Sh! The Octopus - A Fun Lighthouse Mystery

By Steve D. Stones

This 1937 comedy-mystery feature produced by Warner Brothers is loosely based on a stage play known as The Gorilla, then later made as a 1930 talkie, and was then made into a comedy starring the Ritz brothers in 1939. In this version, an octopus is substituted for the gorilla role. The script has many miles on it from its various filmed versions. The film stars two great comedy veterans - Hugh Herbert and Allen Jenkins as bumbling police detectives. They provide great comic relief to the film.

A young artist named Paul Morgan, played by John Eldredge, purchases a secluded lighthouse so he can work in private on his marine paintings. Captain Cobb (Brandon Tynan) escorts Morgan into the lighthouse and tells him the place has not been occupied for over twenty years. Morgan finds evidence that this is not true. A soft, warm candle is on the table, indicating that someone has been there recently. A knock at the door reveals another local captain - Captain Hook, who is the only other person with keys to the lighthouse.

Meanwhile two police detectives, Kelly (Hugh Herbert ) and Dempsey (Allen Jenkins)  are traveling on the mainland by car in the pouring rain when a tire blows out. They stop to change the tire and are confronted by a screaming attractive woman named Vesta Vernoff (Marcia Ralston) soaked by the rain. Just before the tire blows out, a radio report in the car tells of an octopus sinking a ship. Vernoff tells of seeing her stepfather's corpse at the lighthouse and of an octopus that lives in the bottom of the lighthouse.

When Vernoff and detectives Kelly and Dempsey arrive at the lighthouse, a hanging corpse is discovered at the top of the lighthouse dripping blood on the table below. Kelly and Dempsey try to investigate, but discover that the stairs of the lighthouse have been removed. A secret panel opens in the wall, and the detectives find some stairs that lead to the hanging corpse. The corpse turns out to be a stuffed dummy with a bottle of ketchup dripping on the table below.

I won't spoil any more of the plot, but some of the fun elements of this film are of scenes of octopus tentacles reaching out from behind doors and a curtain. Somehow the octopus manages to get out of the water below the lighthouse and make it to the main level to reach out behind the doors and curtains to scare the main characters.

Another fun sequence shows a pair of Detective Kelly's shoes hopping around, which is later revealed to be toads inside the shoes. A turtle with a lighted candle on its back burns the seat of Kelly's pants as he is sitting in a chair. Kelly's scuba outfit fills up with water in another hilarious scene as Dempsey and Morgan try to deflate all the water out of the suit.

In March of 2008, Turner Classic Movies played this film on a double-feature with another octopus film - It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955). For further information about Sh! The Octopus, refer to Gary and Susan Svehla's entertaining book - Guilty Pleasures of The Horror Film, published by Midnight Marquee Press, Inc. in 1996.  Happy viewing.

One Shivery Night, Columbia comedy with Herbert and Dickerson

By Doug Gibson

Watch "One Shivery Night" above, do it even if it's in place of reading this review. To Plan9Crunch, it's important to let cult film fans know that there are more to the Columbia Comedy Shorts than just The Three Stooges, as great as they are. "One Shivery Night" stars Hugh Herbert, who made close to two dozen Columbia shorts; "One Shivery Night" is one of his funniest, and later Columbia shorts.

Directed by Del Lord, who made it for Hugh McCollum's team at Columbia, it was released July 13, 1950, about two years before Herbert's death. His co-star in the film is the African-American comedian Dudley Dickerson, a familiar face in Columbia shorts, including with the Stooges. Dickerson made several shorts with Herbert and the pair had a good rapport, treating each other as equals. (Another frequent co-star of Herbert's was blonde Christine McIntyre. They made domestic comedy shorts. McIntyre is one of the few supporting players in Stooges' shorts who achieved icon status. Vernon Dent and maybe Emile Sitka are others. But these players were in many non-Stooges shorts and just as good in those as the ones we see on TV.

Back to "One Shivery Night": Herbert runs a construction company with Dickerson as his sole employee. The business is tottering, literally, and Dickerson hasn't been paid, the power is out as well as the phone. A potential customer enters, played by Vernon Dent. He wants the pair to demolish and renovate an old mansion. Rumor has it that a fortune was left there and it may be haunted, but Vernon tells them both that's nonsense.

This opening scene is very funny with witty banter by both Herbert and Dickerson and Dent being a perfect foil for the hijinks. To try to impress him, Herbert has an alarm clock serve as a ringer for a phone, only to have the alarm go off again when Herbert's on the phone. A mousetrap pinches Herbert's fingers, and Dent's nose.

So, the pair head off late at night to the mansion. There's a nice matte, or stock shot, of a creepy looking mansion. Before the boys get there we discover two fortune hunters (Philip Van Zandt and Robert Williams) searching for the alleged fortune. They are determined to get Hugh and Dudley out of there, so they claim to be electricians.

What follow are Stooges-type slapstick situations that are very funny, helped considerably by the tight, focused plot, the banter of the stars as well as their comic timing. In one scene Herbert is more or less locked into a wall and Dickerson tries to free him using a pick that comes dangerously close to Herbert's skull. Later there's an amusing scene where a portrait of a bare knuckle-era boxer moves from the wall revealing a hole in which a boxing glove smacks Dickerson.

I won't give away the ending; in any event it's one of this "let's end the short" skits that are common in Columbia comedy shorts, with no real resolution.

The non-Stooges Columbia shorts are a mixed bag; there are clinkers. But this is a very strong 1950s offering. It's mostly slapstick comedy but there are sequences of snappy dialogue, particularly in the first half. Greg Hilbrich, who runs the indispensable Columbia Shorts Department website, is a big fan of "One Shivery Night" and he's the reason we can watch it on the Net.

Herbert was a pretty fair-sized star for much of the 30s and 40s. Some films he was in include "Hollywood Hotel," 1937, the pre-code "She Had to Say Yes," 1933, with a gorgeous Loretta Young, and the 1941 Universal horror comedy "The Black Cat." His Columbia era was on the downside of his career, and he apparently clashed with director Edward Bernds, who claimed he was surly and lazy on the set. In any event, the two were separated from each other and both continued toiling on various shorts. Herbert, had he lived, could have done a passable job as Fred Mertz in "I Love Lucy" in my opinion. He had a looser version of William Frawley humor.

Dickerson was in dozens of shorts and, as mentioned, had great comic timing. Most of his non-Columbia work were bit parts but he did have a prominent role in the "Amos and Andy Show" of  the 1950s. In style, Dickerson reminds me of Mantan Moreland, who was a busy actor at Monogram, including a series with Frankie Darro,

We've devoted a small part of 2016 to featuring non-Stooges Columbia shorts and I think our next one, in a month or so, will be a Glove Singers short. Below is a still from the short with Herbert and Dickerson.