image

Like opticalguy said upthread and Weaver & the Brunases write in Universal Horrors, I feel that producer-director Rowland Lee was in over his head-- this story is a flat and murky mess; I know the history & the legend of Richard well, and I found it hard to follow as it is presented here because my attention kept wandering (which reminds me-- anyone ever seen the 1995 adaptation with Ian McKellen set in a counter-factual fascist Britain? What a hoot!). Lee seems to think that all he needs to keep all the balls in the air is to use Richard's dollhouse as exposition, which is silly: does such a brilliantly sinister master manipulator like Richard need a dollhouse to keep track of his machinations? No, of course not, it's for the audience's sake, and it fails. I'm surprised he didn't try that B-movie narrative crutch of a newspaper front-page montage.

Rathbone's performance as Richard is fine, as well as Barbara O'Neil's Elyzabeth and Price's Clarence. And Karloff's twisted executioner is worth watching, of course, and interesting to compare to that other Rathbone/Karloff relationship in that other 1939 movie. But John Sutton's Wyatt is a drip. The sets are impressive, but I found Vera West's costuming kind of tacky, which is a bad thing to say about a "costume drama." And it seems like Richard's hump changes size and position like Igor's in YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN.







Last Edited By: CreepingBride Oct 26 09 2:22 PM. Edited 1 times.