COLUMBIA HORROR
Lorre and disorde
“Uh, actually, I ordered the salad?” “Don’t make a fuss!”
★★★✩✩
EXTRAS ★★★★✩
RELEASED OUT NOW!
1932-1944 | 12 | Blu-ray
Directors Various
Cast Peter Lorre, Fay Wray, Boris Karloff, Nina Foch
BLU-RAY DEBUT Unlike its rivals
RKO and Universal, Columbia Pictures was never renowned for its horror output. Perhaps the lady with the torch in the studio logo simply scared the shadows away.
And as a blanket label, “horror” feels a little disingenuous here, given that only half of these production-line potboilers truly edge into the deeper darkness. Air Hawks (1935) is a straight aviation thriller that tips into genre by virtue of a plane-zapping death ray that appears to have escaped from a cliffhanging Republic serial.