Continuing with the Night Screams subset of the 250-pack, we bring you two tales of crime, imprisonment, madness, and barging into other people's lodgings without their permission.
Grade: F
The first couple minutes or so of The Phantom offer us an imminent execution, followed by a daring jail break and a bold leap onto the top of a moving train. It's the kind of set-piece done so well by the Keatons, Lloyds, et al. of the silent era -- which was drawing to a close just as The Phantom was being filmed. All in all, despite frequent camera white-outs from overexposure, the opening does a reasonably good job of snagging the viewer's interest.
Then it all goes to hell, as The Phantom immediately devolves into what may be the most excruciatingly draggy, drawn-out, ponderous movie of its kind that we've yet seen. (And we've seen plenty.)
And if you're already thinking "Hey, it was 1931, cut 'em some slack!", we'll answer with a single letter: M. That's also from 1931, and it's terrific, so there.
In fact we can go back further for our unflattering comparisons, as there's almost nothing in The Phantom that wasn't already done far better in 1926's The Bat -- and most of what's left over was done better in 1934's The Ghost Walks.
Triangulate between the plots of those two films, and you've got a pretty good idea of what to expect from The Phantom: craven maids, escaped mental patients, ominous threats from nicknamed criminals, sympathetic characters operating under false pretenses, and so forth.
But all of that doesn't convey the film's crushing slowness, exhibited by nearly every parameter of its existence. Lines of dialogue are prefaced and followed by lengthy, needless silences. Minor plot developments that could be handled in three seconds instead take 30. Characters react slowly and with a delay, as if they've outsourced their nervous system to the Moon and are working through the signal lag.
Moreover, The Phantom is just plain stupid, to the point of incoherence. Not only could you drive a truck through the holes in the plot, but even the moment-to-moment behavior of the characters doesn't make sense: no matter how young and ambitious you might be, you're probably not going to hold your future father-in-law at gunpoint to advance your career, and probably can't expect to be forgiven if you do.
As others have noted our male lead, Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams, bears a remarkable resemblance to George W. Bush -- though P. was initially reminded more of Patrick Swayze, plus a bit of Andy Roddick, and a dash of a former college friend who's since turned into the worst sort of white libertarian douche.
Meanwhile our female lead, Allene Ray, has a squeaky voice that allegedly kept her from success in talkies à la Singin' in the Rain. While it's not so bad as all that, it was probably no accident but -- rather -- a tactical decision to have the film's other female character, Lucy the maid (the piquantly-named Violet Knights), talk like a helium addict.
About the only hint of a bright spot is William Jackie as Oscar, a Swede-talking, rubber-limbed freakshow who lives at a nearby asylum. In his first appearance he emerges from the floor, unknotting himself like a revived marionette, or a bizarre forerunner of that creepy shadow man from Drakkhen.
Though we weren't too yazzed about his "Yack and Yill" faux-Scandinavianisms, Oscar's rangy weirdness certainly livens things up a bit: hardly cause for celebration -- let alone a festive evening celebration -- but at least there's an umbrella in the mix.
Anyway, The Phantom was miserable, it sucked, it was terrible. But besides that it was fine.
Uh, except it wasn't fine at all, scratch that: it really is awful. You've been...
...warned!
And speaking of warnings:
Grade: C
Now this is a weird one. For starters we have William "Stage" Boyd, infamous for nearly (though inadvertently) destroying the career of the other William Boyd aka Hopalong Cassidy, thanks to a well-publicized descent into alcoholism -- and a newspaper that accompanied the story of his arrest with Hoppy's picture.
Anyway, by 1935 Boyd was reduced to shouting "Come in, Appollyn!" into a microphone at the behest of the sad, silly serial The Lost City, which we reviewed way back when (in its oh-so-long, Mill Creek-exclusive feature edit).
And then he died.
But The Midnight Warning dates from before all that, and Boyd's performance as Detective Cornish shows that he undoubtedly had presence, at least of the "overbearing gym teacher" sort. And Cornish certainly is overbearing, taking command of the entire situation from the moment his pal Dr. Steven Walcott (Hooper Atchley) mysteriously collapses in a hotel room.
If the hotel staff had their way, Dr. Walcott's collapse would've simply been chalked up to heat and exhaustion. But thanks to Cornish's super-powered binocular glasses and virtuosic lip-reading skills, a slender thread of anomaly begins to unravel a tapestry of conspiracy.
We can't tell you much more about The Midnight Warning's plot (which takes some rather unexpected turns) without spoiling the film. And that'd be a shame, since there's something engaging about its sub-Conan-Doyle stylings -- a comparison not made idly, as it does feel almost as though we're expected to already be familar with the brash Cornish and the more milquetoast Walcott, in a Sherlock-and-Watson sort of way.
Still, though The Midnight Warning moves rather briskly in its fashion and is refreshingly hard to anticipate, there's something subtly "off" about its direction and tone. It's one of those films where, as we watched (!), it took a long time to figure out whether it was good or bad, if that makes sense. Its narrative progression has an odd creakiness and -- for want of a better word -- impulsiveness to it, leaving us unsure whether we're being pulled along confidently or jerked around by half-assery.
Like so many of its contemporaries, it also has a mild case of IWGIHs syndrome, with much of the supporting cast presented in such a way as to offer no meaningful distinction between its members. Seizing on the odd mustache or last name helps a bit -- but still. (And we all know what's made there.)
The truth is probably that The Midnight Warning is a competent genre entry that's very much of its time, with some inspired moments and some pedestrian ones. Perhaps it's got a few unexpected and mildly intriguing quirks, but nothing much more than that. (It's also got some serious jitter in the film-to-video transfer, though mercifully that doesn't go on for too long.)
If it seems weirder than that to us, chances are it's half a product of our own inexperience, and half a consequence of early 1930s filmmaking working out its narrative kinks.
Oh, and by the way, the plot summary at IMDb for this film -- "Guests at a luxury hotel are horrified when they witness a man literally 'disappear into thin air'" -- is total horse pucky. The sleeve to the Mill Creek disc is also in error, but still close enough to the mark as to spoil several key plot points, so don't read it!
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