Price, Lee and Karloff: Three masters in less than horrific form

With Halloween upon us, what better time to remember three undisputed masters of horror — Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff. With so many great films between them, and most of them available on home video for your annual enjoyment, there couldn’t possibly be more “lost” films out there, right?

Well, the folks at the Warner Archive Collection have really scraped the bottom of the barrel to bring three forgotten films back to life via their Manufacture on Demand service for Halloween. Unfortunately, neither the Price or Lee films can really be considered “horror,” but the Karloff film does become a bit more shocking and horrific as it barrels towards its conclusion. But are any of these films worthy of becoming Halloween perennials?

Unfortunately, the answer is no.

Vincent Price stars as Gilbert de Quincey, a 19th century adventurer, in Confessions of an Opium Eater. I’ve never really been familiar with this film except for the title, and it really bears little resemblance to the lurid poster artwork featured on the DVD sleeve. In the film, de Quincey arrives in San Francisco in the midst of a Tong war and somehow gets involved with trying to stop the Chinese slave trade, as young women are brought into the country and sold to the highest bidder (and for all the resistance the women put up before going on the block, they sure do put on a good show for the bidders). De Quincey only indulges in smoking — not eating! — opium once during the film, and that is pretty much forced on him while he’s being held prisoner. The film’s most “horrific” moment comes during his opium induced trip … but is it a trip, or did everything he see or do at the time really happen? You’re not really going to care by the time the movie ends because it’s all quite unsettling to witness Price as an action hero, the racial stereotypes and even the self-proclaimed “Chinese midget” (who actually gains viewer sympathy by the end). The film’s biggest sin is that it’s boring and at times unintentionally hilarious, especially the opening scene of women being tossed into a fishing net and transferred to a waiting fishing boat. The best thing that can be said about the film is that the black and white cinematography looks very nice on the DVD, and it’s probably the best looking film overall in the collection. But a Halloween film it is not.

Christopher Lee had a five film run as the diabolical Fu Manchu beginning with 1965’s The Face of Fu Manchu, and again I have no knowledge of any of the films in the series except for Lee’s iconic facial hair. In the first film, Lee barely appears for the bulk of the film, leaving his daughter to do all of his dirty work. The story is actually more about Fu Manchu’s adversary Nayland Smith (Nigel Green) as he tracks down information about the disappearance of a scientist and his daughter, as well as some other crimes that seem to lead back to Fu Manchu … except he witnessed Fu Manchu’s execution at the top of the film, so how can he be behind the plot to destroy the world with a potion so powerful that one drop could kill thousands? Nayland puts all of the pieces together, of course, but without Lee making a bigger impact with his plotting and scheming, the film drags quite a bit. The film fails to make an impression, and it’s a wonder there were four more movies in the series but it must have been much more thrilling at the time. The Archive Collection DVD looks fine, if a little color-faded.

The best film of the three is Michael Reeves‘ The Sorcerers, starring Karloff and Catherine Lacey. Karloff stars as Professor Marcus Monserret, a disgraced hypnotist who, with the help of his wife, sets out to prove he can not only hypnotize someone, but completely control them and experience the feelings of the subject at the same time. The Monserret’s find a young man, Mike (Ian Ogilvy), to use as their subject. When the test is a success, Monserret wants to go public with his findings, and the device they used to hypnotize the man, so that they can help older people like themselves live vicariously through others. Unfortunately, once Mrs. Monserret gets a taste of the exhilaration that comes with controlling Mike, she is consumed with power, forcing Mike to do more and more dangerous and horrific deeds while her husband sits by helplessly. With Karloff in the lead, you expect him to be the one in control so it’s a bit shocking to see him take a back seat as Ogilvy and Lacey take center stage, especially as she turns Mike into a kind of Jack the Ripper in the film’s final act.

Even as The Sorcerers looks the worst for wear of the three with a lot of dust speckles, scratches and color shifting in the film, it’s still more watchable than the other two because you just don’t know where Mike is going to be taken next, and how his friends or the police will solve what is basically a mind crime. Having read about this movie for years, I finally know the source of the one iconic image I’ve always seen of Karloff and Lacey in various books about horror movies. The Sorcerers really isn’t a straight horror film, but it does fit in with the thrillers of the time like Psycho, Peeping Tom, and Frenzy. With this being the second of the three horror films Reeves directed before his untimely death from a drug overdose, one is left wondering what he could have done for the genre as his career flourished.

This review is based on retail copies of the three DVDs provided to CliqueClack by the Warner Archive Collection.