Tuesday, October 27, 2009 Halloween Countdown: Supernatural

No, not that show about Bo & Luke Duke hunting monsters. It's a film you've likely never seen before, a 1933 thriller from the makers of White Zombie.


Supernatural opens with the story of Ruth Rogen, an avant-garde artist on death row for strangling three of her lovers. At the prison, a famous psychologist petitions the warden for Rogen's body after her execution. He believes that the ghosts of murderers can possess the bodies of the living in order to commit more killings, and that he might be able to capture Rogen's spirit before it can do so. Meanwhile, a wealthy socialite (played by a luminous Carole Lombard) is still grieving over the death of her twin brother, leaving her open to the predations of con men such as Paul Bavian, Rogen's still-surviving true love.

While its not particularly scary, the film just oozes atmosphere. Fans of The Black Cat's crazy art deco design will love the wealthy parapsychologist's apartment-cum-lab. And check out that long take that introduces Bavian and his landlady, on what is the most authentic-looking tenement set I've seen from that era. In fact, that entire scene is fantastic; as others have pointed out, Beryl Mercer as the besotted landlady practically walks away with the entire movie.

And it's obvious that this film was made before the Hays Code grew teeth. It's the little things, like the roach-infested apartment, the idea of experimenting on human corpses (after tricking the owners into giving consent of course), the landlady's final fate, and the details of Rogen's sordid life:


I've always wanted to live in a sensuous apartment. Not in Greenwich, though

Supernatural is offered here as a 750mb avi file that appears to have been sourced from the VHS release. Blah blah blah Rapidshare blah blah blah.

Supernatural pt 1 (188mb)
Supernatural pt 2 (188mb)
Supernatural pt 3 (188mb)
Supernatural pt 4 (188mb)
Supernatural pt 5 (30mb)