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A demented masterpiece from director Joseph H Lewis. Faced with a script that makes no sense (Lugosi's wife is mentally unbalanced after a car crash, so the loyal servants keep her in the garden shed and pretend to Lugosi that she dies, in order not to upset him!) Lewis pulls out the stops, adding startling and classy and baroque and unusual directorial touches everywhere he can.
The film must have been shot it a week, and feels like it was scripted in an hour. No time for re-writing - the hero goes to the electric chair, but we need a romantic interest - quick, give him a twin brother!
My favourite moment is when Lugosi, having hammed it up at every opportunity, however inappropriate, has to describe the sight of a man briefly (and pointlessly, in narrative terms) rising from the dead. "It was horrible" he remarks, casually, over breakfast. The one moment where a bit of passion would have been useful, and the great Bela belatedly discovers underplaying.
He will be missed.
Kudos to Clarence Muse for keeping it real, and check out the references to "a lot of murders" which have been committed in this house - are there so frequent that no one can remember how many? And nobody thought to question Lugosi, who is known to be several bats short of a belfry...
score /10
cairnsdavid 18 November 2002
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0024477/ |
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30-8-2020 12:05:14