Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935)

Famed cinematographer Karl Freund also directed several films but decided in the mid-1930s, after years of pulling double duty, to set his directing career aside and focus full-time on cinematography. He said goodbye to directing with a bang. Mad Love is one of the great '30s horror films (though it received mostly poor reviews at the time), with a memorably creepy Peter Lorre performance in his first American movie, iconic images throughout, and a surprisingly cohesive structure for what was a troubled production behind the scenes, with multiple power struggles.

Karl Freund, an Austrian whose family moved to Germany when he was 10, worked in the German film industry as a newsreel cameraman, cinematographer, and director of a few silent films and several shorts before emigrating to Hollywood in 1929, a fortunate and probably lifesaving move for Freund, a Jewish man. He was able to get his daughter out of Germany in 1937 and bring her to the States, but his ex-wife refused to move and stayed behind. She died in a concentration camp five years later.

Freund made a successful transition to Hollywood after working on some of the greatest German silent films and was an in-demand cinematographer from the time he arrived in the States until the late '50s, when he concluded his career working on I Love Lucy. His first Hollywood film as director was also a horror movie, The Mummy. Mad Love is not as opulent as The Mummy but is otherwise as visually memorable and punches a lot harder.

Based on the same source novel by Maurice Renard as the silent horror classic The Hands of Orlac, from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari director Robert Wiene, Mad Love retains the basic story but otherwise goes its own weird way. It begins with stage actress Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake) appearing in a Grand Guignol-style play. Tonight is her last performance, as she is about to retire from the stage to enjoy a quiet life of domestic bliss with her husband of one year, concert pianist Stephen Orlac (Frankenstein's Colin Clive). The early Hollywood movies always insist that a woman with a successful career she loves can't wait to throw it all aside to cheer on her man. Not too plausible, but Drake makes you believe it.

Obsessed Yvonne fan Gogol (Peter Lorre), a famous surgeon when he's not stalking Yvonne, is not too happy about her retirement from the stage, but he flips his damn wig when he finds out she's married. He pays a crew member big bucks to deliver to his home a wax statue of Yvonne that was displayed in the theater lobby. He half-believes he can will this statue into existence. Gogol lives the bachelor life with an elderly alcoholic maid named Francoise (May Beatty) and her pet parrot, which is frequently perched on her shoulder. As we find out in later dialogue, Gogol has never experienced the company of women. He's a proto-incel with a sick Yvonne obsession.

Returning by train from a concert, Stephen is injured when the train derails. He's okay, but his hands aren't. Doctors fear they may have to amputate, ending his music career forever. In a panic, Yvonne convinces Gogol to operate on her husband. Gogol convinces the local authorities to give him the body of a recently executed man, convicted murderer Rollo (Edward Brophy), for experimentation. (Rollo was transported to his execution on the same ill-fated train that Stephen was on, but the murderer made it through the accident with no injuries.) These authorities have no idea that Gogol is going to do the ol' one-two hand-switcheroo from Rollo to Stephen. That's some advanced 1935 surgery, I tell you what.

Long story slightly shorter, Rollo was a circus knife-thrower prior to his murder spree. Post-surgery and recovery, Stephen finds his piano playing is not as good as it used to be, but he's acquired some incredible knife-throwing skills and a quick temper along with it. When Stephen finally puts two and two together, Gogol comes up with a plan so crazy that it just might work to get Stephen out of the way and Yvonne in his arms.

It's pretty surprising that Mad Love turned out so well because the production was a bit of a drama magnet. Producer John W. Considine, Jr., fought constantly with Freund over creative control of the project, and seven different people contributed to the writing or rewriting of the screenplay, four of them uncredited. The final screenplay wasn't finished until three weeks into the shooting. Considine also insisted on his preferred cinematographer, Chester A. Lyons, while Freund insisted on Gregg Toland. (Toland's later credits include The Grapes of Wrath, Citizen Kane, Ball of Fire, and The Best Years of Our Lives and probably would have included several dozen more classics if he hadn't died from a coronary thrombosis at the age of 44. Lyons had a less distinguished career, shooting mostly quickie B-pictures. He also died young, at age 51, the year after Mad Love's release.) A compromise was finally reached, pleasing no one, in which Toland got to be the cinematographer for eight working days with Lyons shooting the rest of the film.

Freund, obviously a great cinematographer in his own right, micromanaged the position for both Lyons and Toland, and cast members have remarked that Freund seemed like he was trying to be the director and the cinematographer. Meanwhile, Freund and Considine fought through the whole production, with cast and crew members remarking that Considine kept trying to usurp the director's role from Freund despite the producer not knowing his ass from a hole in the ground when it came to directing (my paraphrasing). The production went one week over schedule, and the title changed multiple times before Mad Love was chosen.

Somehow, Mad Love's behind-the-scenes insanity didn't tarnish the finished product, which is an expressive, atmospheric, weird, funny, and creepy little movie with a great Peter Lorre performance at its center (though the movie received a negative critical response on initial release, as mentioned above, Lorre's work in it was generally praised). The admittedly ridiculous plot is played straight, but the movie does have a decent sense of humor and knows how to balance its lighter and darker elements. The characters all have real personality and spark, including the convicted murderer, who is portrayed as a swell, goofy, friendly guy undone by a hair-trigger temper and impeccable knife skills. His final conversation before his execution is to chat with a newspaper reporter about the nearly completed Hoover Dam.

Another surprisingly positive element worth mentioning is the character of Dr. Wong, played by Keye Luke. Wong is a fellow surgeon at Gogol's clinic, and he's presented as no more and no less than a competent doctor doing his job well. It's a character that could have been played by any actor and is surprisingly free of stereotypes or forced exaggerated accents. This is extremely unusual for a '30s Hollywood movie, considering the decade's track record of godawful racist scenes with Asian characters. I love '30s movies, but the decade at its worst is rough stuff.

What can I say? Mad Love is a lot of fun, with excellent production design, lighting, shot composition, performances, and, as the hippies of yesteryear and the kids of today like to say, vibes. Vibe shift your way back to 1935 for Mad Love. It's worth your time.

C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud (David Irving, 1989)

First things first, C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud has nothing whatsoever to do with the first C.H.U.D. and appears to have been written and directed by people who not only never watched C.H.U.D. but also never even bothered to read a plot synopsis of C.H.U.D. Frankly, this is how almost all sequels should proceed, but I can see how the general audience wanting another heaping helping of humans-turned-cannibal mutants via improperly dumped toxic waste in the sewers of New York City were baffled and confused by a small-town zombie horror-comedy that had nothing to do with toxic NYC sewer mutants, especially since the movie poster and VHS cover featured the chuds from the original C.H.U.D.

C.H.U.D. was a bit of a gone-slumming project by a bunch of New York theater and indie film vets who decided at a party to make a cheap horror movie about environmentalism and homelessness, and then they actually went out and did it. C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud was a straight-to-video sequel-in-name-only written by Honey, I Shrunk the Kids screenwriter Ed Naha under the name M. Kane Jeeves and directed by Amy Irving's brother David Irving. Irving had previously directed a dark comedy about a suicidal filmmaker as well as three G-rated live-action fairy tale adaptations. He followed C.H.U.D. II with an erotic thriller starring Kris Kristofferson and a bunch of documentaries about painters. Weird career.

C.H.U.D. II replaces the first film's cast of serious New Yawk thespians with roughly 37 B- and C-list '70s and '80s TV and cult movie stars. I kept expecting Jamie Farr and Alf to show up in this thing. Cameo appearances in C.H.U.D. II include M*A*S*H*'s Larry Linville, Three's Company's Norman Fell, Lost in Space's June Lockhart, comedian and former SNL cast member Rich Hall, Dynasty's Robert Symonds, veteran character actors Frank Birney and Clive Revill, comedian Ritch Shydner, Pee-wee's Big Adventure's Judd Omen, The Running Man's Marvin J. McIntyre, character actor Priscilla Pointer (the director's mother), socialite and ex-wife of Mick, Bianca Jagger, and Mr. Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund. And those are just the cameos, though Bianca Jagger gets near-top billing for her ten-second appearance, her final acting role to date.

It's clear the writers and filmmakers never bothered to learn much about C.H.U.D. from the opening scenes of C.H.U.D. II. The chuds in numero uno were mostly homeless people living in the New York underground who had transformed into mutants from exposure to illegally dumped nuclear waste. The second film kicks off with a press conference about a discontinued military chud program that involves a medical serum that can keep soldiers moving and fighting in battle even after death. The fuck? It's a bit like if the zombies in Night of the Living Dead were changed to werewolves in Dawn of the Dead but the characters kept referring to them as zombies. The prototype chud for this new definition of "chud" is Bud the Chud (delightful character actor Gerrit Graham). Chud. It's still fun to say and type.

Ordered to destroy the chud by the government, a doctor played by Revill is overpowered and Bud goes on the rampage. Military colonel Masters (Robert Vaughn), a staunch proponent and administrator of the discontinued chud program, is brought in with his team to freeze the chud and take it to a government disease control center in the generic all-American small town of Winterhaven (mostly filmed in the Los Angeles suburb of San Pedro, birthplace of one of my favorite bands, Minutemen) for further study. (Vaughn is hammy as the dickens in this thing. He pronounces "barbecue" as "barbie (pause) kewwww," for example. This dude knew he was in C.H.U.D. II when he was in C.H.U.D. II, if you know what I mean.) Masters' right-hand man is nerdy government employee Graves (Deadwood's Leon Cedar).

Swift military action may have ended our chud problem, if not for the damn teens. Winterhaven high school students Steve (Brian Robbins, star of Head of the Class, director of Norbit, and current president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickolodeon, fer chrissakes), Kevin (Bill Calvert), and Katie (Tricia Leigh Fisher, daughter of Eddie Fisher and Connie Stevens, sister of Joely Fisher, and half-sister of Carrie Fisher) are goofing around in biology class during frog dissection week when wisecracking cutup Steve sets the damn classroom on fire. The more responsible Kevin puts the fire out, but he and Steve have to take the frogs back to the biology teacher's storage area, which improbably includes a human cadaver. Normal thing for a small-town high school biology teacher to have, right? In a classic Steve move, he bumps into the cadaver, which is on a stretcher, sending it rolling out the open back doors and into traffic.

Kevin and Steve hatch a plan to steal a cadaver from the disease center to replace the one they knocked into traffic since apparently no authorities in the small town will ever attempt to investigate a rolling cadaver during rush hour. They enlist the aid of Katie, successfully snatch the cadaver, and hide it in the bathroom at Steve's house. Yes, that cadaver is Bud the Chud. Yes, they accidentally revive Bud. Yes, Bud goes on a citywide rampage, turning almost every person and animal he encounters into a chud by nibbling on their brains. Apparently, these part two chuds are nibblers. Instead of chomping the whole brain, they just like to sample it like they're at the fancy grocery store nibbling on an imported cheese.

C.H.U.D. II is not particularly thrilling, narratively or visually, with the tone mostly resembling a sitcom or children's movie. The film bizarrely received an R rating despite having no nudity, minimal swearing, and only a little bit of cartoonish violence, and the whole thing seems like it's pitched to the 10-12 age group, with the cameos attempting to drag in some baby boomers. On the positive side, Gerrit Graham is always enjoyable, the swimming pool scene in the finale is surprisingly imaginative and effective (though Tricia Leigh Fisher is forced to wear a truly bizarre bathing suit), and Steve's parents, played by The Bob Newhart Show's Jack Riley and Charles in Charge's Sandra Kerns, are legitimately funny. Their scenes have a natural, improvisational feel missing from the forced humor of the rest of the movie. You also get several Wall of Voodoo songs on the soundtrack, in addition to a classically godawful generic '80s theme song by an obscure artist with lyrics directly referencing what we're seeing onscreen. Gated drums? Check. Soulless guitar shredding? Check. Synths? Check. A Yello-esque "Oh Yeah" voice singing "Bud the chud/Bud the chud"? Oh yeah.

So. C.H.U.D. II: Bud the Chud. It happened. And you can see it. If you want to. Or you can do something else. It's your life, pal.