D. George Waggner
B&W
We’re back!
Much more than Frankenstein’s monster, the unnamed concierge/manager/overlord of the deeply mysterious Skaneateles Hotel is the role we should best remember Boris Karloff for. It has everything, not only allowing him a glowering physical presence – capable of turning from contempt to sweetness in a heartbeat – but also line after wonderful line of dialogue to be intoned in his glorious graveyard voice. It’s the voice of doom, but also soft as treacle and inviting despite its spookiness. Here we are welcomed with narration, wherein Karloff explains to us that while the world and the universe may change, nothing alters in the sanctuary of the Skaneateles Hotel. This we know is a joke, as we’ve already seen that the ambience, décor and the layout itself is constantly shifting at the Skaneateles Hotel.
In what we would now call a cold opening, the young David Niven is the first to check in, playing a caddish young Englishman with a string of broken hearts behind him. Outside his room he meets the kind of pneumatic, suggestive blonde that the Hays Code was surely supposed to have stamped out, she leads him like a siren back to her room, where the door slams ominously behind them. It might be that they’re having a night of pleasure together, but his scream suggests otherwise.
The meat of the story though is the arrival of another couple, this time the younger and far less charismatic pairing of Allan Jones and Melody Hazel. Obviously these are a duo we’re not going to care about anywhere near as much as Claude Rains and Marian Marsh, but that doesn’t matter – as the film knows its true star is the hotel itself and the ever brooding and ominous presence of Boris Karloff. Going for a stroll before dinner, our young lovebirds become horribly lost and disorientated, marching down seemingly the same corridor again and again. When they try a different turning, they’re first threatened by Bela Lugosi (playing second fiddle to Karloff once again and clearly hating every second of it), before having an elaborate con-trick played on them by Lon Chaney Jr, where they’re nearly separated and have to run for their lives. They end up in a strange and huge ballroom, one which rolls and lilts like a ship and is crammed full of refugees from some far off war (problems in Europe no doubt playing on the filmmakers’ minds). Joining with the refugees, the two have to hope that when Karloff does show up he’ll save them rather than damn them.
The worlds of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Game of Thrones’ obviously have whole continents to play with and explore. Vast vistas the likes of which we have never seen before. The true genius of the Skaneateles Hotel is that they manage to give us the same sense of scale and size all while filming in a studio and basing the action in one location. Our focus is the hotel, which is at turns a scary, mischievous, deadly, benign and benevolent pile of ever shifting and changing bricks. It, along with its most prominent employee, are the true stars. And what this first sequel proves is that it doesn’t matter if your nominal leads are Zeppo Marx’s replacement and a pretty flapper girl who never made another film, as long as Karloff and the hotel are in place, you can still make a fantastically scary, amazing and edge of the seat film.
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