Le château des loufoques

The Boogie Man Will Get You: 6 out of 10: If Ma and Pa Kettle ever did Arsenic and Old Lace it would be this movie. Very very silly and occasionally quite funny the Boogie Man has a couple of big faults. The supporting cast is mixed at best and the ending is a mess.

It also has two great assets, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. Karloff is spot on as the bumbling well meaning murdering scientist. Whose experiments on traveling salesman to create super-soldiers for the war effort are both well meaning and quite homicidal.

Peter Lorre is hilarious as the Mayor, Police Chief, Undertaker, Notary, excreta. He dresses in a three piece suit with a Siamese kitten in his pocket to which he coos in German.

Watching these two together is pure entertainment and certainly worth a viewing. The rest of the movie is light, frothy, derivative, and occasionally irritating. Just watch the stars at work and forget the rest.

A curious film which weaves satirical comments about World War Two into a modified "Arsenic and Old Lace" theme, together with an implicit weakness of technology and what passes for science. The strongest satire revolves around nutty Professor Nathaniel Billings (Boris Karloff), a mad but seemingly harmless scientist, whose attempt at creating a superman is so close to Hitler's expressed plan for a superman race that the parallel cannot be ignored. The film was produced during a time of military victories for the Axis powers, at a point in World War Two when the Allies were all but powerless to resist. Satire seemed the only sure weapon. As a movie, it's great fun, with a cast much too sophisticated for both the plot and the script. In effect, the acting skill of both Karloff and Peter Lorre (as Dr Lorenz) are the film's salvation. As wacky as the characters are, they seem plausible representations of real folks, which makes one wonder who, indeed, is really in charge of the asylum.

From the very beginning, during the opening credits, you already know what you are dealing with, despite Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. It's not my cup of tea, but that's a movie from Lew Landers,, a grade B movies provider whose I have already tried not to miss any movie available; many are not anymore. Fortunately for me, this feature is not too long, so it was not too hard for me to really focus on the plot. It is definitely fun, enjoyable. Impossible to say the least harm about this film. Made during the war, 1942, it is obviously destined to help audiences to forget, at least for more than one hour, the nightmare of the conflict.

Though conceived as a quickie ripoff of "Arsenic and Old Lace," "Boogie Man" now seems more like a weird precursor of "Green Acres," featuring (Miss) Jeff Donnell as a sort of young female Eddie Albert, and Boris Karloff in what might be called the Eva Gabor position, spoofing his kindly old mad scientist roles as a semi-senile inventor attempting to create a race of electrically enhanced supermen in the basement of a crumbling colonial inn while Miss Donnell joyously appraises all the charming old antiques upstairs. Peter Lorre, of all people, gives a rare comic performance as the local version of Mr. Haney, running around dressed like Robert Mitchum in "Night of the Hunter," with a cute little Siamese kitten in his pocket that he periodically coos to in German. This is the sort of movie you used to catch one night on the late late show, and wonder for years afterwards if you'd actually seen it or just dreamt it.

While the film fails to offer any actual "Boogieman", it does offer up a variety of decent chuckles, courtesy of its then all-star cast. With a goofy set up, likable characters, and some great slapstick, The Boogie Man Will Get You is a decent, fun little romp from yesteryear.

The plot follows a young woman who decides to purchase an old Colonial mansion in the middle of nowhere with the hopes of turning it into a hotel, even though it is barely standing. Her ex-husband finds her only seconds after she has made the purchase (a plot device never fully explained) and tried to convince her she's been swindled. She doesn't care, having become fond of the eclectic cast of characters that inhabit the house... but little does she know, the old man who works in the basement is actually trying to create a race of electric supermen! Bodies begin piling up (or do they?), Peter Lorre shows up playing the town mayor/sheriff/notary with a kitten in his coat pocket, and general Hollywood hijinks ensue. The ending is a mess, but it ends up being so convoluted, it somehow finds charms in all of its lunacy. While far from intelligent entertainment, you could do a lot worse for 66 minutes of your life.

If you're a Karloff or Lorre fan, its well worth seeing. Others, its hit-or-miss.