The Monster Walks
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, NR, 57 m, 1932
Directed by Fred R. Strayer. Stars Rex Lease, Vera Reynolds, Sheldon Lewis, et al.

The Monster Walks has all the trappings of an “old dark house” movie neatly in place: a ferocious thunderstorm; a creepy, spider-infested manor; grasping relatives arriving in the middle of the night to hear the reading of a dead doctor’s will; a half-witted Negro chauffeur; and a temperamental chimpanzee in the basement. With the right talent at the helm, a bit of fun could be had with this formula, but in the hands of scrounging producer Ralph M. Like and anything-for-a-buck auteur Frank R. Strayer, it’s just so many steps to keeping the lights on.

As was the case with many early sound pictures, The Monster Walks contains more babble than a Yenta coffee klatch. (Once upon a time, Hollywood actually thought people wanted a lot of talking in their “talkies.”) The old admonition, “show, don’t tell,” goes unobserved; every clue in this by-the-numbers murder mystery is communicated through painfully stilted dialogue. (The whole affair put me in the mind of a bad John Willard play.) Characters carry on about this, that and the other, but the primitive sound technology renders a lot of their yammering nearly unintelligible. (Everything sounds flat and tinny.) The screenplay by Richard Ellis, who also penned Charlie Chan in Egypt and other such forgettable items, is plodding, uninspired. As an actor himself, you’d think Ellis could’ve come up with some lines that the film’s players would’ve been happy to sink their teeth into, but it looks like the poor devils had a tough go at even getting their mouths wrapped around his words.

After the stage is set, the will is read and the yawns ensue. Of course, most of the visitors aren’t too thrilled when they learn that the late Dr. Earlton has bequeathed his entire estate to his daughter, Ruth (Vera Reynolds). In the event of Ruth’s passing, her paralyzed uncle, Robert (Sheldon Lewis), will inherit the mother lode, and if he’s to buy the farm… Well, let’s just say that Dr. Earlton’s long-loyal servants (who feel that their former boss really stuck it to them from beyond the grave) have their work cut out for them. The incessantly shrieking ape downstairs, Yogi, has a paw in their naughty scheme, which leads to a good share of the Earlton clan meeting up with their patriarch in the sweet hereafter.

The Monster Walks may be of some interest to classic movie buffs as it features the unfortunate Willie Best in one of his earliest screen appearances. As Exodus the limo driver, Best (billed here as Sleep n’ Eat, the degrading identity he was forced to assume for most of the ‘30s) isn’t given much to do except loaf about and make dim asides. (That was his forte, odious as it may have been.) Bob Hope, who worked with Best in The Ghost Breakers, once described his co-star as one of the finest actors in the biz. Even if you take Best’s entire body of work into account, it’s hard to figure out what Old Ski Nose was raving about. Best, God bless his soul, persevered in a business that wasn’t too respectful of performers with skin the color of “coal bin ebony,” but he was a one trick pony at, er, best. If you want to check out a couple of early horror shows where blacks weren’t required to behave like imbeciles, I recommend Invisible Ghost or Son of Ingagi. Not great films by any stretch, but in terms of giving African-Americans their proper respect, they were years ahead of their time. 

August 7, 2009 

© Copyright 2009 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.