on 12/28/08 Joe Karlosi wrote:
I did a search and there has been some discussion on TOWER OF LONDON, but in threads mainly designated for "The Boris Karloff Collection" on DVD. Since it's been a couple of years now, I thought maybe it would be worth starting a thread just on this film alone.

I watched it again last night. I enjoy seeing Karloff, Rathbone, and Price all together (and I can never get enough of that cutey Nan Grey) but this film always languishes at the "fair" point to me rather than being exceptionally "good". There are always fine moments to pick out (my favorite is the drinking sequence between Rathbone and Price, who delightfully chews up the scenery as the Duke of Clarence) and Karloff is a terrific villain as Mord the Executioner. But I feel the movie is overlong, and no matter how many times I see it, the plot seems rather muddled and confusing at times.

So what are your thoughts?
And on 12/29/08 TomWeaver999 added:
Rose Hobart told me she worked on the movie for weeks and when she saw it years later, she was hardly in it, so she felt that some of the scenes she was in had to have been cut. Donnie Dunagan described a scene he was in, that was cut. I smell another SON OF FRANK, a movie that went into production with a half-finished and/or half-assed script, and people trying to "work around that" in production, and problems arising. Maybe somebody'll come up with a script someday.
From the book Universal Horrors I gather that Tom Weaver was correct about the "half-assed" screenplay. Also the director Roland V. Lee was no Michael Curtiz. Staging complex action scenes seemed to be beyond him and although Universal didn't spend the money that Warners spent on Errol Flynn films they did commit a sizable budget to the film. Corman did better in 19672 with five extras and some rear projection plates that appeared to be from the 1939 version. The battle scenes were truly "amateur night in Dixie."Having said this I must add it is a lot of fun for the black comedy bits with Karloff as Mord and the full-throttle villainy of Rathbone. It's a lesser pleasure but a pleasure nonetheless.

image
Basil Rathbone as Richard - ably assisted by Karloff as Mord - on the left and Vincent Price as Richard on the right. You know … he really needed old Mord in his version.


opticalguy1954@yahoo.com (Spencer Gill)
Last Edited By: opticalguy Dec 29 08 5:19 PM. Edited 1 times.