The Walking Karloff

THE WALKING DEAD-1936-The public believes Judge Shaw (Joe King) will never sentence guilty gangster Stephen Martin (Kenneth Harland) to anything extreme but much to everyone's disbelief  Shaw gives the thug 10 years. His sleazy lawyer Nolan (Ricardo Cortez)) and mob boss Loder (Barton McLane) hire hit man Trigger Sith (Joe Sawyer) to kill the judge. They set up ex-con pianist John Ellman (Boris Karloff) to take the fall. Two lab assistants Jimmy (Warren Hull) and Nancy (Marguerite Churchill; in DRACULA'S DAUGHTER the same year)) know Ellman is innocent but stupidly she doesn't want them to say anything. Ellman is convicted and sentence to death (good going, guys). At the last minute they tell their boss Dr. Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn) and he tells the crooked lawyer (who defended Ellman and helped frame him). Of course he does nothing. Ellman dies but fortunately (?) Beaumont has a machine that brings Ellman back to life. 

When revived Ellman is the worse for wear and can't remember anything. But when he hears Nancy playing the piano he sits down and starts to play. When he sees Nolan he calls him his enemy. Beaumont calls a conference with other egghead types that Loder, Nolan and their weak willed cronies also attend. They all get guilty conscientious and want to hire the same hit man as before but Ellman scares Trigger and he shoots himself. He then scares another member who's hit by a train and causes another to have a heart attack and fall out a window. 

Beaumont becomes kind of obsessed with knowing what Ellman felt when he was dead. Ellman leaves to walk around a cemetery and Mary follows him. Unbeknownst to her Loder and Nolan trail her. They shoot Ellman and get away. On his second death bed, Ellman tries to explain what death was like but dies before anything can be said. Ironically, Loder and Nolan are electrocuted when their getaway car crashes into an electric pole. 

Karloff is very sympathetic in the lead but doesn't have much dialogue. Director Michael Curtiz also made THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE the same year. Co-star Ricardo Cortez was in POSTAL INSPECTOR with Lugosi the same year. 

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Who Was Her Mom?

DRACULA'S DAUGHTER-1936-This "sequel" to Tod Browning's DRACULA (filmed 5 years later)  begins right after Van Helsing (Edward Van Sloan) kills the count (a dummy substitutes for Bela). Two dimwit policemen arrest the doctor right near the body of Renfield (it looks like Dwight Frye). After Van Helsing explains what a vampire is to the chief of police, a mysterious veiled woman appears at the morgue and Drac's body disappears. Later the woman performs a ceremony and burns the body. She tells her servant Sandor (Irving Pichel) that now the curse of Dracula is broken and she can lead a normal life. Yet later after playing the piano, she goes out and kills a guy then comes back just before dawn to sleep in a coffin.

Enter Jeffery Garth (Otto Kruger), a vacationing psychiatrist and former student of Van Helsing's who's called back to London to defend his former teacher who's charged with murder! The mystery woman turns out to be Countess Zaleska (Gloria Holden) who wants Garth to "heal her mind" and says "I never drink...wine". She kills a young girl (Nan Gray) she brings home to pose for her. There's much mumbo-jumbo about the mind and souls but it seems if she'd just look in the mirror (which she shuns) a lot of time would be saved. Of course she is (or believes she is) the daughter of the infamous late king of vampires. She kidnaps Garth's secretary Janet (Marguerite Churchill; she was in THE WALKING DEAD with Karloff the same year) to force him to make a journey with her. Eventually everyone winds up in Transylvania. But all's well that end's well in the convoluted ending.

Lots of critics harp about the exotic lesbian overtones but I find DRACULA'S DAUGHTER a bore. Director Lambert Hillyer (THE INVISIBLE RAY) does a good job moving the story along but some of it doesn't really make much sense. It's "based" on the short story "Dracula's Guest" by Bram Stoker and James Whale was the original choice as director. Co-star Pichel was also a director. The unusual looking star Holden was later in Browning's last film MIRACLES FOR SALE.

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