Tag: Lon Chaney Jr.

Bird of Paradise (1932)

Bird of Paradise (1932). 80 minutes. Directed by King Vidor. Starring Dolores Del Río (as Luana), Joel McCrea (as Johnny Baker), John Halliday (as Mac), Richard “Skeets” Gallagher (as Chester), Bert Roach (as Hector), Lon Chaney Jr. (as Thornton), Wade Boteler (as Skipper Johnson), Napoleon Pukui (as the King), Agostino Borgato (as medicine man), and Sofia Ortega (as native woman).

Bird of Paradise is a pre-Code tropical romance that buzzes with as much sex on the beach as a cocktail bar on ladies’ night. The movie follows the story of Johnny, an American yachtsman who disembarks for a month on an island in the Pacific so that he can pant and drool over Luana, a young native woman who can barely speak English. Bird of Paradise holds together by virtue of its layers of fantasy, both sexual fantasy and the fantasy of “going native,” the latter of which Johnny attempts to realize on the island with only minor success. It

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The Wolf Man (1941)

The Wolf Man (1941). 70 minutes. Directed by George Waggner. Starring Lon Chaney Jr. (as Lawrence “Larry” Talbot/the Wolf Man), Claude Rains (as Sir John Talbot), Warren William (as Dr. Lloyd), Ralph Bellamy (as Captain Paul Montford), Patric Knowles (as Frank Andrews), Bela Lugosi (as Bela), Maria Ouspenskaya (as Maleva), Evelyn Ankers (as Gwen Conliffe), J. M. Kerrigan (as Charles Conliffe), Fay Helm (as Jenny Williams), Doris Lloyd (as Mrs. Williams), Forrester Harvey (as Twiddle), and Harry Stubbs (as Reverend Norman). Screenplay by Curt Siodmak. Makeup effects by Jack Pierce.

Of all of the monsters that Universal depicted in its golden age, the Wolf Man has to be the least frightening. Although he is part wolf, he is still part man, after all, and he is not undead like other Universal antagonists such as Dracula, the mummy Ardath Bey, or Frankenstein’s monster; nor is he a homicidal maniac who delights in causing human suffering like the Invisible Man. … Read the rest

One Million B.C. (1940)

One Million B.C. (1940). 80 minutes. Directed by Hal Roach and Hal Roach, Jr. Starring Victor Mature (as Tumak), Carole Landis (as Loana), Lon Chaney, Jr. (as Akhoba), Conrad Nagel (as narrator), John Hubbard (as Ohtao), Nigel De Brulier (as Peytow), Mamo Clark (as Nupondi), and Inez Palange (as Tohana).

If you have never seen One Million B.C., chances are that if you like old B movies, you have seen it in some other capacity. Portions of it were used as stock footage for years afterwards in such films as the awful Robot Monster (1953) and Teenage Cave Man (1958). Additionally, its Academy Award-nominated visuals inspired the special effects of other monster movies that may also be known to you, such as The Giant Gila Monster (1959) and The Killer Shrews (1959). One Million B.C. is marginally better than those movies—less exploitative, more thoughtful, and more ambitious. But it remains a great example of why movies about prehistoric people … Read the rest