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The real find here may be Brit director Robert Day, who helms three of the four. Both The Haunted Strangler and Corridors of Blood benefit from Karloff’s grandly sympathetic contortions as, respectively, a mid-19th century journalist and a mid-19th century surgeon, both starting out “driven” and driving well past “dangerously obsessed.” Tales of Victorian-era medical trials, split personalities, and body snatching, both recall R.L. Stevenson — and The Body Snatcher, the Val Lewton-Robert Wise Stevenson adaptation (also starring Karloff). Day can build a sequence as efficiently as Wise, and shows flashes (in Corridors more so than the gaunt Strangler) of low-rent Dickens-via-Lean atmosphere.
His First Man Into Space, like its undersea partner The Atomic Submarine, trades ripped-from-the-headlines knob-twiddling for resourceful creature-feature schlock halfway through. Serial director Spencer G. Bennet’s work on Submarine suffers in comparison, and while that may reflect the two’s visibly wildly disparate budgets, Brown’s ability to work fast seems his sole merit — he handles actors about as well as he does the bathtub toys standing in for the subs.
Extras
Commentaries by the Gordons (Alex’s recorded before his death in 2003), as well as other retrospective interviews, essays, and promotional material. The most interesting, and disheartening tidbit: the shoestring-sophisticate Corridor languished in distribution limbo before ending up on a double bill with something called Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory.
Verdict
At least now it’s getting the respect it deserves.
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