UNIVERSAL HORROR COLLECTION VOL. 1
Synopsis: Celebrating horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, Scream Factory’s Universal Horror Collection Vol. 1 will be made available on Blu-ray™ on June 18, and is available now for pre-order. Loaded with new commentaries and featurettes, this collection includes The Black Cat (1934), The Raven, The Invisible Ray and Black Friday.
Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi created some of the most memorable performances in cinematic history. Their unforgettable performances as Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster terrified a generation of moviegoers and when these two legendary actors came together for a series of films in the 1930s, audiences could not get enough. Scream Factory now pays homage to these legendary actors with the first of two collections, presenting classic films with all the care that horror fans have come to expect from the brand.
THE BLACK CAT (1934)
Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 66 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: B&W 1080p HD Full Frame (1.33:1)
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Cast: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, David Manners, Jacqueline Wells
American newlyweds Peter (David Manners) and Joan Alison (Julie Bishop) are honeymooning
in Budapest when they meet-up with psychiatrist Dr. Vitus Werdegast (Bela Lugosi) on a train, only to later become stranded in the Hungarian countryside after a bus crash, injuring Joan. Werdegast says that a friedn of his, an Austrian architect, by name of Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff) lives nearby and takes the couple to his mountaintop castle, built upon the ruins of a, military fortress once commanded by the architect during the war. There Werdegast treats the injured woman. Soon the couple find themselves in a strange situation with Werdegast accusing Poelzig of war crimes and of stealing his wife while he was in prison. A strange and macabre tale of revenge that is set in a very cool-looking castle with oodles of macabre atmosphere throughout.
Adding to the weirdness is the fact that Karloff's Poelzig turns out to be the leader of a satanic cult and he keeps a collection of dead women down in his basement lair that he displays in glass tubes - including Werdegast's former wife! The menacing host then announces to Werdegast that he plans to sacrifice newlywed Joan at the next devils-club meeting, inspiring a game of chess with the newlywed's life hanging in the balance. Werdegast is no hero though, he's just as nuts as Karloff's character, the film culminating in him skinning his enemy alive, partially seen happening in silhouette, which is a scene that frightened me something
fierce as a kid watching it on TV!
The Black Cat is a very strange film with only a very loose connection to the Edgar Allen Poe source novel, that of the black cat that gives Lugosi's character a fright, but it works as a demented mad-architect revenge film, with morbid themes that are more than hinted at throughout, including incest.
Special Features:
- NEW Audio Commentary by author/film historian Gregory William Mank
- NEW Audio Commentary by author/film historian Steve Haberman
- NEW Dreams Within a Dream: The Classic Cinema of Edgar Allan Poe – narrated by Doug Bradley (56 min) HD
- NEW A Good Game: Karloff and Lugosi at Universal Part One: The Black Cat (24 min) HD
- Vintage footage - The Black Cat Contest (1 min) HD
- Still Gallery (9 min) HD
THE RAVEN (1935)
Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 61 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: B&W 1080p HD Full Frame (1.33:1)
Director: Lew Landers
Cast: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lester Matthews, Irene Ware, Samuel S. Hinds
The next Karloff/Lugosi team-up on the set is The Raven (1936), another Edgar Allan Poe inspired bit of weirdness with Lugosi taking lead as retired Dr. Richard Vollin, A Poe-obsessed surgeon who becomes obsessed with Jean Thatcher (Ware) a gorgeous young dancer who was disfigured in a horrid car wreck. The doc performs facial reconstruction surgery and begins to fall in love with the woman. When she rebuffs his advances in favor of a younger suitor. The doc is driven mad by this unrequited obsession, and luckily for him he keeps a Edgar Allen Poe-inspired torture dungeon in his mansion which will come in handy later on.
Vollin earlier in the film is approached by a fugitive from the law who wants to have plastic surgery to hide his identity, the doc agrees by cruelly disfigured him, telling him that if he carries out his murderous plans he will fix his face. Vollin later hosts a dinner party inviting Jean, her father and her lover, and carrying out his revenge using a series of torture devices including a swinging pendulum blade and a shrinking room. This one is a bit sillier than The Black Cat, but it's fun to see Lugosi seething as vengeful doc, and Karloff is pretty goof as the disfigured goon here.
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW Audio Commentary with author/film historian Gary D. Rhodes
- NEW Audio Commentary with author/film historian Steve Haberman
- NEW A Good Game: Karloff and Lugosi at Universal Part Two: The Raven (17 min) HD
- Audio Recording: Bela Lugosi reads “The Tell-Tale Heart” (13 min) HD
- Still Gallery (8 min) HD
THE INVISIBLE RAY (1936)
Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 79 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: B&W 1080p HD Full Frame (1.33:1)
Director: Lambert Hillyer
Cast: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Frances Drake, Frank Lawton, Violet Kemble Cooper, Beulah Bondi
The melodramatic sci-fi film The Invisible Ray begins with a far-fetched bit of techno-wonder, with astronomer Dr. Janos Rukh (Boris Karloff) having invented a telescope that can peer deep into the Andromeda Galaxy, and photograph light rays, allowing him to display millions of years old cosmic happenings on a TV display, enabling viewers to watch ancient happenings as if they were on a movie screen. It's during such a viewing with colleague, including Dr. Benet (Bela Lugosi), together they witness an ancient meteorite smash into the African continent billions of years ago. Together they launch an expedition to Africa to find this ancient meteorite.
Once there Dr. Rukh is insistent that he alone (along with several tribal African navigators) to find the intact site, and when he finds it he is exposed to it's radiation, dubbed "Radium-X", rendering him luminous and contaminated with lethal radiation, which kills on touch. He seeks the help of his friend and colleague Dr. Benet who easily (of course) concocts an elixir that holds the ill-effects of the Radium-X at bay, but he must dose himself regularly or the effects will returns.
Both Rukh and Bennet devise ways to harass Radium-X's healing properties, with Rukh curing his mother's blindness, but he goes a bit paranoid after this, more so when his wife leaves him for Benet, with the astronomer turning murderous, tracking down those he feels have wronged him and using his lethal-radiation powers to kill them, leading up to his mother having to take matters into her own hands to stop her son's murder-spree. This was a first-time watch for me, there's a lot of interesting stuff happening here, the science is all-wrong but still fascinating in a pulpy sci-fi sort of way. Lugosi wearing a suave goatee here comes up roses compared to the deranged, and curly-haired irradiated-killer Karloff, definitely a highlight of the set for me!
Special Features:
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW Audio Commentary with authors/film historians Tom Weaver and Randall Larson
- NEW A Good Game: Karloff and Lugosi at Universal Part Three: The Invisible Ray (17 min) HD
- Re-Release Theatrical Trailer (2 min) HD
- Still Gallery (7 min) HD
BLACK FRIDAY (1940)
Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 70 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: B&W 1080p HD Full Frame (1.33:1)
Director: Lew Landers
Cast: Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Stanley Ridges, Anne Nagel, Anne Gwynne
Black Friday (1940) was the strangest film on the set for me, a genre mash-up that's 1/2 40's gangster film 1/2 mad scientist thriller starring Boris Karloff as Dr. Ernest Sovac, who performs a strange operation, putting brain-tissue from a recently murdered bloodthirsty gangster named Red Cannon into the brain of a critically injured college professor (Stanley Ridges), which creates a sort of Jekyll & Hyde duality with the man turning from a well-read professorial chap into a bloodthirsty gangster from scene to scene. When the Red Cannon personality alludes to a substantial sum of money he has stashed away in the city, to that end Dr. Ernest begins to exploit his patient until he can get his hands on that cash.
Where's Bela Lugosi in all this? In a small role as the gangster who ordered the hit on Red Cannon, a pretty terrible role, miscast as a gangster with his overly thick Hungarian accent not doing him any favors. It's a bit of a bummer, Karloff if alright, it's a role he could sleepwalk through really, with the real star here being the split-personality of Stanley Ridges who does a bang-up job in the role. I do give a hats off to the film for the strange gangster/mad scientist hybridization, it's not a bad film, but it's not really a Karloff/Lugosi team-up either.
Special Features:
- NEW 2K scan of the original film elements
- NEW Audio Commentary with filmmaker/film historian Constantine Nasr
- NEW A Good Game: Karloff and Lugosi at Universal Part Four: Black Friday (17 min) HD
- Inner Sanctum Mystery Radio Show: “The Tell-Tale Heart” starring Boris Karloff (27 min) HD
- Theatrical Trailer (2 min) HD
- Still Gallery (7 min) HD
Audio/Video: All four of these vintage Universal films arrive on 4-disc Blu-ray from Scream Factory framed in 1080p HD fullframe (1.33:1). All four films - except The Black Cat - are advertised as new 2K scans from the ever-nebulous "original film elements". The source elements here are in pretty good shape, occasionally I spotted some scratches, dirt and debris but overall these are in fine shape with some healthy looking film grain, with some occasional softness popping up from time to time. They definitely look their vintage, but have been well-preserved and they look fantastic.
Audio on all four films comes by way of an English DTS-HD MA Mono with optional English subtitles. Dialogue sounds good considering the age, there's a tiny bit of hiss and tinniness present throughout but nothing that distracted me to the point of annoyance, but it's their.
I appreciate that each film is presented on it's own Blu-ray disc with an nice array of extras, beginning with commentaries from noted authors/film historians Steve Haberman, Gary D. Rhodes, Gregory William Mank, Tom Weaver, Randall Larson, and Constantine Nasr - all offering insightful and in-depth analysis of the not just the films, but of the studios and more importantly, the stars Karloff and Lugosi.
Along those same lines there's a four-part retrospective on the films with authors/film historians Gary D. Rhodes and Gregory William Mank, who get into the nitty-gritty of each film, telling the behind-the-scenes stories, the relationship between the stars, all peppered with vintage images and clips from the films. It's a solid watch that add up to about 75-min, spread out across the four discs.
The 56-min 'Dreams Within a Dream: The Classic Cinema of Edgar Allan Poe' is narrated by Doug Bradley, and written by Steve Haberman. It walks us through the various Edgar Allan Poe adaptations in cinema from the early days of silent movie-making on through to the Roger Corman Poe cycle of films and slightly beyond.
We also get a pair audio recording of Edgar Allen Poe “The Tell-Tale Heart”, a 13-min reading by Bela Lugosi and a 26-min reading by Boris Karloff. There's also a short clip of Lugosi and Karloff dressed in character at a Black Cat-themed contest, plus a selection of trailers for The Invisible Ray and Black Friday, and an an extensive gallery of still and posters for each of the films.
The four-disc set arrives in an oversized Blu-ray keepcase with a sleeve of artwork featuring the original movie posters for each films. The reverse side is simple black background with "Universal Horror Collection Volume 1" lettering on it, which seems a bit of a waste, there are so many cool vintage movie posters for these films that could have been plastered on the reverse side, or we could have got a 4-panel art option with each of the artworks on their own panel, that would have been cool! Inside there's a 12-page booklet with cast and credit information, plus stills and movie posters for all four films. The whole presentation is very similar to the way that Scream Factory did their Vincent Price Collections. There's also s slipcover with the same artwork and as the wrap.
This is a wonderful set of films for those looking to explore Universal's early films outside of the traditional Universal monsters franchises, or those looking deeper into the filmographies of horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, this is a top-notch set for lovers of vintage horror Universal horror, highly recommended.
