Movie Review: The Queen of Spades

The Queen of Spades (1949)
directed by Thorold Dickinson, starring Anton Walbrook, Yvonne Mitchell, Edith Evans

(Note: This is my entry in The British Invaders Blogathon, hosted by A Shroud of Thoughts.) 

Night after night, Captain Herman Suvorin (Anton Walbrook) goes with his fellow officers to a club, where the laughing sons of nobility stare at the gypsy dancers and play the card game faro until the sun rises. Suvorin, a strange, solitary man, never spends any time with the dancers and never spends any money, but there's a furtive hunger in his eyes as he watched the cards. Andrei (Ronald Howard), the only one in the company nice enough to try to be Suvorin's friend, is puzzled by his behavior, but Suvorin, a poor man who despises his wealthier comrades, is determined not to play faro until he's certain he'll win.

One night, Suvorin discovers a book that promises him the key to unbelievable wealth. The book tells the story of the Countess Ranevskaya, a beautiful, desperate woman who sold her soul to the Devil in order to win the secret of the three winning cards. With the secret of the cards, she won enough money at faro to keep herself from ruin. Suvorin is excited beyong measure at the story, especially when he discovers that Ranevskaya is still alive now an old and irascible crone (Edith Evans) who's never once breathed a word of the secret cards to anyone. Suvorin becomes obsessed with learning the three cards at any price. Even if it means seducing the countess's innocent young ward Lizaveta (Yvonne Mitchell). Even if it means loss of life or sanity. Even if he throws his own soul onto the fire...

 
For a film that Martin Scorsese himself referred to as a "masterpiece," The Queen of Spades has been strangely overlooked for decades. Even now, while it's attained a certain small cult status with those who've seen it, in the U.S., it still only pops up on a dual DVD with Dead of Night (not that Dead of Night isn't a good film in its own right) and it doesn't usually pop up when people are chatting about all the great films of Britain's postwar period. Maybe it just has too much competition; The Queen of Spades was nominated for a BAFTA in 1949, the same year as another little film you might recollect, oh, The Third Man that was it. Maybe it's because Thorold Dickinson, the film's director was born under an unlucky star since despite his own good reputation, his movies (the 1940 British Gaslight, Secret People, Hill 24 Doesn't Answer) haven't always been the easiest to get a hold of. Or maybe it's because The Queen of Spades is easy to mistake for just another cozy British ghost story. 

In fact, the film is tremendously arresting in its visuals, its set design is amazingly elegant for its shoestring budget, and its performances are all topnotch. It's creepy, it's thrilling, and it horrifies in all the right place. Finding The Queen of Spades kicking around on Youtube or in out-of-date DVD releases is like realizing that the eccentric little old lady neighbor you've been ignoring for years was really Miss Havisham all along.

Adapted from a Pushkin short story, The Queen of Spades tells the story of Herman Suvorin, a man who becomes convinces that the riches and esteem he craves will be his if he can learn the secret of how to win at cards. It's a simple enough tale that teases you as to whether our hero is literally selling his soul or just going completely off his head. But for me, The Queen of Spades takes that simple story and makes it beautiful. Despite the fact that director Thorold Dickinson was given the assignment only five days before it started, despite the fact that they had the budget of a mayfly supper, and despite the fact that it showcases little actual horror, The Queen of Spades is a visual feast, creating a cold, haunted vision of Imperial Russia that could rival The Scarlet Empress.

Much of the credit has to go to Dickinson, who's endlessly inventive in his distorted camera angles, twisted mirror shots, and imagery. In one moment that made me literally catch my breath, he goes from a shot of Herman Suvorin scratching out a love letter while a spider spins a web in his dusty room to a shot of Lizaveta swooning away on her bed, her fingers suggestively reaching under the pillow to caress his letter as the transposed image of the spider keeps spinning over her face. 

In another sequence where a younger and more beautiful version of the Countess makes her bargain with the Devil, Dickinson blurs the edges of the scene, as if we're watching something not quite of this world. To hint at the doom that will befall her, all he has to do is show a shot of some mysterious figure's gnarled hands slowly working out the details on a tiny doll, a little miniature of the Countess. And when the Countess does make her fateful visit to the place that, in the film's cryptic words, "left a mark on her soul," Dickinson leads up to it by showing us the Countess walking through a shadowy tunnel, coming to a door that enters into pitch blackness. We hear her scream and we hear the scream of her horses but nothing more. And when the light comes back,  the tiny doll is being trapped under a glass bowl by those same unknown hands. When the movie cuts to the real Countess, she's pleading to a painting of the Virgin Mary for mercy but in a merciless answer to her prayers, the faces of Virgin and Infant slowly turn to black. It's as great as anything you'll find in a Val Lewton film.

The legendary stage actress Edith Evans, here playing the old, crabbed Countess Ranevskaya, is the film's most impressive visual effect. Just watching her hunch across the screen, with her huge powdered wig teetering on her head and her eyes darting around suspiciously is like watching some grotesque oddity from Alice in Wonderland come to life. The Queen of Spades was actually Evans' screen debut, but she's so assured onscreen that you'd think she'd been doing films for years. In her line delivery, Evans is a perfectly banal, constantly complaining old woman, but you can't help but notice something haunted and despairing in her eyes. She strikes the perfect balance, keeping you guessing as to whether Evans is an ordinary woman who's become the unfortunate target of Suvorin's delusions or a soulless crone who knows far more than she's telling.

Dark-eyed, regal Yvonne Mitchell, also making her screen debut after years on the stage, is surprisingly very good as the naive, romantic Lizaveta, the Countess's companion. She's lovely and good-hearted, but her life with the Countess has kept her sheltered from the outside world. Despite Suvorin's brusque manners, poor situation, and unattractive appearance, his ardent love letters (diligently copied out of books) are enough to set her head spinning. It would be easy to write off Lizaveta as just another ingenue, a helpless pawn in Suvorin's schemes. But Mitchell has too much dignity in her manner to let you dismiss her entirely. Instead, you get the sense of a woman who could very well grow into strength and intelligence, given the chance to experience the world. By forcing her ward into seclusion and servitude, the Countess has ironically turned her into the same reckless, unhappy woman she herself once was, seeking relief in a faithless lover.

Ronald Howard, son of Leslie Howard, gets the film's most thankless role as the pure-hearted Andrei, Suvorin's aristocratic foil. As the only character not to originate from the original Pushkin story, his main purpose is to provide Lizaveta with a happy ending. Still, Howard shows more than a few sparks of his father's talent, giving Andrei a genuine warmth and sensitive watchfulness that makes you root for him to bring Suvorin down. Judging by his work here, Howard should have had more of a career.

Like his other great obsessive role, Lermontov in The Red Shoes, Anton Walbrook is again the cold, vaguely inhuman creature whose eyes light up and whose hands tremble, not for a fellow human being, but for something intangible. In this case, it's privilege, not art. He looks at the beautiful, adoring Yvonne Mitchell as if he can stare right through her to the life of wealth that awaits him. Considering that the only other character he spends any time with is an attractive young man, who seems rather fond of him for no apparent reason, it's tempting to try to work in a gay subtext here. However, Walbrook doesn't play it that way; he's just as bored making small talk with Andrei as he is writing love sonnets to a woman. 

That chilly detachment certainly fits for the character, but it did leave me feeling a little removed from Suvorin for a good part of the film's runtime. Unlike Lermontov, who can at least boast that he's bringing beauty into the world, Suvorin's concerns are all wrapped up in himself and so his downfall doesn't feel particularly tragic or shocking. I'm not one to complain about characters being likable or not, but I couldn't help wishing for a little more insight into Suvorin.

Still, that minor complaint aside, Walbrook's performance is knock-out spectacular once Suvorin goes from pinched misanthropy to complete insanity. Intensity was Walbrook's great gift as an actor and he brings it full-force to this role, commanding your attention simply because his needs are so raw. He wants the secret of the cards and he wants it so much that everything else in the world has turned to ashes for him. His one scene with Edith Evans is a stand-out, but I'm also enthralled by the moment when he finally feels he's won. Walbrook mutters to himself, hardly daring to believe it. He closes his eyes in relief. And then he stands up as if to stretch but instead, Walbrook put his hands to his chest, clawing at his own skin in some kind of bestial triumph and then makes this undefinable noise. It's like a bird of prey cawing, I quite literally can't think of another actor ever doing anything like it. And then to cap it all off, Walbrook lifts his hands up, lets out a few hysterical sobs, and ends with a glass-rattling scream that would unnerve even the most jaded horror fan. You don't know whether to be more terrified of him or for him. There's plenty of actors who can make a meal of a mad scene, but Walbrook truly makes this unique and memorable.  

In a lesser film, the director would have just let Walbrook's performance carry the whole thing, but Thorold Dickinson creates a movie that's just mad enough to keep pace with its feverish hero, using mirrors, shadows, sounds, and eyes to tell the old story of what happens when we want too much. More people should know it and more people should talk of it. And more people should be talking about Thorold Dickinson, a man who played his best even when fate dealt him an unlucky hand. The ghosts of the other great movies he could have made haunts The Queen of Spades just as much as the story's ghosts do.

Favorite Quote:

"Take life as you find it."
"I'd rather take it by the throat and force it to give me what I want."

Favorite Scene:

For me, the most thrilling scene in The Queen of Spades comes when Suvorin hides in the Countess's room in order to beg the secret of the cards from her. Dickinson carefully draws out the suspense. He shows us every slow step of the Countess being made ready for bed, her body suddenly shrunken without the weight of her wig and jewels. She mumbles to herself the same prayer we heard the younger Countess make, "Holy virgin, have mercy on me." In the darkness, Evans' eyes look like two black holes. Suddenly she sees a black apparition next to a painting of the Virgin. She rears up and the shadow steps forward to reveal himself as Suvorin. He comes forward, pleading, presenting himself as a supplicant. The Countess looks away from him, mute. Suvorin falls to his knees, asking her to help him in the name of God and any human feeling, but she moves away. Suvorin's pleas turn to demands and then finally to threats. And still the Countess refuses to answer. By this point, the audience is almost as maddened as Suvorin, wanting desperately for this woman to share what she knows. But what if he's a madman tormenting an innocent old woman? The film doesn't tip its hand either way and it ups the tension immensely, as you keep trying to figure out who's most in danger here.

It's hard to overstate just how brilliantly matched Walbrook and Evans are in this scene. Walbrook brings all his vocal gifts to Suvorin's shifting, increasingly savage speech and Evans uses the power of her face alone to show both great dread and a strange, mute contempt. I won't give away how the scene ends or the little shock coda afterwards, but it left me very grateful for directors who know how to let actors bring the horror all on their own. Sometimes you don't need CGI demons coming up through the floorboards or overacting Satans (actually scratch that--you practically never need that). Sometimes all you need is the terror in two people's eyes as they slowly realize they're staring into the face of their own damnation.

Final Six Words:

Sends shivers of delight and horror

More blogathons to come!

What kind of faithful blogging correspondent would I be if I didn't bring you the latest news? Here I was, thinking that I was finished posting about blogathons and here it turns out that two more are on the horizon! And I suggest you guys check them out, whether or not you want to submit something, because they're both being headed up by bloggers I adore and respect.

The Terrorthon (April 20th-24th), Hosted by Page at My Love of Old Hollywood and Rich at Wide Screen World

And you thought Halloween was over! Well, it's only just beginning...or returning...or whatever it is, let's just celebrate scary movies. In Page's words, this is a blogathon to dedicate to "that one film that stood out for all of you as never wanting to see again unless you watch it with all of the lights on and someone holding your hand." She and Rich are throwing upon the doors for reviews on whatever scary movie you want to write about. The only request is that people try to keep it a classic affair, nothing beyond 1980. Still, that leaves you Val Lewton, Mario Bava, Hammer Studios, Universal Horror, James Whale, Robert Aldrich, Alfred Hitchcock, and so much more. Not to mention all the great films that aren't in the horror or thriller category and still manage to haunt you (Picnic at Hanging Rock chilled me to the bone when I first saw it). With so many possibilities here, you'd be as silly as the blonde going into the basement alone if you didn't at least give this one a look.

Participation: Open

The Mary Astor Blogathon (May 3rd-10th), Hosted by Dorian at Tales of the Easily Distracted and R.A. Kerr at Silver Screenings

Even in a crowd of talented stars, this woman stands out. She's always someone to watch, always witty and smart no matter what the subject. Her lines linger even if the movie itself is forgotten. I'm talking about the beautiful and brilliant Mary Astor of course, but I'm also talking about the equally lovely Dorian, from Tales of the Easily Distracted. She and R.A. Kerr from Silver Screenings have decided to bring us a Mary Astor Blogathon, in honor of the actress' 107th birthday. For eight days, movie fans will celebrate Astor and the movies she made. If you don't have much knowledge about the shining, underrated career of Mary Astor, I suggest you start with these two great essays. And then go sign up for a place in the blogathon.

Participation: Open

Cheers, everyone! And if blogathons aren't your cup of tea, might I suggest Miss Jean Brodie's Movie Quiz, courtesy of Dennis Cozzalio? Not for the faint of heart or for the casual moviegoer.

Movie Review: Night of the Demon/Curse of the Demon

 

Night of the Demon/Curse of the Demon* (1957)

directed by Jacques Tourneur, starring Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis

*Night of the Demon was the original British title. For the American release, the film was edited and re-titled Curse of the Demon. For clarity's sake, I'll refer to the film in my review as Night of the Demon since I chose to view the original, uncut British version.

(Note: This is my entry for the '50s Monster Mash Blogathon, hosted by Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear.)

The renowned Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), an expert on hypnotism and superstition, flies to England to attend a symposium on the supernatural. Holden plans to participate in an investigation of a mysterious devil-worshiping cult and their eccentric leader Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis). However, when Holden arrives, he finds out that one of his colleagues, Professor Harrington (Maurice Denham), has died under mysterious circumstances. Karswell appears to Holden and warns him away from proceeding with the investigation, but Holden laughs it off. His skepticism is challenged by the arrival of Joanna Harrington (Peggy Cummins), Professor Harrington's niece, who believes her uncle was killed by something supernatural, something to do with Karswell's cult. The two team up to find out the truth. 

Holden refuses to admit the existence of the supernatural, but how does he explain the strange events happening around them? Why does he feels chilled when the weather is hot, why does he see visions of living smoke, and how does Karswell appear to summon wind storms and wild cats? Holden is further puzzled by finding a scrap of paper slipped in amongst his things, with runic inscriptions on it. Holden and Joanna discover that Professor Harrington received a similar paper, three days before he died. With the furtive help of Karswell's elderly mother, (Athene Seyler), the pair find evidence to suggest that Holden too is doomed to die in three days. Unless he can find out the secret of the runes before it's too late. Before he is caught by Karswell's curse. The curse of the demon.

Night of the Demon was based on M.R. James' classic story, "The Casting of the Runes," often acclaimed as one of the greatest scary stories of all time. In James' original tale, the focus was on a mild-mannered academic named Dunning, who becomes the target of the mad and bad Mr. Karswell, after Dunning rejects Karswell's rather incoherent paper on alchemy. Mysterious things begin to happen to Dunning. He sees cryptic messages, he feels nervous all the time, his servants mysteriously develop poisoning symptoms. It's only after he encounters John Harrington, brother of the late Henry Harrington, that he begins to understand what happens to the enemies of Mr. Karswell. And what may happen to him. The power of James' story comes from the dry, understated way these unsettling details begin to pile up, the way the darkness peeks out between the cracks of the maddeningly deliberate prose. 

Jacques Tourneur's film takes this story and manages to craft a great horror film that honors its original source material while managing to deepen and enrich the story's themes. Night of the Demon changes the protagonist from a conventional British academic to a hard-headed American scientist named John Holden, whose journey to England results in a clash not just of culture, but of science against superstition. As one of his colleagues tells him, "Take it kind of easy on our ghosts. We English are sort of fond of them." The John Harrington of the story becomes Joanna Harrington, the niece of the mysteriously dead Professor Harrington. She helps Holden try to uncover the mystery of Mr. Karswell, who has been promoted from the frustrated academic of the James story into a powerful cult leader. James' story clung to the ordinary trappings of English life; the action was confined to railway cars, hotels, and small private rooms. Tourneur's film ranges all over, taking Holden from apartment buildings to isolated farmhouses to a spooky manor house, even to Stonehenge. And unlike the original story, which plays as an exercise in "is it or isn't it," Night of the Demon boldly opens with the gambit of actually showing the reality of its supernatural threat, as personified by the demon.

The question of the demon has plagued fans of this film since the very beginning. There is one camp, let's call them Anti-Demon, who swear up and down that Jacques Tourneur never planned to actually show the demon in the movie and that its actual appearance is a serious letdown from a subtle psychological horror film. For the record, Tourneur himself was in the Anti-Demon camp and remarked in interviews that the creature's appearance was forced on him by producer Hal E. Chester. But there's also a Pro-Demon camp, who insist that the demon is genuinely frightening and that the movie wouldn't be nearly as satisfying without it. Author Tony Earnshaw, in his book Beating the Devil: The Making of the Night of the Demon, claims that the demon's appearance was planned from early on, rather than shoehorned in at the last minute.

For myself, I have to stand in the Anti-Demon camp. It isn't because I think the monster shouldn't have been shown, it's because of how it's shown. At first when we see the demon, it always appears from a distance, shrouded in smoke and slightly blurry, so that it could be mistaken for an illusion. In those moments, it's genuinely unsettling, this strange black something that's coming closer and closer. Tourneur, quite craftily, always places the demon in settings where its appearance echoes something more ordinary. There's not much difference between a monster and the flash and smoke of an oncoming train. Or much difference between a demon and the sparks of a crashing telegraph pole.

It's only when the film suddenly zooms into a close-up of our monster, as in the still above, that all mystery vanishes and it becomes just another '50s movie monster. And it's not bad by '50s movie monster standards, it's just that it seems so out of place with the almost subliminal glimpses we were getting before. There's one lingering shot of the demon shaking a man like a rag doll that veers straight into comedy. It doesn't feel organic to the film, it feels like a money shot, like the filmmakers are telling us we got our money's worth in special effects horror. There's a similarly silly moment earlier in the film, when Dana Andrews is attacked by a cat that morphs into a leopard (call-back to Lewton and Tourneur's Cat People?) and the camera lingers long enough for us to realize that Andrews is fighting a stuffed cat. And I think these problems aren't because of bad special effects (Modern CGI would be just as much of a let-down), it's because these shots don't fit with an otherwise suggestive film. Night of the Demon ends on the words, "Maybe it's better not to know," and in this case, the film should have taken its own advice.

 

  

That complaint over with, I am free to linger over the many strengths of this film. Aside from the demon itself, Night of the Demon's production design is gorgeous; each set we see is carefully detailed and feels exactly right for the character that inhabits it. The strange geometrics of Karswell's mansion with its spiral staircases, Holden's cramped apartment, Joanna's striped wallpaper in the firelight, it's all fantastic. I kept wanting to pause the movie to linger over the details and I'm sure there are worse ways to spend an afternoon than in trying to parse the visuals of this film. 

Jacques Tourneur's direction here is on par with his best work. Night of the Demon creates a mesmerizing, disquieting world, in which every shot seems designed to constrict your breathing. You can spot a lesser horror film by the way the movie deflates in between shock moments, as if the director doesn't know what to do when there's no big scary thing to shake in your face. Here though, Tourneur never loosens his grip. The echoing corridors, the barren countrysides, everything reflects back the fear and paranoia that slowly begins to grip our protagonists. Even a library becomes a horrifying labyrinth straight out of Crete. Tourneur mainly eschews "gotcha" tricks in favor of a suffocating sense of unease that occasionally veers into the hallucinatory. The way Holden's point-of-view sometimes blurs; is it a sign that he's losing his hold on reality? The way a hand appears on a balustrade, seemingly out of nowhere. In Night of the Demon, there's no easy distinction between the ordinary and the supernatural. They exist together.

At this point in his career, Dana Andrews was very much a sideliner, his alcoholism having relegated him to B-parts. In her brilliant essay on the career of the fascinating and vastly underrated Andrews, Imogen Sara Smith writes, concerning his work in Night of the Demon, that "the slur in his voice and uneasiness in his manner make him intriguing in a role that could have been played by Kent Smith." There was always that unease to Andrews, that lurking discomfort underneath the surface, so it's interesting here to see him play a character who is so determined not to look beneath the surface. The hyper-rationalist character of John Holden is, in fact, so stubborn, so smug and self-assured, that the film's sympathy often shifts away from him to the side characters. Even a group of daffy seance-seekers singing "Cherry Ripe" seem more reasonable. It's only by admitting his fears and doubts, however, that Holden can find a way to fight Karswell. And their battle of wits is something to see, indeed.

It's always a treat to see the talented Peggy Cummins although she doesn't really get to stretch herself as the "horribly bright" Joanna Harrington. Joanna, the professor's niece, is a bit of a stock character. B-movie scientists always seem to have a surplus of beautiful nieces/daughters/granddaughters that pop up out of nowhere, carrying research notes and ready to risk their lives. Still, Cummins adds some spark to the character and Joanna's willingness to accept the supernatural is the necessary foil to Holden's skepticism. Her best moment is when she snaps at the perpetually condescending Holden, "Please don't treat me like a mental patient who has to be humored. I also majored in psychology."

But the real treasure of this cast is Niall MacGinnis as the charming but sinister Julian Karswell. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that this has to be one of the great horror movie villains of all time. At first glance, he's like a cross between Clarence the Angel and Mephistopheles. He threatens, but with a smile and a joke. He's fond of children and his mother, but he also summons demons from hell. He seems confident in his dark powers but to his mother, he confesses the terrible cycle he's caught in. "My followers who pay for this do it out of fear. And I do what I do out of fear also. It's part of the price." Unlike the Karswell of the original short story, a "horrible man" who combines the evils of devil worship with the evils of badly written papers and whose only actions are malignant and petty, the movie Karswell is more fascinating. He's unpredictable, which makes him all the more powerful as an enemy. But there's also a shred of sympathy for his character, who must continually find new victims or else become a victim himself. Ironically, our hero Holden has to find that same ruthlessness within himself by the finale, if he plans to survive.

It's hard to write a review for a film like this without feeling you've only barely scraped at the surface; it's just that fascinating. You could watch it solely for the beauty of Tourneur's visuals. Or you could watch it for the sly humor of Charles Bennett's script. Or for the moment when Dana Andrews stands next to Stonehenge, utterly dwarfed by the mysteries he knows not. Or watch it so that you and your friends can have a rousing debate of Pro-Demon/Anti-Demon. It's a fine horror film and eminently worthy of its cult status.

Favorite Quote:

"How can you give back life? I can't stop it. I can't give it back. I can't let anyone destroy this thing. I must protect myself. Because if it's not someone else's life, it'll be mine. Do you understand, Mother? It'll be mine."

Favorite Scene:

For my money, the party scene at Karswell's house is just about perfect. Holden and Joanna go to Karswell's property to question him and are taken aback by the luxury and size of the place, hardly appropriate for the home of some crackpot con artist. And when they find Karswell, what is this master of dark magic doing? Why, he's dressed up as a clown and doing magic tricks for the local children ("A magic puppy! Now, who'd like to stroke a magic puppy?"). And his mother's even making ice cream. This is one instance of the film completely reversing a scene from the original story. In "Casting the Runes," Karswell is a sadist, who gives the local children a gruesome slide show in order to terrify them.  Here, Karswell is genuinely sweet to them, which makes the underlying menace of his character all the more interesting. As he and Holden pass by a pair of kids playing a game of Snakes and Ladders, Karswell remarks whimsically that he always preferred sliding down the snakes to climbing up ladders. Holden responds that maybe it means Karswell's a good loser. Karswell turns to him, coldly serious. "I'm not, you know. Not a bit of it."

Final Six Words: 

It's in the trees! It's coming!

Movie Review: The Haunted Palace

The Haunted Palace (1963) 

directed by Roger Corman, starring Vincent Price, Debra Paget, Lon Chaney Jr.

(Note: This is my entry for The Roger Corman Blogathon, hosted by Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear.)

Charles Dexter Ward (Vincent Price) and his wife Ann (Debra Paget) have arrived at the isolated New England town of Arkham. Ward has come to claim his inheritance, the "haunted palace" that belonged to his ancestor Joseph Curwen (Vincent Price). The townsfolk are surly and mistrustful of these newcomers and it isn't until the Wards meet the helpful Doctor Willet (Frank Maxwell) that they understand why. 

Over a century ago, Joseph Curwen was known as an evil warlock that lured young girls over to his castle to fulfill his twisted scheme: to bring back the power of the old gods by mating them to human women. Because of Curwen's actions, the town is now haunted by the presence of misshapen "mutations," creatures not entirely human. Finally, the townsfolk had enough of Curwen and burned him to death outside his castle, but his evil influence is still  felt in the village, especially when they look at those mutations. And now his descendant has come to take possession of the castle, his descendant who looks so exactly like Curwen...

Ward and his wife Ann are naturally spooked by these tales but well, they have to find somewhere to spend the night, so why not spend it in Curwen's castle? There's even a helpful caretaker named Simon (Lon Chaney Jr.), who's there to settle them in. But once inside, Ward begins to fall under the spell of the place and of his dead ancestor, who takes over Ward's body in order to carry out his two missions. First, to resurrect his beloved dead mistress Hester (Cathie Merchant). Next, to take vengeance on the descendants of all those who betrayed him. Fiery vengeance.

The Haunted Palace takes a title from Edgar Allan Poe, a story from H.P. Lovecraft, and a screenplay by Charles Beaumont, so it's surprising that the finished product doesn't, in the end, feel like it really belongs to any of these three men. In spite of the borrowed title, Poe has nothing to do with this story. The plotline comes from Lovecraft's novella "The Case of  Charles Dexter Ward," but the film's Gothic, grandly clanking atmosphere doesn't feel particularly Lovecraftian. It belongs far more to Roger Corman and Vincent Price than it does to its literary origins. In interviews, Corman was frank about his displeasure with the Poe references that were forced on him by the studio (in an attempt to make this movie seem like another entry in the Price/Poe series of horror films) since he was very excited about adapting Lovecraft.

In its opening stretches, the film takes pretty near every horror trope you can possibly think of and sets them to an operatic high C. Haunted castle? Check. Vaguely Satanic character who endangers women? Check. Angry village mob? All-encompassing mist? Ominous crashes of lightning? You'd better believe that's a check. For someone like me, who isn't a horror connoisseur, the flood of cinematic cliches in the opening was a little daunting and I started to wonder if maybe I'd made a mistake in choosing The Haunted Palace for my blogathon entry. 

Fortunately, as the movie wore on, I gradually became transfixed by its artistry. For one thing, it's quite beautiful to look at, combining the hypnotic blues and grays of Floyd Crosby's cinematography with the leering angles of Roger Corman's camera. According to the TCM database, Corman deliberately chose a "somewhat starker lighting pattern" than for his Poe pictures, wanting to stress the difference between the two artists. The sets were small, but Corman used forced perspective and sweeping camera movements to create the illusion of size. The ultimate effect manages to be both grand and claustrophobic, as characters race down staircases and in and out of blue mists, always seeming to end up right back where they started.
 

The crux of the story is Joseph Curwen's return and his possession of his innocent descendant Charles Dexter Ward. In spite of the borrowed Poe title, Corman's film is far more interested in the destructive rampage of the Curwen character than of his haunted house. And Curwen is plenty dark, drawing women to the house in order to chain them up and let some unknown monster rape them. We don't get a good look at the creature but Corman shows us how the women are raised up in chains, legs and arms splayed. Then they suddenly look down to see something coming up from the depths below, right between their legs. The film's advertising would capitalize on the psychosexual horror: "What was the terrifying thing in the pit that wanted women?"

This is Vincent Price's movie and he carries it off proudly, in a performance that combines courtliness and evil. Price has to play the dual role of the demonic Joseph Curwen and the innocent Charles Dexter Ward and it's to his credit that you're never in any doubt which persona is in control of Ward's body. The actor gets some help from Corman's makeup and lighting, but he mostly communicates the switches with his eyes, his voice, and the small shifts of his face. Except for a few big moments, Price avoids chewing the scenery and opts for a quiet malevolence. Appropriate, since for most of the movie, Curwen is trying to pretend that he is Ward. 

Unfortunately, the character of Charles Dexter Ward (the screenplay has a lot of fun with that name, having characters chant the whole thing all the time) doesn't feel fully fleshed out so that when his personality is finally submerged under Curwen, there's no sense of loss. Compare it to something like The Shining in which we get to know Jack Torrance intimately before his soul is drained away by the Overlook Hotel, and you get a sense of what The Haunted Palace is missing. The tragedy underneath the surface frights.

Vincent Price is backed up by a great supporting cast in this film, including screen heavy Leo Gordon, everyone's favorite gunsel Elisha Cook Jr., and of course, Lon Chaney Jr., as Joseph Curwen's evil servant Simon. Corman uses every crag and crevice of Chaney's face for maximum spookiness, slathering him in gray-green make-up and letting him pop out of shadows without warning. Chaney's character Simon never makes much sense since we don't know what he is, why he's at the castle waiting for Curwen, or why he serves him. Even Simon doesn't seem to know. At one point, in one of the film's unintentionally funny moments, he asks Curwen to give up this mad idea of resurrecting his dead mistress Hester. 'Cause you know, possessing people, burning them alive, playing with the Necronomicon, and mating unwilling women to monsters, that's all in a day's work, but getting hung up on a girl? That's just not on.

Sadly, this would be the final film for the regal, slightly feline Debra Paget, who was only thirty years old when she stopped making movies. She gives an intelligent and sympathetic performance here, as the frightened, unhappy Ann Ward, determined to stick by her husband no matter how horrible things become. She's also completely gorgeous, so it isn't too much of a surprise when Joseph Curwen takes a momentary pause from his necromantic doings to look lustfully in her direction. In a clever little touch, Corman casts another dark-haired beauty, Cathie Merchant, as Curwen's long-dead mistress, Hester Tillinghast. The two women look enough alike that I was briefly convinced it was the same actress until I checked the billing. Merchant has some nice memories of filming this movie, posted here.

The doubling of Ward's wife and Curwen's mistress doesn't stop with their physical similarities. Corman also links them symbolically in several different shots. In the film's opening, we see the mistress Hester struggling to get to her lover as he is tied and burned at the tree and in the finale, we see Ann throwing herself on her husband at the very same tree, as the flames rise up behind them. There are other, subtler touches. A scene where Hester's gray, decaying corpse rises slowly from her deathbed, Curwen's arms around her, cuts to Ann bolting upright in bed; her wifely instinct is aroused by her husband's touching another woman. Even if it's not really her husband. 

One of the film's creepier and more brilliantly suggestive themes is the gradual switching of roles between the two women. As the film begins, Ann is the happy, lawful wife of Charles Dexter Ward; they discuss things with each other, they're affectionate. Gradually, as Ward becomes submerged by Curwen, Ann finds herself confronted by someone who looks like her husband but isn't, who shouts at her, dismisses her, and frightens her. Curwen initially is disgusted with Ann, longing only to get back to his dead love, but as his efforts to revive Hester continue to fail, he starts to eye her with a little interest. The more Ann shrinks from him, the more he delights in asking for his "rights" as a husband. One scene of Curwen gloatingly demanding a kiss from Ann is more frightening than all of the film's cobwebs and creaky doors put together. It's clear that for Curwen, it's the dead Hester who deserves the rights of the wife and Ann that should be treated like a mistress. While he's using Ward's body, why not use Ann's? All of this climaxes in a you-could-see-it-coming-but-it's-still-brilliant finale with Curwen, whom Ann still believes is her husband, dragging her down to be chained and raped.

The product of these rapes of woman by monster, the aforementioned "mutations" are one of the film's more confusing and fascinating subplots. There's a brief mention of Curwen wanting to use them to bring back the power of the old gods, but we don't get any insight into just how the mutations are supposed to do that and although we see them in the village, sometimes walking around, sometimes being chained in basements, we don't know if they're demented, evil, or even sentient. Even with the lack of explanation and the rather cheap makeup job on them, I found the mutations extremely creepy. I think it's the facelessness of some of them, I always get creeped out by faceless monsters no matter how cheesy the makeup or CGI work. I'll have to go back and read the original Lovecraft story to find out whether these creatures come from Beaumont or Lovecraft.

Charles Beaumont and H.P. Lovecraft are an unlikely marriage of scriptwriter and source material. In his fiction, Lovecraft was obsessed with the undefinable, with horror on the mythic and cosmic scale. His stories frequently harped on the dread of the unnatural and for Lovecraft, the unnatural included any hint of miscegenation, of hereditary taint. The Haunted Palace echoes that theme with its voiceless, mindless mutations, the zombie-like beings that Curwen brought to life through his unholy mating of Arkham's women to demonic entities.

Beaumont on the other hand, known as one of the great Twilight Zone scribes as well as a prolific short-story writer, often had a fascinated sympathy for the misfits and outsiders. His Twilight scripts are peppered with lonely protagonists caught in a world they don't belong in, from the timid bachelor in "Miniature," who finds love with a museum doll, to the ranting prisoner of "Shadow Play," trying hopelessly to convince people that they are stuck in his recurring nightmare. One of Beaumont's more famous short stories, "The Crooked Man," portrayed a dystopian future where heterosexuality is forbidden and a straight couple try furtively to hide their love in a gay bar. Lovecraft hated and feared the deviant; Beaumont reached out to it. Perhaps that is why The Haunted Palace feels a little uncertain of where the greatest horror lies, in Curwen or in his creations. 

  

The film unfortunately loses steam by the climax and even its final "gotcha" moment is dissatisfying, since it implies that any answers we got about Curwen's powers and the extent of his power over the village weren't really answers at all. Even though Corman does give us a grand set piece of the castle going up in flames, it wasn't enough to dispel my feeling that I had been waltzed right into a Plot Hole Pile-Up. Let's consider a few of these plot holes:

1. We never find out the truth about the mutations and whether or not they are evil or why they keep popping up in the village even during the years when no maidens were being mated to devil gods.

2. We never find out what Curwen's henchmen are and what ties them to Curwen (in fact they disappear at the end of the film).

3. We never get much understanding of what the curse on the village really means.

4. And finally, why are all the villagers just standing there at the end? Why don't they just skewer Curwen? C'mon, the mob from Beauty and the Beast had more moxie than these clowns.

All of these plot holes unfortunately put some dents in an otherwise stylish film. We expect some unanswered questions in horror films, but when they pile up in this fashion, it starts to look like laziness, not mystery. It's a pity, because Corman shoots a grand, fiery climax, perfectly book-ending the beginning, and Price is so good in the ending, flipping between the horrified Charles Dexter Ward and the diabolical Joseph Curwen right up until the very last moment.

The Haunted Palace is a strange meeting of minds, a movie that pays homage to Lovecraft but ultimately feels entirely like a Corman and Price creation. It's frequently stunning, in spite of its clumsy moments, like a good dancing partner that every so often feels the need to just stamp on your toes. The confidence of Corman's camera work, the thundering Ronald Stein score, the beauty of Debra Paget and the wily charm of Vincent Price will probably stay with me far longer than my plot complaints so overall, I have to say, the film works. It's a worthy entry in Roger Corman's long, creative career.

Favorite Quote:

"I advise you, Mr. Ward, to leave this village. I advise you to flee it as you would from a madman with a knife, who feels compelled to destroy you before you can destroy him."

Favorite Scene:

Hands down, the film's creepiest, most flesh-crawling scene is the moment where the mutations converge on Charles Dexter Ward and Ann. It starts slowly, with Ward and Ann walking through the streets of Arkham, shrouded in that ever-present mist, when suddenly they come upon one of the faceless mutations, shuffling silently towards them . They whirl away as suddenly another starts coming towards them. The camera whirls with the hapless Wards as more and more mutations arrive until suddenly the couple find themselves trapped, as these beings corral them for...who knows what purpose? Then suddenly, in the distance, the church bells start to ring. Church bells, even in Arkham. And then, with no explanation, the mutations turn and limp away. Driven away by God, fear, we don't know. We never find out. But in this case, explanations didn't matter to me. It was still chilling.

Final Six Words: 

Conventional yet compelling, stylish Corman horror

Movie Review: I Walked with a Zombie

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

directed by Jacques Tourneur, starring Frances Dee, Tom Conway

In spite of its cheesy popcorn title, this film captures so many moods and ideas within its brief 69 minutes. The battle between superstition and science. The longing and regret for what you cannot have and might never even understand. The confusion of being in a foreign place with ideas so different from your own. If the Stephen King model of horror is to show you the terror lurking behind the ordinary and familiar, then the Val Lewton model is to tease you with possibilities and keep you in situations that are always unsettling but rarely terrifying. His films are self-contained worlds that sometimes seems to run on dream-logic, with characters pulling you aside to speak poetic words of warning.

I wonder if the author of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies knew that decades earlier, Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur had already made a movie that could rightfully be called Jane Eyre and Zombies. Instead of a gloomy English manor, we're taken to the fictional island of Saint Sebastian. Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is a young Canadian nurse who takes a position as the caretaker of sugar planter Paul Holland's (Tom Conway) ailing wife. She finds herself drawn to the bitter, gloomy man and begins to believe that the only way to make him happy is to cure his wife, Jessica (Christine Gordon). Except that Jessica is no ordinary patient. She exists in a catatonic state, like a sleepwalker with no mind or will, except to obey simple commands. Some of the islanders believe that she may truly be a zombie...

Complicating the story is Paul's alcoholic half-brother Wesley Rand, a man who can match Paul for bitterness. The brothers despise each other and it doesn't take long for Betsy to discover the reason. In one of the film's most memorable sequences, she and Wesley are surprised to hear a calypso singer (Sir Lancelot) tell of the Fort Holland Scandal: how Holland's wife stole the heart of his younger brother and brought on the trouble. Sir Lancelot breaks off his song at the realization that Wesley and Betsy are listening but after Wesley has drank himself into unconsciousness, the singer returns to menace Betsy with his song:

"The wife and the brother, they want to go
But the Holland man, he tell them no
The wife fall down and the evil came
And it burnt her mind in the fever flame.
Ah woe, ah me
Shame and sorrow for the family"

Did Jessica simply become sick from brain fever, as her doctor suggests? Or is she a true zombie, punished for her adultery, as the natives believe? Was she the victim of Paul's mental cruelty, as Wesley tells Betsy? As Betsy slowly begins to believe in the potential of a voodoo cure for Jessica, spurred on by her own guilty love for Paul, we are also left to wonder if she is falling under the superstitious suggestion of the tropical atmosphere. Lewton and Tourneur spin the same wheel that they do in Cat People, sometimes offering rational if pat explanations but keeping us too unnerved to really trust them.

The zombie Jessica is nothing like the usual movie zombie and that's what makes her so effective. She's only a blonde woman shuffling around in a white dress but her slow, steady walk and blank stare are enough to send a shiver down your spine. In one scene, the maid Alma (Theresa Harris) cheerfully says that dressing her is "just like dressing a great big doll." Watching this movie, I was reminded why dolls so often become the objects of horror films. You never know what's really going on behind those empty eyes. Of course, the really frightening image in the film is not Jessica but the zombie Carrefour (Darby Jones), who provides the visual punchline to the film's most famous scene, the walk through whispering sugar cane fields to the houmfort.

"These people are primitive. Things that seem natural to them would shock and horrify you." So says Paul and Wesley's matter-of-fact mother, Dr. Rand (Edith Barrett). You don't expect a 1940s film about voodoo priests and superstitious Afro-Caribbeans to be enlightened but this film is a pleasant surprise. Lewton researched voodoo traditions pretty thoroughly for this film and the scenes at the houmfort sometimes seem close to the style of a documentary, as the camera lingers on the transported faces of the people at the houmfort. The film also touches on the very real cultural divide underneath all the songs and rituals. In one crucial scene, Paul tells Betsy that the centuries of slavery and misery are so ingrained in the island's population that they "weep when a child is born and make merry at burial." The San Sebastian people may still be the exotic unknowable but the portrayal is a far cry from the sentimentalized Mammies and childlike Africans that infect so many classic Hollywood movies.

The black islanders we meet are for the most part, a self-assured and intelligent group of people. When Sir Lancelot makes his apologies to Wesley for his song, he is cool and dignified. And then there is Alma the maid, who is clever, sassy, and sweet. In her first appearance, Paul chastises her for frightening Betsy, who has just had a nightmarish encounter with Jessica in the dark. "Well," shrugs Alma. "She didn't soothe me none either, hollering around in that tower." Later, she and Betsy begin to be friends and Theresa Harris's performance is so well-tuned that she can say lines about how she wants to tend to Betsy's needs without sounding servile or insincere.

Before this movie, I'd only seen Frances Dee in a rather horrible audition tape for the role of Scarlett in Gone with the Wind. George Cukor apparently wanted her for the role of Melanie but according to an interview with her son Peter McCrea, "both he and David Selznick thought she was too pretty, that she and Vivien Leigh were both beautiful and they needed just a little more contrast." That's pretty high appreciation for an actress that has slipped so far out of sight, despite being both beautiful and married to Joel McCrea for 57 years.

Feminine beauty is a crucial element in I Walked with a Zombie. The story implies that Jessica's loveliness is to blame for the family ruin and the dissent between the two brothers. Paul has a pointed conversation with Betsy. "Tell me, Miss Connell, do you consider yourself pretty...and charming?" Flustered, she says that she "never gave the matter much thought." Paul sinks back into his usual state of Gothic-husband abstraction. "Don't. You'll save yourself a great deal of trouble and other people a great deal of unhappiness." Unlike Cat People, which gives us the image of poor Simone Simon tormented by her self-imposed frigidity, this film walks in the pure Gothic tradition of a dead or incapacitated wife who somehow or other, brought it on herself through her promiscuity and attractiveness.

Not that I Walked with a Zombie is unkind to its female characters. Betsy, Alma, and Dr. Rand are all strong, resourceful women and they drive the story's action while Paul and Wesley do little except glare at each other. The women also outclass the men in terms of acting, for my money, with Frances Dee and Theresa Harris as standouts. Tom Conway, on the other hand, contends with the least interesting of his Val Lewton roles and James Ellison falls prey to the same lockjaw acting that afflicted Kent Smith in Cat People. They're not bad, but their accents (Conway sounding like his brother, George Sanders, and Ellison sounding eerily like Robert Stack in moments) are more memorable than anything else in their performances.

Favorite Quote:

"It's easy enough to read the thoughts of a newcomer. Everything seems beautiful because you don't understand. Those flying fish, they're not leaping for joy, they're jumping in terror. Bigger fish want to eat them. That luminous water, it takes its gleam from millions of tiny dead bodies. The glitter of putrescence. There is no beauty here, only death and decay."

Favorite Scene:

It's a tough choice, but I have to go for Betsy's first, heavily Jane-Eyre-inspired trip up the tower. Tourneur uses the shadows so well that the film's low budget starts to seem like an advantage, the simplicity of the sets adding to the dreamlike feel. Alma's crying, Betsy's voice echoing and the slow white shape of Jessica. The film closes in on the terrified Betsy as Jessica draws closer and closer. We don't know just what it is she sees in Jessica's face that makes her scream. And then, as Betsy moves away and Jessica once again begins to walk toward her, we see Betsy grow calmer, if still unnerved and we know, without being told, that Jessica is not an ordinary movie monster but a creature that frightens because she is so blank, so unknowable, so far beyond.

Final Six Words:

Atmospheric, elegant, most unorthodox zombie film