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Jeruzalem (2015)
Annoying Movie
«JeruZalem»... what a dreadful movie. Perhaps that is why people viciously judged «The Golem», the Paz brothers' next film, because of this one that deserves all scorn. I saw them backwards. That big Z in the title must have warned me that it was cinema grade Z.
Now, if you liked the plaintive camerawoman from «The Blair Witch Project», who made you see the story from her point of view, through the camera she handles without stopping crying and screaming, then maybe «JeruZalem» may look good to you and you would like it.
The annoying and silly story follows Sarah and Rachel, two Jewish-American women who go on vacation to Israel, but instead of going to Tel Aviv as planned, they make a little trip to Jerusalem, after the ass of Kevin, an anthropologist they meet in the plane. Once there they have a great time with a local Arab called Omar. But they do not know that doomsday is coming, and the trip is going to turn really ugly. After 48 minutes in which we only saw the quartet having fun, in the remaining 46 minutes, the cake is turned and we see them flee from some winged zombies and be slaughtered one by one, as they run through the streets and caverns with Omar's father and two young Israeli soldiers. Only one person is left alive ... at least before the final credits roll up.
If it is already annoying to see the story from Sarah's point of view, it makes it worse that she is supposedly wearing "smart glasses" that take orders, recognize faces, accept calls and messages from social network and just do what they want, like playing a rock track while Sarah rescues Kevin from a madhouse.
Dedicated to their family, the Paz brothers were possibly disowned for making such a bad movie.
Jagten (2012)
Hate Story
After almost two hours, I found the ending in complete consonance with the rest of the movie, which during many scenes made me feel angry, because it is neither realistic nor plausible, but belongs more to the realm of melodrama. I believe nowadays things are handled a bit different than the way the situation is depicted here: in "Jagten", persons rarely confront each other, as normal people do. They do not question the supposed offender, nobody seeks a lawyer. They just assume things, until everything gets so out of hand, that it becomes brutal and nasty. The writers expect us to take seriously a situation created by a woman who (like a fool) runs away from the "offender" when he goes to the school to talk to her. This does not mean that I find "Jagten" a bad film. I just believe it is an average melodrama, a genre movie from start to end. And in that sense the ending makes complete sense.
J'irai cracher sur vos tombes (1959)
Michel Gast's Cult Film
I finally saw «I'll Spit on Your Graves» tonight and I cannot say it is a good movie... but it is a good movie! It is wonderfully trashy and sordid, yet it is truthful, direct, and daring even by today's standards, elegantly enhanced by Marc Fossard's black-and-white photography, Alain Goraguer's jazz score, and Michel Gast's direction.
Based on a novel by Boris Vian (who died on the opening night of a heart attack), it is one of those typical Northern stories about slightly light-skinned people, whom many call blacks, but go through life as whites. Joe Grant, the protagonist (Christian Marquand), is one of those people. In Memphis, his black brother Johnny is murdered for allegedly raping a white woman (in fact, they were lovers planning to get married). Joe's reaction is violent, he has an incendiary temperament, so he moves to another town, just as racist and virulent, where he looks for a way to avenge Johnny's death, seducing white women who, on several occasions, he is about to kill. However, Joe falls in love with the richest girl in town (the beautiful Antonella Lualdi) and tragedy...
What I find amazing is how director Gast decided to recreate places of the American South in France and got away with it, not because of the details, precision or elaboration of environments and sets, but because of the atmosphere he was able to create, a sensation of oppression and racism with a strong American seal, which I, for example, who am not white, could feel when entering the Panama Canal Zone, when it was under the regime of the United States Armed Forces. (Racism is better or only identified by or known to those of us who have experienced it).
«I'll Spit on Your Graves» is, for me, a very good industrial job, in which I do not find any pretense of making an art film, but rather of competing in the international film market with an effective product. The motion picture was successful everywhere, including Panama. I could not see it at the time, because I was 8 years old, but I heard people talk about it, because of its open frankness about sexuality. Despite all its flaws, I believe this film is a French classic on its own terms, an important piece in the evolution of French commercial cinema.
La isla de los dinosaurios (1967)
No Aztec Mummy Around...
This cult movie is pretty bad, I could not even find it funny. This time director Rafael Portillo did not have a terrifying creature like the Aztec Mummy (whose trilogy he directed), but rather magnified lizards from sequences created for "One Million B. C." (1940) and Mexican hunk star Armando Silvestre, who was no longer 25 years old nor in top shape as in "La red", to lead the cast as Caveman Número 1.
The story is simple and silly: scientist Manolo Fábregas recruits his ex-students Alma Delia Fuentes, Elsa Cárdenas and Genaro Moreno to help him prove that he is not crazy, exploring an island in the Atlantic Ocean, which he believes was part of Atlantis, where prehistoric creatures still exist. Alma Delia meets Armando, who kidnaps her and takes her to his cave, while a volcano is about to erupt and giant lizards fight among themselves everywhere. The servviceable integration of live action with the pre-existing footage in some scenes is probably the best achievement of this production... which has to be seen to believe it has a happy and sexy ending in loincloths.
Good copies are available in the net.
La invasión de los vampiros (1963)
Frau Hildegarda's Feast
After "El vampiro sangriento" (Cf.), this tired entry ends Miguel Morayta's vampire diptych in the same hurried fashion as its predecessor, but unfortunately this time there are no surprises: the same bat with donkey ears hanging from nylon threads, more quarrels of Frau Hildegarda with everybody in sight, long sections of dialogs, and not enough action. Rafael del Río plays a fragile-looking and very indecisive disciple of Dr. Cagliostro (absent this time from the story) who arrives in the same region of the previous film, where nobility and charros live in terror because of count Frankenhausen's evil deeds. The young man's mission is to fight the count with a serum made from the flowers of black mandragola. It takes him 89 minutes of 92 to do so, while the attacks persist, the fangs grow bigger, and the number of dead men increases. Credit must be given to Bertha Moss, whose Frau Hildegarda is fun.
Imagen del sonido: Ingeniero Joselito Rodríguez (2001)
Mexican Sound Pioneer
Interesting account of the invention of the sound system developed by Mexican filmmaker Joselito Rodríguez, successfully tried and tested with the first sound film made in México, "Santa" (1931). Rodríguez worked as sound engineer in other classics, as "Redes", and he went on to direct singing superstars Jorge Negrete and Pedro Infante, respectively in popular musical dramas "¡Ay Jalisco... no te rajes!" and "Angelitos negros"; as well as the 'lucha film' (wrestlers films) "Huracán Ramírez", starring David Silva. The documentary, made for the 70th anniversary of the release of "Santa", includes heartfelt and moving testimonies by colleagues and friends, including actresses Lupita Tovar and Carmen Montejo, director Miguel Zacarías, film editor Carlos Savage, producer Gregorio Walerstein, composer Sergio Guerrero, and his own sister Emma.
Infancia clandestina (2011)
Nationalist pancarta disguised as cinema
Luis Puenzo, the guy who made "La historia oficial", was behind this film, as producer of a typical Argentinean nationalistic melodrama dealing with the late 20th century dictatorship that ravaged that country from South America. It is a boring tale about a boy with grown-up's interests and perceptions, mixed with infantile montages of the child he carries inside, plus Leftist speeches, songs and rethorics, and an uncle who is a male chauvinist with a grenade in his left hand... just in case. This kind of nationalist banners disguised as films are common in all national cinemas in the North and South, but some know how to handle propaganda better. Not this one.
Imitation of Life (1934)
Outstanding Melodrama
This is a better adaptation of Fannie Hurst's novel than Douglas Sirk's overrated 1959 version. All the "gloss" that producer Ross Hunter put into Sirk's remake is thankfully absent from this classic, elegant melodrama. As played by Claudette Corbett, Bea Pullman (renamed Lora in Lana Turner's vehicle) is a sexy widow and hard-working woman, not a past-her-prime glamour queen becoming a superstar, while all the racist elements are stronger and more interestingly portrayed, since all prejudices are taken as the norm, for granted. The central characters are just what the "American dream" of yore pretended them to be: Delilah, the typical Mamie; Peola, a sad mulatta; and Bea, a woman who waits 20 years for the right man and ends putting him in hold, as the Hays Code demanded. Very good.
I Bury the Living (1958)
Slow but effective thriller
"I Bury the Living" is an incredibly slow-paced thriller, its 76 minutes seem endless, but it always keeps you attentive, though: I guess it works for its strange but original premise, in which the administrator of a burial ground discovers that he can cause the death of the plots' owners when he changes the status of the parcels from empty to occupied. The film also features effective lead actors (especially Richard Boone and Howard Smith) who enliven the events. While watching it I thought that maybe it had an influence on George A. Romero, who later filmed "Night of the Living Dead." Enjoy.
Hypocrites (1915)
Moralistic Tale
The highly imaginative resources used in the few Lois Weber movies that I have yet seen (also evident in "The Rosar"y) surely place her among the first auteurs of cinema, regardless of her gender. However, part of her author's signature is the strong Catholic content in her movies. This markedly affects "Hypocrites", which turns into a moralistic (and a bit self righteous) tale. It is serious religious drama, told in three different times: the past, the present and the dream. This structure somehow reminded me of Griffith's "Intolerance", which was released a year later. I'll keep watching her other works.
Hoy como ayer (1987)
A Sad Affair...
I saw the original 90 minute version when the film opened during the film festival in Havana, in December 1987. The reaction was unanimously negative, mainly for the miscasting of Jorge Montes de Oca not even as Benny Moré, but as a young aspiring actor to play the great Cuban singer. In Mexico it was cut to 76 minutes and retitled "El Bárbaro del Ritmo (Benny Moré)", to not be available, but this is the copy that today is available on DVD and is aired from time to time on Mexican television.
As additional information, Cuban co-director Constante "Rapi" Diego, son of renowned poet Eliseo Diego, was also a prominent artist and illustrator of children's books. His first fiction feature film was the award-winning drama "El corazón sobre la tierra" (1984), followed by the ill-fated project "Hoy como ayer", which seriously affected his career and health. It took him five years to recover to make his third feature film, "Mascaró", for which he also received various awards. And in 2002, as a retaliation, he made the documentary "Con la misma pasión", in which he gave the portrait of Benny Moré that he did not achieve in "Hoy como ayer". Rapi died four years later, at age 56.
How to Steal a Million (1966)
Those Were the Days
I became aware of John Williams' music thanks to this film. By 1966 standards this was first-class comedy, considering that Doris Day (44) and Rock Hudson (41) were by then unconvincing as vestal and satyr, respectively, or whatever. Nobody cared much about them anymore with Shirley MacLaine around, and after 1965's "What's New Pussycat" (which nobody cares about today, but back then it gave us kids many ideas to explore body zones...) As a matter of fact the leading "transgressor" in that movie (written by Woody Allen, as an improved alter ego) plays the leading man to Holly Golightly turned Nicole Bonnet here, so it was not hard to imagine some unseen action in that museum.
I have not seen it in many years, but I remember I liked it in 1966, although I thought it needed a bit of "rebellious piquancy", compared to The Beatles' movies and even Howard Hawks' "Man's Favorite Sport?", which put Hudson in front of 22-year old Paula Prentiss, another "transgressor" who played a poetess-suicide addict-stripper in "Pussycat", with strip-tease included that in the end was cut... Those were the days.
How the West Was Won (1962)
The Prescotts' Saga
If it is useful for anyone interested in the dramatis personae of "How the West Was Won", a more appropriate cast listing -in terms of the drama and not the actors' status at the time of release- would read in this order: with Debbie Reynolds, George Peppard, Carroll Baker, Gregory Peck, James Stewart, Karl Malden, Agnes Moorehead, Carolyn Jones, Robert Preston, Thelma Ritter, Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Eli Wallach, Lee J. Cobb, Walter Brennan, Tudor Owen, Harry Morgan, John Wayne, Russ Tamblyn, Claude Johnson, Brigid Bazlen, John Larch, Jay C. Flippen, Andy Devine, Raymond Massey, David Brian, Mickey Shaughnessy, Stanley Livingston, Bryan Russell, Kim Charney... Actors appear and quickly disappear in this film, but Reynolds and Baker as the Prescott sisters, and George Peppard as Zeb, respectively their nephew and son, lead the story of three generations of pioneers in the American West. I found the first part of the story the more interesting, with the voyage of the Prescott family in search of a better life.
The House on 92nd Street (1945)
Pleasing Mogul Zanuck
Quite often regular movie viewers complain that some motion pictures -especially documentaries- contain biased propaganda and that these could not be called documentaries because of that. I wish those movie viewers would see this Henry Hathaway film and tell me if this does apply too, especially coming from 20th Century-Fox, one of the major studios that, along with Disney, most persecuted its workers (both actors and technicians) for having ideas leaning towards the Left. Propaganda it is, biased most probably, but I would not say this is not a film. As a matter of fact, it is quite an interesting drama with documentary elements, in spite of its (slanted) narration, but propaganda nonetheless. It even advertises war bonuses in "The End" card. But Hathaway knew his profession and knew how to sugarcoat the pill.
L'homme blessé (1983)
Good film
Patrice Chéreau's first film is not a pleasant viewing experience, but an excellent portrait of male desire, dominance, and confusion, sometimes arousing in its explicit depiction of homoerotic activity, sometimes a horror film of dark and sordid spaces. It was also a turning point in the career of Jean-Hugues Anglade, who became a star with the suggestion of a quiet personality and a clean handsomeness as coverups of the stormy passions of a common man, in curious roles that illustrated, as this one does, the condition of the French young men during the 1980s... and possibly of many men in the rest of the world. Anglade was in his 30s when he made "L'homme blessé", but he projects the innocence and fragility of a teenager, wrapped up in his own addiction to violence, unrequited love and his death wish. Vittorio Mezzogiorno is the addictive complement to him, as the hustler accustomed to the lack of affection and the fight for survival. If you are looking for something happy, this is not the film for you. Believe the title, that is its content.
Hitlerjunge Quex (1933)
Propaganda Lesson
Just as a good commercial can induce us to buy a car that we do not need or drink water instead of a sugared soda, «Hitlerjunge Quex» is an effective propaganda film that, once again, proves to me how effective were Nazi communications, public relations, press and propaganda. «Hitlerjunge Quex» fulfills its objective, by passionately putting forward a romantic vision of the Hitler youth against a bleak and humorless description of a group of violent and aggressive communists. While the nazis are described as prosperous and kind, communist have old proselytizing tactics and are hard hit by the economic Depression in Germany, around 1932, when the victory of the National Socialist Party was irrepressible.
The story moves us because the little protagonist Heini is not seduced by bribes, a public office, sexual blackmail or electoral promises: through his child's eyes he perceives and is moved by symbols, hymns and group singing, he is seduced by uniform and order, in the face of shady chaos at home and the customs of the friends of his father, an unemployed ruffian who, in the course of the plot, begins a process of re-evaluating his own life. Curiously, this process had continuity off screen: the leftist actor Heinrich George ended up convinced by the Führer's strong harangues and joined the ranks of the party.
At this point of history neither George nor anyone imagined the potential for malice and depravity of the Nazis: everything was hope for renewing the country... as it happens every time that the electoral process begins and the people go to polls that hide their real nature as slaughterhouses. A good film, an excellent reminder of the directions by which we can be seduced and taken by moving images.
El hijo del capitán Blood (1962)
Old Peter Blood's Boy
Spirited, brisk and sprightly are good words to define the first moments of "El hijo del capitán Blood", or any time Sean Flynn has the opportunity to move, be it in a sword fight or sliding through ropes among masts and sails aboard a ship. My opinion is based on the original Spanish version of this sort of sequel to his father Errol's own "Captain Blood" (1935), one of the best American paradigms of adventure film, that tells the story of doctor Peter Blood, who became a pirate after being submitted to slavery. His son Robert has minor problems: he wants to follow his father's steps, but mother Arabella (Ann Todd) wants him to study. She rapidly concedes and grants him a trip to London, so the movie can take off (or sail off). The film slows down a bit when the ship in which he is travelling is captured by one of his father's enemies, the mean Captain de Malagón (José Nieto), and we have to wait until the pirate friends of Robert's father come to the rescue, to regain the lively atmosphere of the beginning. By now Robert's juvenile adventure turns more dramatic, following the struggle of his mother against racism in the Caribbean, and it is crowned with an earthquake and flood, with typical 1960s visual effects, in the line of George Pal's "Atlantis, the Lost Continent", released a year before. In all, we cannot appreciate Sean in full, due to dubbing (he must have been around 20 years old when he made the film), but whenever he has the opportunity to perform action scenes, what is on the screen is more than enough. There are also Italian and US versions of this film, with different editing, score, dialogues, and running times.
Hester Street (1975)
Excellent!
What a beautiful film! "Hester Street" is a subtle, fine immigrant tale centered on a Jewish wife and mother who arrives in New York City in the late 1890s, not just a period drama as it has been often identified... and a highly enjoyable comedy too. I remember seeing Carol Kane for the first time in "Carnal Knowledge". She had a wonderful face that I never forgot. Bu in "Hester Street", Joan Micklin Silver made her a glowing presence, and gave her a moving character to play, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Steven Keats is also very good as her husbands, as well as Dorrie Kavanaugh as her husband's mistress. A plausible entry into the National Film Registry, not to be missed.
Heroes for Sale (1933)
Good social drama
In my opinion, this was the best film in the third volume of "Forbidden Hollywood" DVD anthologies edited by Warner Home Video. My appreciation for William A. Wellman has grown, starting with "The Ox Bow Incident" and "Wings", which are among the best films I have ever seen by an American filmmaker. A script that mirrors the best attitudes and ethics, and the worst of the United States population and institutions (some of which unfortunately persist), good performances by Richard Barthelmess and Aline MacMahon, downplayed sentimentality, and Wellman's direction, all combine to good effect. Recommended.
The Haunted Palace (1963)
Haunted Set
«The Haunted Palace» has nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe (credited as Edgar Allen Poe) apart from the title that was borrowed from his poem, but it is a shortened version of the novella «The Case of Charles Dexter Ward» by H. P. Lovecraft, who strove to force his tale with countless historical, linguistic, and Kabbalistic details, as well as some from his own imagination.
The film adaptation by Charles Beaumont simplified everything, in accordance with the format that Roger Corman drew up from the scripts by Richard Matheson, Beaumont and others for the movies of the Poe cycle. So, as a title in that series, «The Haunted Palace» is a motion picture that does not get lost in detail or reflection to tell, in less than 90 minutes, the story of the possession of Charles Dexter Ward by his sorcerer ancestor Joseph Curwen.
Lovecraft knew how to be ambiguous and leave the interpretations and deductions of his stories to the reader, but Beaumont was more explicit, inventing gestations of beings from the wombs of women from the port of Arkham, possessed by summoned archaic gods, which seems a bit far-fetched, if all they spawned were mutants; and on his side, Corman materializes the monster of the ancient fertilizing god, and shows --through a green filter-- a roaring but immobile prop, without causing any impression. Perhaps that is why the climax is so fast and rushed, so that there is little opportunity to see the entity or to let us think.
I found Floyd Crosby's camera movements and lighting admirable, as well as Daniel Haller's sets, especially those in the basement of the palace. But for every fluid camera movement or corporeal decoration, the budget betrays the movie with poor makeup and visual effects, while composer Ronald Stein, although he wrote a melodious central theme, does not know when to stop the music and let the images express their own "music".
Of the eight films in the Corman-Poe cycle, I think this one, «The Pit and the Pendulum» and «Tales of Terror» are the ones that I like the least. But with the next two productions, «The Masque of the Red Death» and «The Tomb of Ligeia» Roger Corman brought the cycle to full maturity.
Hallelujah (1929)
Revelations
While a group of young men and women from Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Senegal were taking a Spanish course to enter their freshman year in the film school created by Gabriel García Márquez in Cuba, I taught them Historia del Cine in a mixture of English, French and Spanish. I remember to this day their pretty faces (they were all very beautiful!) and their brilliant eyes with fascination as they discovered the early stages in the evolution of cinema, especially when I showed them this movie. By that time (around late 1980s) I had not seen the work of Afro-descendant filmmakers as Oscar Micheaux, or the ethnographic shorts by Zora Neale Hurston, so I used Vidor's production to illustrate the films with "all-Black cast". Of course the tale, music and actors were very attractive to them (as they are still to me), but for them it was also a revelation.
The Gold Rush (1925)
A Gem
Charles Chaplin may not be everybody's favorite comic of silent cinema: as for myself, sometimes I prefer Buster Keaton while there are times I feel more inclined to Harold Lloyd. But we cannot deny that neither made such a great film as this tale of love, greed, misfortune, and luck. Not even Chaplin topped himself! The film includes classic scenes and sequences, as the roll dance, the complete sequence in the cabin with Mack Swain (including Chaplin cooking his shoe or dressed as a chicken), the waltz scene... Chaplin was so fond of this work that he declared that this was the film for which he most wanted to be remembered. A true masterpiece.
Girl Asleep (2015)
Very good
The Australian film «Girl Asleep» is a fascinating tale (based on a play by Matthew Whittet) that covers that difficult stage in which a woman becomes less and less a pre-adolescent little nymph and more of "wife material", according to traditional canons that throw her into the ring as a potential bride. This phase is closely associated with the 15th birthday, which gives rise to a line of rituals ranging from debutantes' sampling on the social scale to sexual brag, in dances, waltzes and pink dresses. In Cuba, in particular, it is a crazy celebration with gowns, crowns, photos, rides in 1950s convertible Cadillacs and excited mothers who celebrate their horny daughters.
In other cases, such as Greta, the protagonist of this film, the debutante does not want a party, she does not want a boyfriend or girlfriends of the "Heathers" type. Greta (endearing Bethany Whitmore) struggles to stay in her dream world of dolls and music boxes. During the birthday party --which opens with a delirious sequence to the rhythm of "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" by Sylvester--, the three "Heathers" arrive to spoil the party by singing about her lack of tits; her friend Elliott, whom his classmates call a "homo", proposes (a very funny performance by Harrison Feldman) and a being from the woods next to her house steals her music box. Greta chases the thing through the woods and enters a world that drastically breaks the tone that the film has held until then, between parody and absurdist comedy. We enter a dark and threatening dimension that Greta has to flee from if she does not want to be devoured by canine entities that we hear but never see clearly. With the help of a young forest Amazon, Greta flees and returns to the party, but before she must go through other rites to come to terms with her family, with Elliott and her 15 years old life.
The associations that have been made to this film directed by Rosemary Myers, are with Wes Anderson's cinema and surrealism. It does have that tone, but also a bit of Susan Seidelman's female fantasies and it strongly reminds me of Neil Jordan's «The Company of Wolves», a film about of Little Red Riding Hood's sexual initiation with the Hunter who is also the Wolf, with the difference that in «Girl Asleep» it is a single story, while in Jordan's movie the story of Little Red Riding Hood is crossed with folk tales about werewolves, nymphs in heat and knowing grandmothers. Myers' movie obviously does not contain the horror sequences that abound in Jordan's, but both films are intelligent and visually ingenious works that equate that moment of social and sexual validation with the stories and characters that filled our childhood's fantasies. Highly recommended.
German Angst (2015)
Puke Angst
The best story is probably "Final Girl", which opens the movie, probing that less is often best. It is the shortest, only has occasional narration as a girl mutilates her (probably abussive) father, and ends when it starts to get more interesting, leaving you wanting more, which is good anyway. The second segment, "Make a Wish", is a story of old nazis and present-day neo-nazis torturing and killing Polish persons in the past and the present. It is the more complex, a tale that mixes strong ideological content with fantasy and extreme violence, but it keeps the tension. "Alraune", the third one, is the last, and I guess it was placed in the end because it delivers what horror fans like best: sex and gore. But it is the less effective: it is decidedly the worst. Too silly approach to male menopause crisis, with not-too-pleasant actors, anti-erotic situations and despite its sucking tentacles, flirt with S&M and horrific sex scenes, it is the less "angst" inducing segment of the three. A nice puke trilogy, though.
Grip of the Strangler (1958)
Good Film
In 1957, at age 70, the legendary Boris Karloff had already lived the best years of his artistic career as a film actor, in classics such as Edgar G. Ulmer's "The Black Cat", James Whale's "Bride of Frankenstein" and Mark Robson's "Bedlam". However, Karloff would continue acting until 1969, the year of his death, often in projects unworthy of his talent and resume, but also in very good films, such as "The Raven", "The Three Faces of Fear", "The Sorcerers "and" Targets ", directed by Roger Corman, Mario Bava, Michael Reeves and Peter Bogdanovich, respectively.
In 1957 he appeared in "Grip of the Strangler", a psychological drama, a tale of mystery and death (based on the story "Stranglehold" by Jan Read) in which the writer James Rankin (Karloff) investigates the execution of a man, unfairly accused of having strangled and stabbed a chorus girl and other women. Rankin ends up following the trail to a doctor declared crazy and then disappeared, who, by all accounts, is the real culprit. The problem begins when Rankin rescues the murder weapon, falls in trances in which his face is disfigured and continues the crime wave.
Made with limited resources, the drama solves many situations with wit, although director Robert Day or editor Peter Mayhew dilute the tension in long sequences of can-can. So Karloff sustains the drama development with a passionate performance that gradually shows the emotional imbalance that the research had caused on him.
It has been noted how, to find a solution to the absence of money for special make-up and effects, Karloff proposed to remove his dentures in the scenes in which his face appears deformed. It is interesting how his proposal was in line with the drama, because Rankin is not "possessed" by any spirit, but the grimace on his face is an evidence of his imbalance.
Also in 1958, the year of the premiere of "Grip of the Strangler", Karloff and the same technical team finished the superior "Corridors of Blood", which was not released until 1962, due to problems with the British censorship. But this one is definitely worth a look.