Change Your Image
onolaie
Reviews
Kongo (1932)
Filth and Perversion
This must have been made on the sly without the knowledge of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg -- drugs, beatings, murder, orgies (with a chimpanzee actually mounting Lupe Velez, or did he mount Virginia Bruce). The only black women seen are drunkenly dancing in the house during the orgy scene. The black men are subdued with sugar. A girl is stolen from a convent and sent to a "house" (we all know what kind of house) before being taken deep into the jungle and degraded and turned into an alcoholic (Virginia Bruce), and Lupe Velez almost has her tongue cut out, literally ... some obviously missing scenes where Lupe disappears from screen twice and returns, then disappears again ... maybe this film should simply be destroyed. Sharp racist slurs, shocking to hear the native chief called a "dried up monkey" -- both the chief and Walter Huston are paralyzed, incidentally, some weird visual metaphors these men in power are themselves powerless? This is the most bizarre MGM production I have seen.
Prix de beauté (Miss Europe) (1930)
a beautiful and easy to watch film
This is a beautiful film, easy to follow the story even in the French language version without subtitles because of the great pantomime performance by Louise Brooks: her facial expressions and reactions to events tell the whole story from beginning to end. She submits her own photographs to the contest sponsored by the newspaper (or magazine) that she works for as a typist, but later tries to withdraw from, but then, surprise, she wins the title of Miss France and and is sent to Spain (wearing an ermine or chinchilla coat) for the bigger event of Miss Europe. Her fiancé for some reason is angry by the attention and misunderstands. When she unwraps the pears for the dinner table she is stunned to see a picture of herself in the crumpled newspaper. A motif that her growing fame is stalking her. There are several scenes with clocks behind Miss Brooks foreshadowing the climax. Very poignant is the scene when he takes her to a photographer for a family picture of them together, she is very sad (but tears are unnecessary and might have made the scene over sentimental). Her ironic scene with the canary is a cinematic allusion to her previous 1928 silent film The Canary Murder Case (in which her character was also murdered, another irony), for which she refused to return to Hollywood to dub her voice ... odd to note that a French speaking actress dubbed her few lines (Miss Brooks says one or two words, but several words in French are rapidly spoken). The most ironic scene of all is the private screening of herself on film. Incidentally, I recognized the unmistakable voice of Josephine Baker as the singing voice for Miss Brooks during three segments. When she sees herself on the screen for the first time her joy and fascination with the cinema version of herself is amazing; she is enraptured as if the beauty belongs to somebody else, and not her real self. When her hand is held by the man sitting next to her in the projection room during this scene, she is aware but her smile is not for him, it is for her screen image that she continues to stare at. This is the climax when her fiancé sneaks pass the guard to find her in the projection room, sees the ecstasy on her face and sees the man next to her holding her hand, which he misunderstands.
Where East Is East (1929)
Beautiful and romantic story with a REAL CLIMAX
This film is so easy to watch and enjoy, Lupe Velez is a great under-rated actress and such an expert at pantomime (when she is happy, the viewer is happy, when she is sad, the viewer is sad). It could have been filmed with synchronous sound, but it is superb as a silent with some subtle sound effects. Lupe's eyes and body poses tell all her emotions, and her smile is so charming when it blossoms on screen into laughter. Lon Chaney is, well, um Lon Chaney, but there are some strange seamy undertones of incest with his jealous protection of Lupe (playing his daughter, Toyo) particularly when he pretends to be a tiger crouching on the floor and growling at Toyo whose laughter turns to tears as she rushes into his lap to cry and says she does "not want to play". Estelle Taylor as the absentee mother is sultry, seductive and gorgeous, her exotic costumes are extensions of her character. The surprise is that Lupe (the STAR) does not have any fantastic gowns to wear, not even at her own engagement dinner party. The scene with the enraged gorilla walking up the stairs to find her mother is chilling. Seems like the gorilla's eyes were visually enhanced, they shone with anger! You knew something awful would happen when the gorilla went insane when the mother showed up unexpectedly at the house. (Only Lon Chaney could have a caged pet African gorilla in Asia). A woman servant in the house prayed for the ancestors to remove the evil - that woman was the sweeter counterpart of the mother's personal maid who constantly betrays her. I kept waiting for the gorilla to get loose and I was not surprised. Reminds me of the climactic scenes at the end of "FREAKS" .. you never see the horrible brutality being committed, but you can easily imagine it. Estelle's wide open eyes were the same as Olga Baclanova's eyes in the rain before she was "chickenized". From start to finish the viewer correctly imagines the conclusion of all events, but you want to keep watching, and congratulate yourself for being right. This is film as art. This is very much a TOD BROWNING film.
Freaks (1932)
Important Missing Scene found in STILL PICTURE
Look fast: there is a second striped exhibit near Cleopatra (as a "duck" woman, NOT A CHICKEN) toward the end of the film, while a barker leads a crowd in the tent.
If you have a copy of the film, you see a horrified expression of Hercules reacting to something during the lightning storm, then a very abrupt cutaway (no pun intended). He apparently was being altered with a knife when lightning hits a tree near Cleopatra. All that remains of the sequence is Cleopatra screaming and another quick cut: "Some said it was the storm, some said it was the freaks, there she is!"
Cleopatra is quacking and one of her eyes is half shut, and in the second exhibit Hercules was also shown as a duck, emasculated and singing to Cleopatra in a soprano voice that he still loved her. I read that in some review about the confusing endings to some surviving prints. I doubted it was trued until I found evidence of this missing scene at the following web site and I hope IMDb will allow it to be posted:
http://www.classichorror.free-online.co.uk/tod.htm
This is VERY IMPORTANT information for fans of this strange movie. Director Tod Browning was photographed with the actor who played Hercules wearing his "duck costume".
Now that second mystery exhibit makes sense.