Then there are the opening credits -- the shadow of an electric chair, the title spelled out in letters resembling electricity. And the great Lionel Atwill in the lead! All of this is what B-movie fans salivate for. You could probably watch it in your head without ever actually having seen it. A couple of unexpected twists, along with a cast game for anything, ultimately made this PRC release worth the time it took to tell its strange, convoluted story. Maybe because it's only 55 minutes long.
A typically-subtle PRC touch. |
"At least we weren't smoking. Mayor Bloomberg would kill us!" |
"But honey, I'll bring them back!" |
"You look guilty. That's good enough for me!" |
investigation.
A crazy slut, at that. |
Had the makers of Lady in the Death House continued on this path, news of Mary's innocence would have arrived seconds after she got fried. Bradford would then drag her back to the lab and pull a Dr. Frankenstein on her. Mary's eyes would have blinked open and next thing you know, it'd be honeymoon of the living dead. Although I'm not keen on happy endings for crime films, I'd have found that acceptable.
Prisons had really cool lighting in those days. |
All ends well. Mary moves to Chicago with Bradford, who gets a new job that doesn't involve killing innocent prisoners, freeing up his time to reanimate the dead. For some reason, this still doesn't seem strange to anyone concerned.
Low-budget movies like this, stuffed with no-name actors, give you a good idea of what "regular" people looked like then. Everybody, other than Lionel Atwill, looks just different enough to step in front of a camera, but not for an important production. They can memorize and recite their dialogue more or less convincingly. All the men wear pencil-thin mustaches, that apparently being the style of the day. And as for Jean Parker -- the woman who plays Mary Logan -- I recognized her from Laurel & Hardy's The Flying Deuces and nothing else. But when you're in a Laurel & Hardy movie, other credits are superfluous.
America's most debonair orgy-meister. |
Lady in the Death House is a far cry from Lionel Atwill's glory days in movies like Murders at the Zoo where he sews shut the mouth of a romantic rival in the very first scene. But you'd never know it by watching him. As with other character actors of his time -- Henry Daniell and George Zucco, to name just two -- Atwill immediately elevates any movie he's in with his stage-trained polish, diction and charisma. He's a pro no matter how skimpy the budget or bizarre the script.
Atwill was once a reliable player in A-pictures -- the one-armed policeman in Son of Frankenstein, the not-so mad scientist in Dr. X among the best-remembered -- until a perjury conviction involving one of his legendary porn-fueled orgies made him actor-non-grata among the studio-head hypocrites who were guilty of far worse.
Atwill spent his last years shuttling between low-rent jobs at Universal and PRC. Always dependable for a good quote ("All women love the men they fear. All women kiss the hand that rules them"), he's kind of like Claude Rain's mysterious step-uncle. Perfectly civilized, a wonderful raconteur, but someone you wouldn't want to babysit your kids.
But damn, could he throw a porn-fueled orgy. High-five!
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