Quote:
Originally Posted by OceanBlue
Great minds think alike, Aclea.  Watched this past weekend, Horrors of the Black Museum (Network's DVD-only release). On the whole I liked it (especially the way the outside scenes were shot), although I had to adjust the volume levels at times (the dialogue was hard to hear, then the volume had to be turned down when there was music). |
I've bought both the original Cinema Club release and the Network in the past, and at least the latter doesn't have the synch problem the first release had. Hopefully there'll be an improved Blu-ray upgrade somewhere down the line.
Originally a very notorious X certificate, now reduced to a puny 15,
Horrors of the Black Museum is a wildly enjoyable rare colour and CinemaScope production for Herman Cohen, the American producer of
I Was a Teenage Werewolf and the English Poverty Row studio Merton Park, whose budgets were so low they couldn't even afford Sid James or Richard Wattis.
Michael Gough stars as a conceited crime reporter with a chamber of horrors in his basement and bats in his belfry who hypnotises his juvenile assistant into carrying out a series of gruesome murders so he can write about them. You can fill in the gaps yourself. The only things that retain their dignity six decades on are Geoffrey Keen's performance and Gerard Schurrman's exceptionally strong score. The latter actually led to the film being recut; the censors originally passed the notorious binocular murder that opens the film without music but insisted on trimming it after hearing his scoring for the scene!
Like the same team's Konga, there is some truly astonishing dialogue.
"Don't forget by bringing her down here you've placed both of us in jeopardy!" rants Gough of Shirley Ann Field, who gives a performance you will never forget no matter how hard you try.
"The first time she wants to feel her strength, the first time you quarrel she can start a toboggan that will crush us!"
Other unintentional comic highlights abound, with blowsy June Cunningham's solo dance number in a London pub to Rockola accompaniment pipped to the post by 'poor demented barmy' Howard Greene's confession scene:
"You used a guillotine?"
"Well, I felt like it. Saw a picture of one in a history book. It inspired me to build one. I'm clever with my hands! Do you know what I'll use next? A death ray! I've been working on it secretly for years and its almost ready. Nobody will be safe. I'll be able to shoot this ray out of my eyes!"
Subtle it ain't, but great camp fun it is.
Given a 2.35:1 widescreen transfer with the colour as garish and unreal as only early Eastmancolor can be, the definition suffers from the grain and loss of detail that always comes from early widescreen Eastmancolor films, but more annoying was the way some scenes drift out of synch on Cinema Club's now deleted UK DVD. That first release also includes the original UK theatrical trailer but Network DVD's 2013 DVD release goes better on the extras front by including the extended US 'Hpno-Vista' opening and a stills gallery. The US edition from VCi goes even better with an audio commentary with composer Gerard Schurmann with archive interview clips from Herman Cohen and US and UK trailers but unfortunately only offers a poors standards conversion transfer from PAL to NTSC.
"There's a huge monster gorilla that's constantly growing to outlandish proportions loose in the streets!"
Konga is probably schlock producer Herman Cohen’s best-remembered film after
I Was a Teenage Werewolf and
I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, and even began its life intended to round out the series as
I Was a Teenage Gorilla before settling for the usual mad scientist formula as Michael Gough’s homicidal Dr Dekker returns from a year lost in the jungle with a chimpanzee and the secret of how increase the size of plants and animals. Naturally this leads to growing a greenhouse full of giant carnivorous plants and – after killing the cat - giving little Konga an injection that not only increases his size and strength but it turns him from a chimp into a gorilla who will follow his every command to kill the college dean and the professional rival who stands in the way of his place in the history books as well as the odd student who stands in the way of his star pupil and spectacularly bad actress Claire Gordon. Naturally the mad doctor’s faithful assistant isn’t too keen on this and gives Konga an injection of her own, but gets the dosage wrong, and Konga finally goes on a rampage through the streets of London. It’s not much of a rampage, more of a leisurely stroll through Westminster with Michael Gough playing the Fay Wray part and Konga’s size changing from shot to shot, but at least it gave the film’s poster artists something to work with before it quickly meets its end aside Big Ben.
While it shares the usual faults of Cohen’s “we’ve got a great title and a great poster, whadda we want with a script?” epics, not least the incredibly awkward use of language that’s such a distinctive feature of his British films, it’s just not as enjoyable as it should be. Sure there’s Claire Gordon’s spectacularly bad acting, Jess Conrad’s inability to pronounce his ‘r’s and the striking absurdity of the firemen who don’t notice the 40ft gorilla in the back garden (but then considering Gough is too busy grappling with Gordon in the greenhouse he doesn’t hear him destroy his house that’s par for the course), but there’s not enough rampant silliness or mindless destruction to make it more than watchable. Still, there’s another good score from Gerard Schurmann (Cohen berated him for repeating himself with one cue from Black Museum only for the composer to point out that Cohen had repeated himself with practically the entire movie).
Network's DVD could do with an upgrade (and will probably get one eventually), the extras limited to trailer, stills gallery, pressbook PDF and an introduction by Jess Conrad so brief he might as well not have bothered.
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