DICK TRACY MEETS GRUESOME - "Chester Gould Meets Boris Karloff" (1947)

 On the 13th day of X-Mas, my true love gave to me, Boris Karloff and Dick Tracy!

 Welcome to Saturday night down in The Dungeon, and tonight's special feature, "Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome!" Anything and everything with Boris Karloff in it, is always going to be special to us!

The opening is rather ominous!

But as it turns out, it's just the local dive, "The Hangman's Knot!"

Everyone's shakin' down at the Knot to the swinging sounds of a wild cat named Melody tinkling on the keys! Hit it Melody!!

The mood changes when a fresh out of prison Gruesome comes on the scene!

Melody is happy Gruesome is out so they can pull off some big jobs together! Melody was played by Tony Barrett, who went on to be a very successful TV detective series writer in the 60's with shows like "77 Sunset Strip," "Peter Gunn," and "Mod Squad!"

 Time to see what's happening on the other side of this door at Wood Plastics Inc!

Gruesome gets a little too nosy and sticks his snoot into something he should have stayed out of!

 He staggers back to the Knot, keels over dead, and is stiff as a board in no time at all! The rigor mortis sets in almost instantly!

This case is just weird enough that it's time to call in Dick Tracy! Dick was played by Ralph Byrd who also had the role of Dick Tracy in 5 other serials and movies, and then also for a two year run of 48 episodes as Dick Tracy on TV from 1950 to 1952!

Gruesome wakes up in the morgue, and lights up a cigarette before he realizes where he is! He knocks out the guard and escapes right when Dick Tracy arrives!

 Gruesome develops a plan with Melody to use this new found gas to rob a bank while all the customers are left stiff and incapacitated! One guy stops cold right in the middle of a sneeze! Time basically freezes which allows the boys to clean out the place!

Unfortunately Dick Tracy's main Squeeze Tess Trueheart was also in the bank, and she blows the whistle on the robbers! She is only pretending to be stiff, but she was unaffected because she was in this phone booth when the gas was released! Tess is played by the lovely Anne (House Of Frankenstein, Teenage Monster) Gwynne!

Chester Gould's character Dick Tracy was so popular that the comic strip ran in the newspapers in 27 different countries! You would think a lot of the word gags would have got lost in translation!

The marvelously creepy Skelton (House Of Dracula) Knaggs had the role of X-Ray! I love this shot of Skelton and Boris together!

Whose jokes and play on words came first, Chester Gould or The Three Stooges?

"Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome" is not exactly a comedy, but it's pretty funny at times! Lyle Latell is detective Pat Patton. The colourful Mr. Latell also had the role of Pat in "Dick Tracy," "Dick Tracy vs Cueball," and "Dick Tracy's Dilemma!

Just in case you didn't notice, the date today is 12-13-14!!!

 

 You can't beat a gift like this, "Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome" is another awesome movie you can download or stream for free over at the truly amazing Internet Archive!  It's all free, but they sure wouldn't mind if you'd donate a couple of bucks to the cause!

 

Sometime in the near future, we'll get around to that other great Dick Tracy film, "Dick Tracy vs Cueball!"

Here's a look at just a very, very, small sampling of the colourful characters Chester Gould came up with for Dick Tracy to tangle with in the 30's and 40's! What a guy!

THE HAUNTED STRANGLER - Buxton Orr - Jean Kent - "Enjoy The View" (1958)

Not to toot my own horn, but Beep, Beep!! Has this not been a great month of titles or what? I learn things daily around here, and sometimes I have to admit it's truly amazing, and speaking of amazing, tonight we've got another delight from the crown prince of the double entendre, probably one of the nicest guys who ever inhabited this planet, and also a master of the macabre, Boris Karloff, in the 1958 feature "The Haunted Strangler"!!!

Originally released as "Grip of the Strangler," it all starts with a murderer's execution!

The lovely Yvonne Buckingham is the uncredited whore in attendance, and what a dance it would be to attend to!! Yvonne was one of the many class acts who appeared in the early 60's "Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre" TV show that I forget to mention half the time! Cue the wolf whistle!!

With an exuberant crowd like this, it really makes a guy kind of nostalgic for a good old fashioned public execution!! Yeehaw!!!

Oh, Shit!! What if he wasn't guilty of the crime!!!

I defy you to tell me this isn't in tribute to "La Mort de Marat," the classic 1793 painting by Jacques-Louis David!!

Cut to 20 years later, and our hero Boris at the age of 71, still looking great, and all prepared for what would be his first shot at the role of what is basically the "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde" storyline! Boris is an author who thinks the hanged man was possibly innocent, and is bent on proving it!

So freakin' Boris goes and digs up the guy's grave, and finds this knife, and............

.....the next damn thing you know, well, I guess he wasn't so innocent after all, because his spirit has overtaken the kindly Boris and turned him into a hideous and ruthless killing machine!!

Meanwhile back at Boris's favorite hangout, "The Judas Hole," there's a party going on, and the wine is flowing like water!!

Hey, what kind of movie is this, anyway? How many degrees? Vera Day as Pearl gets doused with wine by this drunken fool, months earlier she was Sally Norton in "The Womaneater!"

Now that's what I call entertainment!!!

Meanwhile backstage, all the girls are talking about the killer on the loose!!

All right, now it's time for the headliner, Jean Kent as the marvelous Cora Seth to come out and do her song and dance schtick! "Cora, Cora, all the boys adore A," Man, that thing will get embedded in your mind as bad as "Hey Mickey!" The musical credits go out to Buxton Orr who we've raved about before for his work on "Corridors Of Blood," First Man Into Space," Dr. Blood's Coffins" and "Fiend Without A Face" but Jean Kent gets the award for her Coraformance!

For a minute there, I almost forgot this was a horror movie, Boris's personality swings are just getting worse, and he literally crashes the party, and the show at "The Hole!"

They were trying to figure out how to do Boris's makeup cheaply when he himself came up with the idea of simply removing his dentures! What a sport!!

Going from having a pretty good time to no fun at all, Boris takes the most extreme turn for the worst and even kills his own loving wife!!

Pretty bawdy and wild for 1958, and further proof positive that Boris Karloff, despite any present day claptrap, will always be known as one of the best actors of any era, period!! Great movie!!

NIGHT KEY - "What I Create, I Can Destroy" (1937)

Today's date is 2012012, crazy huh? Tonight's feature is pretty wild too, the Boris Karloff classic, "Night Key," and just like this great title card, it's simple, but very effective!

The Big City where crime runs rampant! The whole soundtrack of "Night Key" is stock music from at least 9 different uncredited composers including Karl Hajos, Charles Maxwell, Arthur Morton, Charles Previn, David Raskin, Heinz Roemheld, Clifford Vaughn, Edward Ward, and Franz Waxman!!

The only thing that slows the criminals down is the vigilant diligence of "The Ranger Protection Service!"

And the always amazing Boris Karloff is David Mallory, the brains behind the design of the sophisticated alarm system!

Mr. Mallory's conniving two-faced lawyer is giving him the old do-si-do, with one hand patting him on the back and the other one in his pocket! Allemande Left, and away we go!!

This is David Mallory's newest wireless burglar alarm invention, pretty fancy for 1937! Kudos to the prop department!

The effervescent Jean Rogers is Joan Mallory, David's daughter. They're really happy because David's lawyer just told him that Ranger wants to buy his latest device, and Joan can get out of her deadend job, and David can get the much needed eye surgery he needs and deserves!

This is Hobart Cavanaugh as two-bit crook Petty Louie! Hobart was in 190 films from 1928 until 1950, the year of his death! Here's just a couple of samples, "The Mayor Of Hell," "The Devil's Mate," "I Am A Thief," and "The Ghost Comes Home!" What a great character guy!

Here's how Mallory's system works, when an alarm is tripped, this big wall of lights and numbers is triggered, and then this guy yells out what number it is..... "601!"

....then his co-worker goes over to this file system, and looks up the number, and written on a card is the actual location of the alarm! Pretty sophisticated by today's standards! When I was in The Army, I trained for 8 weeks with a similar system, then they sent me to Alaska, where they used a completely different system! What a waste of time!

Then the Ranger guys go out and grab the perp while he's in the act! This time, it just happens to be Petty Louie!!

Meanwhile, back at the Ranger station, Mallory's equum asinum of a lawyer has totally set him up! Mallory sold his latest wireless alarm invention to Ranger, but he doesn't get paid until they use it, and they don't plan on upgrading for 10 years!! In the vernacular, Ranger is an asshole!!

On his way out, Mallory passes by Louie's holding cell, and since he now has nothing to lose, he uses his wireless device to bypass the electric door, and lets Louie escape!

Boris leaves behind a little classic piece of graffiti for the authorities to ponder, "What I create, I can destroy," and signs it "Night Key."

Not knowing that her Father got screwed out of any money they were going to have coming their way, Mallory's daughter makes some party hats to celebrate! Jean Rogers had the role of Flash Gordon's girlfriend Dale Arden in two of the three "Flash Gordon" serials!

The party's over when the ugly truth comes out!

With Louie Louie's help, Mallory decides he'll show Ranger what's up by showing the public how inefficient his old system is!

But instead of robbing the places, he plays a series of practical jokes! The clock shop is the first stop, and when the Ranger guards get there, all the clocks are going off at once!

Next up is the umbrella store!!

Time for a change in the story as Ward Bond as "Fingers" steps in to let Mallory know that "The Kid" wants to see him!! If you've ever watched any 50's or 60's TV, you'll know that Ward Bond was Major Seth Adams, the star of 133 episodes of "Wagon Train" from 1957 to 1961, but all total, he had 271 acting credits before passing away at 57! Major Seth Adams was without a doubt more benevolent than "Fingers" ever thought to be!

This is "The Kid!"

Perennial thug, punk, and gangster, Alan Baxter puts in another killer performance! One of Alan's last films was the dirty rat flick "Willard!" "Fingers" always has his back!

The Kid knows Mallory can bypass all the alarm systems, so first he take's Mallory's glasses away, and when that backfires, he kidnaps his daughter!

Using Louie's eyes, Mallory is able to come up with a device that puts a shocking electrical charge on "Fingers" that freezes him in his chair, so Louie takes advantage of the situation by giving "Fingers" the old Three Stooges nose job!

Mallory creates this cool electrical gun that allows him and Louie to escape, unfortunately, the electric waves can't hold back bullets, and Louie gets shot as they exit!

Reunited with "The Kid," Mallory and Joan are almost goners, but it all works out in THE END! Double Bonus, "The Key" and "Tower Of London" are on a double feature Boris Karloff DVD that is available on Netflix!! It's a no brainer!!