DEAD MEN WALK (1943)

This is the kind of picture that separates the true horrorista from the dilettante.  Sure, anyone can sit through a couple of hours with one of the honest-to-god classics, but it takes a special kind of nerve to stay put for 64 minutes of a PRC giggler.

PRC was Producers Releasing Corporation, which Wikipedia generously calls “one of the less prestigious Hollywood film studios.”  When you got to the bottom of the barrel, you dug through the wood to get to PRC.

One of the studio’s primo directors was Sam Newfield (originally Neufield) who, along with his brother Sigmund, owned a chunk of the outfit.  In 30 years, Sam directed something like 300 films, 15 of them in 1943 alone (Dead Men Walk, The Black Raven, and a bunch of westerns.)  Dead Men Walk’s screenwriter, Fred Myton, was a slacker, with only seven produced credits in ’43—two horror pictures and five oaters.   

Okay, I hear you ask yourself, was there anything about this flick that makes it stand out.  Good question, and the answer is “Yes.”

It stars George Zucco and Dwight Frye, actors who had both seen better days. 

Frye is Zolarr, a retread of his most famous screen role, Renfield in the Lugosi version of Dracula.  Zolarr is the servant of Dr. Elwyn Clayton who, being dead, is relatively easy to take care of.  Frye’s main purpose is to hysterically cry “Yes, master” or “Help me, master” depending on his predicament of the moment.  It’s been only a decade since Dracula, but Frye hasn’t aged well and looks as if he could drop dead on a bus at any moment, which he did later that year.  He did manage to give us five films in 1943—after this one came Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, and three tiny and uncredited roles in others.  Frye had been a successful comic actor on Broadway during the 1920s and longed for a chance to do comedy on screen.  You can see the comic chops in Fritz, in Frankenstein.

Zucco is good guy Dr. Lloyd Clayton and evil twin Elwyn Clayton.  Elwyn is a follower of Satan (nothing good ever comes of that) who is killed by Lloyd and then returns from the grave as a vampire, a situation which gives Zucco all the room he needs to give us his best Tod Slaughter imitation.  Eyes wide open, ramrod straight, chortling at every thought of revenge, Zucco is absolutely worth the price of admission—which, admittedly, in a PRC film, isn’t much.  Another Broadway star fallen on hard times in Hollywood, Zucco was a fine character actor who only once got the kind of screen role he deserved—as Moriarty in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1939.

The picture is essentially another re-hash of Dracula with touches of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde tossed in to make it look different.  There ain’t much to it, folks, but Zucco and Frye are always fun to watch, and Zucco is extra special this time out.  At 64 minutes, you might enjoy it.  If it had gone to 65, not so much.