All posts filed under: Tower of London (1939)

Tower of London (1939)

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Part of the Vincent Price Blogathon hosted by Nitrate Diva We have a lot of Vincent Price fans as regulars here on The Baz. I’m one myself in fact, so it seems appropriate to take part in the VP blogathon and celebrate Vincent’s talent. I thought about looking at A COMEDY OF TERRORS, a movie I actually like quite a lot (though many deplore it), but I want to leave that to a more general consideration of Basil’s later movies. So, today I’m talking about that strange hybrid film, TOWER OF LONDON. Part faithful historical exploration. Part Universal Horror. Featuring fine nuanced performances from the likes of Price, Basil Rathbone and Ian Hunter on the one hand, and Karloff with a club foot and a bald wig on the other, TOWER OF LONDON covers the life of Richard III, from the second accession to the throne of his brother Edward IV in 1471 to his own death at Bosworth in 1485. Much as I love it, I have to concede it’s a car crash of …

Son of Frankenstein and Tower of London

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I thought I’d talk briefly about two movies – SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and TOWER OF LONDON – the Baz made for Universal between November 1938 and October 1939. The quotations are courtesy of Cinegeek. “In the scene where Bela slowly tells Basil “He does things for me” and there I am all stretched out on this dais – well we all just doubled up, including everyone else on the set, the entire cast, crew and even Rowland, who said he didn’t mind the extra takes for the chuckles it gave everyone!” –Boris Karloff In contrast to many of the episodes and events we’ve been looking at here, this seems to have been quite a busy and fun time for him. In fact it was in many ways his creative peek, or at least his most prolific period as a movie actor. SON OF FRANKENSTEIN was filmed almost alongside THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, and Basil must have gone straight into HOUND from completing SON just after Christmas 1938. TOWER OF LONDON started filming August 1939, …