Round Up 1942, Part Two: The Undying Monster

Delving further into 1942 a number of interesting titles emerge from the list of 28 horror, fantasy and science fiction films made that year. Little that I'm going to add to my Want To See list, but worth noting, if only in point form (click the title if you must know more and you'll wind up on the IMDB):

The Undying Monster  (Dir: John Brahm) This sounds like a rehash of The Hound Of The Baskervilles, complete with a Scotland Yard detective and his female Watson, set in Wales, with a werewolf instead of a spectral dog. Brahm went on to direct The Lodger and Hangover Square, about which we hear such good things, and all three films are now available on DVD in the Fox Horror Classics Collection, (you'll find a link below). Of the three, The Undying Monster is considered the least interesting, but the presence of an investigator is a big selling point in a horror film for me, this is an old dark house movie with a detective, and lovely Heather Thatcher, pictured blond and monocled somewhere in the vicinity of these words, can be my Watson any time. Yes, I would very much like to see this, and it makes The List. 

Beyond the Blue Horizon (Dir: Alfred Santell) Dorothy Lamour as a jungle girl. I've had a weakness for jungle girls since discovering Maureen O'Sullivan's Jane in the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films, and will probably be noting them as I find them, but this one isn't a List contender.

Fantastic Night (Dir: Marcel L'Herbier) This one does sound interesting. French film detailing the surreal attempts of a man (Fernand Gravey), who believes he is dreaming, to foil a plot against the girl of his dreams (Michelene Presle). At the time Garvey was spending the hours he wasn't making movies working with the French Resistance. List? I think so. Surprisingly, this is available on DVD, and I've linked to it on Amazon, below.

Tomorrow We Live  (Dir: Edgar Ulmer) Ulmer, best remembered for the Z-noir classic Detour (starring Ann Savage, pictured here seductively courting lung cancer) is very nearly as fascinating a Hollywood figure as Val Lewton, and anything with his name on it is of at least passing interest. Ulmer ran into trouble in Hollywood when he fell in love with the wife of a Universal Studio exec and married her, after which he couldn't get work except at bargain basement PRC, which he ultimately laboured mightily to spruce up after spending some time making Yiddish films on the East Coast. This particular PRC release has to do with a gangster with mesmeric powers (a la my beloved Doctor Mabuse?), called The Ghost because so many have attempted to whack him. As far as I know there's no decent book about Ulmer, though there exists a career-spanning interview with him conducted by Peter Bogdanovich that I would love to get my hands on, as well as an underwhelming documentary available on DVD from Kino that's about the best you can do at the moment.

The Devil's Envoys (Les Visiteurs Du Soir, Dir: Marcel Carne) Another film made during the Nazi occupation of France, this time by the director of the classic Children Of Paradise (1946), which I have also not seen. One of a pair of 15th Century minstrels employed by the devil to destroy desperate people has the misfortune to fall in love with his mark and must then figure out how to save her, and himself, from his employer... This description mostly just makes me want to see Fritz Lang's Destiny again. No List for you. 

The Night Has Eyes (Dir: Leslie Arliss) Two female school teachers take refuge in an old dark castle on the Yorkshire Moors on a dark and stormy night, but they'r really there to find out what happened to a friend of there's who disappeared while visiting the area the year before. Did shell-shocked James Mason have something to do with it, or was it one of the other creepy occupants? The film apparently has a bit of a cult following, which is enough to make me curious. Let's put it on The List, shall we? 

Sideral Cruises (Croisieres Sideral, Dir: Andre Zwoboda) The only sci-fi movie made during the Nazi occupation of France, this film reportedly isn't much more scientifically sophisticated than the first cinematic moonshot imagined by Georges Melies (apparently the space craft is a diving bell suspended beneath what looks like a hot air balloon), and is probably most interesting for the fact that its director got into trouble for his main plot hook. Girl astronaut goes into space for two weeks and comes back 25 years older; boy astronaut, who was unable to make the first trip, likewise blasts off in order to come back the same age as his lady love. This being a cockeyed take on Einstein's theory of relativity, the director was called on the carpet by the Nazi authorities to explain what he was doing publicising 'Jewish science'. Also contains a kind of Busby Berkely dance number? In case you're wondering, as I was, 'sideral' means 'relating to the stars', and in astrological terms 'unfavourably affected by the stars'. Sounds kind of diverting actually, but perhaps not quite enough for The List.

And from here on in you'll only hear about it when a film makes my Want To See List, not when it doesn't.

Well, that finally satisfies my obsessive compulsive need to know everything that was going on in fantastic film in 1942. Moving on (backward and forward in time) to 1941 and 1943 when next we meet...