Customer Reviews

Climax [VHS]

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Slow moving tale of mad doctor on the loose in the Vienna Opera is not as sinister as one would hope. Karloff is okay and Sondergaard good as the watchful housekeeper, but it is the state of the art Technicolor - here perfectly and impeccably restored - that is the real star. Watch for this reason alone. Sumptuous color design. Oscar nom for Art Direction but it deserved nods for Costumes and Score as well.

My sister and I were able to see this movie on regular broadcast television many times as we grew up. We wanted to BE Angela Klatt, had mad crushes on the hopeless romantic and bumbling Franz, and it created in each of us a love for musical performance that we still revel in. Oh, to be even in the chorus of those magical musical numbers "Powder for Her Nose" or "The Magic Voice". Of course the real dream was to be the coloratura singing star Miss Klatt. Somehow mom bravely endured hearing us try to out sing one another on those high C's. We were spellbound every time we saw it - and even though we knew the story, we always secretly feared that Luise was the true villain as the movie began each time. As one other reviewer cited - the amazing costumes were another wonderful part of the movie, and the sets worthy of Ziegfeld or Busby-Berkeley extravaganzas! Definitely a must see for anyone who loves the theatre! Thanks to The Climax - we both now perform at our local community theatre regularly!

Boris Karloff stars as Dr. Horner, The opera's doctor, Who earlier in life was obsessed with opera star Mosoliena {June Vincent}. But after telling him she does not love him anymore, He goes insane and murders her. The doctor hides her body in his house behind a locked door. But when new opera star, Angela {Susana Foster}, sings for the first time on stage the doctor goes mad and remembers that tragic night when he murdered his love. Angela's voice sounds just like Mosoliena's. So that she may never sing again, The doctor poisons her vocal cords. A great film with horror icon Boris Karloff! Starring Boris Karloff, Susana Foster, Turhan Bey, Jane Farrar, Gale Sondergaard and June Vincent as Mosoliena. Directed By George Waggner, 86 minutes.

The Climax would be more aptly named The Anti-Climax. It marked Boris Karloff's return to movies after three years on Broadway and touring in Arsenic and Old Lace. His name alone led many to believe The Climax would be a grand, shivering horror fest, especially as it would be Karloff's first color film. Instead, The Climax is a sad tale of an elderly doctor who has a thing about a singer he strangled ten years previously. For some, it might have promised a delightful Technicolor movie of Viennese operetta and Hollywood soubrettes. Instead, it's a weak re-make of The Phantom of the Opera, without the Phantom, which was released the year before. At the very least, ticket buyers would have expected, based on the lavish sets and art design, all in Technicolor, a passionate story of behind-the-scenes Old Vienna, complete with everyone wearing evening dress or gilt-braid uniforms with red breeches, with gas lights and wet cobblestones, with jealous prima donnas, excerpts from operettas and dancers in pastel tutus. We get the tutus, all right, but the lavishness is from the Minnelli school of garish over-kill. More than anything else, we get a story of aged obsession, hypnotism and throat spray that is as flavorless and stale as a slice of month-old Sachertorte.

Dr. Friedrich Hohner (Boris Karloff), an aging and dignified doctor, serves the medical needs of the operetta singers at Vienna's Theatre Royal. Count Seebruck (Thomas Gomez) runs the theater and the opera company with firmness and humor. One day the doctor chances upon an audition Seebruck is giving to a young student, Angela Klatt (Susannah Foster). She has a marvelous voice, and Seebruck immediately gives her a role in an upcoming production. Hohner is horrified. Angela sounds just like the great singer, Marcellina, who disappeared without a trace ten years ago. We have already learned in flashback at the start of the movie that Hohner loved Marcellina obsessively, and blamed her refusal of his love on her ambition...caused by her extraordinary voice. Hohner solved that problem by silencing the voice. An unfortunate by-product of his action was the dead body of Marcellina. And now it appears that the same voice will star again at the the Theatre Royal. For the rest of the movie we have Angela being pulled and pushed between Hohner, determined that Marcellina's voice will never be heard again, and the young man and fellow student who loves Angela, Franz Munzer (Turhan Bey), who is determined Angela will sing and be a great success. Lurking around the doctor's lavishly decorated medical office and home is his assistant and housekeeper, Luise (Gale Sondergaard). Luise is playing some game of her own, but what could it be? Could it have something to do with the steel, locked door at the top of the stairs in Hohner's home, a door which leads to a room we dread to see what it might contain?

What makes a movie dull? The Phantom of the Opera the year before also starred Susannah Foster. It was a Technicolor knock-out of a movie, and featured a fine performance by Claude Raines, all the behind-the-scenes stuff you could want, an amusing light comedy performance from Nelson Eddy, aided by his rival for Foster's affection, Edgar Barrier. The sets were lavish, including some of the creepiest below-ground scenes ever filmed. It is no classic, but it isn't dull. The Climax uses the same sets, same story line and has a fine actor as the main threat. But there it ends. The story is too familiar and drags on and on. Inexplicably, Karloff is under-utilized. When Karloff says in that deep, sincere voice of his, "I've come to help you, my dear," we hope things will pick up. They don't.

Phantom of the Opera

"The Climax" provides Boris Karloff not only with his first Technicolor film, but audiences with a handsome, humdinger of a mustache-twisting Victorian melodrama.

True, the story is not supernatural, but what does that matter when Boris keeps his deceased girl friend preserved beneath a gauze shroud in a secret room? If this is not sufficient, then just savor the mouth watering color photography, art direction and costumes.

This is one of the most visually handsome color films from the 40's, and ranks favorably against Minnelli's "Meet Me in St. Louis" in the warmth, depth, and clarity of its chromatic range, whilst simultaneously recalling Twentieth Century Fox's lighting schemes from "The Little Princess," and anticipating "Blanche Fury" in its tonal subtleties.

The settings are both sumptuous and historically accurate, (sharp eyed viewers will note that some of the same props show up later in Ulmer's "Bluebeard,") and provide the perfect background for the cloak and dagger theatrics.

Not to be outdistanced are Vera West's (one of Hollywood's most undervalued designers) late Victorian gowns--each a marvel of velvet, chiffon, plumes, and various embroideries, not to mention being a testament to the lost art of dressmaking.

Susanna Foster not only wears them charmingly, but sings like an angel, until Boris hypnotizes her. Thereafter, she is a bit somnambulistic--something of a problem given an impending operatic engagement.

Not to worry though, a turban-less Turhan Bey will save the day, in a nick of time, allowing Susanna to hit her high C on opening night, as scowling villain Karloff rushes off to a succulent fate.

That fate, as depicted, with Uncle Boris collapsing on a curtained bier that is laden with the corpse of his long dead (though still photogenic) inamorata, as they both go up in flames, is as aesthetically and dramatically delicious as they come.

One can almost imagine the the whoops of the popcorn patrons as they cheered this pyrotechnic finale in the Rialto's of yesteryear.

Not to be missed.

This film is an obvious follow up to Phantom of the Opera ,showcasing Susanna Foster.As in "Phantom" she is superb. Karloff does his best with a weak script.Turhan Bey acts like a lovesick teenager for most of the film.Color and staging, as in "Phantom", is outstanding.No one sings like Foster;not Durbin, MacDonald or any of filmdoms canarys.She is one of a kind!View it for the music if for no other reason.Oh yes,Foster and her clothes are gorgeous.