The Extras - We Get Spooky with Three Warner Bros Horror Classics

Episode Date: October 29, 2024

We get spooky in our Halloween special featuring the expertise of George Feltenstein from the Warner Archive, alongside the sharp insights of film historians and audio commentary contributors Dr. Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasr. Ever wondered why Jack Warner, a known skeptic of horror, decided to produce some of the eeriest films of the 1930s and 40s? We unearth these mysteries and celebrate the restoration of iconic films "The Walking Dead" starring Boris Karloff and directed by Michael Curtis, "The Return of Dr. X" starring Humphrey Bogart and directed by Vincent Sherman, and "The Beast with Five Fingers" starring Peter Lorre and directed by Robert Florey. We shed light on their production, the HD restoration details and included extras, and the unique elements that make these horror films enduring classics.Blu-ray purchase links:THE WALKING DEAD (1936)THE RETURN OF DOCTOR X (1939)THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946) 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 Tom Weaver, author of Universal Horrors, a monster movie audio commentator, and member of the Tim Millard fan club. You're listening to the extras. Hey, we have a fun, spooky Halloween episode here today, and I have three very special guests. Very excited to have George Felstein on from the Warner Archive. Dr. Steve Haberman and Constantine Nasser, who are both writers, producers and film historians. So I hope you'll enjoy our special Halloween episode on The Extras.

Hi, guys. Hi, how are you doing? Hello all. So George, you have a great month. You have three classic horror releases coming from the Warner Archive this month. That feels like more than it's been for a while. So how'd that all come together? Fan demand. Everybody was asking for these films and I made sure well in advance that we'd be able to bring in the camera negatives from the Library of Congress and do a full restoration with 4K scans.

And they look phenomenal and thank you to these gentlemen who've been so integral these gentlemen who've been so integral in helping to support not only these releases, but of course releases in past years. You guys are my heroes and I'm eternally grateful to you. Back at you, George. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, and just for those who don't know, this is our third Halloween podcast talking about your commentaries that you guys have done on certain different releases, which is a lot of fun. Steve, we were just talking earlier, this is becoming a yearly habit.

I said, yeah, let's do it each year. That's terrific fun. Why not? So, well, let's talk about, we'll talk about all three films that are releasing from The Warner Archive this month, but let's start with The Beast with Five Fingers from 1946 because I know Constantine, you and Steve created and recorded an all new commentary for it. And Steve, maybe we'll start with you. Maybe you can provide a little background on the origins of the film. I know there's a lot of interesting stuff leading up to it.

on the origins of the film. I know there's a lot of interesting stuff leading up to it. Well, you know, it's based on a short story by W.H. Harvey, which is very, very well regarded, you know, anthologized from the early 20th century. And Warner Brothers was not too prolific with horror films ever, even in the 30s. Really, they only made, you know, four or five in the 30s, really they only made, you know, four or five in the 30s and they only made, if you don't count Arsenic and Old Lace as a horror film, they only

made one in the 40s and it was The Beast with Five Fingers because Jack Warner wasn't particularly, you know, excited about that genre. But, you know, it almost would have been commercial malpractice had they not at least tried to make a horror film during the horror boom between 1931 and 1946 or so. So the one they made late in the game was The Beast with Five Fingers, as I said, based on this short story by Harvey. And he wisely had Kurt Siodmak do the screenplay. And Kurt Siodmak had written some stuff for Universal

like The Wolf Man and Black Friday, and he also wrote the first draft of I Walk with a Zombie, which was basically rewritten by Ardell Ray. But he was very into, kind of like Roger Corman later in the 1960s, he was into the psychology of the protagonists of horror. I mean, especially, obviously, in The Wolfman. As a matter of fact, his original script of The Wolfman didn't show The Wolfman. It was all about the suffering of Lawrence Talbot. So he was probably the guy to pick to do the screenplay for Beast with Five Fingers.

And he worked on it for a good long time. We have notes from him as far back as 1942 working on it. And he made it a movie about castration anxiety. And I go into that in great detail in the commentary. I may say the word penis one or two too many times. I don't want to give it away, but it's kind of obvious. It's about a guy who cuts the hand off of somebody else that is his father figure. So you do the math.

It's very Freudian. What he did was he made an hour and 26 minute brilliant Gothic horror film, dark, brilliant, psychological mystery horror film, dark, brilliant, psychological, mystery horror film. And Warner Brothers tacked on a one minute cringey comedy epilogue at the very end. But it doesn't ruin the movie. However, it's quite confusing when you go through the hour and 26 minutes of Gothic horror and at the end it becomes this farce for one minute. But anyway, that's what we do.

That's how we approach the beast with five fingers. Constantine, maybe you can pick up on that. What were some of the interesting things that you found in doing the research for the commentary? Well, I think that there was some opportunity to go back and read a little bit of what was written prior to, I think, the declining years of the horror film, which we're talking about the movie that ended it right before Abed and Costello met Frankenstein and really ended it.

But unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of access to what I liked. Steve and I both liked to go back to the original script and script notes. This was a hard one to... We didn't have the time and also the ability to find the access at probably at the USC archives. So, I think just going back and trying to have a better understanding of Flory's intent, Flory as a filmmaker, to me watching some of his earlier work and then also kind of digging back into the

Career of Peter Laurie at that time and Warner Brothers who was also, you know, kind of like waning In the I guess pre, you know, Jack Warner wasn't exactly appreciative of Peter Laurie In in the in the mids, and a lot of that had to do with his political feelings. So, kind of for me, going back and understanding the people who made the film and then also realizing that Kurt Siyadmakis, he was saying, was such a critical figure, he pretty much from a writer's perspective ruled the 1940s. When you look at all the films he had hand in, things might have been adjusted along

the way, but particularly when you look at his involvement with Universal and then with Val Lutten in a movie like this, C. Odd, I Mac was all over the place. Um, and in a way as an independent writer. That I think was like really impressive and a lot of it had to do with a very psychological impact and and it was a no coincidence that of course at this time film noir was so strong. That's. course at this time film noir was so strong that those German expressionist ideas of the mind also informed the way the thematics of the films of the 1940s went concurrently with the horror film, including a movie that we all love, like Son of Dracula, which was a Siad Mack experience. So I think that to me was the most interesting part.

And really looking back on a movie that I hadn't kind of watched in quite a while, hoping that George was going to get to it. And he got to it like with two other great films. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, George, why don't we- Thank you, George. George, why don't we throw that to you then and you can talk a little bit about

the film and what's made it so popular over the years and kind of how the restoration process came together. Well, this, this is particularly gratifying because I would say maybe 10 years ago, maybe more, we did remaster the film for DVD. That wasn't a restoration. That was a new master because what had been existing before was like 30 years old at that time and looked really awful. But we didn't have access to the original negative. A new fine grain was made and that master did not look very good. And I was disappointed in the quality because you want it, it was so beautifully shot, you

want to have the presentation be up to the par of what the creators intended. So to be able to get the approval to go for it and do something that was really definitive, scanning the negative 4k, coming out this new Blu-ray that is really pristine. This is incredibly rewarding because the fan base for certain films, and this is one of them, they were very vocal. We want this on blue. I hear that about four or 5,000 films all the time because everybody has their favorite. But this is definitely a keeper. It's really important in the studio's history and it maintains

its ability to entertain and fascinate, especially because, as you guys just pointed out, this was not a genre that Warner Brothers really looked into very much. There were some B-pictures in the early 40s like The Hidden Hand, and Mysterious Doctor, and so forth that were like, maybe they weren't really horror films, but they were exploring mystery. This was more blatant horror and is to be treasured for that reason.

Yeah, I recall in listening to your audio commentary guys and looking at the images, you talked a lot about the influence of German Expressionism and the way it's filmed. Maybe you can talk a little bit about that because in this restoration, I think that really helps George with this kind of filmmaking to really see the blacks and the contrast and everything. Precisely. Yeah, Robert Flory wanted it to be more expressionistic. His idea to, this is not really a movie he wanted to do, but once they made him do it, he really got into it and he said, I got excited about it.

And what he wanted to do is he wanted to make it from the Peter Lorre character's point of view and he's mad. So he was really trying to do a Dr. Caligari type thing where we would find out this was all the vision of a madman at the end. And he was going to go for not just expressionistic lighting and camera angles, but expressionistic sets. But the producer said that would be commercial suicide. We're not doing that.

So they didn't. But I think the movie is stronger for that because it really, it's naturalistic, but it's gothic. As you said, the lighting is very high contrast, use of shadows, use of moving camera and radical angles and so forth. So, and it gets more so as the narrative progresses and the narrative forces you into the Peter Laurie character's head in the last act. And then Robert Flory has more fun with extreme angles and with the strange lighting and music. Max Steiner's score is

fabulous in this. And with expressionistic sound effects, you know, he does wonders with like a mandolin string breaking and the sound of wind coming down a chimney and things like that. Wonderful stuff when it gets very expressionistic. But yet it's still in a naturalistic environment. It's just what the camera and the sound effects and the performance. Peter Laurie goes full out expressionistic as a German actor, you know, from that he knew what he was doing. So he does a lot of, you know, stuff. So it has that quality too, but within a naturalistic framework and I think it works extremely well. Yeah. I mean, they do a lot of closeups on him

when he's in those modes, but let's talk about Peter Lorry for a second. Constantine, what did you learn about Peter Lorry in some of this research, or what are just some of your thoughts on his performance in this film? Well, I think that it starts off in a way where Peter Lorry is, he's not a background character,

but he's not presented as the main character. And I like how the film progresses that he, as Steve said, he kind of just starts unraveling and he goes full on gothic, German expressionism by the end. So I think he hadn't really had that opportunity for the genre, not that he was looking to do a horror film, certainly at that time. I just found it to be one of his more compelling films of the period, because he was often used, always really good.

That's the thing, you watch a Peter Lorry film from really any of his films. He's a good, very good, strong, supporting player. But he expected to have better roles and Warner Brothers just didn't give him any anything that was like like the one of the last great leading roles he had was with Robert Flory, with the face the mask in 1930 Steve was it 1940? 1940 yeah Columbia yeah but 1940 so so he's he's got five years or yeah he's he's in the Maltese Falcon memorable and he's memorable in Casablanca and the Curtis films I was just watching arsenic and old lace another great Warner

Brothers Halloween film that Criterion put out. My film? What? I said not quite a horror film, almost a horror film. Almost, but it's a Halloween film. We're in Halloween and I got to thank George for helping make that happen. Beautiful. Beautiful.

And you know, but you're like, well, you know, where's Peter Lorre like cutting loose? And this was the movie where he gets to cut loose. And it's not as dimensional as the face behind the mask. That really is a wonderful, sad movie. Less a horror film than just it's a tragic film. And obviously, he had a great experience working with Robert Flory. So the two of them may not have wanted to do this movie, but I think they made a very

memorable movie and sort of a final statement of the period in the mid-1940s before the genre just, again, just gets shunted away. Yeah. Some of the things that I learned that I wanted to just mention and we're not going to talk about the commentary because people need to watch the movie, see it in its brilliance first. I mean, this new Blu-ray, to your point, George, you know, when these films go from DVD to Blu-ray, the reason everybody's asking for those is because that's the huge jump, right? It's that DVD, the Blu-ray, that's the huge jump in terms of quality. And Steve, you mentioned the Max

Steiner score. So then the audio as well, you know, to get that, the full composition of the orchestration in this one specifically behind this great visual really makes the viewing experience a totally new experience really for people. So they need to see that first and then when they can come in and view it again with your audio commentary, so much you guys put in there, nuggets of information and everything. But here we are talking about Peter Lorian. Of course, he's not even the lead in the film, but he's so memorable in this. The other cast members, Robert, Alda, Andrea King, you guys talk about a lot. Talk about some of the other performances. And

of course, I want to talk about the hand itself a little bit. 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. Well, the hand is the star, of course, and the special effects are fantastic, you know. I mean, everybody talks about that Peter Laurie movie with The Hands.

Right. And that's, there's two movies that could be. That could be Peter Laurie's first American movie, which is Mad Love, where that's a remake of The Hands of Orlok, which was a novel and then a silent movie in Germany with Conrad Veidt. And Peter Lorry did it in America in 1935. Karl Freund directed it and he plays a mad doctor who has to remove the damaged hands of a concert pianist and graft on the hands of a knife murderer to save the man's hands, you know, as one does. And of course, the hands of the knife murderer

have a will of their own. At least Peter Laurie wants to talk Colin Clive, the poor pianist, into thinking so. So that was the one hand movie, the first hand movie of Peter Laurie. But this is really the hand movie. You know, first of all, this is the first disembodied hand feature. It became kind of a horror movie trope later on. The amicus films from England in the 60s liked to have hand short stories. But this is the hand movie, the classic first hand movie. And Peter Lorre, the fact that he's not in the first two acts as much as he's in the third act doesn't matter because what people take home from this movie is the actual basis of the movie, which is a crawling hand short story.

The short story itself is not as much of a horror story as Kurt Siyadmak made the movie. It's got horrible things in it. It's a creepy, eerie sort of idea, but it has a kind of British understatement in the character's reactions to the crawling hand that keeps it from being full. But this movie, Peter Laurie, if there were no hand in this movie, his reactions would make it a horror movie because he's so dim- he's so bipolar in it. You know how Peter Laurie likes to get very excited a lot in this movie, you know? And that's what people remember. So, oh, but the hand though, they did the hand a number of different ways. They had a couple of mechanical hands.

They had a non-moving wax hand. And they also did the hand with a real concert pianist who was doing a Bach piece for one hand that had actually been rejiggered for one hand on piano. And what they did is they did it like they did Claude Rains in The Invisible Man. The pianist was wrapped all in black velvet, and just the hand and the piano were shot against black. And then that was matted into the set

in which then they covered up the hand and the piano. So that could be, that was made into a shadow. The optical printer does this. It's many different steps, and it all has to be, you know, compounded with an optical printer. But they did it exactly the way they did Claude Rains in The Invisible Man with Black Velvet, doing the invisible parts. And it works beautifully. I mean, the special effects in this movie are, without CGI, they're by far the best crawling hand special effects you'll ever see in a movie. RG Yeah, yeah. Well, it fascinated me hearing you guys talking about that, the effects that you just went through over there with the hand. But the question that sticks with me

is why did Jack Warner, when he didn't care for horror, I mean, why did the studio buy the short story rights and why did they develop? I mean, like they did. And you mentioned that it's like the last of that horror period, classical horror period. But why, I mean, why did he do it? Well, like why do you want right here at the end? He wanted a piece of the pie. People were making a lot of money on horror films. Sure took him a while.

Yeah, took him a while. But you know what the next horror film he made was? House of Wax in 1953. And that was a huge hit again. I think he finally learned his lesson because then he made The Bad Seed and then he picked up the distribution rights for Curse of Frankenstein. Every time he decided to make a horror movie or distribute a horror movie, he made a, it was a hit. So I don't know. He just, I don't know why he didn't like the genre. Maybe it tapped into something that he didn't want to face. RG It's just financial, you're saying is the reason why they did the beast.

ST Because you know what? Every time Jack Warner, especially in the early days with Dr. X and Mystery of the Wax Museum and Return of Dr. X and The Beast with Five Fingers and even House of Wax. He always has, even when he makes a real gothic masterpiece, in the end he will have a comic scene. As if to tell the audience, we were just kidding, you know, go home, forget about it, don't worry about it. It's particularly egregious in this picture, in the piece with five fingers, because it's such a dark, sort of disturbing movie on a subconscious level. I told you, it's about castration anxiety, which of course, you know, everybody can enjoy. But at the end, he tries to soften the blow, if you'll pardon the expression, with this comedy scene

saying, oh, we were just kidding, kidding us all. Don't worry about it. Well, I mean, when I think of the history of Warner Brothers, I think of a lot of great horror films over the last hundred years. And of course, in the 30s, we're going to be talking about a couple of them in a few minutes. But I just found that interesting because this one is, uh, it's so good. So all this is an opportunity to make something that would be a commercial hit. And that's what Jack Warner was always looking for was success at the box office. And what's it a hit George?

I think it made back its money. Oh, it did better than that. It did. Okay. It did. It did pretty well. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't a blockbuster, but it was a profitable money. It did better than that. It did okay. It did pretty well. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't a blockbuster, but it was a profitable picture. Right. And that's the most important thing.

And it was an expensive picture. I mean, that was an expensive little movie. It had a 52-day schedule and it cost about half a million bucks. That was a lot of money in 1946. And they had confidence in it. Yeah. Well, that was a tried and true genre in the 40s. It was a little bit more... Well, it went two ways. There were the very dark, psychological adult RKO, Valuetton films, which by and large mostly were hits. And then there were the sort of more juvenile monster movies from Universal. I mean, of course, that genre started as an adult genre in the 30s, but by the time they were making them during the war in the 1940s, they had, you

know, they'd sort of gone down the IQ scale a little bit in pictures like House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula and pictures like that where they became kind of monster mashes and monsters are fighting and so on and so forth. So there were different kinds of horror films. And then there were, in the 40s, movies like Gaslight were considered horror. And certain movies like The Lodger and Hangover Square and Dragon Wick at Fox, those movies were considered horror movies. And they were very psychological, they were very expensive, they were very gothic. And so,

you know, that genre had a big spread in the 40s. You know, what I wanted to say, you asked me before, what did I learn or what did I come to appreciate? I had spent a lot of time many years ago studying Robert Flory. What I liked was trying to figure him out during this period because he was bouncing around between Columbia and independent studios as well as doing a series of Warner Brother films like God is My Copilot and the Desert Song, a couple you know memorable films for the 40s and discovering that he was a guy who really

tried to buck the system whenever he could. If he didn't like something he'd just be like all right I'm not gonna take that job and he's gonna go gallivanting across Europe and come back and the job might still be there because somebody else might have turned it down. He was not somebody that just took the job that Jack Warner would give him. But in this particular case, I think even after he turned it down, it was still there. And he found a way to tune into it. And it was definitely the right film for him and for Peter Lurie, but it was interesting that, you know, he's a guy that often is forgotten.

He's remembered for being the guy who almost made Frankenstein. But he made a number of really strong films. And he made a number of films, as we mentioned, the Face Behind the Mask being a film that was – I don't know the budget of that film, but it certainly was a fraction of what he had when he was working for Warner Brothers and doing a movie like this. So I think if you look back at this film, it's worth taking a look at some of the other films that Flory had done and giving a director and a writer, like a multi

height, like the multi hyphenate filmmaker that Flory was another chance, especially when you see what he was able to do with what was, you know, a decent budget, but arguably not anything special for Warner Brothers at that time. Well, there are a couple other extras you put on here, George, I'll just mention you got the classic cartoons, the Foxy Duckling and the Antease, and the theatrical trailer. So altogether, this is a great release.

It's got the new commentary with you guys there, which is just load, you guys just load your commentaries with information. It's fascinating, I love it. So this is a great package. Thank you. What's also great is, you know, these three that George released are all Warner Brothers films.

It's not an RKO film, it's not an MGM film. Like George laid it, like here's Warner Horror 1940s enjoy. That was exactly the objective. And I've never seen Beast with Five Fingers look this good. Right off the camera negative. Oh my God, it is beautiful. It looks like it was shot yesterday. The fans are going to go nuts for this. Yeah, that is what I'm most excited is for people to actually see it. You guys have seen it. Very few people have. And so when people finally see this compared to the difference on

Beasts with Five Fingers is substantial. But when you get to Walking Dead, it's ginormous, because that had only existed in a, an ancient master made off a sixth generation film element. So when you're coming off the negative, it's like a different film. And that's why I'm so excited about this trio. Well, why don't we just dive into The Walking Dead since you kind of already started that, George,

and tell us a little bit about this restoration. Well, once again, thankfully, the original negative was well maintained. Most of the pre-49 Warner feature negatives are under the care of the Library of Congress. And we have a partnership with the Library of Congress where we basically help to support those efforts financially, because that's a lot of maintenance work. And these films were deposited there decades ago, but what they do in terms of their care for nitrate negatives is impeccable. And the same can be said of several other archives in this country as well as in Europe, where there is this fastidious care of nitrate.

And they're preserving our cinematic legacy. And to bring in the negative for Walking Dead, I don't think anyone had touched that negative since they had to make print downs for the television sales in 1956. I don't think it had been touched since then. I could be wrong. The Library of Congress might have done something on their own, but happily it was scanned here at Warner Brothers Motion Picture Imaging, and our wonderful artisans in the Color Bay did a fantastic job.

Not only with the picture at MPI, but also our archival sound team did a beautiful cleanup on the audio so that you have full frequency response. You don't feel any high end has been cut off and you hear the full width and breadth of the soundtrack. And I've always had Warner Brothers soundtracks had a unique studio style. I can't verbalize what that is, but you hear it from the mid thirties all the way up

through movies like Bonnie and Clyde. To see Curtiz once again take up the horror mantle and Karloff in this film to me gives one of his greatest performances. I don't know if you gentlemen agree but I would love to hear your thoughts on that. When did he give a bad performance? He was even good on The Girl from Uncle. Yeah he was great on that. I mean that would be the anomaly if. If you saw Boris Karloff performance, you know, wow, he really wasn't into that, was he?

No, he was always wonderful. Yeah. And it is always a sadness, because you mentioned Orson Nicolau-Layes before. Yeah. It's like the heartbreak of all time that he didn't get to recreate that stage role. Raymond Massey's great in the film,

but to have Karloff in that film would have been Nirvana. Karloff and shooting Cary Grant with a tranquilizer dart. Those are the two. It needed to happen on the set of Arsenal Canole Lairs. Well, just to be clear for people out there, we're of course talking about The Walking Dead from 1936. out there. We're of course talking about The Walking Dead from 1936. Yes, this is not Daryl Dixon and Rick Grant. They also worked on it. I was curious. Yeah, I was curious. That's well known for being able to do any genre.

He could do it all. But how did he get involved in this? He was one of those few, not unlike Vincent Minnelli, very different directors, but they could master virtually any genre. And yes, he directed Mystery of the Wax Museum, Dr. X, and The Walking Dead. That's why we put the great documentary about the greatest director you've never heard of, which we originally created for the Casablanca anniversary back in 2012. That piece is on this disc as well so that people can understand, if they haven't seen it already how incredibly versatile and talented Mr.

Curtiz was. Yeah. Maybe one of you guys can dive in a little bit and talk a little bit about the this movie in terms of the storyline or the origins. You mentioned Boris Karloff already. He's a man who comes back from the dead seeking revenge on the gangsters who framed him for the murder of the judge who first jailed him. How did he become involved? Well, he had signed a contract. Warrantors went after him. They were trying to develop properties for him.

And this seemed like a good fit. They were absolutely right about that. And you know, I mean, it's some kind of strange movie because it's part gangster movie, which you would expect from Warner Brothers, and part horror film. But the horror film is very spiritual. The whole idea of this movie is that Karloff, after he's been executed and brought back to life, is in touch with some kind of spiritual power that's allowing him to be a force of God. You know, he's becoming an instrument of God's wrath to these people who had framed him for a crime. And in that way, see, Universal didn't do stuff like that. Even when it's

a story that has an obvious spiritual quality, like Dracula, for example, they kind of underplayed it. They were more into science fiction. I think they were more comfortable with Frankenstein and the invisible man and the invisible ray and stuff like that, or just cruelty. But in terms of a spiritual quality, unless it's like done in a somewhat parodic style like James Whale did it, like in Bride of Frankenstein, it's not in your face like it later will be in the Hammer films of Terrence Fisher. But in this film, the very narrative is based on the fact that Karloff becomes an instrument of God's vengeance. And he's aware of it. Karloff is aware of it, the living dead creature that he is, you know. And that makes it very

unique. RG There was a commentary already on here, right, Constantine? You can talk a little bit about that one and the other new one you created. So we put this out, well, actually what's interesting is, just thinking about this when everyone's talking, collectively, many of these films that George has put out had been on DVD before, with the exception of Beasts with Five Fingers, right, George? had been on DVD before with the exception of Beast with Five Fingers, right George? Beast with Five Fingers came out more recently,

like 2012 or so. Yeah. We mastered for DVD only by the Warner Archive. It never had a retail release. Right, right. So when all these films were coming out at the height of like classic films on disc, we were- You were buying stores.

Yeah. They were part of these collections. Legends of Horror, I think that's the one where we had Mad Love and Fu Manchu and Dr. X and Return of Dr. X came out together on that release and that was 05, I think, 06. 06. 06. Okay. And that's when we were able to get Steve to do an interview. We went out to – I'm jumping ahead to the return of Dr. X but meeting Vincent Sherman at the Motion Picture Home. And that was quite a nice afternoon. And then we did The Walking Dead, which is part of this Legosi-Karloff set. So on one hand, it was like Frankenstein 1970 and Walking Dead. And we had gotten at that

time Greg Mank to do the audio commentary. Greg, of course, is a premier biographer and historian, Karloff and Legosi biographer. And I mean, you name name it he's written about it. It's a very very very good commentary and I also like when George brought this up I just thought well from a Michael Curtiz perspective there might be more to dig into because it seems like there's been a Curtiz Renaissance. George has mentioned the documentary that was made. George was very gracious in allowing me to do a little documentary a few years ago on the horror films of Michael Curtiz. And there's a lot of Curtiz love going around.

So I asked, well, George approved it and we went out to Alan K. Rody to do an interview. He agreed to do a Curtiz-centric commentary. And then the idea was how do you save the commentary that Greg Mank made? This is a technical bit because I think it's important to share that when we recorded these things many years ago, DVD was not at the same frame rate as a Blu-ray, as a HD master. The sources and the time codes and everything kind of, in order for it to sync, it's got to sync exactly. Otherwise, audio is off and people's lips and it's just, it's a mess to watch. So we worked at trying to sync Greg's

commentary from nearly 20 years ago to the new master. And what I discovered, and I was texting George in between each discovery, I think I was annoying him, I'm not sure, but I was realizing that there was like, it wasn't syncing because all of a sudden I was finding an extra frame or two or an extra shot or two. And so when George is saying that nobody has seen this, this negative since the fifties, perhaps, I don't know which print the latest version was struck from. But this is a film that may be 15 seconds

longer than the version of The Walking Dead that has been seen. Exactly. There's more. There's a couple of fades. There's a couple lines of dialogue. And I'm sitting there getting very excited, struggling to sink it in. I was mad at the hard work I was dealing with, but I'm very excited because this is truly

an uncut version of the movie. The extended version. All right. I'm excited. We have run into this several times where we're doing new scans of the original negative and we have an archival commentary that came from a secondary or third or fourth generation element

that was missing footage or missing frames, and that's what we've been living with for decades. And then we go back and try to sync the commentary and it wouldn't always sync. And that's why on some of our disks, we've had to put the commentary with a standard definition version as an extra, which is not ideal. And thankfully, thanks to Constantine's dedication and skill and acumen, he was able to get Greg's

commentary to sync despite the extra footage. So bravo, Constantine, as always. Yes, very good. Thank you. It was fun. You're welcome. Thank you. Just to be clear, this is an extended version. I mean, because of that by 15 seconds or so. But that was the most important 15 seconds in the movie. And nobody's seen it for the last 70 years. It was one of the best musical numbers. seen it for the last 70 years. It was one of the best musical numbers. Let's see if these eagle-eyed fans can figure out which 15 seconds across the board they

are. George, we should laugh because of course, anytime you're off by one second and any other movie or TV show people just come out of the weeds to hold you to the... So I mean, I just want to be clear, hey, we found extra on this one and people should... Okay, let's have a clap, you know, here for George. Oh man. Anyway, we kid a little bit, but that's really neat because you're going back to this original nitrate to make the scan. So that's pretty cool. So not only does it look great and it's a fun film, but

you also have the Greg Mank commentary and you have the new Alan K. Rode commentary that is Michael Curtiz centric so to speak to bring a new angle to the commentary. So you've got... What's really terrific about that is they're very different approaches. And although he's not on the microphones with us today, I can say that Greg Mank's commentaries over the years have been treasures, just as Constantine and Steve's are. I was introduced to Greg by our mutual friend friend Tom Weaver. I think one of the

most fortuitous opportunities was when Greg was able to add his commentary to several of our releases, which we're very proud. And he's delighted that this commentary from almost 20 years ago is having new life. So all the more excitement that makes for a better blu ray disc experience. We really cared about these and we still we still do but all the commentaries that i've been very fortunate to record for warner brothers in particular for decades now. for decades now, I always felt like we got the right people to do the right work. And, you know, whenever we do add a second one, and some it's like what Steve and I did with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde never intends to take away the sort of bar that was set really, really high by people like Greg. So I just wanted to, you know, I haven't talked to Greg about this, but hey, thank you very much, Greg, and to all those people who've, I think, created great work out there

that you shouldn't be throwing out your DVDs anyway. You know, you can upgrade, but just make sure the excellent work out there is not forgotten, even if it is 10 or 20 years old. That's why we try to include everything that was on a DVD on the Blu-ray, if we can, if it's still legally clear, so that there is no reason that you have to keep the DVD.

But sometimes it doesn't work out that we can keep everything. In this case, we were able to do that. And it's very, very gratifying, especially in commentaries. We don't usually run into problems where we can't reuse a commentary. You do have a couple of classic cartoons on here for those who want to know what all the extras are. The cat came back and let it be me and the original theatrical trailer. Plus you already mentioned that documentary on Michael Crete. So it's a robust, robust amount of extras. And I think that's one thing that sets our discussion

apart this year, George, with the, with these three is that you were able to get all of these new, new extras on these releases. So there's the obvious upgrade and restoration and then just the great package that you have for every fan out there. I don't want to make anybody blush, but I feel so fortunate and honored that Steve and Constantine led their gifts, talents, and knowledge to working on making these really, really superb releases. It sets a different standard. And I'll just be very unabashedly grateful

for what they not only contributed to these releases, but many of the other recent releases in the past. Thank you, George. Recent past. Thank you. It's all like I've said it a million times, George, when you call, I will answer the past. Thank you, George. Recent past. Thank you. Thank you. It's all like I've said it a million times, George. When you call, I will answer the phone.

So there's- More than I can tell you. What? Yeah. Well, there's so much that I think that the Warner Archives have done that I think is critical in this time when anybody else would overlook what you've been doing. So I'm just really, really excited to offer whatever time and skill and technical ability we can offer, I can offer, and then Steve joins in. And of course, Alan Rodie was willing to give an excellent, very studied, very expertly crafted

track on Curtiz for The Walking Dead. And just like, just when you think you've learned enough or you know enough, somebody comes in and educates you. But those opportunities wouldn't be there if George, you didn't call know, years ago, two, three years ago when we were doing Dr. X, there was a question about will the Walking Dead ever come out? And you had told me that there was such damage done and you weren't sure when you were going to have the funds. When you called and said the Walking Dead not only was going to be done, but it was done, I almost fell out of my chair. So I was so excited. You keep those cards close to your vest.

And then when you choose to reveal them, they're really, there's like not one release you've done that I think has not been of value to not just the fans, but to preserving film history and the Warner Brothers legacy. So, and that goes to Warner Brothers and MGM and RKO and Howlite Artists. So thank you very much for the opportunity and just keep us posted when the next one's

ready. Yeah, we're here waiting. We'll do, my friend. And just a little explanation for those listening who maybe don't know why we chose Alan K. Odie, but he literally wrote the book on Michael Curtiz and his book is fantastic. Those of you who have listened to the podcast, he's a friend of the podcast and has been on many times, but for those who maybe are newer, that's why his take on the movie from a Michael Curtiz point of view is going to be so interesting and I'm looking forward

to watching and listening to that. Well, we have one more movie and you mentioned Dr. X, Constantine and the movie now we're going to talk about is the return of Dr. X from 1939. And Steve, you have a thread going back to the original commentary that was done with director Vincent Sherman on this for the DVD.

Maybe you can kind of take us back to when you did that and working and doing that commentary with him and your thoughts on that process and the film. Okay. Well, that was an unforgettable experience because Vincent Sherman was a hundred years old. A hundred. unforgettable experience because Vincent Sherman was 100 years old, 100. And we went out, Constantine and the crew and me, and we went out to Woodland Hills and we met with him and he was in a three-piece suit with a cane and a bow tie. And he was quite lovely and, you know, still a handsome guy.

You know, he had quite the reputation of being a dog in his great years, you know, names like Joe Crawford. And he was not shy about, you know, mentioning it on the lowdown, but he had a great career with famous actresses. And he was not a, you know, an auteur by any stretch of the imagination. He was a great craftsman. He did many different genres. He worked a lot with Humphrey Bogart. He did a lot of women's pictures when there was such a thing. And he was just a pleasure. Articulate, his memory was sharp. This was his first feature that he ever did.

He had been a screenwriter and he'd been an actor, actually. He was a good-looking enough guy to be an actor. So he got, you know, he drew the straw and had to do this contract horror movie, The Return of Dr. X. The reason the movie was made was that the horror genre had come to an end, really, with the Beast with Five Fingers for its first period. The reason was because in England, which was a big market for horror films in the early 30s, the British Board of Censors was very offended by a lot of the stuff in horror films because horror films were quite transgressive for

the time and for now. They weren't graphic, they were reticent, but they were quite transgressive in terms of themes. I'm thinking about movies like Island of Lost Souls, which dealt with bestiality as a subtext and other topics that were unsavory. Even Paramount's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you know, Oscar Wilde always said about the picture of Dorian Gray, he didn't want to say what Dorian Gray was doing to corrupt him. He wanted the reader to think that Dorian's sins were your sins, were the reader's sins. And they didn't have that attitude at Paramount when they made Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in

1931. They showed what Mr. Hyde's sins were and they were pretty unsavory at the time, you know. So anyway, the British Board of Censors got pretty fed up around 1935 with a couple of movies, Mad Love, the aforementioned Mad Love, and The Raven especially, a universal picture which was just about a sadist, about a doctor who's obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe and he's reconstructed Edgar Allan Poe's torture devices and uses them on people he hates.

It was a very sadistic movie. And England said, that's it, no more horror movies. We're not going to import any more horror movies. So Universal and the other studios stopped making horror movies. And then a theater in, I believe it was in Beverly Hills, in 1937 or 38 got a couple of battered prints of Dracula and Frankenstein and I think the Son of Kong or something. And they started showing these. This was a second or third run theater. And the lines were around the block.

There hadn't been a new horror film in a couple of years, and people wanted to see that. And so, Universal struck New Prince of Dracula and Frankenstein, re-released it, made a big budget sequel, Son of Frankenstein, and horror was back. So even Jack Warner, Jack Warner, who had an antipathy for the genre, said, well, I guess we, you know, we got to make a horror film. We got to get a piece of this pie. So they decided to make this movie. It was based on a short story which had nothing to do with their original Dr. X movie from 1932. And they did many drafts of the script. At one point, they were going to cast Boris Karloff, who was under contract, owed them a picture, and Bela Lugosi, who you could easily see Boris Karloff, who was under contract, owed them a picture,

and Bela Lugosi, who you could easily see Boris Karloff in Humphrey Bogart's part and Bela Lugosi in John Lattell's part, and it would have been fine. But they decided not to spend the money just to use contract actors, so it was Humphrey Bogart in the part that they thought Karloff would have been good for and John Lattell, as I said, in Bela Lugosi's part. At one point they were going to have Claude Rains play what John Lattell ended up playing. Anyway, so they made this little movie and they gave it to Vincent Sherman. It was his first picture. And he liked to emphasize the comedy, which was, I'm sure, fine with Jack Warner, because if you look at Dr. X and Mystery of the Wax Museum, not Walking Dead, but Dr.

X and Mystery of the Wax Museum, there's a lot of 1930s patter and there's always a wisecracking reporter who's your protagonist that's taking you through all this unsavory material and they did the same thing. That formula worked for them and so they did it with the return of Dr. X. It's actually a pretty, it's a pretty good mystery. It's pretty intriguing, especially the first two acts before you know what's going on. You're wondering what kind of movie is this exactly? At least there's no gangsters involved this time. There's a wisecracking reporter, but there's also a very serious, Wayne Morris plays the wisecracking reporter, and Dennis Morgan plays a very serious

doctor who's very disturbed by some of these vampire goings on that seem to be happening in Manhattan, in modern Manhattan, modern as of 1939. So that's the story. And Humphrey Bogart, much to his chagrin, was cast as the monster, Dr. X, Dr. Xavier, who was executed for doing experiments on children where he wanted to see how long he could starve them. And he loses a child. And so they try him and they execute him for this. And Dr. Lattell, John Lattell, the doctor that he plays, has a way of bringing the dead back to life that involves electricity. And, you know, fortunately, Humphrey Bogart had been electrocuted. And so, he brings Humphrey Bogart back to life.

There's only one caveat. He needs to have blood. And it has to be his specific blood type Which is type one, you know, they had four types in those days and category one is what Humphrey Bogart had when he was alive So he has to go around Killing people and draining them of blood so that John Lattell could put it put it in him So it's it's pretty unsavory like dr. X and mystery of the Wax Museum, but it's done in this 1930s fast talking, you know, reporter style. And Vincent Sherman emphasized the comedy part of it more than the horror, I think. And it

turned out to be, it got great reviews when it came out and it made money. It was a very inexpensive picture. They shot it in three weeks and that's the return of Dr. X. George, I know you mentioned it a little bit when we did the announcement for this, but tell us a little bit about how Humphrey Bogart felt about starring in this film. He was not happy. He was under contract. He did what they told him to do until he had his big breakthrough a little bit with Day Drive by Night followed by High Sierra that catapulted into basically leading man Maltese Falcon cemented that. But up until those films, he was doing all sorts of roles, a lot of which he didn't like. In Virginia City, which is

1940, he plays a Mexican bandito. His accent is embarrassing. In Dark Victory, he's an Irish horse trainer, I think. They just had him do anything where, oh, let's use Bogart for this. He wasn't appreciated for his gifts and his talents. Finally, he broke through. And of course, I think if anybody thinks about Warner Brothers and classic leading men, if they're not thinking Cagney, they're thinking Bogart. Usually Bogart is number one. Yeah, absolutely.

He wasn't bad, by the way, as Dr. X in this movie. usually Bogart is number one. Yeah, absolutely. He wasn't bad by the way as Dr. X in this movie. Oh no, he's terrific. Yeah, he's actually quite good at it. I mean, his cynicism and his little lisp and his gravelly voice, it works extremely well and they make him up. I mean, it's almost a parody of a vampire makeup, but it's quite effective on him

and he's genuinely scary in it. He didn't fall for it. Without question. He had the hair for it. He didn't work. Right. What did you say, George? I said he was fully committed to the work he was doing. Yeah, right. He was. I mean, he bitched and complained and then he went and did it, but

he did. He was very chilling in it. He could have had, you know, if he hadn't made it as a gangster, he could have made it as a horror actor. All without question. The mind boggles at the thought. Right? But this, yeah, this is his only one. And you kind of, again, you wonder if it had done better than it was. But it was a, you said three weeks you do is a brian for production and it was a b unit production. Why did they choose to do it and then not follow through obviously there was the horror you know resurrection in the late thirties. What why did jack wait why was there not any other attempt.

In the forties until be withingers. I mean it took a few years for them even to get the the Harvey novel or the Harvey short story. But yeah, they actually at that point, you know, I mean George, do you have, do you have any thoughts on that? I think it just really was a matter of it not being amongst Jack's personal taste. Because he was, you know, he oversaw all production. He had people working under him, but he ultimately made the decisions. And this wasn't his cup of tea. Yeah, they weren't looking for horror properties. They had no, you know, except for Peter Laurie, who occasionally was a horror star, they didn't really have anybody set up there for horror.

He didn't like horror. I don't think they were looking for the properties. I don't know how they stumbled on the short story of Beasts with Five Fingers. Somebody liked it at Warner Bros. It seems like, you know, if Foy had produced Invisible Menace, right, and West of Shanghai, these were all his thing. So by the time it wasn't going to be a Karloff film, they were like too far into production to stop. Just get the thing made, just get it out.

It's a beat program or let it go. Yeah. But Vincent Sherman was, he was very dedicated to it. I mean, he did in his very, in his short sketch, what's his name? Hickox was the DP. Excellent. Excellent moving camera stuff, excellent deep focus stuff, nice little simple low budget, you know, scene where John Lattell brings a rabbit back to life. You know, I mean, it wasn't bad.

It wasn't bad at all. It was better than much of the sort of lower grade universal work in the 40s. I think the best thing about it is it really did have a good mystery. The hook of it was very interesting and very morbid. So I'm sure it appealed to the fans at the time. And then he went on to a lot of great films

in the 1940s for sure. Yeah, yeah, he was a good director. Oh, well, George. Without question. George, in terms of this restoration, same kind of as the others? Yes, all three films have this in common. We were able to retrieve the original camera negatives from the Library of Congress.

There were some shots in some of the films where there was a hint of nitrate decomposition and we substituted a shot from a second generation nitrate fine grain. But this was very, very rare. What we used to do was we would bring in the camera negative, we would make a new fine grain. That's what we would master from. And if there was damage in the camera negative, people who were here at the time weren't really making sure that, oh, that bad section or that bad frame, that could be improved. No, they just went ahead and did things as they are.

We are much more dedicated in the current team that we have here. So we will analyze the film elements, analyze the negative and if we find that there's a deficiency, we'll look for a backup element, even if it's only to fix a few shots. That's the kind of meticulous work that goes on at Warner Brothers of Motion Picture Imaging.

So I always say great things about them and I blush when I say them because we're so lucky to have such dedicated colleagues and they make our jobs much easier because we're bringing something to the consumer that they can really appreciate as collectors. One question for you, Constantine. Did you have to do a little bit of that same magic work on syncing this one up as well? And did you find any extra seconds or frames? Actually, yeah, I did have to do the same thing. But in this particular case, I did not run across the problems, good problems that we ran across with Walking Dead. So everyone's seen, I guess,

the original and only version of The Return of Doctor Who. There are a couple other extras on here, classic cartoons, Doggone, Modern, and Porky's Hotel, and the theatrical trailer. It's nice that these all have the trailer, George, because they're Warner Brothers films. brothers of film. And I want to point out that we did not have a film element on the trailer of The Walking Dead. Very unusual post-1932 or so that we wouldn't have some kind of a trailer element on a Warner film. We're very good on trailers for Warner and MGM, for RKO, it's a rarity.

And when you get deeper, like for monogram films, it's almost impossible. But strangely, there was no film element on the Walking Dead trailer. And thankfully, a gentleman who's been a friend of mine since high school happened to have a 16 millimeter print of the trailer because he is a meticulous collector and he was kind enough to

send it our way so that we could include it on the disc. It doesn't look great but it's the trailer and we're so lucky to have it. Well, thanks guys for coming on and taking us through these. Thank you, Tim. As always. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween, everyone. Halloween. Halloween everyone.

As always, there are purchase links in the podcast show notes for the films that we talked about today. So if you're interested in purchasing those, you can look for those there. And if you're enjoying these podcasts, please think about following the show or leaving us a review wherever you listen. 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.