Your (Great-)Grandfather's Old, Dark Tavern

Now Playing: The Rogues' Tavern (1936)

Pros: The male and female leads; A deliciously ripe villain's speech at the climax
Cons: Stale Old Dark House cliches; Rock-bottom production values

Important Update!

It's happening, just as I predicted! Last October, in a post on Bert I. Gordon's Tormented (1960), I issued a warning to Facebook investors:

Facebook investors take note: I've been on it for a year or so now, and the surest sign of the decline and fall of a service like this is when old people like me start grudgingly using it.

Sure enough, it looks like the early reports of youngsters abandoning Facebook are indeed true, and they're jumping ship faster than rats at an Orkin convention.  In the "real" world, teens use their smart phones and earbuds very effectively to screen out older people and pretend they don't exist. Just the thought that parents, aunts, funny uncles, and grandparents are using their social media tools is too much to bear. So, it's on to the next great fad, at least until the oldsters invade it with photos of their cats, political rants, what they ate for dinner, etc., at which point the great migration will begin anew.

However, I do see a potential win-win situation in all this faux social chaos. With decent pensions going the way of the dinosaurs, and politicians in both parties drooling at the thought of taking big bites out of Social Security and Medicare, seniors like me are going to need some extra pocket change to keep their food pantries stocked with something more than Sam's Club-special cat food and Ramen noodles. So, all you teens and twenty-somethings with discretionary income, what's it worth to you to keep grumpy old people like me out of your precious social sites? To make it convenient, we'll accept all major credit cards, Paypal and Google payments. Since founder Mark Zuckerberg is still (barely) a twenty-something and stinkin' rich, I think he should be the first to pony up. Hey Mark, if you're reading this, contact me and we can arrange for a reasonable lump sum payment to be transferred to my account in the Cayman Islands.

While we're waiting for Mark and his peeps to do the right thing, please visit Films From Beyond the Time Barrier on Facebook. It features lots of interesting links, capsule reviews, important dates in B movie history and other extra special content that you won't find here on the blog. And, as a special incentive, if you click Like today, I'll make sure you get a cut of whatever settlement I get from the Z-man (minus attorney fees, financial transaction fees, and shipping and handling of course).

Since Valentine's Day is getting close, I thought I'd use part of this post to celebrate a long-lost love. She was nothing much to look at, but in the olden days before online streaming and Blu-Ray (heck, even before DVDs, if you can imagine that), she provided me with hour upon hour of unique, one-of-a-kind entertainment. Okay, before you get too creeped out, "she" was a video store -- the charming, eccentric, independently-owned kind that was hard to find even 20 years ago.

Morris Classic Video was located in a dumpy, nondescript mini-strip mall just north of South Bend, Indiana, near the Michigan border. It was one of those places you knew about through word of mouth, because the chances of finding it on your own were next to nil. From the outside, it looked way too small to hold much of anything, not to mention a good videotape collection. But when you entered through the creaky front door, the standard laws of physics and geometry no longer applied, and wonderfully peculiar video worlds beckoned you from every nook, corner and cranny.

To maximize their cramped space, the proprietors installed dozens of floor-to-ceiling pegboards that housed video sleeves and numbered round tags corresponding to the various titles. You browsed the cover art, grabbed the tags for the videos you wanted, and took them to the main desk where they fetched the VHS cassettes. Space was tight to say the least, and even someone as lean and mean as myself sometimes had difficulties squeezing through the maze of shelves. In the winter, with a heavy coat on, it was a real challenge to navigate--  on several occasions I backed up to make room for another customer, or absent-mindedly raised my arm, and a bunch of tags would clatter to the floor.

True to its name, Morris Classic Video played host to the all-time greatest stars of the silver screen (and some wannabes as well). There was a Katherine Hepburn section and a Bogart section, and for some reason I never quite figured out, an Eric Roberts (!??!!) section (possibly one of the owners had the hots for Eric, brother of the reprehensible and revolting Julia). And there was more than silver screen classics -- Morris was where I discovered the incomparable I, Claudius on videotape.

But best of all for someone with my peculiar tastes, they had a generous helping of "classic" sci-fi and horror. I got reacquainted with some of the great, schlocky sci-fi flicks of my childhood, titles like The Angry Red Planet (1959) and The Crawling Eye (1958). Better still, they stocked a fair number of horror and mystery thrillers from the '30s and '40s, obscure programmers from the Poverty Row studios that never made it to the Creature Features that I watched as a kid. Many of the titles were from the now defunct outfit Video Yesteryear, which specialized in public domain cinema. When I got a catalog to see what else they offered that Morris didn't, it wasn't long before I was in the grip of that terrible, yet exhilarating addiction known as video collecting.

Jimmy (Wallace Ford) and Marjorie (Barbara Pepper) wonder
whatever became of Morris Classic Video in South Bend, Ind.

I'm not sure what attracted me to The Rogues' Tavern at Morris Video, except that, apparently having had a lot of time on my hands back in those days, I systematically went through pretty much their whole collection of classic horror, sci-fi and mysteries. If you're not open-minded and in the right mood, B programmers from the '30s like Rogues' Tavern can be more work than pleasure. The medium was still evolving: cameras and sound equipment were clunky and hard to use; the acting craft was still recovering from the exaggerated mugging of the silent era; and only the best, most imaginative crafts men and women with the highest budgets were discovering that cinema could combine good storytelling with pace, movement and spectacle to transport audiences to new worlds. Consequently, B movies of the '30s were often maddeningly static affairs, set-bound, with outrageous overacting, no music tracks, embarrassing character stereotypes, and a glacier-pace.

Still, the better B's overcame these deficiencies with personable leads (especially the leading ladies), strange, eccentric supporting characters, and clever, lightning-quick dialog. Rogues' Tavern predictably suffers from some of the worst traits of the cheapies, yet delivers just enough punch -- especially through an unusual red-herring and some deliciously over-ripe dialog -- that it's worth checking out for hardcore vintage mystery-thriller fans.

Rogues' Tavern starts out with Jim Kelly (Wallace Ford) and Marjorie Burns (Barbara Pepper), two department store detectives, desperately trying to get married in the middle of the night. The Justice of the Peace tells them there's a waiting period, but he can call the nearest Justice over in the next state, and they can meet him at the Red Rock Tavern just over the state line. We're not quite sure what the hurry is, but the two lovebirds quickly agree to the plan. The next lines are a good indication of what the viewer is in for (Noel Coward this is not!):

Kelly [to the Justice of the Peace]: Are you married?
Justice: No, I was born this way.

"Why grandpa, what big eyes you have!"

Ouch! The script never really rises above this clunker. The pair arrive at the tavern with the wind, and a dog, howling in the background. The interior of the Red Rock looks nothing like a tavern, but rather a standard-issue old dark house with a large fireplace, grand staircase, wall tapestries, a suit of armor, etc. Apparently, there wasn't enough money in the budget to outfit the set to look like a tavern, so they just used it as-is. But the set is appropriate, since what we're watching is a typical old dark house thriller. In its 67 minute running time, Rogues' Tavern checks off just about every cliche in the Old Dark House subgenre, which by 1936 was getting a bit long-in-the-tooth:

✓ A dark and stormy (in this case, windy) night
✓ An intrepid, wisecracking male protagonist (Jimmy Kelly / Wallace Ford)
✓ A plucky blonde female protagonist who's constantly being menaced by shadowy figures and clutching hands coming out of secret rooms and passageways (Marjorie Burns / Barabara Pepper)
✓ A houseful of unlucky victims who've been summoned to get their just rewards
✓ A mysterious, exotic-looking femme-fatale (Gloria Robloff / Joan Woodbury)
✓ An eccentric handyman/house servant who's afraid of his own shadow
✓ An eerie face at the window
✓ Creepy disembodied voices
✓ Scads of red-herrings, including a howling dog
✓ A mad, deadly plan of revenge exposed by the plucky protagonists

The two leads, Wallace Ford and Barbara Pepper, manage to make this stale affair watchable. Wally Ford is one of my favorite character actors from the '30s and '40s. No matter what he's in, his doughy-faced, wisecracking everyman act has me smiling every time. This is not one of his better performances -- he stumbles through some of his lines and slurs others -- but he still brings life to a programmer that without him would be deadly dull to watch. (It probably didn't help that this was an ultra-low budget, 1-take-and-done production. For a much better showcase of Ford's talents, see The Mummy's Hand, 1940. See also my write up of One Frightened Night for more info on his fascinating life, which rivals the plots of many of his movies!)

Marjorie is menaced by... a stuffed dog's head!

Per the dictates of the subgrene, Barbara Pepper as Marjorie is perky, intelligent, curious and very blonde. She's instrumental in solving the mystery, but Ford's character is so dismissive and arrogant toward her that you wonder why she is so hot-fired to marry him. (Barbara went from a showgirl spot in Ziegfield's Follies to movie starletdom in the early thirties, then turned to the inevitable TV career in the '50s. Toward the end of her life, she was a recurring character, Doris Ziffel, on the TV comedy Green Acres.)

As a counterpoint to the perky blonde, Rogues' Tavern throws a dark, exotic-looking beauty, Joan Woodbury (as Gloria Robloff), into the mix. Unfortunately Joan has little to do except peer at her fortune-telling cards and glumly intone lines like "Everyone here is in the shadow of death!"

The ultimate redemption of Rogues' Tavern is the murderer's rousing, florid speech at the climax, punctuated with bouts of insane laughter. It is a memorable piece of over-the-top acting, and is mentioned in everything that I have read about the film. It is the prototype for the mad villain's taunting of the captured hero in every spy movie or comic book adaptation you've ever seen. There aren't too many candidates for the maniac in this one, so even if the culprit comes as no surprise, at least the speech will have you grinning.

---

Where to find it:

Oldies.com

YouTube

"A roadside inn turned into a trap of doom!"

Countdown to Halloween: An Old, Dark Funhouse

#12: One Frightened Night (1935)

HAlloween MoVie rating:
You'll never Guess the murderer

It's a dark and stormy night. The camera swoops down on the exterior of the forbidding Whyte mansion. Like a helicopter-borne peeping tom, it focuses on an upper story window. The storm shutters fly open, and a mysterious hand quickly pulls the shade, which reveals the main title, "Nat Levine presents One Frightened Night." (Even the title is ingratiating in a clumsy sort of way-- if my memory of basic grammar serves me right, a person can be frightened, but not a thing like a dark and stormy night… frightening, yes, but not frightened.) The camera pans to a series of windows and more hands pulling shades to reveal the credits. This is one of the more clever title sequences I've seen from this era, and an auspicious beginning. The film doesn't quite live up to its imaginative titles, but with a brisk 66 minute running time, there's no harm in giving it a chance.

Crotchety millionaire Jasper Whyte has chosen this stormy night to summon a motley (but upper crust) collection of relatives and his doctor and housemaid to the parlor for some important news. He's been unable to locate his long lost granddaughter, and he needs to do something with his millions before a new state inheritance tax takes effect at midnight. Years ago he disinherited his daughter because she dared to run away with a disreputable actor. She died, but he found out that she had a daughter. Remorseful, he tells the group that he's had his attorney searching for the granddaughter, to no avail. If she had been found, she'd have gotten every penny of his money. Instead, he's decided to give each of his remaining relatives and the doctor and housemaid a cool million to prevent the state tax man from getting his greedy mitts on it.

Naturally, everyone's ecstatic until the attorney shows up at the door with, lo and behold, the long lost granddaughter, an attractive blond by the name of Doris Waverly (Evalyn Knapp). Now the old man's ecstatic, and the rest of the crew are seriously bummed. The proud grandfather takes Doris upstairs to get away from the morose group and find out more about her. As they're talking, a second Doris (Mary Carlisle) shows up at the door-- she's part of a traveling vaudeville magician act (the Great Luvalle, played by the great Wallace "Wally" Ford), and what do you know, she just happened to be in the neighborhood and was curious about the grandfather she never met.

One frightened face.

Minutes later, the first Doris is found dead in a locked room with a cup of poisoned tea in her hand, and we're off to the "old dark house" races, with lots of lightning, thunder, lights going out, hands reaching out of secret passageways, grotesque masked figures, poison blow darts, bumbling police… the works. By now (1935), audiences were well-acquainted with all of the old dark house cliches from such films as The Bat (1926), The Cat and the Canary (1927), and of course, The Old Dark House (1932). This micro-budgeted affair takes all the hoary cliches and adds a very engaging cast, including Charley Grapewin as the irascible Jasper, Hedda Hopper (who in a few years would become the feared, powerful gossip columnist) as his money-grubbing niece, Regis Toomey as an insouciant playboy nephew, and wonderful, wisecracking Wallace Ford as the insecure vaudeville magician.

The best thing about Frightened Night (and a hallmark of '30s B movies) is the mile-a-minute dialog. The verbal barbs fly fast and furious in the movie's hour plus change running time, and seemingly every character dishes it out and gets it in return. One running joke has Ford constantly correcting the other characters when they address him by name-- "that's the Great Luvalle…" Even the bumbling Sheriff (Fred Kelsey) gets his digs in when someone exclaims, "Somebody tried to murder Mr. Luvalle!" "Maybe they saw his act," he says dryly.

One word of warning: this is not one of those classic titles that has been lovingly restored and remastered. The transfer to DVD (Alpha Video and Mill Creek) is just barely watchable, and the sound is terrible. But if you're a fan, something is better than nothing at all.

Key Player #1: Wallace Ford was one of the great character actors in B movies, with a career that spanned 4 decades, from the early '30s through the mid-1960s. In the '30s and '40s, he perfected the role of the hard-bitten yet genial, wisecracking yet self-deprecating, doughy-faced everyman who popped up in countless gangster films, dramas, comedies and thrillers. Born in England in 1898, his real name was Samuel Jones. He was abandoned by his mother and ended up with a farm couple in Canada who beat him and used him as slave labor. He ran away in his teens, eventually meeting up with an engaging itinerant farm laborer named Wallace Ford. When Ford was accidentally killed trying to jump a train, Jones adopted his beloved friend's name. Later, after gaining fame in Hollywood, Ford tracked down his natural mother in England. (Tom Weaver, Poverty Row Horrors! Monogram, PRC and Republic Horror Films of the Forties, McFarland, 1993)

Key player #2: Precocious Mary Carlisle was introduced to Hollywood at the age of 4, and was screen testing at Universal at the age of 14. She completed high school before breaking into movies as a bit player in the early 1930s. By the time she retired from acting in the early '40s, she was a veteran of dozens of B movies. In a Filmfax interview, she explained the unique nature of B's in a very matter-of-fact way:

There was little time for lighting and rehearsing. Everything was different [from working in an A picture]. On an A picture, a designer designs the wardrobe. At PRC, we'd go to wardrobe and pick out something that had already been worn two or three times on other pictures. It was the difference between buying a diamond at Tiffany's or a little unknown place; it was the difference between a Rolls-Royce and a Ford. We'd shoot a picture at PRC in anywhere from ten days to two weeks. They were quickie B's. (Weaver, Poverty Row Horrors! )

Evil in a Sequined Evening Gown

The Spider Woman Strikes Back (1946)

First, let's talk about truth in advertising. The title sure makes this film sound like a sequel, and an interesting one at that-- who is this mysterious Spider Woman? Who is she striking back at, and why? Any amateur IMDb sleuth would quickly discover that The Spider Woman played by Gale Sondergaard tangled with Universal's Sherlock Holmes (Basil Rathbone) just a couple years before, but to paraphrase the great detective, "it's not so elementary my dear Watson."

Truth is, Universal had planned to cash in on the earlier film's reputation with a whole series to be helmed by Ford Beebe and featuring the deliciously evil character.  But studio politics and/or financial concerns scuttled the project, with the exception of Strikes Back. Universal obviously wanted to recoup some of the money they'd sunk into the ostensible sequel, but delayed shooting for several months while they scaled it back. 

Further evidence of the studio's lack of faith in the film can be seen in the IMDb entry, where half the credited cast are noted as having "scenes deleted." It seems to have been downsized both before and after cameras started rolling. It's a wonder it survived at all-- the end product clocks in at 59 minutes, short by even B programmer standards. What the poor misled moviegoers did get for their hard-earned money was a spider woman of sorts played by the same great Sondergaard, but Holmes and Watson were nowhere in sight.

In spite of the faux Sherlock Holmes association thrust on it, The Spider Woman Strikes Back is a decent, if low rent, horror-thriller programmer with one rich, ripe performance (Sondergaard), a plucky heroine-in-peril (Brenda Joyce), and "Brute Man" Rondo Hatton skulking around for good measure. Given the studio's careless handling, Strikes Back has its flaws-- it drags in places (even in a 59 minute running time!), and there are more than a few continuity lapses and plot holes due to the hack edit job. But it has a couple of scenes of jaw-dropping, gothic campiness that make for a very good time if you're in the mood.

It all begins with chic Jean Kingsley (Joyce), arriving by bus in the small rural community of Domingo. It seems she's come to town to be a companion/assistant to wealthy recluse Zenobia Dollard (Sondergaard), a botanist who lost her sight in the jungles of Central America. Inexplicably dressed in an expensive fur coat (later we find out she quit her merchandising job for more peace and quiet), she discovers that she's missed the last taxi for the evening. By coincidence, she runs into ex-boyfriend and rancher Hal Wentley (Kirby Grant), who is more than happy to drive her out to Zenobia's. Jean is grateful, but a little peeved-- she obviously doesn't have room for old beaus in her new life.

Jean wonders what she's gotten herself into.

As they drive up to the house, Jean remarks on how dark and quiet it is. Hal reminds her that Zenobia is blind, so she doesn't need the light. Jean gets a second bad feeling when they're greeted at the door by Zenobia's mute, dour, and world-class ugly manservant Mario (Hatton). The doubts seem to be dispelled, however, when the mistress of the house greets Jean in the parlor. Even though she tells Jean she wasn't expecting her until morning, nonetheless Zenobia is dressed in an elegant, formal evening gown. "I do hope you like me and will be happy here Miss Kingsley," she says, smiling sweetly. When Jean declines her offer of dinner, Zenobia insists that she at least drink a glass of milk. Zenobia is a very firm believer in a glass of milk before bed -- a little too firm -- but Jean brushes off the eccentricity and dutifully drinks it.

It turns out that in this house, milk before bedtime is not such a good idea. At first, Jean is captivated by the elegant, worldly woman with her stories of adventure and exploration in the wilds of Central America. And as she interacts more with the locals, everyone she talks to (including rancher Hal) have only the nicest things to say about her kindness and generosity. But gradually, Jean's suspicions build again. For all her kindness, Zenobia seems to have had bad luck in keeping companions for very long. A letter for Jean's predecessor, who was supposed to have quit to get married, comes to the house. Jean writes back to the forwarding address, but that letter is returned. And in spite of all those wholesome glasses of milk before bed, she finds herself lethargic and unable to get up at a decent hour-- something that's never happened to her before. It doesn't help that she hears strange tapping sounds coming from behind the wall of her walk-in closet, or that every time she turns around in a long, dark hall, the frightful Mario seems to be following her.

Adding to the intrigue, she hears gossip at the local dry goods store / post office about the terrible luck that the local ranchers are having. Cattle are mysteriously dying, and a local boy is sick from drinking suspect milk. The problem is so bad that many cattlemen are packing up and leaving for greener pastures. Rancher Hal thinks the cows are eating some kind of poison weed new to the area, and calls in an agriculture agent (Milburn Stone) to help investigate.

"You're going to die Jean, just like the others..."

Meanwhile, back at the old dark house, Jean gets a shock when she quietly observes Zenobia concentrating on collecting spiders from the leaves of a plant, and realizes that her employer is not blind after all. Mario, seeing everything, tries to warn his mistress in sign language that she's been spotted. Jean faints (or pretends to faint), and the unflappable Zenobia feigns concern and fusses over Jean as she comes to. Jean's eyes are now wide open concerning her duplicitous employer. She soon learns that night after night, as she's lain in bed drugged, Zenobia has been draining her blood to feed to her prize carnivorous plant. The plant in turn supplies Zenobia with deadly blossoms that she's using to secretly poison the local cattle and drive the ranchers off the land once owned by her family.

More truth in advertising: moviegoers who expected to see large, venomous tarantulas crawling around, killing unfortunate victims in their sleep were no doubt disappointed. The "Spider Woman" here is more of a "Carnivorous Plant Woman," who needs spiders and human blood to keep her strange, precious pet happy. But when you're famous for being the Spider Woman, you go with it. Gale Sondergaard went with these exotic, villainous roles more than she cared to. Years later she told an interviewer:

They thought they would do a series starring me as the Spider Woman and it had nothing to do with the other one. Well, I almost had hysterics at one time out of just hating it so, I remember. It came out, and people still talk about it, think it's great. And I'm all right… I've seen it, and it isn't anything to be ashamed of, but I didn't like it when I did it. (Quoted in Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946, 2nd ed., Weaver, et al.)

Dahling, you look absolutely mahvelous!

Having won the very first best supporting actress Oscar for her debut performance in Anthony Adverse (1936), I suppose she can be forgiven the frustration she felt at the kinds of cartoonish roles she was getting ten years later. However, around the same time as The Spider Woman Strikes Back, she sufficiently impressed Hollywood and audiences with a supporting role in Anna and the King of Siam (1946) that she was nominated again (she lost to The Razor Edge's Anne Baxter).

Rondo Hatton (Mario the mute manservant) is a tragic story. Deciding to pursue a military career as a young man, he ended up in the trenches in France in World War I and was exposed to poison gas. Pensioned, but still needing to remain active, he became a reporter for a Tampa, Florida newspaper. During that time he developed the rare syndrome acromegaly, which causes deformation of bones, swelling of the soft tissues of the head, hands, and feet, and swelling of internal organs. (While acromegaly is a disorder of the pituitary gland, speculation was rampant that the poison gas was ultimately responsible for Hatton's condition.) Hatton, covering the shooting of a movie in the Tampa area, was noticed by director Henry King, and ended up being lured out to Hollywood in 1936.

He secured a contract with Universal, and earned notoriety for portraying a succession of bogeymen in cheap thrillers. Like Sondergaard, he has a Sherlock Holmes connection-- perhaps his best known role is that of "The Creeper" in Universal's 1944 Holmes entry The Pearl of Death. Hatton died of a heart condition brought on by the acromegaly a month or so before The Spider Woman Strikes Back was released. (Another story related in Universal Horrors is that during filming of Strikes Back, Sondergaard thought Hatton's looks were the product of the studio's make-up department!)

Strikes Back is worth seeking out if only for Sondergaard's deliciously evil hamming. Who can resist The Spider Woman, decked out in a slinky black evening gown, her eyebrows arched, declaring triumphantly to the cowering heroine: "You'll die Jean, just like the others. But it won't be really dying… you'll live on in this beautiful plant!…"?

The Spider Woman Strikes Back is available on DVD-R from Sinister Cinema (the print from 16mm is watchable, but degraded in spots).


Wealthy recluse Zenobia Dollard (Gale Sondergaard) and her mute manservant Mario (Rondo Hatton) feed the "beautiful creatures" in her basement laboratory: