Frame By Frame: Val Lewton

Wheeler Winston Dixon Author

12/22/2015 Added

224 Plays

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UNL Film Studies Professor Wheeler Winston Dixon scares up the films of 1940s horror movie producer Val Lewton.

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[99:59:59.999]1 00:00:16,240 --> 00:00:18,940 Hi. I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, and this is Frame By Frame,
[99:59:59.999]2 00:00:18,940 --> 00:00:21,964 and today I'd like to talk about Val Lewton,
[99:59:59.999]3 00:00:21,964 --> 00:00:25,124 who is a 1940s master of horror who worked for RKO.
[99:59:59.999]4 00:00:25,124 --> 00:00:29,785 In the 1930s, Universal made a whole series of horror movies...
[99:59:59.999]5 00:00:29,785 --> 00:00:33,039 Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, Wolf Man,
[99:59:59.999]6 00:00:33,039 --> 00:00:35,919 but eventually these deteriorated into things like
[99:59:59.999]7 00:00:35,919 --> 00:00:38,829 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man in 1943,
[99:59:59.999]8 00:00:38,829 --> 00:00:41,516 and then House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula,
[99:59:59.999]9 00:00:41,516 --> 00:00:43,302 which was the last one in 1945.
[99:59:59.999]10 00:00:43,302 --> 00:00:45,458 And then the genre collapsed in parody
[99:59:59.999]11 00:00:45,458 --> 00:00:48,618 with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in 1948.
[99:59:59.999]12 00:00:48,618 --> 00:00:53,592 But at the same time, RKO was looking for a way to get into the horror field,
[99:59:59.999]13 00:00:53,592 --> 00:00:57,438 but couldn't use any of these monsters that Universal had the copyright on.
[99:59:59.999]14 00:00:57,438 --> 00:01:01,640 So they turned to Val Lewton, who was a brilliant producer
[99:59:59.999]15 00:01:01,640 --> 00:01:04,978 who worked for Davido O. Selznick on Gone With the Wind,
[99:59:59.999]16 00:01:04,978 --> 00:01:09,263 and asked him to create a small, B-horror unit at RKO,
[99:59:59.999]17 00:01:09,263 --> 00:01:14,620 and make films on short budgets with short schedules with pre-sold titles.
[99:59:59.999]18 00:01:14,620 --> 00:01:18,688 And after he left David O. Selznick, he went to RKO, to the B-unit,
[99:59:59.999]19 00:01:18,688 --> 00:01:21,663 and gathered a remarkable group of people
[99:59:59.999]20 00:01:21,663 --> 00:01:24,258 including Jacques Tourneur, the brilliant director,
[99:59:59.999]21 00:01:24,258 --> 00:01:29,108 Robert Wise, who was just then beginning his career and had just cut Ctizen Kane,
[99:59:59.999]22 00:01:29,108 --> 00:01:32,899 Mark Robson, who also broke in as a director during this period,
[99:59:59.999]23 00:01:32,899 --> 00:01:36,712 and made a series of fantastic films which have become classics
[99:59:59.999]24 00:01:36,712 --> 00:01:38,464 and have been released as a box set.
[99:59:59.999]25 00:01:38,464 --> 00:01:42,627 Cat People in 1942, which was the first of these films,
[99:59:59.999]26 00:01:42,627 --> 00:01:46,254 which offered an alternative to the standard werewolf movies of the period.
[99:59:59.999]27 00:01:46,254 --> 00:01:52,322 I Walked With a Zombie by Jacques Tourneur, remains one of the most beautiful horror films of all time,
[99:59:59.999]28 00:01:52,322 --> 00:01:55,018 particularly the zombie walk sequence.
[99:59:59.999]29 00:01:55,018 --> 00:01:59,023 The Leopard Man, The Ghost Ship, and then The Body Snatcher,
[99:59:59.999]30 00:01:59,023 --> 00:02:02,682 a fantastic adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's story.
[99:59:59.999]31 00:02:02,682 --> 00:02:06,938 Isle of the Dead with Boris Karloff, which was a remarkable film they made
[99:59:59.999]32 00:02:06,938 --> 00:02:08,910 under terribly difficult conditions.
[99:59:59.999]33 00:02:08,910 --> 00:02:12,737 Karloff was suffering from a very bad back injury,
[99:59:59.999]34 00:02:12,737 --> 00:02:14,814 and they had to halt production and pick it up again.
[99:59:59.999]35 00:02:14,814 --> 00:02:17,099 And his last film for RKO, Bedlam.
[99:59:59.999]36 00:02:17,289 --> 00:02:23,643 "Some are pigs. Those I let wallow in their own filth.
[99:59:59.999]37 00:02:27,619 --> 00:02:31,743 "Some are tigers. These I cage."
[99:59:59.999]38 00:02:32,804 --> 00:02:37,371 Lewton offered an alternative to the Universal "boogie man" horror,
[99:59:59.999]39 00:02:37,371 --> 00:02:42,411 and Boris Karloff once referred to Lewton as "the man who restored my soul to me,
[99:59:59.999]40 00:02:42,411 --> 00:02:46,351 "by taking me out of the films which were very childish,
[99:59:59.999]41 00:02:46,351 --> 00:02:48,264 and into more adult horror films."
[99:59:59.999]42 00:02:48,264 --> 00:02:50,514 And indeed, Lewton's films still hold up today.
[99:59:59.999]43 00:02:50,514 --> 00:02:54,302 You can see them routinely on TCM, and they are absolute classics.
[99:59:59.999]44 00:02:54,302 --> 00:02:59,190 Unfortunately, after 1946, when he made Bedlam at RKO,
[99:59:59.999]45 00:02:59,190 --> 00:03:01,507 Lewton's career went into steep decline.
[99:59:59.999]46 00:03:01,507 --> 00:03:05,825 He worked at MGM briefly, and then he died of a heart attack in his forties.
[99:59:59.999]47 00:03:05,825 --> 00:03:07,201 But his films live on,
[99:59:59.999]48 00:03:07,201 --> 00:03:09,610 and he offered an absolutely unique vision
[99:59:59.999]49 00:03:09,610 --> 00:03:12,553 of the supernatural and the world of the unknown,
[99:59:59.999]50 00:03:12,553 --> 00:03:15,618 which was something very different from what Universal was offering
[99:59:59.999]51 00:03:15,618 --> 00:03:17,997 as standard movie monster fare.
[99:59:59.999]52 00:03:17,997 --> 00:03:21,655 I'm Wheeler Winston Dixon, and this is Frame By Frame.

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Frame By Frame: Val Lewton

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