Trivia and Quotes
Quotes
 Hjalmar Poelzig: You say your soul was killed, that you have been dead all these years. And what of me? Did we not both die here in Marmorus 15 years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder? Are we not both the living dead? And now you come to me, playing at being an avenging angel, childishly thirsting for my blood. We understand each other too well. We know too much of life.
Hjalmar Poelzig: Vitus! Your are mad.
Hjalmar Poelzig: Come, Vitus, are we men or are we children?
Peter Allison: I don`t know. It all sounds like a lot of supernatural baloney to me.
Dr. Vitus Verdegast: Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney, perhaps not. There are many things under the sun.
Hjalmar Poelzig: The phone is dead. Do you hear that, Vitus? Even the phone is dead.
Trivia
Director Edgar G. Ulmer, when writing this film, loosely based the villain Hjalmar Poelzig, played by Boris Karloff, on director Fritz Lang. Ulmer knew Lang from the German-Austrian film scene and, though he was a huge admirer of Lang`s films, felt Lang to be a sadist as a director.
The ill-fated bus driver is a direct homage to the doorman in Letzte Mann, Der (1924), on which Edgar G. Ulmer worked as Production Designer.
Edgar G. Ulmer dubbed Bela Lugosi`s voice instructing his servant to "wait here" before accompanying Boris Karloff down to be shown his preserved dead wife.
Edgar G. Ulmer dubbed Boris Karloff`s line at the end of the chess match: "You lose, Vitus".
Boris Karloff`s character is named after Austrian architect and art director Hans Poelzig. Poelzig worked on Golem, wie er in die Welt kam, Der (1920), on which director Edgar G. Ulmer was set designer.
Among the unconventional elements of this film was the soundtrack. At a time (early 1930s) when movie music was usually limited to the titles and credits, Edgar G. Ulmer had an almost continuous background score throughout the entire film.
The first of eight movies to pair Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.
The set of the main room in Poelzig`s house were built for $1,500.
This was Universal`s biggest hit of 1934.
Censors in Italy, Finland and Austria banned the movie outright, while others required cuts of the more gruesome sequences.
Edgar G. Ulmer admitted in an interview that Edgar Allan Poe`s story was credited to draw public attention, despite the fact it had nothing to do with the story in the movie.
The satanic prayer Poelzig chants during the black mass scene consists of phrases in Latin, the most recognizable being "cum grano salis" (with a grain of salt).
|
Comments
Submit a Comment