Son of the Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 17: Tower of London

In honor or in acknowledgement of the unearthing of the body of King Richard III and ending our little  1930’s sidebar we have 1939’s Tower of London a retelling of Shakespeare’s Richard III without the blank verse (and truth be told – it’s not as good) .

It’s played as ½ Horror film – I mean with Boris Karloff in it how could you not? And ½ historical melodrama and while entertaining in a bloody way – it’s not a great picture.

Still there are pleasures here – Basil Rathbone makes a fine Richard the III moving  through the intrigues of the court with a murderous  singleness of purpose,  to gain the English Throne. He never deviates from that goal.  He even has a little stage where there are dolls showing the line of the succession to the throne. As each shall one say obstacle to his gaining the throne, they are tossed into the fire. It’s creepy yes.

Assisting Richard in his quest is Boris Karloff as Mord the Bald Club footed chief executioner of the Tower of London – he is devoted to Richard (not sure why) saying “you are more than a king to me, you are a god” this of course before Richard gain’s the throne. Mord is wonderfully evil,  played with Boris’s usual wonderful competence – he’s obsessed with of all things killing a man in battle “I’ve never killed in hot blood” he tells Richard begging to allowed to join him early in the film.

There are moments of black humor with Mord, on his was to execute a duke at the beginning of the film, he stops to look at a man being tortured by pressed under weights, after a moment’s thought he puts another weight on the board and moves on. Later he opens an Iron maiden and the unfortunate man who had been put in there (off-screen) falls to the ground dead. “pick it up” is Boris’ command to one of his underlings.

Rounding out the cast is a young Vincent Price as the Wine sotted and unable to avoid plotting Clarence brother of Richard and Edward. He loses a drinking contest with Richard and is as per legend drowned in a Butt (a big big barrel) of Malmsey (a type of fortified wine or sherry if the internet can be trusted)  .

With this cast and this story , the film really should be better but the need to stop and make moral points at each moment of the film weakens it, and the female characters especially bring the narrative to a total halt as they all seem to wonder why they are not living the simple lives of housewives in the suburbs (or so it seems to me) 

And as this was done in 1939 the urge to use Richard as an allegory for the rise of men such as Mussolini and Hitler was pretty irresistible but adds another uncomfortable contemporary edge to the proceedings – Henry Tudor the eventual winner is presented as being the epitome of goodness and light with the effect that he’s dull bland and rather boring. The rest of the Lancastrian side is portrayed more as innocent – the mad Henry VI or a bit of a fool – his son Edward the Prince of Wales. It’s not enough when placed against the implacable evil Basil Rathbone brings to his part. And you need a hero to face down the dragon not a milksop.

Another weakness is the battle scenes which consist of crowds of folks in armor running at each other – this may well have been historically accurate – it is interesting that while there have been many books on the wars of the Roses how the battles were fought is not dealt with much probably because this was the way the battles were fought confused yelling and shoving – but really it would be better if you had some idea of what was going on. Especially in the last battle where we get a bit of confused moment – Richard yelling out “Henry Tudor” them more confused camera work and then Richard is dead and the rest of the battle is one of the secondary male characters hunting down Boris Karloff who gets a much better death scene that Richard which is a bit odd.

And I think someone coming into this film without a good knowledge of the players and the history of the Wars of the Roses, which I freely admit I have, would be totally lost – For example one of the reasons that Clarence is obviously not trusted by either Edward or Richard was that earlier, before the part of the story the film shows, he had been on the side of the Lancaster faction with his father in Law the Duke of Warrick, known as the kingmaker – who during a very  busy life had deposed Henry VI and put Edward (the Edward we’ve been talking about – please pay attention there will be test after this) on the throne, then changed his mind put Henry VI back and then was killed in battle against Edward and Richard. This rather complex set of relations and story is tossed off in a sentence or two in the film – and if you didn’t already know what I just wrote you’d miss it.

Still what works works, Boris is fun to watch and Basil always made a good bad guy – the film misses due to I’d say an excess of sentimentality over the events and of anything will pale compared to Shakespeare’s version of the same events.

Enjoy with of course Malmsey (not too much mind you – look at what it did to Clarence)