Guise and Dolls

Now Playing: The Psychopath (1966)

Pros: Colorful, quirky characters; Nicely staged climax and a particularly creepy ending
Cons: Some egregious over-acting; Pointless lovers' subplot slows things down

What is it about dolls that causes an involuntary shudder in many of us? Have you ever been in a toy store, or worse yet, a semi-darkened room, and seen a particularly hideous specimen propped up in the corner, its stubby plastic or porcelain fingers almost seeming to move, its sightless glass eyes staring at you? Have you ever thought to yourself, or said half-jokingly to the person standing next to you-- "that thing frightens me!"

In an earlier post on the TV movie Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981), I speculated that somewhere in the deepest, darkest recesses of the Id, we all harbor the atavistic belief that figures made to look like a man or an animal can somehow be invested with the spirit or power of the thing being represented. The most obvious example of such sympathetic or imitative magic is the voodoo doll, which can be used to gain power over the person depicted.

Then there's the spooky feeling you get when you happen to glance into the black cutout holes that are supposed to be the scarecrow's eyes, or the fixed, staring glass eyes of a doll, and for just the briefest moment you think you see some sort of life there, possibly malevolent. Filmmakers have been playing on this atavistic fear for a very long time. There have been possessed dolls (Trilogy of Terror, 1975; Dolls, 1987; Child's Play, 1988), possessed ventriloquist's dummies (Dead of Night, 1945; Devil Doll, 1964; Magic, 1978), possessed puppets (Asylum, 1972; Puppetmaster, 1989) and even people that have been turned into dolls (The Devil-Doll, 1936).

A recent and very funny example of this fixation is an ad for the U.S. postal service, in which the ever-helpful mailman assures a frightened family that they can quickly and economically return a creepy clown doll that seems to have a life of its own:



Dolls figure very prominently in the eerie atmosphere of The Psychopath, but in this case they are not possessed themselves, but rather are the tools of a person possessed by madness. The film begins with a well-dressed man carrying a violin case preparing to get into his car, then discovering to his great irritation that it has a flat tire. Shrugging his shoulders, he starts walking. As he wends his way through dark alleys, apparently looking for a shortcut to his destination, we see several quick shots of a small red car following him. He pops into yet another alley, then, realizing it's a dead end, turns around. The car's high beams hit him like a slap in the face, and he throws an arm up to shield his eyes. Trapped in the dead-end alley, he drops his violin and waves his arms frantically as the car bears down on him. We see the violin case crushed under the car's tires, then flattened a second time as the car lurches forward and backs up again. As the car screeches off, the unseen driver drops a doll -- an exact replica of the victim down to his coat and tie -- onto the smashed remnants of the violin case.

Cut to a genteel, well-appointed drawing room, where we see a close-up of an empty chair with sheet music lying on it. The camera tracks back to reveal three well-heeled men playing a nice classical piece for string quartet. We know what's happened to the fourth member. The stark contrast of the dark, grimy alley where the murder occurs to the well-lit, refined atmosphere of wealthy privilege is nicely done, along with the subtle reveal of the victim's intended destination.

As the quartet "jam" session is breaking up, police inspector Holloway (Patrick Wymark) shows up at the residence with information that their fourth member had been found murdered at 8 that evening -- run over by a car several times. He starts grilling the assembled amateur musicians and other guests about their whereabouts, and they furnish him with a variety of alibis for the 8 o'clock hour. In an odd bit of business, the inspector lets them have their say, then reveals as he gets up to leave that the body was only found at 8 o'clock-- the coroner had determined time of death at around 7.

Inspector Holloway (Patrick Wymark) interviews the widow Von
Sturm (Margaret Johnston) surrounded by her "friends"

Through inquiries to various toy and doll shops, the police determine that a number of doll bodies identical to the one dumped at the murder scene were delivered to the residence of Mrs. Von Sturm (Margaret Johnston), widow of a WWII era German industrialist. Holloway pays Von Sturm a visit, and finds an eccentric, wheelchair-bound woman who has surrounded herself with dolls of every size, shape and description. When Holloway shows her the murder scene doll and asks her if she's ever made one like it, she immediately recognizes it as Rinehart Clemmer, her solicitor. The widow breaks down when she learns of Clemmer's death, so her son Mark (John Standing) takes over the interview with Holloway. He explains that Clemmer was the legal representative for his industrialist father's estate in Germany. The elder Von Sturm had been accused by an allied commission of using slave labor in his factories during the war, and had committed suicide in prison. Clemmer had been retained to clear the Von Sturm name, but according to Mark, had given up years ago without telling his mother, supposedly so as not to dash her hopes. Mark explains to Holloway that her world collapsed when her husband died, and she's since created a new one out of her imagination. "The dolls are her friends," he says, grinning, "the dolls and me."

Pretty soon we find out that the upstanding citizens and amateur musicians that Clemmer had been friendly with were -- you guessed it -- members of the very commission that condemned Von Sturm and seized his extensive holdings. There are rumors that the commission manufactured the evidence against the industrialist to get their grubby mitts on his money. And yes, you guessed it again-- soon they're bumped off one by one, each murder scene, like Clemmer's, marked with a doll uncannily fashioned to look exactly like the victim. To add variety to the proceedings, each self-satisfied ex-commissioner is dispatched with a different method-- by car, poison, hanging and **gulp** blowtorch. Another potential witness is stabbed to death, and the police inspector himself is almost blown up in his own car.

Martin Roth (Thorley Walters) stares into the face of death:
a doll uncannily fashioned in his own likeness.

Screenwriter Robert Bloch (of Psycho fame) throws in a number of red herrings and misdirections that don't fool the viewer for a minute (and aren't really intended to). Louise Saville (Judy Huxtable), the daughter of one of the retired commissioners, Frank Saville (Alexander Knox), just happens to be a doll designer. When poison is implicated in one murder, the inspector starts grilling her fiance Donald (Don Borisenko), who happens to be a medical student with knowledge of and access to such things. Even one of the surviving (up to that point) ex-commissioners, Victor Ledoux (Robert Crewdson), is a sculptor who is very good at fashioning human likenesses, especially faces. Bloch has fun flinging around the red herrings even as he sets the plot grinding to an inevitable and obvious, yet disturbing, conclusion. It's a bit like a surreal, cinematic version of the game Clue -- "I'll take Ledoux with the rope in the artist's studio."

The strength of The Psychopath is not in a "keep 'em guessing" mystery plot, but in the well-crafted creepy atmosphere and eccentric characters (due in no small part to the talents of director Freddie Francis and cinematographer John Wilcox). There's the imperious businessman Frank Saville (Alexander Knox) who wears his smug self-satisfaction with the same panache that he wears his elegant smoking jacket. There's the portly, nervous solicitor Roth (Thorley Walters) who jumps at the sight of his own shadow. Robert Crewdson plays the debonair sculptor Ledoux with a thick French accent and heavy dose of insouciance. Mark (John Standing), the industrialist's son and professional mama's boy, is immaculate with his perfect blonde haircut and tight-fitting black leather jacket. When he grins at the inspector, you know there's something not quite right with that boy. But the eccentric prize (a big honey-baked ham) goes to the widow Von Sturm (Margaret Johnston), who goes from cooing at her large collection of dolls, to weeping uncontrollably, to rolling her eyes and gnashing her teeth. It's either fun or appalling to watch depending on your frame of mind.

Mother and son have a heart-to-heart talk.

Regardless, the widow figures into some of the more effective, chilling scenes. When the inspector first comes to call, he enters a huge, cavernous room with hundreds of dolls occupying almost every square inch of floor space. He calls out for Mrs. Von Sturm. There's a stirring, almost as if the dolls themselves were coming to life. After a few moments, she wheels herself out from among her silent plastic and porcelain friends, looking almost like a large, demented doll herself. In another very effective scene, she pays a visit to Frank Saville's home in the dead of night. Frank stands at the head of the stairs, peering into the gloom of his spacious front hallway. He takes a few fearful, tentative steps down the stairs. "Who's there?" A barely-perceptible figure in a wheelchair rolls forward into a patch of moonlight. "Take a good look…" Von Sturm hisses, her face contorted with malice.

In the midst of all these bizarre characters, Patrick Wymark's Inspector Holloway is an island of calm, unflappable British reserve. It's a good acting job and a nice touch, with the quiet competence of the Inspector standing in stark contrast to the hysterical aberrations of the other characters.

Also noteworthy is Elisabeth Lutyen's original music-- the simple, chilling nursery music for a madhouse is used very effectively in the titles and at key points in the film.

While more than a few precious minutes of film time are wasted on an uninteresting side story about Saville's disapproval of his daughter's American fiancee, and there are parts that get overly talky, you'll want to stick it out for the nightmarish conclusion. Without spoiling it, let's just say that, like Psycho, this film manages to raise the gooseflesh with a simple (?) shot of a person sitting in a chair. Overall, The Psychopath is a very worthy member of the Psycho-imitators club, bringing a number of unique, creepy touches and stylistic flourishes to the subgenre.

Sadly, this one is very hard to find, and there's no U.S. DVD release that I'm aware of. I saw it on TCM Underground (Friday nights). At the moment, the full movie is available on YouTube (see below). Catch it before some grumpy rights-holder forces YouTube to take it down.

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Where to find it:

YouTube

A Brain is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Now Playing: The Brain (1962)

Pros: Interesting melding of a crime thriller with sci-fi; Dark and moody with eccentric characters
Cons: Wooden acting by the lead; Straight-up sci-fi / horror fans will be disappointed

I'm not sure why, but lately I've been on a living head / living brain kick. A few months ago I did a quick survey of the curious "living head" sci-fi subgenre of the '50s and '60s. Before that, I wrote about the greatly under-appreciated The Colossus of New York (1958), wherein a brilliant scientist has his brain transplanted into a robot body, resulting in some unexpected -- and cheesily fun -- consequences.

Not to keep beating a dead horse, but as science and cybernetics grind relentlessly toward that day when we can finally preserve the brain (or our living consciousness) outside of these shells we call bodies, perhaps we need to revisit that ancient mind-body debate -- what is it that truly makes us… us? Is the core of our being in the brain, with all the electrical activity that produces conscious thought (and that unique personality that is all you), or is there more to us than just that one, albeit very vital, part? Is the body also an essential part of what is you? What about the soul? Does it even exist? If it does, does it need a body? Laugh at moldy old B movies like Colossus and The Brain That Wouldn't Die all you want, but they actually attempt to address these issues in offbeat and entertaining ways.

The obscure UK-German co-production The Brain (1962) presents its own quirky take on this existential subject in its relatively spare 83 minute run time. The Brain (and its source novel, Donovan's Brain by Curt Siodmak) posits that, just as nature abhors a vacuum, the living brain abhors being bodiless. So much so, that, given time, it will develop frightening telepathic and telekinetic powers to procure the needed body. After all, what good is pure thought without the physical means to back it up? And if that pure thought just happened to belong to a powerful, implacable multimillionaire used to having his own way, you can imagine how pissed he'd be to find himself reduced to a mass of brain matter plopped into a glass jar with some electrodes attached.

In Siodmak's original 1942 novel and the best-known film adaptation, Donovan's Brain (1953; with Lew Ayres, Gene Evans and Nancy Davis), Donovan is a monster who uses his telepathic powers to carry on with his evil deeds and eliminate his enemies. The Brain (and an earlier predecessor, The Lady and the Monster, 1944) takes a different tack, wherein the disembodied magnate exercises mind control to investigate his own murder and right some wrongs (or at least that's what I gather from the synopsis -- I've never seen the 1944 adaptation).

"I ain't got no body..."

In The Brain, the Donovan character is named Max Holt. At the beginning of the film, Holt is traveling on an incredibly spacious and well-appointed private plane, doing the usual international financier thing -- barking orders at assistants and being generally grumpy. We never see Holt's face, but we do see one of his quirks in closeup -- when he's deep in thought or agitated, he drums his thumb repeatedly against anything that's handy (make a note, it will be important later).

Just as Holt begins dictating into a tape recorder, we see an exterior shot of the plane, and an explosion. Cut to the crash site, where Doctors Peter Corrie and Frank Shears (Peter van Eyck and Bernard Lee, respectively) are inspecting the scene for survivors. It seems their research lab, where they've been doing some interesting work with monkey brains, is nearby, and naturally they've been called out to the site to help (never mind that after a mid-air explosion and crash, there wouldn't be much left to help with).

Miraculously, there's enough left of Holt to scrape up and take back to the lab -- but no time to take him to the hospital (uh-huh). Just as Corrie and Shears are ready to pronounce the financier dead, they spot evidence of brain activity. The somewhat-less-than-ethical Corrie is excited by the prospect of finally being able to experiment with a human brain, while at the same time saving a life (in a manner of speaking). He persuades his decidedly reluctant surgeon colleague to help him extract the brain from Holt's completely broken and rapidly fading body. Little does he know that he'll soon be in the employ, so to speak, of the determined rich man who refuses to die.

Corrie devises a system that activates a light over the tank whenever Holt's brain is "awake." "Every thought has it's own signature," he tells his beautiful lab assistant Ella (Ellen Schwiers). That night, Corrie can't sleep. He wanders downstairs, seemingly lost in thought, and pauses over the tank holding Holt's brain. As he shuffles away in the darkened room the brain-activity light comes on, eerily illuminating the disembodied grey matter floating in the tank. Corrie soon finds himself at his desk, pondering the microphone from Holt's dictation machine that was recovered from the crash. He starts to write on a sheet of paper, but then switches the pen from his right hand to his left!

"You took his brain... what will they say when they dig him up again?"

The result is a list of names, followed by Max Holt's signature. Corrie has no recollection of writing the list. Shears points out that Holt was left handed… could telepathy be at work here? Things start getting interesting pretty quickly. Corrie is visited by a mortuary assistant (Jack MacGowran) who noticed that Holt's body was missing something rather important after its brief stay in Corrie's lab, and he tries to blackmail the scientist. Rumors swirl that an explosion brought down Holt's plane. Corrie, exhibiting more of Holt's mannerisms (including the nervous tick with the thumb), pays a visit to the tycoon's family -- daughter Anna (Anne Heywood), son Martin (Jeremy Spenser), and Holt's lawyer, Stevenson (Cecil Parker). All of their names, among others, are on the list Corrie wrote in his midnight daze. It soon becomes apparent that it's a list of suspects, and that a "dead man" is investigating his own murder through the body of the scientist who recovered his brain and is keeping it alive.

Although it was filmed in England and more than half the cast is British, this dark, moody British-German co-production is more reminiscent of the Dr. Mabuse and Edgar Wallace crime thrillers ("krimis") that were so popular in Germany in the 1960s. Peter van Eyck in the lead role of Corrie/Holt gives The Brain a decidedly Teutonic tilt: he played in several of the Dr. Mabuse films of the 1960s, including The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960), Dr. Mabuse vs. Scotland Yard (1963), and The Secret of Dr. Mabuse (1964). Unfortunately, van Eyck is pretty wooden throughout the film, thus undercutting the menace and intrigue of a character in the grip of a powerful telepathic brain. James Bond fans will immediately recognize Bernard Lee in the Frank Shears role -- that very same year he would appear as 'M' in the first Bond movie, Dr. No (and reprise the role in 9 more Bond films after that).

You'd better do everything this man tells you to --
telepathically or not!

The other stand-out cast member is Jeremy Spenser as Holt's spoiled and dissolute son Martin. When Corrie, under the influence of Holt, meets the family and Holt's lawyer for the first time, Martin glibly encourages everyone to lift a drink in celebration of his father's death. He relates that he had painted an absolutely hideous portrait of his hated authoritarian father, but was surprised when the old man insisted on displaying it prominently in his office. Later, Martin takes Corrie back to his studio where he shows him more paintings of surrealistic monsters, which he says are all portraits, of a sort, of his father:

Martin: I became a painter, because I couldn't think of anything that would annoy my father more.
Corrie: Did you succeed?
Martin: Oh yes, I succeeded. I wanted to be as unlike him as I possibly could. He was a great, busy beast of prey… so I decided to be innocently useless.

Freddie Francis, the Oscar-winning cinematographer turned horror and sci-fi film director, keeps things moving nicely in a shadowy, "Dr. Mabuse meets Donovan's Brain" fantasy world. Not long after this film, he directed a couple of decent psychological thrillers for Hammer, Paranoiac (with Oliver Reed, 1963) and Nightmare (1964). He also had a go at both Frankenstein and Dracula for Hammer (The Evil of Frankenstein, 1964 and Dracula Has Risen From the Grave, 1968). In addition, he directed some of the better Amicus horror anthologies, including Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and Tales from the Crypt (1972). (See also my post on another of Francis' creepy directorial outings, The Creeping Flesh, 1973.)

I won't go so far as to say that if you see just one adaptation of Siodmak's Donovan's Brain, this should be it. But if you're a fan of the dark, film-noirish German "krimis," your brain will thank you for tracking it down.

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Where to find it:

Trash Palace (Rare Sci-fi and Fantasy Movies)

Amazon Instant Video