Review of Tower of London

"No age is without its ruthless men who in their search for power, leave dark stains upon the pages of history."

Although best remembered today, if at all, for Son of Frankenstein, director Rowland V. Lee was responsible for a nice line in swashbucklers in the 30s and showed he could handle darker bigger budget fare with aplomb with 1939's Tower of London, a determinedly non-Shakespearean but highly entertaining account of the rise of Richard III and the fall of the Plantagenets. It's not quite top notch but it's not far from it, Lee managing to draw slightly more diverse performances from his leads than their usual default screen personas.

Filmed at a time when Universal still had enough of their Hunchback of Notre Dame backlot left to give the film an impressive sense of scale (ironically scheduling conflicts with this film meant that Basil Rathbone had to drop out of playing Frollo in the Charles Laughton version of Hunchback), it's surprisingly lavish, Lee's dynamic and visually striking direction putting every cent and more besides up on the screen. It also benefits from a witty script that may not aspire to Shakespeare but has a firm grip on the practicalities of power in the Middle Ages ("Marry your enemies and behead your friends!") and enough of the blood-soaked cruelty of the era to satisfy the Universal horror fans ("There's a way of tearing the truth from a man's soul") thanks to the presence of a bald and limping Boris Karloff as Crookback's favorite torturer, Dragfoot Mord. There's even a striking battle in the pouring rain (naturally shot in crippling heat) that may well have made an impression on Orson Welles when he heard those Chimes at Midnight.

Rathbone, looking like Mr Spock, is quite magnificent here, relishing fencing with sword and words alike, whispering to avoid waking the sleeping boy king during court business and even managing to deliver one of the screen's few genuinely convincing drunk scenes in his drinking match with Clarence over that fateful vat of Malmsey wine. Ian Hunter makes a convincingly robust King Edward and Vincent Price (who would play Richard Crookback himself in the 1962 remake) a weaselly Clarence. Naturally the good guys can't compete: led by John Sutton, sounding alarmingly like Peter Cook, they're a typically bland lot, and it's only really some weak casting on the side of the angels and a rushed ending that doesn't give Richard and Mord good enough exits after such a grand buildup that let it down. But for 90 minutes you'll probably be having so much wicked fun with this near-forgotten near-classic that you'll forgive the less than grand finale. No extras on the DVD, though.