope of adding organ music adding to the scary ambience of the whole. 

 

Spooktaober 27: The Head of Janus (1920)

 

I know... this is two Conrad Veidt films in as many days, but this lost gem is so much more.  It has connections to so many other really famous horror and near horror films (Karl Freund was the chief cinematographer), many of them amongst the most well known silents films out there. The most recognizable connection is that it's a Murnau film from 1920. Murnau needs no introduction; he was famous in his native Germany and later in his adopted United States. Veidt would follow a similar path, via the U.K. But, it is yet another player in this silent German adaptation of Stevenson's Jekyll And Hyde, who became a much bigger fixture the American psyche than Veidt or Murnau combined who is of interest here: Bela Lugosi. Lugosi who was famously Hungarian, born in what is now Romania and a World War I veteran, made his way to Germany after the war (he had already appeared in a Hungarian production directed by future Casablanca director Michael Curtiz), where he appeared in a handful of films, including this one. The film is lost, but stills do survive. We are fortunate that one of them contains Lugosi in his role as Dr. Warren's Diener. 

 

 

Spooktober 13: The Gorilla (1927)

 

One of the first in a long line of gorilla horror films that lasted through the 1940's; (productions occurring at some regularity), Alfred Santell's 1927 The Gorilla was a mystery/horror by First National, and is another lost film. For a lost film however, there are a surprising number of remnant materials from stills to posters. It's very wide distribution also provides a generous amount of hope that a print will turn up somewhere.  The story line, however, is mundane and well known; and though it is based on a Ralph Spence play, there is little doubt that it's based in no small part on Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue (though Poe does not get a credit). Basically it is your average creature feature story line of a killer animal after human prey, the twist is (spoiler alert!), it turns out to be a man in an ape suit...so it's also a serial killer film, complete with the victims only being female. If you are a fan of old B horrors, you might be asking yourself...um that sounds familiar...wasn't Lugosi in a film like that? Answer: Yes! This film was remade in 1939 with Lugosi and Lionel Atwill and the Ritz Bros as a horror comedy (it was the second remake, with the first coming in 1930 as an all sound affair, it too is a lost film). In another Universal Monster connection, cameraman Arthur Edeson went on to photograph Frankenstein (1931) and The Invisible Man (1933), as well a whole host of other classics including Casablanca. 

 

 

Spooktober 10: The Great London Mystery (1920)

 

One of the only surviving stills from British serial The Great London Mystery, a horror/crime/thriller that boasted 12 chapters. British serials were rare, and this 1920 production had a great deal of the "race trappings" that Victorian print serials had, especially in regards to Chinese people.  It starred David Devant, the David Copperfield of his time (Devant, like most stage magicians of the age, was also deeply involved in film exhibition and other forms of projection as well). The serial also had a female co-writer in Hope Loring. It apparently had a number of significant horror elements, including a vampire like character named Froggie no less (!), mutants and a Chinese mad scientist. Despite its racial issues, it is a shame that it has apparently not survived (please don't be fooled by the fake review by a very fake "British" man on IMDb--no one has seen this since before sound came to theaters!). It has been included on several print and video lists as one of the world's most sought after lost horrors.

Spooktober 8: London After Midnight (1927)

 

It turns out that one of the most famous lost silent films is actually also a famously lost horror film. Every few years or so rumors swirl that a print of Tod Browning's long lost 1927 London After Midnight has surfaced. People go nuts for a while, silent film and horror film lovers always approach with a mixture of slight excitement and a healthy dose of skepticism...and every time hopes are dashed. We do, however, have a few stills both from the set and materials for promotion to gaze upon [most of Lon Chaney and this little gallery is, of course, not exhaustive]. And, faith is that a copy will indeed turn up one of these days! 🙏 

 

 

 

 

Born Today June 5: Richard J. Jose

1862-1941

Often listed as an "American countertenor," Richard J. Jose was in fact a British operatic singer born in Lanner, Cornwall (his name rhymes with "rose" and was originally "Joce"--which is a traditional Cornish name [reminder: Cornwall is a Celtic enclave of England--it is as Celtic as Wales]).  He apparently followed an uncle to the U.S., settling in Nevada and singing in saloons. He eventually joined minstrel shows which wound up taking him to California. By this time (the 1890's) he was becoming a well known operatic singer in the U.S. and made a number of recordings via the new technology of phonograph cylinders. By the turn of the century he was an early signee of the music company Victor.  His version of "Silver Threads Among the Gold" was a big hit for him and the company.  It was this song that led to his only appearance in a film, which came in 1915. The film was titled the same as the song and was a curiosity to say the least.  The poster boasted the gimmick of the film's promotion, "Richard J. Jose (Appears In Person)."  Jose actually toured with the film, singing the song in the appropriate places during the film's screening; Jose also starred as Martin in the film itself (IMDb link, and the film should not be confused with the 1911 film of the same name produced by the Edison Co & directed by their man Porter). The film was the brain child of the K & R Film Company--a one off sort of affair.  Unfortunately the film is lost; it's one of those great loses in the film world from the silent era--not because the film would likely be some long lost masterpiece, but because it was so oddly unique.  This is Jose's only film appearance; he soon retired completely from the entertainment industry and settled permanently in California.  There he embarked on a second career as California Deputy Real Estate Commissioner.  Jose died in San Francisco at the age of 79 on 20 October 1941.  He is buried in the Olivet Memorial Park (then Mount Olivet Cemetery) in Colma, Ca--just outside of CA. 

IMDb

Wikipedia

Find A Grave

Released On This Date--Silent Horror

The silent film starring Lon Chaney Sr. and directed by Wallace Worsley for Goldwyn was released on this day in 1922.  The film is one of the silent horror films that Chaney is not well remembered for, that is because the film is lost.  Here's to hoping that it will turn up somewhere soon!  Meanwhile here is a look (fan tribute) to the film from YouTube.