Popular reviews

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  Review by Helen_S ★★★½

  I really like this John Carradine serial killer flick. The only thing that bugs me is that even though it's good the music is constant like as if it were a silent film taking your focus off the actual words sometimes.

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  Review by Slig001 ★★★½

  Edgar G. Ulmer's fascinating little B-movie, loosely based on the fairytale Bluebeard, stars John Carradine in the titular role. The film begins with panic - a murderer is loose on the streets of Paris and dead girls are turning up in the river. There's never any mystery as to the identity of the murderer - its clearly Carradine from the moment he is introduced. Apparently this was the actor's favourite of all his roles, and he gets a lot to play with in what is somewhat a dual performance; a respectable painter and also a maniacal murderer. Carradine is oh so sinister in the lead - and never more so than when captured by Ulmer's close-up. The film was obviously…

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  Review by Graham Williamson ★★★½ 5

  Everyone who loves bad movies - who genuinely thinks they're a form of outsider art, and have a passion and personal quality that is sometimes transcendent - needs to raise a toast every day to Edgar G Ulmer. His masterpiece Detour has all the qualities of a bad movie - the miniscule budget, the overreaching dream sequences, melodramatic plotting, and stridently one-note acting - but it remixes them into something brilliant, something that's been rightly admitted to the canon of Great American Cinema. Nobody talks about Detour as a guilty pleasure. It is pure pleasure.

  Bluebeard, which Ulmer produced the year before Detour, does not spar in the same ring, but it's a memorable little b-movie nonetheless. And the pacing,…

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  Review by Sally Jane Black

  Absolutely wretched sound quality on the copy on Tubi makes this one hard to understand, but what's there is a pretty basic serial killer narrative back before the term was in use. The misogynist backstory is both apt to serial killers and disappointingly played straight instead of used for any kind of commentary. The idea that finding out someone is a sex worker could turn someone into a killer is absurd, ignoring the pre-existing violence and attitudes that must exist for them to take that step, just as trans panic and gay panic defenses do; finding it as a running theme in old serial killer films is tiresome but not surprising. It makes this otherwise okay film much less sinister and much more pathetic.

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  Review by Scott Huston ★½ 1

  Release date: November 11, 1944 

  We all want a movie to be great; however, some don’t measure up. This film had potential but was undercut by a terrible musical score. 

  John Carradine and director Edgar Ulmer add an interesting style to this story of a portrait artist who then murders his muses after painting them. 

  This is a Poverty Row film with low budgets and a workman-like attitude,  and they still squeeze a lot into 70 minutes. 
  This film had potential, but a continuously loud musical score that was overlaid onto the film had no correlation with the action on the screen. 

  Just a textbook example of how one sound editor can ruin a film with sloppy workmanship.

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  Review by Dr. Ethan Lyon ★★★

  3rd Edgar G. Ulmer (after Detour and The Black Cat)

  If you're watching this film thinking it's some version of the Landru story. It is not. Rather, it's the tale of an art-obsessed serial strangler/puppeteer in Paris at the end of the 19th Century and his love for a young costume designer. Said individual is played by John Carradine, whose deep-set eyes and thin face is strangely suited for the part, especially in the closeups of his eyes when he does the deed. The film was produced by PRC, of Poverty Row fame, but it very clearly is trying to do what Lewton would attempt at RKO in the next two years; making low budget period dramas for virtually no…

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  Review by sydney ★★★

  same shit different day, am i right ladies

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  Review by 𝕭laze the 𝓐ction 𝕵unkie ★

  A John Carradine flick where he plays a serial strangler. I thought I was going to enjoy this one much more. Yet I found myself quite bored through many stretches. Carradine does carry the flick, yet excessive over-lengthy monotone dialogues are quite sleep inducing.

  1944 Ranked
  1940's Ranked
  Horror Ranked
  Horror in the 1940’s Ranked
  Crime and Law Enforcement / Investigation films Ranked
  Serial Killers Ranked

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  Review by Will Sloan

  The Important Cinema Club Bargain-Bin Classics - the Criterion Collection of cheap public-domain home-video companies - returns with a features-packed limited-edition release of Edgar G. Ulmer's immortal Poverty Row classic BLUEBEARD.

  ✓ Feature-length audio commentary track by The Important Cinema Club's Will Sloan and Justin Decloux
  ✓ FEATURETTE: The Priceless John Carradine (A Video Discussion)
  ✓ FEATURETTE: Beyond the Process: The Art of Eugen Schüfftan (A Visual Essay)
  ✓ FEATURETTE: The Best Films of Edgar G. Ulmer (A Video Discussion)
  ✓ FEATURE-LENGTH BONUS FILMS: Edgar G. Ulmer's THE WIFE OF MONTE CRISTO (1946) and FROM NINE TO NINE (1936)
  ✓ Liner notes by Will Sloan

  Presented in glorious unrestored standard-def for the low, low price of $10, and limited to 200 hand-numbered copies. Available here: goldninjavideo.com/14-edgar-g-ulmers-bluebeard/

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  Review by Kaijuman ★★★

  Hooptober VIII: The Well’s Not Dry Just Yet

  8 decades - 40’s

  Seeing John Carradine as a good-looking young man was more shocking than anything the film had.

  It’s a short ride with a good finale and a neat twist on a famous tale.

  Plus we got Carradine’s crazy eyes and what more could I ask for?

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  Review by PUNQ ★★★

  Surprisingly good for such a low budget horror story of Bluebeard (1944). One of those miracle creation of Edgar G. Ulmer. Finding the right actors helped of course. John Carradine as the smooth killer and often underrated Jean Parker as the girl of his desires. That was good casting. But it wasn't just the cast, it was the whole look and atmosphere of this production. Professional through-and-through. Amazing that this one came out from the poverty row outfit PRC!

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  Review by cherryz ★★½

  Day 9. Classics Collection.

  What a guy. I could paint a better man.

  I only kill when I paint, please understand I'm really a catch.

  Imagine being with this guy.... say the wrong thing and it's starry eyes and the necktie for you my lass (no paintbrush required). Really liked her sister.