Boris Karloff – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Svengoolie Movie: “The Black Cat” vs The Weather Report

The atmosphere for the Svengoolie TV show airing of the 1934 movie “The Black Cat” was nothing short of electric—as in electrical storm. I thought the mood of ambivalence in the film was firmly set for about the first half hour of the movie. That was how long the TV station weather alert was on screen, shrinking the viewing size of the movie somewhat to make room for a map of the counties at risk and the scrolling warnings about which east central Iowa counties were affected by the flood watch and guidance about what to do.

Anyway, the film is not related in any way to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same title. The movie was directed by Edgar Ulmer and starred Bela Lugosi as the Hungarian psychiatrist and ex-WWI POW (that’s right, I said “psychiatrist”), Dr. Vitus Werdegast; Boris Karloff as the satanic and necrophiliac Hjalmar Poelzig, the former WWI commander of the Fortress Marmorisch and a famed architect who built an ultra-modern mansion on top of the grisly site where thousands of soldiers were killed. Vitus and Hjalmar play chess for the souls of the aspiring novelist Peter Alison (David Manners) and his wife Joan (Jacqueline Wells) who, unfortunately get stranded there along with Vitus after the bus carrying them crashes on the way from the train station to various hotels and Disney World.

The mood of ambivalence I thought was evident, contrasting the creepiness of Hjalmar and Vitus grimly gambling in a chess match for the lives of Joan and Peter and the comicality of the two policemen interviewing the Alisons and the two heavies about the bus accident. The lieutenant and the sergeant arguing with each other in a “My hometown’s better than yours” exchange reminds me of Abbott and Costello. I recommend you see it for yourselves on the Internet Archive; it’s about 35 minutes in.

Contrast this with the hysterical cat phobic Vitus (despite being a psychiatrist) throwing a knife at one of the many black cats prowling around the house after it ejects a hairball on the floor! Or Hjalmar thumb wrestling with Vitus until the latter chooses to pick up what looks like an emery board from an array of much larger knives and bazookas on a large table—and prepares to flay Hjalmar with it. This would only make Hjalmar look even more excruciatingly well groomed, along with the precisely trimmed haircut carefully smeared with a pound of Brylcreem.

I think “The Black Cat” is a hoot. It’s a litter box full of nuggets of melodramatic ailurophobia with here and there a hairball of ambivalence but hey, nobody’s purr-fect!

Shrilling chicken rating 4/5

Comments Without Spoilers on the Svengoolie Movie “The Haunted Strangler”

Last night I watched the Svengoolie Show movie, “The Haunted Strangler” (1958), starring Boris Karloff as Dr. Rankin, which had psychiatric overtones, along with hints at demonic possession. This was evidently a rerun of a previous Svengoolie episode.

Without spoilers, I can point to a time setting goof you can see in two copies of the film on the internet Archive. It involves a line by the character Dr. Kenneth McColl (played by Tim Turner, in which he attempts to explain Dr. Rankin’s behavior using the term “projective identification.” The problem is that as far as the time setting of the film’s story (from 1860 to the early 1880s), this psychoanalytic term for a defense mechanism was not invented until the mid-1940s by psychoanalyst Melanie Klein.

The point in one of the Internet Archive copies of the movie “The Haunted Strangler” where “projective identification” is mentioned by Dr. Kenneth McColl (played by Tim Turner) as a way to explain Rankin’s behavior is at 1:03:28, added on 09/02/2019 by Amalgamated. It’s also at 1:28:44 on the Internet Archive copy “Creature Feature: The Haunted Strangler” which is actually a Svengoolie episode, added by “Uh? Want Entertainment” on 02/22/2022.

Another interesting feature pointed out on the Svengoolie show includes the lack of complicated makeup for the transformation of Dr. Rankin into a homicidal monster. Karloff just removed his dentures and grimaced. I’m pretty sure it saved money on production costs.

The other psychiatric connection of “The Haunted Strangler” to psychoanalysis is dissociation both as a mental disorder and a defense mechanism. It’s also connected to dissociative identity disorder. In fact, the character Dr. Kenneth McColl mentions “dual personality” in the movie “The Haunted Strangler.”

There’s an echo also to “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” which was a novella published in the mid-1880s by Robert Louis Stevenson, which was adapted from Freud’s concepts of the id, the ego, and the superego. And we got the 1920 film “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (which I’ve never seen) arising from the dual personality idea. I think Svengoolie showed “Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which I’ve also not seen.

There were several warnings (more than I usually have seen) to viewers about the possibility some scenes in the movie might be too intense for younger or sensitive viewers.

The Most Interesting Thing About the Svengoolie Movie House of Frankenstein

We saw the movie House of Frankenstein last Saturday night and, spoiler alert, everybody dies!

Anyway, the main impulse we had when listening to Boris Karloff (who played Dr. Gustav Niemann) was to think of something I’m not even sure I can say on this blog due to the strict copyright laws governing even the utterance what I’m going to call NAME. I’m using only the word NAME because I’m afraid Dr. Sues Enterprises will track me down and sue me for copyright infringement if I actually say NAME.

Yes, Dr. Sues Enterprises is intentionally spelled that way because I’m not even sure I can say their name without getting slapped with a lawsuit.

No kidding (and this is no joke by the way), I read a lot of scary stuff on line about how NAME is not in the public domain and what can happen to you if you even say it out loud.

I think I can get away with saying that Boris Karloff was 79 years old when he voiced NAME in the movie which I guess will have to remain nameless.

There are people who get away with it, though. Maybe it’s because they pay for the privilege of uttering NAME.

Here’s an interesting thing. Pixabay has a lot of pictures that are royalty-free. You want to guess what I found there? Pictures of NAME! I don’t know how they get away with it. OK, so maybe it’s because they don’t charge a fee for use.

On the other hand, there’s this guy who wrote in to some kind of ask-a-lawyer website that he sells a tee shirt that has NAME printed on it. He got a copyright infringement notice and asks why he can’t get away with it. All the lawyers who answered said he can’t sell shirts with NAME on it because Dr. Sues Enterprises has a federal trademark registration on NAME.

Anyway, that’s the most interesting part about the movie House of Frankenstein.