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Acolyte, v. 4, issue 1, whole no. 13, Winter 1946
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Miklos Rosza's excellent score. ---oo0oo--- ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY. This Columbia gem of a notion (?), distilled from the nightclub type of Zombie, proves beyond a doubt that the corn is grain. Corny Alan Carney and his sidekick, Wally Brown, tour the tropics in search of a genuwine zombie. They have the misfortune to meet up with Trini-badman Bela Lugosi, discredited scientist who has manufactured a serum which produces artificial zombies. High point of the picture is when Carney sits on the hypodermic needle and is transformed into a poor man's Peter Lorre, complete with popeyes. Slapstick comedy that's OK if your brow is feeling low. ---oo0oo--- THE FROZEN GHOST, an Inner Sanctum Mystery from Universal, featuring Lon Chaney Jr. Hypnotist's eyes prove lethal to individuals arousing his ire. Frequent close-ups of Chaney's orbs unimaginatively illuminated by a slit of light. A wax museum wanders into the story somewhere, and a villain who played Goebbels in The Hitler Gang meets a fiery but boring death in a blast furnace. We happened to attend the opening of this picture with the woman who was the fiancee of the deceased co-author of the screenplay. Original title was Son of Svengali, and original plot, she said, was far more original. Rating: just fair. ---oo0oo--- JUNGLE CAPTIVE, Universal, sequel to Captive Wild Woman. Otto Krueger as scientist who sometimes gets angry, even a little mad. His assistant, a new character who impersonates Karloff without makeup, steals the ape-woman's corpse from the morgue. Cadaver is brought back to live with a serum, but roams about strangling people because she has no brain. That's where the heroine comes in. That's where the audience walks out. Rating: Why bother? ---oo0oo--- ISLE OF THE DEAD. Hippocrates v. Hermes! Science battles superstition on a tiny Greek burial island as a..plague? vampire?..threatens to take the lives of an isolated group of people, including Boris Karloff. A crescendo of horror comes when a cataleptic victim, prematurely buried, revives in her coffin. And the climax is one of the screen's most savage mixtures of mania and murder as a trident becomes an instrument of gory death in the hands of a crazed woman. Picture introduces, for the first time on the screen, the Greek version of the vampire, called vorvalaka. The name puzzled your reviewer, who recalled a story of similar title ten or more years ago in Weird Tales. After reference to our files we found the tale we had in mind in the April 1932 issue. Titled "The Vrykolakas", it states in one paragraph: "The vrykolakes of the Greek islands differ from the Slavic vampire. They are the dead, but still animated, bodies of wicked men. They have enormous strength, and may not be killed by any ordinary means. Only fire may totally destroy them." Vorvalaka--Vrykolakas? We will not risk revealing that the divergent spellings are all Greek to us; rather, we request someone among Acolyte's linguists to enlighten the readers. For this service Editor Laney will undoubtedly be willing to Greece someone's palm. ---oo0oo--- THAT'S THE SPIRIT, Universal. Unorthodox musical that is difficult to classify. Dark Lady in a Shroud takes the life of vodvil ham Jack Oakie when his wife is dying in child-birth and he calls on unseen powers to spare her, offering himself as a sacrifice. In Heaven, where clouds of frozen carbon-dioxide base bubble up from the "ground", Oakie is discontent, worries over the fate -- 19 --
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Miklos Rosza's excellent score. ---oo0oo--- ZOMBIES ON BROADWAY. This Columbia gem of a notion (?), distilled from the nightclub type of Zombie, proves beyond a doubt that the corn is grain. Corny Alan Carney and his sidekick, Wally Brown, tour the tropics in search of a genuwine zombie. They have the misfortune to meet up with Trini-badman Bela Lugosi, discredited scientist who has manufactured a serum which produces artificial zombies. High point of the picture is when Carney sits on the hypodermic needle and is transformed into a poor man's Peter Lorre, complete with popeyes. Slapstick comedy that's OK if your brow is feeling low. ---oo0oo--- THE FROZEN GHOST, an Inner Sanctum Mystery from Universal, featuring Lon Chaney Jr. Hypnotist's eyes prove lethal to individuals arousing his ire. Frequent close-ups of Chaney's orbs unimaginatively illuminated by a slit of light. A wax museum wanders into the story somewhere, and a villain who played Goebbels in The Hitler Gang meets a fiery but boring death in a blast furnace. We happened to attend the opening of this picture with the woman who was the fiancee of the deceased co-author of the screenplay. Original title was Son of Svengali, and original plot, she said, was far more original. Rating: just fair. ---oo0oo--- JUNGLE CAPTIVE, Universal, sequel to Captive Wild Woman. Otto Krueger as scientist who sometimes gets angry, even a little mad. His assistant, a new character who impersonates Karloff without makeup, steals the ape-woman's corpse from the morgue. Cadaver is brought back to live with a serum, but roams about strangling people because she has no brain. That's where the heroine comes in. That's where the audience walks out. Rating: Why bother? ---oo0oo--- ISLE OF THE DEAD. Hippocrates v. Hermes! Science battles superstition on a tiny Greek burial island as a..plague? vampire?..threatens to take the lives of an isolated group of people, including Boris Karloff. A crescendo of horror comes when a cataleptic victim, prematurely buried, revives in her coffin. And the climax is one of the screen's most savage mixtures of mania and murder as a trident becomes an instrument of gory death in the hands of a crazed woman. Picture introduces, for the first time on the screen, the Greek version of the vampire, called vorvalaka. The name puzzled your reviewer, who recalled a story of similar title ten or more years ago in Weird Tales. After reference to our files we found the tale we had in mind in the April 1932 issue. Titled "The Vrykolakas", it states in one paragraph: "The vrykolakes of the Greek islands differ from the Slavic vampire. They are the dead, but still animated, bodies of wicked men. They have enormous strength, and may not be killed by any ordinary means. Only fire may totally destroy them." Vorvalaka--Vrykolakas? We will not risk revealing that the divergent spellings are all Greek to us; rather, we request someone among Acolyte's linguists to enlighten the readers. For this service Editor Laney will undoubtedly be willing to Greece someone's palm. ---oo0oo--- THAT'S THE SPIRIT, Universal. Unorthodox musical that is difficult to classify. Dark Lady in a Shroud takes the life of vodvil ham Jack Oakie when his wife is dying in child-birth and he calls on unseen powers to spare her, offering himself as a sacrifice. In Heaven, where clouds of frozen carbon-dioxide base bubble up from the "ground", Oakie is discontent, worries over the fate -- 19 --
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