…co-starring her pet newt, Kyle
The Doclopedia #2,501
Lost Movies of Earth 2-B: No Light To Die By (1942)
How can a movie be lost and still exist? By being too good at what it sets out to be, apparently.
Directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, Richard Franklin, June Denning, and Vincent Price, this horror movie was so frightening to test audiences that it was completely reshot to tone down the scares. Vincent Price has said that it was the most frightening movie he has ever seen. All the other principal actors agreed with him.
What made it so scary?
It was shot on sets designed to be just a bit “off” to the audience, so as to establish a feeling of discomfort early on.
There was no clear idea of who the deranged murderer was until almost the very end, when the shocking revelation came.
A supernatural aspect of having the killer render the victims nearly blind so they could be toyed with before dying. These scenes lasted from 1 to 3 minutes.
Almost no music, but lots of very creepy sound effects, including the constant deranged murmuring of the killer during the murder scenes.
A body count of 7, all murdered at the height of their terror by stabbing, garroting, or falling.
And finally, as James Whale himself said in 1965, it was a movie about 20 years ahead of its time.
After faintings, vomiting, walk outs and no less that 4 heart attacks during the test runs in 5 major cities, Universal pulled the movie, had it reshot with far less terrifying scenes, then released the new version in 1944. It was a moderate success, and launched Price into 3 followup movies, all much less frightening, as his character, Charles Logan, ghost hunter.
Universal destroyed all of the cut footage in 1946.
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