Hooptober 13 Draft List

Is it man, beast or both behind a string of savage maulings and murders in The Leopard Man? An escaped leopard provides the catalyst for a foray into fear in which castanets clack wildly, a cemetery is a rendezvous for death and love, and a closed door heightens rather than hides the horror of a young girl's fate. It's the third and final teaming of producer Val Lewton and director Jacques (Cat People) Tourneur.
This is usually considered one of the lesser Lewton horror flicks as well as a lesser entry in Tourneur's oeuvre. I think this is unfair, because aside from the rather pedestrian solution to the "mystery" and the lack of resources available to the filmmakers to more faithfully create the New Mexico setting and Hispanic characters, The Leopard Man is to this day a quite tense and frightening film.
This rip includes a commentary by director William Friedken (The Exorcist) and while he is obviously fond of the film and the filmmakers, he has never been the most interesting commentator. Still, it's worth a listen for the little gems that pop up now and then.

A high priest of Karnak travels to America with the living mummy Kharis (Lon Chaney Jr.) to kill all those who had desecrated the tomb of the Egyptian princess Ananka thirty years earlier.

The Invisible Man's grandson uses his secret formula to spy on Nazi Germany.

Ole and Chick are making a movie, but the director is not satisfied. So he brings them to a young writer, who outlines them an absurd story. They have to support Jeff and Kitty in setting up a musical revue in their garden and want to bring it up on Broadway. If Jeff is successful he can marry Kitty. But there is his rich friend Woody, who also loves Kitty, Chick's sister Betty, who's in love with a false Russian count, and detective Quimby. They all make the thing very complicated for Ole and Chick. After some mistakes they think that Kitty isn't the right girl for Jeff and they start sabotaging the show, but the Broadway producer is impressed and signs the contract. That's the story the writer tells them. For this he's sued by the director.
Written by Stephan Eichenberg <[email protected]>

A 3-D short subject in which the narrator goes to a creepy old house in search of his missing aunt. There he encounters the Frankenstein monster, a witch, a wooden Indian who comes to life, and assorted other monsters and frightening characters, all of whom manage to throw something toward the camera.

Eccentric Professor Gibbs, brilliant but impractical, invents an invisibility machine and advertises for a guinea pig. What he gets is Kitty Carroll, an attractive, adventurous model, who thinks being invisible would help her settle a few scores. Complications arise when three comic gangsters steal the machine to use on their boss. But they fail to reckon with the Revenge of the Invisible Woman!

Archaeologists defile the tomb of mummified Kharis, who was buried alive for falling in love with an Egyptian princess.

University professor George Kingsley is struck by gangsters while crossing the street, leaving him with brain damage and one of the gangsters, Cannon, paralyzed. Kingsley's friend Dr. Sovac attends to both men, and when Cannon offers him a reward for aiding his recovery, Kovac transplants part of Cannon's brain into the dying Kingsley's skull, creating a dual personality.

The owner of a coal mining operation, falsely imprisoned for fratricide, takes a drug to make him invisible, despite its side effect: gradual madness.

The story is set in Cambodia in the years following WWI. An evil count has come into possession of the secret methods by which men can be transformed into walking zombies and uses these unholy powers to create a race of slave laborers. An expedition is sent to the ruins of Angkor Wat, in hopes of ending the count's activities once and for all. Unfortunately, one of the members of the expedition has his own agenda.

John Ellman (Boris Karloff) has been framed for murder by a gang of racketeers. He is unfairly tried and despite the fact that his innocence has been proven, he is sent to the electric chair and executed. Dr. Evan Beaumont (Edmund Gwenn) retrieves his dead body and revives it, as part of his experiments to reanimate a dead body and discover what happens to the soul after death.
Dr. Beaumont's use of a mechanical heart to revive the patient foreshadows modern medicine's mechanical heart to keep patients alive during surgery. Although John Ellman has no direct knowledge of anyone wishing to frame him for the murder before he is executed, he gains an innate sense of knowing those who are responsible after he is revived. Ellman takes no direct action against his framers; however, he seeks them out, wishing to know why they had him killed. Each dies a horrible death, and in the end it is their own guilt that causes their deaths.
Confronting the last two villains, Ellman is shot. Having fulfilled his divine mission to bring about justice, he dies, just before he would have explained death and the afterlife to the curious Dr. Beaumont. Beaumont is warned not to continue his experiments, citing the Biblical Scripture, "For the LORD thy God is a jealous God (Deut. 6:15a)."

Dr. Janos Rukh discovers a certain type of radium that has almost magical healing properties. But the element has a dangerous side, too, and it has already started affecting Rukh. Consumed by paranoia, he begins to suspect that his wife is having an affair. Wild for revenge, Rukh hatches a deadly plot...using his own poisoned body as a weapon to kill.

A brilliant surgeon obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe saves the life of a beautiful dancer and goes mad when he can't have her.

A strange animal attack turns a botanist into a bloodthirsty monster.

Beleaguered adventurer Carl Denham returns to the island where he found King Kong.

In 19th Century Paris, the maniacal Dr. Mirakle abducts young women and injects them with ape blood in an attempt to prove ape-human kinship. He constantly meets failure as the abducted women die. Medical student Pierre Dupin discovers what Mirakle is doing too late to prevent the abduction of his girlfriend Camille. Now he desperately tries to enlist the help of the police to get her back.

Dr. Henry Jekyll believes that there are two distinct sides to men - a good and an evil side. He believes that by separating the two, man can become liberated. He succeeds in his experiments with chemicals to accomplish this and transforms into Hyde to commit horrendous crimes. When he discontinues use of the drug, it is already too late.

1928 French film by Jean Epstein

A young woman, Margaret Dauncey, is caught between the forces of a charlatan magician, Oliver Haddo, whom she is unable to resist, and the love of a handsome surgeon, Arthur Burdon, who has saved her from being a helpless cripple by performing a delicate operation on her spine.

A kindly but desperate Alsatian innkeeper named Mathias murders and robs a rich Jewish merchant staying at his inn, but the ghost of his victim will not let him rest. Meanwhile, a mysterious Mesmerist has come to town, claiming he has made many criminals confess their crimes...