Karloff, Lugosi as meteor men

THE American Cinematheque’s Festival of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction continues tonight with “The Invisible Ray” (1936), a sometimes amusingly dated Universal sci-fi horror picture teaming Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. It is also surprisingly poignant, building to a tense and dramatic climax, and represents a rare chance to see a film directed by silent-era veteran Lambert Hillyer, who brought similar verve to the 1943 “Batman” serial.

A Carpathian scientist (Karloff) has invented a time-and-space travel device, which he demonstrates at his mountaintop castle to a French scientist (Lugosi), a British scientist (Walter Kingsford), his novelist wife (Beulah Bondi) and her explorer nephew (Frank Lawton). Karloff’s guests are astounded when he’s able to show them in his planetarium, where his device has been hooked up to a telescope, a meteor hurtling through space and landing in Africa -- “thousands of millions of years ago.”

Karloff’s prescient mother (Violet Kemble Cooper) advises her son to stick to his experiments and not mingle with people, but Karloff insists on going with his guests on an African expedition in search of that meteorite. Karloff’s devoted wife (Frances Drake) also insists on going along. Striking out on his own, Karloff discovers the meteorite, which has unfathomable powers of radiation that can heal -- and destroy. Karloff’s innate loner contrasts with the humanitarian Lugosi, and a tragic accident will have drastic consequences that are imaginatively played out in a script adapted by John Colton from a story by Howard Higgin and Douglas Hodges.

“The Invisible Ray” is a handsome, ambitious production in which some stilted acting and dialogue add to, rather than detract from, the fun. It is followed by another Karloff film, “Bedlam” (1946), a hallowed Val Lewton production directed by Mark Robson.

The series’ Friday program is composed of two classics: “Re-Animator” (1985) and “Colossus: The Forbin Project” (1970). The first, a winner of a Cannes critics’ prize, remains one of the best, funniest Grand Guignol horror pictures of recent decades.

“You haven’t done this on people?” asks a medical student (Bruce Abbott) of his new roommate (Jeffrey Combs), who’s shot up Abbott’s dead cat with a phosphorescent chartreuse substance that has turned the poor creature into a rampaging attacker. But Combs, a fresh transfer from a Zurich medical school -- never mind why he departed -- is a genius teetering on madness and determined to conquer brain death. The only trouble is that the dead, animal or human, are brought back to life as zombies with brutal killer instincts.

Of course, Combs’ experiments lurch out of control with breathtaking rapidity, but then everything about this film is fast and punchy. Adapted by Dennis Paoli and William J. Norris from a 1922 H.P. Lovecraft story and directed by Stuart Gordon, it’s a real throat-grabber that holds on tight from first frame to last. There will be a discussion with Gordon and others involved in making the film after the screening.

In the second film, scientist Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden, who will discuss the film afterward) has just completed devising a gigantic computer, hidden deep in the Rocky Mountains, capable of launching missiles designed to maintain the security of the world. Director Joseph Sargent; writer James Bridges, working from a D.F Jones novel; and a fine cast cut to the core of a common fear: the possibility that machines will someday become masters, enslaving and destroying mankind.

Israeli hustlers

This week’s Outfest Wednesdays presentation is Yair Hochner’s “Good Boys,” winner of the Emerging Talent award at the recent Outfest 2005. In a raw, no-holds-barred style, Hochner focuses on two young male hustlers in Tel Aviv, Menni (Daniel Efrat) and Tal (Yuval Raz). While entertaining a voyeur, they discover that the feelings for each other they’ve been hired to fake may be real. Hochner intercuts the next hectic 24 hours in their lives to reveal how everything about their dangerous existence conspires to drive them apart.

Hochner’s urgent, near-documentary approach reveals that Menni and Tal strive to live up to the film’s title -- that they are tough-minded and lacking in self-deception, as well as decent and self-respecting. They retain a capacity and need for love but wonder if it’s within their reach.

Note: The Cinematheque launches Farewell: A Tribute to Russian Filmmakers Elem Klimov and Larisa Shepitko, a series of weekly Friday and Saturday screenings that begins this Friday at the Egyptian at 7:30 p.m. in the Spielberg Theater with Klimov’s “Welcome, or No Trespassing,” a 1964 satire on Soviet children’s summer camp life. It will also screen Sept. 15 at 7:30 p.m. at the Aero.

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Screenings

Festival of Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction

* “The Invisible Ray” and “Bedlam”: 7:30 tonight

* “Re-Animator” and “Colossus: The Forbin Project”: 7 p.m. Friday

Outfest Wednesdays

* “Good Boys”: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

Info: (323) 466-3456; www.americancinematheque.com