Ulmer-thon 2: Electric Boogaloo: Strange Illusion(1945)
One of the great things about having an obscure blog is how you don't really have to worry about attracting attention but can still bring the blog up occasionally as a conversation piece; either in real life or on the internet. A few months ago before my vacation and eventual fumigation fiasco, I e-mailed a link to my review of Ulmer's The Black Cat to an accquaintance of mine on a certain horror film board in a PM. I was curious as to what he would think as he has quite a reputation for disliking that piece of art-deco vomit and was even mentioned on the TV Tropes entry for the film(he should be glad no one from Encyclopedia Dramatica is an Edgar G. Ulmer fanboy).
For some reason, I never got around to reading his response until recently. He enjoyed my review, but still made his reasons for disliking the film clear, his main gripe being the film's lack of faithfullness to the Poe story of the same name, and mentioned how it may as well have been called Hamlet because of the basic thematic similarity of a man whose family has been torn assunder who then plots a methodical revenge on the man who did it. Even during Karloff's brief attempts to break out of horror roles that same year(like The House of Rothschild), I honestly doubt anyone would have accepted seeing Karloff in an adaption of one Shakespeare's most admired plays.
But would you believe that Edgar G. Ulmer, the gent who gave us such cinematic classics such as Detour and...uh...well that's about it, actually did make an adaption of Hamlet? Well he did, and the beast in question is called Strange Illusion, and it's a perfect way to kick off a sequel to Ulmer-thon. Only now that I've covered his most popular films(The Black Cat, Bluebeard, Detour) I thought I'd give his more obscure works a try. Let's proceed, shall we?(but I'm going to assume that everyone knows the plot intricacies of Hamlet first, so spoilers abound)
A voice wails! In a fog enshrouded backdrop, we think we see a boat in the water, or is it a young man emerging from the fog on dry land? He shouts to his mother to keep away from the man beside her. He is not his real father, the boy shrieks. Suddenly, Schumann's concerto begins to play wildly, and we see a train rushing wildly toward a car, then off the tracks! Then a shadowy figure in a fedora approaches, tauntingly. It's the man who has usurped the position of father! The young man becomes hysterical! Fog continues to swirl.
Hallucinatory imagery? check. Hammy acting? check. Fog? check. This awesomely effective sequence dissapointingly revealed to be a dream? check, sadly. Raping of classical music by PRC composer Erdody? check.
Still, dream or not, isn't that just a great opening? Such a pity that nothing else in the film really matches it.
Our young man in question is Paul Cartwright(teen star Jimmy Lydon), who is jostled out of bed by a much older man, who then orders him to get ready for breakfast. That's disturbing, seeing a man menacingly claim he's your father now in a dream then being forced to wake up by another man in a menacing fashion. But the man who wakes our protagonist isn't his father, but his doctor, Martin "Doc" Vincent(pronounced as "Benson" by every character in the film).
Vincent(Regis Toomey) may as well be Paul's dad, because he's apparently been the closest thing Paul has had for a father figure in months after his father died in what was apparently a road accident. Paul has been staying with Benson for the past few months while his mother gets over the loss(remember the days when doctors regularly travelled and lived with their patients for months on end? Neither do I). He returns home after recieving some mail(a letter from his alte father's attorney, the letter instructs him that he is now the man of the houise and that he msut protect his mother and sister at all costs. Gee, do you think this will be a plot point later on?), but not before having a silly discussion about how dreams can sometimes be prophetic. This being a film by Edgar G. Ulmer, how much do you wanna bet that those dreams not only are propetic, but in fact, depressingly to the letter?
At home, we quickly meet Paul's friends and family; Ben the faithful family man-servant(George Reed), Paul's dogged nice guy best friend George(Jimmy Clark), his inexplicably lederhosen-clad sister Dorothy(Jayne Hazzard) and Paul's ex- girlfriend Lydia(Mary McLeod, who could pass for a skinny Deanna Durbin). But the person who is going to make the biggest impression on Paul is a man whom he's never met. You see, Paul's mother Virignia(Sally Eilers) has been seeing this man lately, he's the most charming fella, apparently, an exemplary man whom tough-guy George should try to be like if he wants to be more succesfull with the ladies. Virignia and him have been spending a lot of time together, and they're making plans you see...
You see...
You see where this is going already, right?
No subtlety here. We know straight and away that Virginia's new squeeze, suave englishman Brett Curtiss(Waren William) is obviously the Claudius figure in this story. From his faux-british accent to his Lionell Atwill moustache, it's clear that no matter how genial he attempts to be that he's the villain of the piece. Still, since everyone seems to like him, Paul, being a territorial little snot, decides that because he's banging his mom, then(are you ready for this?)Curtiss must be some sort of evil criminal mastermind that dad(dad was apparently a judge or governor or something) kept a file on. Sure enough, our hero just randomly pulls out a file on a criminal, and he's sure he has his man.
I really don't know how to feel about this. Usually I hate when obvious villain characters are left with the possibility of being innocent when it's all too obvious they are guilty, and you usually can just guess this depending on the character's archetype and the billing of his actor. This approach has ruined many an intriguing mystery film I've seen. On the other hand, while it's refreshing to have a hero who doesn't bullshit around when it comes to figuring out who is evil, it's kind of depressing when he's such a dick about it. (though you can have this both ways, like in the awful The Vulture where the obnoxious hero knows literally everything about the villain's modus operandi but can't deduce his all too obvious identity) Paul may have reason to dislike Curtiss, but he has no reason as of yet to suspect he's actually a criminal, and the fact that he seemingly randomly just picks a case from his father's files and assumes it must be the same man(going on absolutely nothing) right off the bat is just plain nasty.
Oh, but that's not all, not only is Curtiss the same criminal from the file, but get this, he also has an evil psychiatrist(!!!!??) named Muhlbach(Charles Arnt) who aids him in his crimes for....reasons never really made clear. But this still gives Curtiss an edge when he realizes that Paul is on to him; he can simply have the genial Mulbach question Paul's mental health, get him to committ himself, then kill him. This bogey man IS out to get you, and then some!
This type of worldview is how a paranoiac views the world: Some person who you feel is muscling in on your territory is really a devious monster, and anyone who suggests you are wrong about him is in on it. What's amazing about this is how Ulmer in no way questions it, thus destroying any suspense this film could have generated quite early on. It's fashionable nowadays to read Hamlet not as a revenge story, but as a tale of one man's Oedipus complex gone horribly out-of-control, as he leaves a trail of corpses to dethrone the man who has usurped his father's position, a throne next to, and a place in the bed with, his mother, one he wants for himself subconciously or not. After all, it is left ambiguous as to whether the ghost Hamlet sees is real or not, leaving one to question Claudius's guilt. But that aside, Paul, the Hamlet figure of this film, has even less to go on than Hamlet, and that's sad when a ghost from another story seems a more trustworthy source of information than a realisitc dream in a "psychological" film such as this. One could argue however, that since the camera pans to a portrait of Paul's father when he sifts through the files, that he is being guided by a higher power, but nothing seems to confirm this.
So ultimately, Strange Illusion has little to recommend it, with few opportunities for suspense(though there is a memorable sequence where Mulbach appears ready to throw Paul off a roof), a foregone plot conclusion, never explained character motivations that definitely need to be explained, no drama in that almost everyone believes the hero of his far-fetched theory, and little action.
What makes the film watchable are the performances, however uneven they may be. Jimmy Lydon manages to make Paul a likeable and believably troubled(if somewhat unfair and dickish at times) character without descending into total neurotic, screaming nutcase territory. However, sometimes he seems too mature, almost like Rathbone's Holmes, and way too unrealistic as the sort of super-sleuth he tries to be(and seems to be) in some scenes. Other times he seems indistinguishable from his peppy, grinning, all-american Henry Aldrich character. Flaws aside, an interesting series could have been built around the character of Paul Cartwright.
You also have to love the scenes where he affectionately greets and kisses his mother. The actress playing Virginia is obviously not much older than he is, so possibly there was an on-set attraction. On film it gives an almost icky incestuous quality to the scenes of them kissing and calling each other "darling"(yes). Wait? What did I say about Oedpial complexes earlier? I was wrong, they are present in this film; completely unintentionally.
George Reed, despite limited screentime, is quite good in the small role of Ben the butler; a refreshingly non-stereotyped black character of the kind you didn't see much back then. Does his life revolve around his white masters? Yes, but the character is portrayed as stoic, good-natured and intelligent rather than a comedy relief buffoon. His loyalty to the elder Cartwright comes off as quite moving. A shame the character has such little screentime.
But the real standout is Warren William as Curtiss. Called the poor man's Basil Rathbone, William nonetheless makes the film his whenever he's onscreen(approximately 16 minutes, just like Anthony Hopkins as Lecter). What makes the character frightening is not the crimes he contemplates, or how he hides his true nature behind a veneer of respectability, but the implication that he's capable of a lot worse than we are shown. For example, it is never explained what his motivation is. One assumes it's money, but a bizzare scene with Mulbach seems to suggest that he wants to marry into the Cartwright family for revenge. Why? And what for? The man he hates, Judge Cartwright, is dead, murdered by his own hand. Why is this scary? Because revenge is never enough, he wants to destroy the family even after his nemesis is dead, and what for? He obviously has covered up his true identity extensively, and even destroys the evidence at one point, so his motive isn't to destroy the remaining evidence. His motivation is sheer and simple sadism, he wants to continue to hurt Cartwright even after he is dead, when he has no power to save his family. BRRRR. That's just twisted. And even more disturbing is...well, see for yourself in the film.
Strange Illusion may not be a good film, per se, but it's interesting for it's sheer lack of subtlety, as well as Warren William's fine performance. It's also notable that it slightly fits the thematic content of Ulmer's earlier films(if his films can be said at all to have thematic content) with the theme of a protagonist caught in a web while confronting the destruction of his life/family/delsuions and sanity, but subverts it because here, in contrast to the other Ulmer heroes, such as the doomed and hopeless Vitus Werdegast, Gaston Morell and Al Roberts, here his obsessed hero, Paul Cartwright, not only has his delusions proven to be reality and never placed in doubt, but he also has a happy ending. Was this the sign of a maturing Ulmer, or further proof that Ulmer is an overrated hack whose films have been overanalyzed and overpraised? I still stick to the conclusions I drew in my Detour essay, but I'm willing to be proven wrong.
Next Up: 1946's Strange Woman.