Supernatural (Victor Halperin, 1933)

Following the financial success of director Victor Halperin's White Zombie, a low-budget horror classic, the major studios came calling. Paramount signed Halperin to a lucrative contract, and his next horror film had the full resources of Hollywood behind it. He paid it forward by hiring most of the same crew that worked on White Zombie, and though Supernatural is a slicker, more mainstream film, Halperin fills it with oddball character details, moments of eccentric humor, and some pretty amazing sets. Supernatural is a solid, enjoyable, offbeat '30s horror film.

Though it doesn't show up onscreen, the movie had a troubled production. Halperin and star Carole Lombard didn't get along. Lombard felt she was miscast and that her natural comedic skills weren't being used, making for tense working conditions and frequent arguments with Halperin. That wasn't the only problem. The Long Beach earthquake of 1933 briefly halted production mid-shoot and caused cast and crew to flee the set in fear. The film's theatrical release was less than ideal, too. Supernatural was a box office disappointment and got mixed reviews.

Watching it 87 years after all the behind-the-scenes drama, I think Lombard was too hard on herself and Halperin. Though she overdoes the cocked-eyebrow thing a bit and is a little dialed down compared to her usual work in comedies, she's very good in the part, which requires her to take on the personalities of two different characters in the same body. There are fine turns as well from Vivienne Osborne, Alan Dinehart, Beryl Mercer, and William Farnum, and Halperin makes the whole thing look great. Randolph Scott is a bit dull as the milquetoast boyfriend (a character type that is oddly in most horror films of this era). He would become a great character actor and star of westerns once his face got a bit more lived-in, but he played a lot of generic handsome guys in his early years in the biz.

Supernatural has an enjoyably convoluted plot for being only 65 minutes long. Serial murderer Ruth Rogen (Osborne) is about to be executed (only the fourth woman to ever face the electric chair, according to headlines in the film's exciting opening montage sequence) for strangling three of her lovers with her extra-strong hands (she is later seen crushing a tin cup in one hand like it's made of paper). I particularly loved the newspaper article that read: "Ruth Rogen yesterday confessed she killed each of her three lovers after a riotous orgy in her sensuous Greenwich Village apartment." Turned in to police by her current lover, Paul Bavian (Dinehart), a con artist/phony spiritualist, Rogen is pissed. Bavian doesn't even have the guts to visit her in prison.

Enter Dr. Carl Houston (H.B. Warner), a psychologist/psychic/scientist (the kind of character who only exists in movies). He believes the spiritual essence of a powerful, unusual criminal can possess and influence impressionable fellow humans, leading to most copycat crimes. The prison warden agrees to let him experiment on the body of Rogen shortly after her execution in an attempt to both prove this phenomenon exists and to prevent it from occurring with Rogen's spirit. Rogen reluctantly agrees, and signs Houston's waiver.

Meanwhile, beautiful millionaire heiress Roma Courtney (Lombard) is grieving the loss of her twin brother John, killed in a mysterious accident. Phony baloney spiritualist Bavian contacts Roma and claims her brother is trying to get a message to her. Bavian has an elaborate grift planned to get some bucks out of Roma by implicating the executor of her and her brother's estate, Nicky Hammond (Farnum), in John's death, and Roma is sad enough to get caught up in the grift. Dr. Houston is a family friend of the Courtneys, and when a distraught Roma and her boyfriend Grant Wilson (Scott), run to Houston's apartment/lab to get some advice after a session with Bavian, they stumble upon the experiment. Rogen's spirit possesses Roma, causing even more pandemonium than we've already experienced so far.

Whew, that's a complicated story. Lombard gets to play the high melodrama of the grieving heiress and the smart, fiery, and murder-happy Rogen once she's possessed, and Halperin gives her some great moments alone with the camera and the sumptuous sets. Dinehart and Osborne also get great moments to revel in the actions of their morally dubious characters. I also want to salute Mercer in her small role as Bavian's alcoholic landlord. There's a great scene involving cockroaches in her sink and a large bottle of vodka that is just one of many neat little offbeat character details Halperin adds to the otherwise slick Hollywood veneer.

Set in New York City, Supernatural was filmed on Hollywood studio sets, and the expressive artifice of these gorgeously designed faux apartments, mansions, storefronts, laboratories, jail cells, offices, and city streets enhances and complements the strangeness of the story. Supernatural may not be one of the enduring classics of '30s horror, but it's a damn good little movie.