Secret of the blue room 1933 - Atmospheric mystery with good performances

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IMDB rating: 6,6

Director: Kurt Neumann
Main Cast: Lionel Atwill, Gloria Stuart, Paul Lukas, Edward Arnold

"This tight little melodrama opens with a group of wealthy people staying at a luxurious European mansion. According to legend, the mansion's 'blue room' is cursed - everyone who has ever spent the night in that room has met with an untimely end. The fact that Universal made it has awarded this tight little whodunit status as a horror film. There are indeed some horror elements (spooky rooms, secret panels, etc.) but the mysterious goings-on are subsequently explained to everyone's satisfaction, except perhaps the viewer who is forced to grabble with a couple of loose ends. The Secret of the Blue Room was indeed one of Universal's cheapest releases of 1933 - a Depression year that did not call for extravagance anywhere - but good utilization of standing sets, including the mansion from James Whale's far superior The Old Dark House (1932), adds production values not matched by its Poverty Row competitors, of which there were many. Also leftover from The Old Dark House, so to speak, is Gloria Stuart, who makes the perfect foil for Lionel Atwill's troubled estate owner. Remade twice by Universal, Secret of the Blue Room was based on the German Geheimnis des Blauen Zimmers, produced by Engels & Schmidt Tonfilm in 1932." - www.allmovie.com

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The prisoner of Shark Island 1936 - "Your name is mud!"

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028141/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: John Ford
Main Cast: Warner Baxter, Gloria Stuart

"The team of director John Ford, screenwriter Nunnally Johnson, and producer Darryl F. Zanuck was best remembered for its work on the classic The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Four years earlier, the same three men crafted the excellent The Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), memorable as Ford's only foray into docudrama. While much of the depiction of Dr. Samuel Mudd (Warner Baxter)'s relationship with his crusading wife (Gloria Stuart) was probably invention, the adherence to a mostly accurate historical viewpoint was unusual for Ford. The director's most successful forays into historical storytelling, such as Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) and My Darling Clementine (1946), liberally blended fact with fiction in films that bore little resemblance to reality. The Prisoner of Shark Island was the first of three Hollywood efforts to exonerate Mudd, the Maryland physician who was probably falsely accused of participating in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln in 1865; the other films were Hellgate (1952) and, for television, The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd (1980). In real life, Mudd earned an 1869 pardon from his valiant efforts to save fellow prisoners and captors during a yellow fever epidemic at the remote island fort in the Dry Tortugas where he was in captivity. However, Mudd, whose name gave birth to the insulting expression, 'your name is mud', was not pardoned for the crime he allegedly committed until nearly a hundred years after his death. That pardon owed no small debt to the trio of popular films that uniformly depicted him as an innocent victim of justice gone wrong." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-prisoner-of-shark-island-v106712/

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The Prisoner of Shark Island by crazedigitalmovies

Gold diggers of 1935 - A visual masterpiece

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026421/?ref_=nv_sr_3
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Busby Berkeley
Main Cast: Dick Powell, Adolphe Menjou, Gloria Stuart, Alice Brady, Hugh Herbert, Glenda Farrell

"Gold Diggers of 1935 features outstanding musical numbers and dazzling choreography from director Busby Berkeley, not to mention some amusing moments with future Titanic star Gloria Stuart. The plot, such as it is, takes place at a rich resort hotel where a lowly desk clerk (Dick Powell) falls in love with Stuart's character, the daughter of a rich snob (Alice Brady). As was common in Depression-era escapist movies, the wealthy elite are depicted as elegant but insensitive, and true love wins out for the happy ending. Winifred Shaw's rendition of 'Lullaby of Broadway' gives the film its highlight, though all of the production numbers are strong. Gold Diggers is a primary example of Berkeley's work, both as a choreographer and as a director. Of particular note in the tech credits are Anton Grot's production design and George Barnes's crisp cinematography." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/gold-diggers-of-1935-v20141/

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The invisible man 1933 - A new kind of horror movie with humor!

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024184/
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: James Whale
Main Cast: Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, William Harrigan

"Based on H. G. Wells' novel, James Whale's The Invisible Man was a new kind of horror movie in 1933 - one that made audiences laugh almost as much as it frightened them. Whale might simply have relied on the dazzling impact of John Fulton's special effects, which did an extraordinary job of creating the illusion of an invisible man on screen. Instead, he challenged his audience's expectations by playing many of the key scenes for laughs, such as that of the shirt dancing around the room while the police officer chases it; the scenes between the inn keeper (Forrester Harvey) and his hysterical wife (Una O'Connor); and the confusion of various characters trying to describe what they've seen (or, more properly, haven't). Wittily scripted by R.C. Sherriff and an uncredited Philip Wylie, and brilliantly directed by James Whale, The Invisible Man is a near-untoppable combination of horror and humor. Also deserving of unqualified praise are the thorouhgly convincing special effects by John P. Fulton and John Mescall. With the exception of The Invisible Man Returns, none of the sequels came anywhere close to the quality of the 1933 original. Audiences feel as though they've seen two films for the price of one, and the mixing of genres and moods worked so well that Whale was emboldened to try for even more extremes of humor, irony, and horror in his next major movie, The Bride of Frankenstein, 18 months later, and succeeded even further beyond anyone's expectations, creating that rare sequel that outstrips its predecessor. It is on that film, and The Invisible Man, that much of Whale's 70-year-plus reputation as a master filmmaker and horror creator rest, and from these two movies that dozens of modern filmmakers, from Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper to Tim Burton, derived much of the inspiration for their work and their careers." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-invisible-man-v25334

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The old dark house 1932 - A dark, gothic, one-of-a-kind macabre comedy

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023293/
IMDB rating: 7,4

Director: James Whale
Main Cast: Boris Karloff, Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Gloria Stuart, Raymond Massey

"Although little seen since its original release, The Old Dark House had by the 1960s attained a grail-like status among fans of director James Whale, whose beloved Universal horror films included Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933), and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). The least successful of this quartet of fright classics, The Old Dark House came to be reconsidered a cult gem, part of the renewal of interest in Whale's talents many years after his creative peak. Whale's protégé and friend Curtis Harrington, who went on to become a director in his own right, rescued The Old Dark House from oblivion in 1968, after it had languished on Universal's shelves. Harrington repeatedly asked the studio to locate the negative, then convinced Kodak's Eastman House to finance the creation of a new duplicate negative of the unsalvageable first reel. Without his intervention, The Old Dark House would probably not have survived in any form. Harrington's heroics complete, The Old Dark House was seen once again in its original form after many years of speculation based on recollections of those who had seen the original, some beautiful set stills that had become popular collectibles, and European critics who had viewed post-WWII prints. Predictably, some Whale fans were disappointed in the film's scant thrills and chills. The story, based on the novel Benighted by J.B. Priestley, indeed lacked the shocks and scares of Whale's three other horror standards, eschewing the fantastic for more psychological suspense. Nevertheless, The Old Dark House contained all the other essential ingredients of the director's style, including moody shot compositions, mocking humor, witty dialogue, and sly hints of sexuality. Critics hailed it as one of Whale's gothic masterpieces, and The Old Dark House rightly took its place among the director's best-regarded titles." - http://www.allmovie.com/movie/the-old-dark-house-v36123

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