and both versions of SCARFACE—reaching for a gun to break the cycle of violence. In early scenes, Karloff and Young seem to be prefigur- ing the Corleone family set-up: Tony sneers at his prissy son for not being the man his Sonny- like brother Benedicto (Elliott Rothe) is. Benedicto meets the same fate as Sonny (and Mercutio) but the film breaks with Shakespeare and doesn’t have John-Marco turn avenger, choosing to concentrate on professional hispanic Carillo’s unlikely Capone character. (Karloff isn’t exactly first-choice casting for a Italian-Ameri- can either.) Instead, there’s too much spooning in the moonlight and brittle party chatter before the melodramatic finish. The best performance comes from sallow Leslie Fenton (FPI 1) as the Tybalt character: Maria’s drunken, sullen, over- privileged brother who resents being kept out of the rackets. Though it’s genteel compared with the average Warners shoot ’em up, the script makes editorial asides which fit in with the popu- list vigilantism of GABRIEL OVER THE WHITE HOUSE or LET ’EM HAVE IT (“I’d like to take every gangster in the country, put ’em in one pen, then let the Marines loose and tell ’em to go crazy”).
BEHIND THE MASK (1932, 68m 27s) was re- leased after FRANKENSTEIN, and—at least in- sofar as the publicity goes—retooled to appeal to new-minted horror fans as well as the established gangster crowd. It opens with a return to prison and footage (or outtakes) from THE CRIMINAL CODE (there’s more yammering, too). Tough con Quinn (Jack Holt) and sly mug Henderson (Karloff) get together to escape... but Quinn is actually se- cret agent Jack Hart and he’s undercover to infil- trate a drugs ring run by an Edgar Wallace/Dr. Mabuse-like mystery mastermind called “Mr. X.” Since the gang’s bearded medico Dr. Steiner and civic leader Munsell are both played by FRANKEN- STEIN/DRACULA co-star Edward Van Sloan, the mystery angle isn’t up to much. However, the macabre elements allow for more fantastical melo- drama, with a climax which finds our hero strapped to an operating table while a shudder pulp fiend in a surgical mask explains just what he’s going to do: “The pain whilst I am cutting through the outer layers of skin will not be unendurable... It is only when I commence to carve on your vital organs that you will know you are having an experience.” Screenwriter Jo Swerling (adapting his own story “In the Secret Service”) and director John Francis
Karloff with well-disguised FRANKENSTEIN cohort Edward van Sloan in the marginally macabre BEHIND THE MASK.
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