The Katie-Bar-The-Door Awards (1943)

The best film of 1943 was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a brilliant comedy of manners from England's Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger that gently and wittily took Britain's military leaders to task—pretty daring considering that Britain was at the time still locked in a death struggle with Nazi Germany. Winston Churchill responded by trying (unsuccessfully) to suppress the film and it was a big hit in its home country. When it arrived in America two years later, Hollywood showed the prime minister how it's done—straightening out the film's flashback chronology and so chopping it up as to render it an incomprehensible mess and a box office flop, promptly forgotten.

Fortunately, it has been restored to its full glory, and features Deborah Kerr in not one but three star-making roles.

Over here, Hollywood produced a trio of outstanding films—The Ox-Bow Incident, Wild Bill Wellman's tense story of a mob determined to mete out its own brand of justice; Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock's brilliant tale of a serial killer come home to visit his family; and I Walked With A Zombie, a voodoo-infused retelling of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre from the master of atmospheric horror, Val Lewton.

I tried on all three of them for the top prize in drama, finally opting for The Ox-Bow Incident. Not only is it a gripping story with terrific performances all around, it's also a prime example of America grappling (albeit indirectly) with the question of why we were fighting the war—merely to survive at any cost or to preserve our higher ideals as well? It's an uncompromising film from beginning to end, a real achievement with a war on and the Production Code in effect. It's also entertaining, a tribute to Wellman, actors Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews, and author-producer Lamar Trotti. A real must-see.

PICTURE (Drama)
winner: The Ox-Bow Incident (prod. Lamar Trotti)
nominees: I Walked With A Zombie (prod. Val Lewton); Sahara (prod. Harry Joe Brown); Shadow Of A Doubt (prod. Jack H. Skirball); So Proudly We Hail! (prod. Mark Sandrich); The Song of Bernadette (prod. William Perlberg)

PICTURE (Comedy/Musical)
winner: The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp (prod. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
nominees: Cabin In The Sky (prod. Arthur Freed); Heaven Can Wait (prod. Ernst Lubitsch); The More The Merrier (George Stevens)

PICTURE (Foreign Language)
winner: Vredens dag (Day of Wrath) (prod. Carl Theodor Dreyer and Tage Nielsen)

ACTOR (Drama)
winner: Joseph Cotten (Shadow Of A Doubt)
nominees: Humphrey Bogart (Sahara); Henry Fonda (The Ox-Bow Incident); Paul Lukas (Watch on the Rhine); Mickey Rooney (The Human Comedy)

ACTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Joel McCrea (The More The Merrier)
nominees: Don Ameche (Heaven Can Wait); Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson (Cabin in the Sky); Roger Livesey (The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp)

ACTRESS (Drama)
winner: Teresa Wright (Shadow Of A Doubt)
nominees: Anne Baxter (Five Graves To Cairo); Ingrid Bergman (For Whom The Bell Tolls); Jennifer Jones (The Song Of Bernadette); Ida Lupino (The Hard Way)

ACTRESS (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Deborah Kerr (The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp)
nominees: Jean Arthur (The More The Merrier); Gene Tierney (Heaven Can Wait); Ethel Waters (Cabin In The Sky)

DIRECTOR (Drama)
winner: William A. Wellman (The Ox-Bow Incident)
nominees: Carl Theodor Dreyer (Vredens dag a.k.a. Day of Wrath); Alfred Hitchcock (Shadow Of A Doubt); Jacques Tourneur (I Walked With A Zombie)

DIRECTOR (Comedy/Musical)
winner: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp)
nominees: Ernst Lubitsch (Heaven Can Wait); Vincente Minnelli (Cabin in the Sky); George Stevens (The More The Merrier)

SUPPORTING ACTOR
winner: Charles Coburn (The More The Merrier)
nominees: Dana Andrews (The Ox-Bow Incident); Rex Ingram (Cabin in the Sky and Sahara); Erich von Stroheim (Five Graves to Cairo); Anton Walbrook (The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
winner: Lena Horne (Cabin In The Sky and Stormy Weather)
nominees: Jean Brooks (The Seventh Victim); Jane Darwell (The Ox-Bow Incident); Veronica Lake (So Proudly We Hail!); Katina Paxinou (For Whom The Bell Tolls)

SCREENPLAY
winner: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp)
nominees: Lamar Trotti, from the novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark (The Ox-Bow Incident); Thornton Wilder, Sally Benson and Alma Reville, from a story by Gordon McDonell (Shadow of a Doubt)

SPECIAL AWARDS
"Happiness is a Thing Called Joe" (Cabin in the Sky) music by Harold Arlen; lyrics by E.Y. Harburg (Song)

Best Fun-Stupid Movie of 1930-31: Dracula

In honor of Bela Lugosi's birthday today, I am moving my choice for the best fun-stupid movie of 1930-31 ahead by a few days.

The brain child of Oscar-winning producer Carl Laemmle, Jr., Dracula was the first of Universal Studios' classic "monster" movies, a series that included Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Black Cat and Bride of Frankenstein and continued well into the 1950s (see, e.g., Creature From the Black Lagoon). The title character was played by Bela Lugosi, a Hungarian film actor who had had a huge success on Broadway with a stage adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel. Although Lugosi was not Universal's first choice to play the title character (Lon Chaney was reportedly set to play the role until his untimely death; also considered were Conrad Veidt and Paul Muni), he became so closely associated with the role, he rarely appeared in any other kind of movie.

The story, based more on the stage play than the novel, is by now a familiar one. A young British lawyer (Dwight Frye in the movie's other great performance) journeys to Transylvania to arrange Count Dracula's sea journey to London. Once there, Dracula begins to prey on beautiful young women, first Lucy Weston then Mina Harker—famously conflating sex, seduction, virginity and horror, soon to become staples of the genre—until that old vampire hunter Professor von Helsing arrives and divines Dracula's true nature.

The movie was a big box office hit upon its release in February 1931 and continues to enjoy acclaim today. Just last month, the London Telegraph included Dracula on its list of the twenty-five best book to film adaptations in movie history. The American Film Institute chose Lugosi's Dracula #33 on its list of the fifty greatest villains, ranked the movie #85 on its list of the 100 top thrillers and voted the line "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music they make." one of the top 100 movie quotes of all time. In 2000, the Library of Congress selected Dracula for the National Film Registry.

Lugosi himself didn't fare as well. Although he continued to work right up until his death, even appearing posthumously in Ed Wood's camp classic Plan 9 From Outer Space, most of his roles after the early 1930s were in campy, low-budget horror films for poverty row studios. He did have a supporting role as a Russian commissar in the 1939 comedy Ninotchka and in the 1945 Val Lewton adaptation of Robert Lewis Stevenson's short story The Body Snatcher with Boris Karloff. Lugosi died of a heart attack in 1956.

Martin Landau won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Lugosi in Tim Burton's comedy Ed Wood.

Will you find Dracula scary? Not unless you under the age of four. I mean, the guy's wearing a tuxedo for crying out loud—how scary can he be? I'm not even sure audiences in 1931 found this movie scary and certainly by the time Bela Lugosi reprised the role for Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein he was playing the part strictly for laughs. But while it's true that one generation's horror becomes the next generation's camp, the appeal of Dracula has always rested not on its shock value but on its ideas and it's there you will find the lasting power of its horror.

You have to know what kind of a movie fan you are. If you're a sit back, arm's crossed "show me something" kind of viewer, you may find Dracula slow and campy. But if you're willing to give yourself up to it, particularly with Halloween just around the corner, I think you will find it fun. At least I did.