Tower of London (1939)

For some reason this is sometimes marketed and sold as a horror film, but it’s piss all of the sort; I used to use this old toplist at ICheckMovies as a bit of a viewing project, but was always unsatisfied by some of the inclusions on it (The Virgin Spring is horror? Just because Wes Craven knocked it off for Last House on the Left? Be serious. And I’ve always had reservations about classing gialli as horror films), of which this was one… and there’s a bunch of other lists there featuring it, many sourced from books on the subject by Carlos Clarens, Scream Factory’s Universal horror collection, Time Out magazine, that sort of thing. But it’s not a horror film, despite some of the people involved; it’s a pretty straight and fairly dry historical drama about Richard III’s ascent to the throne. Vincent Price was one of the secondary cast here in one of his earliest film roles, and he would go on to play Richard in Roger Corman’s 1962 remake; I saw the latter many years ago, and remarked on my old blog about the ho-hum characters and irritating American accents. I see no real reason not to level the same criticisms against the 1939 version too; even Richard (Basil Rathbone here) isn’t particularly interesting here somehow. Boris Karloff tries his best as the latter’s torturer Mord, but he doesn’t get enough to do. And Richard’s battle for the throne is nothing compared to the duelling accents, with a grim fight between varying American flavours clashing with actual English voices. For something set in such a specific time and place, the lack of effort the Hollywood mob make is kind of galling. Mostly well-enough made (bar the fighting scenes, which were a technical nightmare for multiple reasons and wound up frankly looking a bit shit), but only Price really goes at it with the sort of teethmarks-in-scenery bravado it needed more of.