Apologies for the low resolution. I tried to put this on youtube, but it all got blocked.
Featuring:
Spring Byington as Ettie Coombes ("Shh.") whose work in this film is as good as anything out of Lee Strasberg.
Charlotte Granville as Lady Forsyth ("Please don't yank me, Paul.")
Maude Leslie, as Mrs. Charteris ("I simply jitter to go to Java.") or at least I'm assuming that's who this character is. I'm not sure she and Lady Forsyth are that drunk either.
Jeanne Bartlett as Daisy ("Give me a nice kiss, Alf."). Definitely meant to be drunk, but again I'm only assuming from IMDB that this is "Daisy".
Ethel Griffies as Mrs. Whack ("Is your tripe tough, Mrs. Moncaster?")
Zeffie Tilbury as Mrs. Moncaster ("Spear the canary with a fork.") These two I'm sure about; they're very good about saying each other's names.
And Tempe Pigott ("I want two gins for two ladies"), credited simply as "Drunk Woman" on IMDB which is a bit rich in this company.
Parenthetically, in contrast to all the superb character work above, the film's two werewolves, Warner Oland and Henry Hull, appear to have been genuinely paralytic for most of the filming, making their many conversations about the fictional plant Mariphasa Lupina Lumina particularly nail-biting.
"Mariphasa... Lupina... Lumina..."
Screenplay by John Colton from a story by Robert Harris. Direction by Stuart Walker. Second viewing by means of the Wolf Man boxset at Peter Davis and Laura Marshall's, where I finally gave this film the attention it was due. Excellent party. Peter's just extended his horror podcast output, by the way. "Horror Movie Maniacs" pleases me greatly, and might please you too. And the Hellraiser-inspired audio guignol that he and fellow maniac Phil wrote and produced, "Piercing The Veil", in which I got to play an absolute rotter, is still audible here.
Piercing The Veil is, to this day, the single most terrifying audio piece I've listened to in my entire life. (Terrific job, by the way, but I think I'm fine with just the one listen.)
ReplyDeleteAs someone who definitely isn't a big fan of horror - or, more accurately, not at all - I've ended up listening to a surprising amount of it for some reason. (Said reasons being The Monster Hunters and Definitely Human, mostly.)
I am also not particularly into being scared. What I like about "Horror" is that it's high-stakes magical realism in which a happy ending is not guaranteed.
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