The Extras - Four Films From Todd Browning: The Devil Doll, Freaks, The Unknown, & The Mystic

Episode Date: October 25, 2023

Join us for a captivating  discussion of classic horror auteur Tod Browning with George Feltenstein of the Warner Archive, and esteemed film historians, Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr. Their 20-year-long collaboration started with the DVD release of Mel Brooks’ "Dracula: Dead and Loving It," and has now extended to creating an audio commentary for the upcoming horror/sci-fi film, "The Devil Doll" (1936).  That's the jumping-off point for our discussion and appreciation of four of Tod Browning's films released for the first time on Blu-ray in October.  This episode is also a testament to the importance of preserving and cherishing physical media, highlighted through the restoration of Browning's classic horror masterpiece, "Freaks" (1932), undertaken by the Criterion Collection in partnership with Warner Bros. You don't want to miss George Feltenstein's engaging story about the film master that was used in this restoration, and the fifty-year journey to return it to its rightful owner.  We also dissect the artistry behind Browning's 'The Mystic' (1925) and 'The Unknown' (1927), and the wonderful work Criterion did in restoring and presenting these silent films.Lastly, we revisit the profound themes present in Browning's films, showcasing the darker aspects of human nature and crime. This episode is a celebration of classic horror cinema and a tribute to the artistry of director Tod Browning.Purchase links:THE DEVIL DOLL (1936) Blu-rayTod Brownings Sideshow Shockers: FREAKS, THEY UNKNOWN, THE MYSTIC Blu-rayThe Sitcom StudyWelcome to the Sitcom Study, where we contemplate the TV shows we grew up with and...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify The Extras Facebook pageThe Extras Twitter Warner Archive & Warner Bros Catalog GroupOtaku Media produces podcasts, behind-the-scenes extras, and media that connect creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals. www.otakumedia.tv

Hi, I'm film historian and author John Fricke. I've written books about Judy Garland and the Wizard of Oz movie, and you're listening to The Extras. Hello and welcome to The Extras, where we take you behind the scenes of your favorite TV shows, movies, and animation, and they're released on digital, DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, or your favorite streaming site. I'm Tim Millard, your host. And joining me is George Feldstein of the Warner Archive, and two very special guests, film historians Dr.

Steve Haberman and Konstantin Nasser. Welcome, gentlemen. Thank you. Hello. So before we dive into our discussion on the Todd Browning films that we're going to talk about today, this is the first time I'm meeting you, Steve. But I see your name and Constantine on so many audio commentaries, especially in this genre, that I just I had to ask you, how did you start working together? When did you meet? How long has this collaboration been going on, Steve? I made a movie. I wrote a movie with Mel Brooks called Dracula Dead and Loving It. Okay. When the DVD came out, Constantine was in charge of the extras. And so what happened? You interviewed us, right? Yeah, I got the call to talk to you and Mel, and you, Mel, and Rudy came in.

And actually, I had gone to a book signing. It's funny, the Marx Brothers, by the way, into your office. You don't want to do that if you don't have to. Well, we know it was great, but we just started talking, and I had your book, and I said, oh, I love horror movies, too.

And that was kind of it. Oh, yeah, no, that's what happened. It just come out. Love at first sight. I don't know. What year was that? 2003. Okay. So 20 years.

You guys are celebrating 20 years here. There you go. For those watching the YouTube version, Steve's just holding up the book there. 20 years here. There you go. For those watching the YouTube version, Steve's just holding up the book there. 20 years. So you've started off interviewing Steve and met him at the book center. And then when did you guys start doing

commentaries together? Well, I've gotten Steve on to numerous tracks. And I think at one point... Did you record the commentary for Dracula with us? Yeah, I did Dracula. Yeah, yeah, I was Dracula. He did Dracula Dead and Loving It with

Mel and I and Rudy and then he came to the signing and then you asked me to do Village of the Damned or something? Yeah, it was one thing after the next. We started doing horror movies and I knew Steve could say a few things and had a good, you know, a lot of good opinions and and and Warner Brothers and Universal approved. And and then when we first started doing this, it was for what I said, I'd like to do a commentary, too, was over with a Fox

title that we were able to convince Fox to release Dragonwick back in the mid-2000s. And once we did Dragonwick, it was kind of off and running. We've done, I think, 30 plus together now, right? Something like that. I don't know. Who's counting? I don't know. I'm just guessing.

This guy's done a lot more than me. Yeah. Well, obviously, George, we'll bring you in. Obviously, Warner Brothers, or excuse me, Warner Archives specifically, is only releasing one horror film this October, but it's a pretty big one, and that's the main part of our discussion today, The Devil Doll. But maybe you can give a little background, George, into how you selected that and then reached out to these guys to do their thing.

Well, if I truly had the ability to do what I would like to do, we would have had many horror films released this month. We're in a very constricted situation where we don't have as much freedom to do as I would like. So we have to be judicious in what we do. And I have been working with our partners at Criterion on really every release that they've done since we began partnering with them. And I knew that Freaks was coming out from them October 17th, and I went to the powers that be and asked, I won't say the truth, which is begged and pleaded for the money to do a brand new master on The Devil Doll. So we would

have it come out around the same time. Because I think the film has been very, very underrated and unappreciated outside of classic horror film circles where it is lauded. Now, on the 20th of October, by October 24th, it will be available, hopefully on people's doorsteps, since all of our products are online only. So once you knew that this pretty big title was going to be coming out along with Criterion, how did you get these guys on board to do this audio commentary? Well, again, it was a big hope. But a year ago at this time, we all shared the joy of a rapturously received release of Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And these gentlemen made a contribution to that release that is inestimable. And that was a huge success for us, both critically and financially. And I only wish we had the ability to do more commentaries and new special features. And I'm hoping the future will bring that.

But today we have that in this release and it's something to celebrate. And we're better to do that on the extras. Well, thanks. Thanks, George, for reaching out to me and suggesting it. Because, I mean, I've been diving in and I listened to the commentary and I have watched the Criterion Collection. So I'm really excited for today's discussion because we're going to be talking about a lot of Todd Browning's highly esteemed films. But maybe we should just start

and focus on The Devil Doll here since that's coming out on the 24th. Steve, maybe you can give us a little background on, because I was listening to your other commentary, a little background on this film and Todd Browning and, you know, coming into it. Well, Todd Browning is an auteur. I'm an auteurist. I believe that there are certain filmmakers that have such a strong personality and such obsessive interests that it comes out

in everything that they, in all the movies they make, even when they don't write the stories and the screenplays, it comes out because they're guiding it through to its final form. And these directors, these auteurs, the obvious ones, Hitchcock, Hawks,

Ford, Orson Welles, they have such really strong personalities that their movies become works of art. They're unique. And Todd Browning is one of those guys. Now, he started the horror renaissance, shall we say, or it wasn't even a renaissance because there wasn't a true genre of horror before 1931. He started that genre with Dracula. He directed Dracula in 1931. Because of some bad history and some bad critical evaluations in the past, he hasn't really until lately been given the credit for what a truly unique version of Dracula that is.

But the fact that it's the one that people remember the most, um, that, that kind of proves my point, but it was a huge hit. And then he, because he was such an obsessive auteur, he followed it with a movie. they sort of gave him carte blanche to,

uh, Irving Thalberg said, uh, you know, we want to out Frankenstein, Frankenstein here at MGM. And, uh, so he allowed Todd Brown to make the movie he wanted.

And he made a picture for MGM called Freaks, a movie that probably nobody wanted to see. But it's a it's it's a masterpiece. It's a it is a proto Browning film, but it really bombed. And so he was out of the picture for quite a while, for a few years, in terms of the genre. But he made kind of a comeback by remaking his now lost silent film, London After Midnight, for MGM in 1935, called Mark of the Vampire. And it did okay. It made a profit. It was a credit to its company. It was a credit to its company. So he was looking around for another likely project, and he found a book by Abraham Merritt, a very strange kind of science fiction fantasy horror writer of the early 20th century. And the book was called Burn, Witch, Burn. And it was about this woman who is a witch, and it's in modern-day Manhattan.

And she makes the mistake of cursing a gangster's hitman. I guess that's what he is. And so this gangster comes to a doctor, and the doctor and the gangster gang up to try to defeat this witch. And what she's doing is she's, with magic, with black magic, she's taking the personality and the faces of her victims, people that cross her, and imbuing these real dolls, dolls made out of, you know, wood and plaster and, you know, wire and stuff like that. And they become these living little creatures, and they have to do her will. So Todd Browning is interested in this for a lot of reasons. It taps into his personal obsessions. And so he starts to work on the screenplay and he calls the project The Witch of Timbuktu. And fortunately, he was not allowed to make the version

that he wanted to make because today we would consider it incredibly politically incorrect and racist to a degree that would make The Mask of Fu Manchu look like it was a biopic of Martin Luther King. So he's working on this screenplay with Garrett Fort, who was one of the screenwriters very early on in the genre. He did the final scripts of both Dracula and Frankenstein for Universal. And when they go to present this project to their sales force in England, MGM, they say, no, we don't like horror movies to begin with. And on top of that, this movie is about black magic. And we here frown on that.

We find that to be quite transgressive, and we don't want to deal with it in our entertainment. We don't want to present that to the British public. So, they think and think about it, and they come up with the brilliant idea of not making it about black magic, but making it science fiction, making it so that it's about someone who turns people small. And obviously using the Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein and, you know, the various science fiction horror films of the early 30s as their template, they recraft it and they hire the down-on-his-luck Eric von Stroheim, another undisputed auteur of American cinema, and who shares with Todd Browning an interest in the seamy side, you know, con men, moral ambiguity, the regeneration of bad people. And he crafts the first screenplay about that,

about a scientist, a mad scientist who makes these human beings small. And that becomes their project. That's how this develops. And this is very late in the process. And that becomes approved. It gets rewritten several times and improved and perfected. Todd Browning is always in charge. Actually, MGM is always in charge. But Todd Browning is the artistic spearhead of this project. And so every one of the changes makes it more Brownsian, if that's an adjective. Yeah, I was listening to the audio commentary, Steve, and you mentioned the number of writers. And you would think, oh, man, that's going to be a disaster. But it sounded like that

through your research, I think you say that actually, it made it some way better each time. I think you say that actually it made it some way better each time. It made it better every time. I don't know where this theory that the number of writers on a project makes it bad. You know, the whole idea, it can. It depends on who's guiding those writers and the motivation for the rewrites. But, you know, if you have somebody that is focused, what they're doing is they're taking the ideas of a lot of other obviously talented people and folding it into their vision. He only had two writers, but the second writer made a big difference. The first writer sort of came up with the template of the story of the adaptation. The second writer really made it more Corman's vision. And that's what happened with each of the rewrites on The Witch of Timbuktu, which eventually became, you know, The Devil Doll.

I mean, if you want to talk about films with multiple writers ending up in a genius result, look at Blazing Saddles. Exactly. Yes. And I've been in that stew myself, as you all know. So, you know, I mean, it's, it can be a creative bliss. I mean, Mel has all of his writers in the same room at the same time, which you would think would be chaos. But Mel is a bit of a fascist, despite the fact that he makes anti-fascist movies. And so, you know, everything kind of gets filtered into Mel's vision. Even though both Life Stinks and Dracula were projects I came to Mel with, they are not Steve Haberman movies. Those are Mel Brooks movies. Because he said yes and no.

He guided it, you know, for better or for worse. And he made them unmistakably Mel Brooks movies. And that's what Browning did. Because he had that kind of strong, consistent vision. Stay with us. We'll be right back. Hi, this is Tim Millard, host of The Extras Podcast. And I wanted to let you know that we have a new private Facebook group for fans of the Warner Archive and Warner Brothers Catalog physical media releases.

So if that interests you, you can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. You can find the link on our Facebook page or look for the link in the podcast show notes. So, Constantine, you can jump in here, but I mean, what are some of the things that you were going through your research here about this film that kind of jumped out to you? Well, I think at the time that I had revisited it, it was not one of the Browning films that I always went back to. I think Discovery for me was really focusing on the performances, you know, really embracing what the film is at its heart, which I think we tried to express at the end that even watching a movie like the mystic which i just you know was really entertained by really discovered as uh in this in this new presentation as a a masterpiece that i would put right up there with the show and um uh for the unknown i i was really taken by it but it all comes full circle with the devil doll and

it's like the devil doll was a nice stopping point because miracles for sale is is his final film that he does afterwards which is um i'm sure if he had more time and i i'd studied that film for a period it's it's it's not the devil doll i think think the thing that I appreciated was, and it is sad that Cheney didn't live to play various roles, but if anyone was going to play that part, not Cheney, certainly Lionel Barrymore brought such heart that I thought, I don't know if this may be upsetting to some people, would Chaney have been even better than Lionel Barrymore? I think that's what I was processing as I watched the movie, because Barrymore himself was a staple by Browning's work as an actor's director. And you kind of wonder when you're watching all these silent films, how does he elicit a performance like the finale of The Unknown with Cheney's complete and utter breakdown, which again, blew my mind when I watched it the other night when I got the Criterion set.

Or, of course, how does he pull off what he pulls off with all of these non-actors and freaks? I think my admiration for Browning was the actor's director, because nothing feels off. Yes, there's some quirkiness, a little bit excessiveness with Melina, the character Melina in The Devil Doll. And honestly, this goes back to Dracula, where people criticized maybe Lugosi was a little bit too theatrical. This is what Browning wanted. I just have a hard time when you watch all the Browning movies. And that's what I was doing, prepping for this commentary. And we had a very short amount of time,

but it was joyous because, and I was like, I think we recorded and then like three days later, I had neck surgery. So I was going into deformity. I was like going into a town Browning movie myself, but having Browning film after film sort of processing in my brain, you recognize that nothing is a mistake. And that is consistent with all of his work. And I think for The Devil

Doll, while it's the penultimate Browning movie of his entire career, I think it's one of the ultimate in terms of performance. And he had one of the great actors of American cinema, Lionel Barrymore, as his star. And you're asking me, what did I discover? I mean, I think that's what I... You can get the facts and you can process the travels of the screenplay and all the people that came in and out and how this is the movie that he ended up with. But Barrymore, it was just really interesting reading what he had to say about the film or the work. But my discovery was a greater appreciation for Todd Browning as an actor's director. Steve, it sounded like you had some comments about that. About Browning as an actor's director?

Yeah, and the performances in The Devil Doll. Well, yeah. Well, look, as the talkies progressed in the 30s, you could see a new kind of acting starting to take place in front of the camera. Obviously, it became much more naturalistic. In the late 20s, when talkies began, the only place you could see acting with sound was on stage. So it became very kind of stagey because the actors had been trained to project their voices and to play for the balcony.

And, you know, I mean, there were certain things that actors had been trained to do, and none of it involved a camera this close to your face. And so you can see in the early, in the late 20s and the early 30s, some actors got it right away. And other actors, you know, it took a little while. But by 1936, when The Devil Doll was made, there was an art of acting for the camera that was well known. The Spencer Tracy approach where you just are very naturalistic. You don't bump into the furniture and you say your lines. And that's where Todd Browning was in 1936. And that's where Todd Browning was in 1936.

In 1931, when he made Dracula, Bela Lugosi was always saying, you know, my director is always trying to bring me down. He says, don't be so big. And if that's Bela Lugosi being brought down, I can imagine what he was doing on Broadway in 1927 as Dracula. But, you know, it works for that movie because that movie is gothic. You know, big sets and big emotions and big performances. And it's not realistic. It's as expressionistic as a sound film could be in 1931. So by the time The Devil Doll came along, Browning had also become more naturalistic. Although Browning's silent films are very naturalistic. I too just watched the restoration of The Unknown, which is a revelation. Ten minutes of silent movie time is a long time, you know? And they

found ten more minutes in another print of the unknown and it makes that movie full and deep and the characters much more believable and it gives the motivation you know for example it's very clear now that joan crawford is afraid of men's hands because of her father and i saw the mystic as well which as constantine said is a masterpiece it is absolutely mainstream Browning with his, you know, his themes. It's about carnival people. It's about the regeneration of a bad guy. And it even has a very touching ending, a surprisingly positive ending. You know, had Lon Chaney played the lover part in The Mystic, it probably would have had a tragic ending because he never got the girl.

But this guy gets the girl, you know. And it's a wonderful, wonderful movie. And, and it's the last act of that movie is so suspenseful. I mean, you don't know what is going to happen. And he does,

you know, Browning before Hitchcock was doing the Hitchcock recipe for suspense, which is giving the audience all the information, but not giving all the characters on screen the information. So he shows the two sides, the law and the criminals, very clearly. He shows what they're doing, what their motivation is, and he brings them together in the end. And you don't know what's going to happen or who's going to survive or what relationships are going to end up being.

It's a masterpiece, The Mystic, and along with The Unknown and Freaks, which we always knew was a transgressive masterpiece, and The Devil Doll, this is a nice Halloween season for Todd Browning. And it goes a long way to get rid of, you know, there was a lot of bad scholarship about Todd Browning. It wasn't so bad scholarship. The facts were found and a lot of the research was valid, but a lot of the critical discernment was missing. And I don't think Browning was ever given his due. I wish Andrew Sarris or somebody like that thing about Browning. He was comparing him to James Whale, because they sort of together with Dracula and Frankenstein created the horror genre. And Andrew Sarris, who was our American proto-autorist, he said, James Whale may have been the greater technician, but Todd Browning was the greater artist. And that becomes clear the more of Browning's work that we can see, you know, restored in the way he presented it. It's interesting you say that because when we were researching, there was one of the few studies, and I can't remember which critic had written this, but it said, you know, Todd Browning basically deserves more attention or requires further study.

And back in the 70s, whenever this was written, I was looking far back as I could. I thought it's only now in the 21st century can, you know, these people didn't have the chance to have the study. And now we do. It's not just the facts, but I mean, watching the mystic this way, and I know this, somebody's out there even doing their own, probably legal restoration of the show. I saw like, well, what is this? Like the attention to Todd Browning today? Gary Rhodes book on Revolt of the Dead, which just came out, was extremely useful and required reading for anybody. But look, it's worthwhile. But there's such a reassessment. And you can watch the movies. It's just not scholarly work. They're all there and they're all being presented in ways where you can find them.

I mean, we got Mark of the Vampire earlier. George, was that this February? When did Mark of the Vampire come out? I think that was last year. It was the same time as the Dr. Jekyll and Hyde. We did that podcast on both of those together, actually. But that was like, it's great.

Thank you to George for the Blackbird, you know, or the 13th chair. Like, we have all the movies now. All the things that came out on DVD, and now the battle is to get them in HD and restored. And that's a big battle.

But we're winning little battles, and hopefully eventually we'll win the war. The war for restoration. Yeah. Well, why don't we take a break from Todd Browning just to ask you a little bit about the restoration on the Devil doll. Because usually we talk about that, George, and just the HD version. And then you can give us a little background on, I mean, it looks terrific from what I saw. Yeah, I think it looks, it's astounding because the previous transfer that everybody has seen is close to 30 years old. Standard definition.

It served its purpose at its time. The Devil Doll is one of the many, many MGM films where the original negative perished in the tragic fire at George Eastman House in the late 1970s. So we had to work from secondary elements, but we scanned them at 4K, as we usually do for preservation. And then our masterful team at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging went in and did their usual magic, which should never be underestimated because the work they do is astounding. And what they did for this film,

especially considering that they weren't able to work with a first-generation camera negative, it looks so much better than anyone has ever seen it. And equally as important, it sounds terrific because the audio has been restored as well by Warner Brothers post-production archival audio. So I was just blown away with how good it looked and sounded and knew the fans would be very happy. One thing I noticed about seeing it looking so good, and I want to get your take, Constantine and Steve, because you talk about this a lot in the commentary is there's a lot of special effects in this.

I mean, the dolls. And I thought they actually, they look great, even though they're now in HD. You know, you could expose things more when you have a better image like that. Talk a little bit about that when you saw it, your impressions. image like that. Talk a little bit about that when you saw it, your impressions. Well, those were traveling mats and traveling mats can look great or they can look terrible. And, you know, MGM had a wonderful special effects department. Even this restoration, it doesn't expose any flaws. What it exposes is the fact that they were so meticulous. Even sometimes people crossing in front of the dolls that are mats,

you know, that are moving mats, and they do a wipe with people crossing in front of them. I mean, the greatest thing they did was not special effects. It was making gigantic sets. You know, later on, Universal would do that for The Incredible Shrinking Man. But the ones in Devil Doll, there are these big art deco stairways and huge end tables, built to scale sets that match the real normal size sets. It's just remarkable. And the thing about it is, movies like even Dracula and Freaks, which have been available forever, they were a different experience when they were crummy 16 millimeter prints or worse than that VHS off crummy 16 millimeter prints or even 16 millimeter prints or 35 millimeter

prints that had been pasted together. They had, you know, speckles and dirt and it makes such a huge difference just to see them pristine as you would see them at the, not just as the release in your town, but maybe at the premiere, you know, the cast and crew screening. That's how good these look now. I would add though, that that's, that's the magic of MGM. When you have M, when you had MGM behind you, you got the ability to make sets that were so carefully crafted that, I mean, nothing looks false. The giant pearls, everything looks right. And one thing that I would also add, I want to go back to what George said about the audio restoration. For the first time time you can hear with such clarity the Franz Waxman score. Yes.

I think when those of us who love film scores get a chance to listen to old classic, you know, you're listening to film and you're like, oh, one of my favorite composers is composing the music for this picture. Oftentimes, you know, an old 30-year transfer, it's like the music kind of just gets buried. It's there. It's part of just a simple layer of sound because you can't really differentiate it. And I think I try to pay attention here because I thought what music there is in the film, it's not wall to wall, but there's a lot. Uh, it, it really, uh, pops isn't the right word, but I,

it, it, you can finally hear it, I think for the, the quality and care that Franz Waxman put into it. And, and I, I know when George, uh, was sending files, he was like, listen to the sound, the sound is so great. And, and he was so right. So like everything from the visuals and, and the, the, the colors and the blacks, especially, I always look for that in a black and white film. It's just so wonderful to see this movie this way, especially when you get to these nice touching close-ups at the end of the film between Lionel Barrymore and his daughter. The power is certainly magnified because you can see these people, you can see the emotion on their face better than you have ever seen it before. And

that's, I think, at the heart of the end of this movie. It's so important. And it's so important that Browning is getting three films to come out all at the same time. But I think the Devil Doll is not always one that people go to. Like, there's Freaks, there's Dracula. They talk about the Chaney films. But I'm really excited that the Devil Doll got this attention. And I thank George once again for inviting us to do it with him. for inviting us to do it with him.

Well, I think we have to talk about A. Arnold, quote-unquote, Buddy Gillespie, the special effects genius who is probably best known for The Wizard of Oz, but this is three years before that. He was incredible at what he was able to do, and it is amazing that 85 plus years later, we can look at the Devil Doll and see these special effects that are really, I would say, cutting edge for the time. Would you gentlemen agree? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Bride of Frankenstein. I can't think. Well, you know, in King Kong and in The Lost World, you know, they were doing traveling mats and they were sort of.

Yeah. But it's it's right up there. And as a movie, I think it's as good as any of them. And I think it's as good as any of Browning's films as well. I think it's one of his great movies. any of Browning's films as well. I think it's one of his great movies. I agree. And I did a lot of research in Todd Browning's employment file, going back literally to the pre-MGM merger and his early works. And then it was clear from going through all this documentation that he had a huge supporter in Irving Thalberg. And Irving Thalberg believed in his genius and was basically his defender against others within the MGM hierarchy that were not necessarily supportive of the things he wanted to do. But Thalberg got it. And we're blessed to have this body of work.

Interestingly enough, MGM had something in the hopper with him as late as 1942, but nothing ever came of it. And it seemed like there were people at the studio even after Thalberg's death who were still trying to champion him. So he wasn't all alone. There were people there who really supported him. I wish Browning had directed a version of Nightmare Alley. That would have been right up his alley. I know he was trying to get They Shoot H shoot horses, don't they, off the ground, which would have been absolutely mainstream Todd Browning. But with the death of Irving

Thalberg, I think that was pretty much the death of Todd Browning's career. Yeah, for sure. And look what happened after he passed away to the Marx Brothers at MGM. They basically got two great movies and what followed were not of that level of greatness. Right. I always I always wonder what would have happened to a Todd Browning film made during the war. I figured something something to speak to, you know, the horrors that everybody were experiencing. You know, Pride of the Marines done by Todd Browning would have been interesting. Yeah, of course.

But I mean that in a something like that. I'm not saying this facetiously. I think that he probably had a lot to say, but didn't have an outlet. So I'm, I'm just, again, so happy that, that there's such a reassessment that I don't know how many people are browning family out there, family members that are still alive to sort of, sort of see a vindication or appreciation that, that generations are now re-experiencing. The Mystic in particular really struck me. You're talking about suspense. I mean, there's that moment in the film where you have no idea,

you have no idea which way this movie is going to go. I don't want to give it away, but it's really powerful. And revisiting the unknown and just watching Cheney's complete and utter breakdown, all the emotion that's going on in his head. I mean, that's the beauty of that dynamic between Cheney and Browning. I don't think it's rarely been matched, but, but to see this in a, in high definition as, as restored is going to get I want, I rewound the scene as I watched it just to watch it one more time. And again, if you haven't seen it, it's toward the end of the film. Don't want to reveal it, but you know, this is Halloween at its best, everybody.

You might not have, you know, you might not, George, you might not have been able to get more than just The Devil All Out through Warner Archives. But this other Criterion release happened because of you and pushing. I mean, I don't know if you want to speak to that, but, you know, these MGM films came out because you saw that was valuable and important and the right thing to do. So thank you for that. Without question, and we're not done yet. There are many more that I want to tackle, both from the, actually from the MGM side, the Warner side, and the RKO side. I do want to share my enthusiasm for what Criterion has done with freaks. They are, the people at Criterion, I think of more as more than just partners. They're almost like family to me because we've worked so closely together and I've known them such a long time.

They had freaks under license for many years, but they were overwhelmed by the need to tackle it properly and do it in a way that was worthy of the Criterion Collection. What happened was, if you are a fan of Freaks, and I have been since I saw it, I think it was in junior high school and snuck into a midnight show, I think it was in junior high school and snuck into a midnight show, you know, much to my parents' horror. That was in the late 70s and when it was still, you know, cool to see movies like that and it was running the midnight show circuit. But it just astounded me. And yet it also looked terrible. And the whole time that I've ever seen it, it looked terrible. And I'll make a very, very long story short, because this is a very long story. In 1947, MGM made a decision

to sub-license the theatrical rights to freaks to a tent show promoter for a 25-year period, and that would have reverted in 1972. The tent show promoter wanted access to the original negative, MGM refused, and they sub-licensed to the tent show promoter with the proviso that MGM's name nor the MGM line would not be part of the film. And those rights passed down to other people, eventually to the last individual that had those rights was, most people will know who I'm talking about, but I'm not going to mention any names. This person was a notorious, he was not a straight arrow in terms of business dealings and had a rather unscrupulous way of dealing with film and film ownership. And so basically at the end of the license, And so basically at the end of the license, there was a dupe negative made in 1947, nitrate dupe negative, that was given to the original tent show promoter and worked its way down to this last owner of the term, this person was supposed to return that nitrate dupe negative to MGM.

And not only was he late in resolving it and really tried to snorkel the studio in a big way, when he finally relented, everybody thought everything was fine, but the film librarian hadn't actually communicated with the legal department, and illegally, basically, ended up depositing it with the Library of Congress. And the ownership of that element or that element was gifted to the Library of Congress by this person. And Criterion and ourselves confirmed that that element was there. And I spent four months going through legal files to make the legal argument that that was our material that was never properly returned. And fortunately, after the empirical evidence, that element was clarified as being indeed Warner Brothers' property at Library of Congress on deposit there. That was the source of the restoration that Criterion has just released. So this was very much a team effort. And of course, everybody wins because now Warner Brothers has something to distribute in all markets that's of much finer quality than anyone has ever seen before. And that's due to the collaboration with our friends and partners at the Criterion Collection.

It was their idea to add The Mystic, which I was thrilled about because we have so many silent films that haven't been accessible to the public because we haven't had audio tracks to go with them. And Criterion took the leap here to say, oh, this is what we want to do. And they wanted to add The Unknown and really make it into something that was a testament to the sensibilities of Todd Browning as a filmmaker. So you get this enormous amount of attention paid to Freaks and what has happened with the unknown and the previously hard-to-see, the mystic. What a phenomenal collection that they've put together.

And, you know, anything they do is a reflection of our collaboration with them as partners. And between what Warner Archive does and what Criterion does and what we do with a few other select partners of great respect. We're bringing more of our library to the consumers on physical media, which we do not want to see have a premature slicing of the neck. There are a huge amount of people out there that want to own physical media and want to own it with the very best quality. And while some people may not see that as important, Warner Brothers does. And that's why Warner Archive is still around. with folks like Criterion to make sure that we can get as much of this great cinematic legacy out to people's shelves at home as possible. Thank God, because you can see your story proves

how fragile analog media is. You know, it's stuff that dissolves, that blows up, that catches fire, that gets lost. And the only way to preserve the art form of the 20th century is physical media, stuff that people will have, like books in their home that they'll pass down to their children and stuff. And that's how I've always thought of it, Steve, because what you say, I say building a library of films on your home shelf is like building a library of books. Now, I may have 200 books on my Kindle, but I have about 2,000 books on my bookshelves. And I have 1,000 movies in my digital locker, but I have about 8,000 movies between Blu-ray, DVD, 4K, LaserDisc, and even Betamax tapes. If you have

the physical media in your hand, there's nothing like it. That's right. And we're going to continue fighting the good fight and I have to thank Tim and you guys and everybody who is on the side. There's a huge amount of people

who are fighting this fight and I don't even know some of them, but we're all aligned together in making sure that physical media is a vibrant and living business. Even if it's changed and morphed into more of a niche business, it's still a business, and it still can be done profitably for the shareholders of each individual rights holders company. I just want to jump in and say one last thing about The Mystic. I really was taken by the soundtrack, the new score. But I say soundtrack because it has sound effects.

George, I don't know how you feel or how you felt about that. But the composer is Dean Hurley, and it just feels, it's a very textured soundtrack and a wonderful score, unlike, I mean, there's a lot of wonderful scores written, and The Unknowns is also really good by Philip Carley. But this one, I just had to look it up. Dean Hurley. I was really taken by this score. I loved it. I think they did a wonderful job. And there are several contemporary composers, performers, and instrumentalists who are all creating great music for films that are 100 years old or getting

there. And that's terribly important. And I just was very, very impressed with what they did for both The Mystic and The Unknown. Yeah. And for The Mystic, Constantine, to your point, I'm going into it thinking not having seen it before, oh, this is a silent film. There'll be a little bit of music, but the effects, the doors closing, the light switches, everything that they're doing there, I was shocked by it. And it really did add a lot to the viewing experience. Yeah. You felt like you were one of the audience members being tricked by the whole, yeah, it was, it was, and it was done in, in such a way where it was, it wasn't flat. When I say textured, it's,

it was very considered where, and I mean, I don't, I don't, I don't know how they chose to mix it the way they did, but I thought it was very clever. It was like the M&E track, you know, who's ADR, what's the music, all that's missing is the voice. Well, I was a little surprised about the Devil Doll to hear that it was his, you know, Todd Browning's penultimate. And I think you guys touched on it, you know, because I was thinking, why? Why wasn't he able to do more after the Devil Doll?

I mean, he did just the one. And it sounded like not having Irving Thalberg there was a big part of it. But was there anything else to that? Why he didn't do more movies? Well, he said he wanted to retire. I mean, people say that when they can't make movies anymore. So you wonder whether he was fired or they couldn't fire him because he quit first. I don't know. But I'm pretty sure it was Thalberg because, you know, I mean, Browning's movies were very Browning. Even now, if you look at the great span of silent movies, all the different kinds of silent movies, Browning's movies pop out

because they're so obsessive about the things he's interested in that nobody else seems to be interested in. I mean, nobody would have made Freaks ever, ever. So Steve, expound on that a little bit. What was he interested in? What are his themes that endure? Well, you know, he ran away to the circus when he was a teenager. He came from a rather affluent home in Kentucky and he ran away to join the

circus. He was interested in show business at the lowest level, you know? And he was like, he, he was probably the geek in the circus at some point, you know, he allowed himself to be buried alive. He was a clown. He was this, he was that water, the elephants, he, that's the way he came in. And then when movies began to be a thing, of course, he was intrigued by that. He already had a show business gene in him. And so he joined up with D.W. Griffith, as one does, and learned his craft. And he maintained

that interest, that very individualist interest in that kind of show business. I mean, being a certain kind of a criminal is show business, isn't it? You know, being a con artist is show business. Tricking people, taking their money, exploiting them, bait and switch, that's all part of show business, isn't it? And so he broadened his horizons. I think he discovered Edgar Allan Poe at a very early age. So he was interested in the darker side of human nature. And they all came together in a very special blend we call Todd Browning, where he makes movies about show business people or criminals who are performers, are tricking people. And he's very interested in the regeneration of criminals,

as was Lon Chaney. You know, Lon Chaney was a big advocate of prisoners. He went to prisons and visited prisoners, and he was very interested in their rehabilitation once they got out of prison. And Todd Browning makes movies like that. The most moving part of The Devil Doll, and the most moving presentation of that Browning theme, is the end, where he finally gets to see, where he renounces his criminal enterprise, because it was all just for revenge. It was very personal. And he took his revenge. And he knows for the safety of his mother and his daughter that he can't come back into the world again as himself, even though he's been exonerated for the crime that he was in prison for. But he's committed murder now. And, you know, that last scene with Marino Sullivan, with his daughter, is so moving on so many levels. And one of the most moving, beyond the narrative and beyond the characters and the performances, one of the most moving aspects of that scene is the fact that it is Todd Browning at his highest level showing one of his most personal themes. It's like vertigo for Hitchcock.

You know, he's really exposing something that's very important to him. And that is the soul of a man who's committed crime, who's been an enemy to society. But he's not a sociopath. But he was in sort of survival mode committing crime. And now he's connecting on a human level with someone that he loves. But he's sacrificed so much, he can't let her know who he is ever. It's really wonderful. And then is he going to kill himself? He gets in that elevator and the elevator boy says, it's a nice night. And he says, it's the most beautiful night of my life. Very, very moving. Coming from Todd Browning.

I felt the same way. I think that was one of Barrymore's later great performances. And it's so nuanced and it's so moving because it wouldn't be too much later that he'd be Dr. Gillespie. And that's not to say anything against the Kildare films or Barrymore but he became more of a caricature as opposed to a straightforward actor

with this incredible list of stages, screen credits. This is a really remarkable performance and it's highly, highly stylized. Yeah, it's up there with his performance in Key Largo is pretty real and moving too. Oh, that's true. And that was many years later. But he was great. I mean, he rose to any occasion and it was really a Chaney character. It had the

nuances of a Chaney character. It had the nuances of a Chaney character. Barrymore most often played the villain in Browning silent films, like in West of the West. You know, he's rotten. He's just a terrible guy. And, you know, he shows in The Devil Doll that he could have played the Chaney part, the nuanced good bad guy or bad good guy, you know? I remember reading one of his quotes, and of course, he's speaking to his public, and there's some joke about him in his costume and the wig, and they should have gotten Ethel to play the part. Why did they come to me? But he's saying this certainly in a joking, passing manner, but there's nothing but, it's not just professionalism, but he clearly understood the character.

And he never once breaks into anything that's a stylized or slightly outlandish performance, even when he's dressed in in the drag part of the the role. He never wavers from the commitment of that character, which obviously that's partnership between him and his director. Like they knew exactly where they wanted to go and they had to get to that end. And if that end was not, if the end, the end could only work if the rest of the movie, even, even if he's surrounded by some of the other characters that were performances that were stylized his character was always someone you could sympathize with and that's what that's what really was like crystal clear because i'm watching it in a crystal clear way on this you know like like finally a way to

really appreciate the film and it struck me how important this movie is that's an interesting point you made because i think that's one of the things that Browning has over James Whale. And that is, no matter how contrived the plot, there's a human sincerity to Browning's characters. There's an emotional reality to Browning's characters that's not in James Whale, because James Whale is being very camp oftentimes, you know? He is often guying the material in a very entertaining and clever way, but yet there's a lot of winking in James Whale. There's not any in Browning. And Browning's plots are, you know, they're like some of Hitchcock's plots. They're pretty tricky and rather contrived, because he's always going for a twist or suspense. He's always going for surprise or suspense, Browning is, like Hitchcock does. And so you can go through this crazy story with the living dolls and stuff like that committing murder and get to an ending in Browning between a father and daughter and feel it completely like it was directed by Clarence Brown, you know? We didn't really talk about the impact of the Hays Code, which I think you guys bring up quite a bit in the commentary, but that did impact The Devil Doll quite a bit as well,

right? Yeah. I mean, that's why the script became what it became. I mean, there was like no way there were no gangster films being made at that time. No, the horror film band certainly in Steve brought up in England. George, what do you think? and seeing the response back from the Breen office, as it was called, they were very restricted in what they could do. And yet, the film is, I think, very cutting edge in being able to not only have visual fright, but it also has implied fright. Just as with the great Balut movies, most of the horrific things you only hear about, you don't actually see them happen on camera. Steve, you pointed out the suicide at the end. I mean, you could go either way, but it's pretty heavily implied that there's suicide and yet that's a real possibility, and then you see the water, and then you see the water ripple. I mean, you get what happened. But I think the power of this ending is maybe the fact that he's seen his daughter and given her some peace, maybe he's not going to kill himself now.

I think that's even more powerful than that he does. Because the fact that he says it's the most beautiful night of his life, maybe he's going to go underground. You don't know. I like that ending better than just flat out suicide. But yeah, the Hays office, that was just not allowed. Nor, you know, in the early scripts, the Marino Sullivan character was implied to be a prostitute, at the very least, you know, on her way to becoming an alcoholic. at the very least, you know, on her way to becoming an alcoholic. And all of that stuff had to be removed as well.

You know, they said they were very specific to MGM. They said she is a good person. She's a good daughter. She's a good she has a good heart, but she has to do work that is demeaning to survive, you know, which in a way, you know, in 1936, which was still the Depression, was a noble kind of pursuit. Somebody who's, you know, could be better if her circumstances were better, but she's forced to work in the laundry to support herself and her mother. Absolutely. Well, just to wrap it up, gentlemen, I think for anybody who's new to Todd Browning or who wants to build their library, I mean, after watching these four movies, I have to say, I think you need to get both of these, The Criterion set and The Devil Doll.

I think everyone's gonna be pretty happy in watching these films. They're highly entertaining and a great representation of Todd Browning's work. Yeah. And let me also recommend a few other Warner titles that aren't on Blu-ray. You need to see West of Zanzibar.

That's one of his truly great movies. And The Unholy Three. These are all silent movies. And Warner's even offers, you know, some of the lesser movies like The Blackbird and stuff like that. I mean, every one of them is unmistakably a Browning movie.

And the show. I would say the show. The show. That's also on DVD from Warner's. Yes, it is. Thank you, George. Thank you, George. But now we have to take them to the next level. That's right. We're trying.

And there are some Warner Brothers and RKO genre films that are itching to get out, maybe even a few from other sources. So we've got some surprises in store, that's for sure. But we'll leave that for another visit to the extras. And Tim? We'll leave that for another visit to the extras. And Tim? We didn't even touch on the unknown to the level that I was blown away by that film and Lon Chaney's and Joan Crawford's work in that one. We just barely touched on it. You touched on the music too, a little bit, Constantine.

But it was a lot of fun. It's a good introduction for everybody. And hopefully whets the appetite to want to hear you two in your terrific audio commentary on The Devil Doll. So thanks for coming on The Extras. Thank you, Tim. Thank you very much. Thank you, gentlemen, for your inestimable contribution to making this Blu-ray as truly wonderful event for the year. It's our pleasure. And we're here anytime you call. Thanks so much.

Thanks so much, Tim. For those of you interested in learning more about the Todd Browning films we discussed today, there are links in the podcast show notes and on our website at www.theextras.tv. That includes The Devil Doll and the Criterion Collection release of Freaks, The Unknown, and The Mystic. I'll also have a list of some of the other Todd Browning films released by the Warner Archive on our website, so be sure and check those out. If you're on social media, be sure and follow the show on Facebook or Twitter at The Extras TV or Instagram at The Extras.TV to stay up to date on our upcoming guests and to be a part of our community. And for our long-term listeners, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review at iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast provider. Until next time,

you've been listening to Tim Millard. Stay slightly obsessed. The Extras is a production of Otaku Media, producers of podcasts, behind the scenes extras, and media that connects creatives with their fans and businesses with their consumers. Contact us today to see how we can work together to achieve your goals at www.otakumedia.tv or look for the link in the show notes.