Last night's movie was "The Dark Tower"(1943), a British thriller about a hypnotist (Herbert Lom) who comes to work for a circus. Lom plays "Mr. Torg", a secretive man of unspecified European extraction. The circus is in financial straits. "Phil Danton" (Ben Lyon), the owner who doubles as the ringmaster, is about to lay the performers off when Torg walks into the Big Top. He has a pitch for Danton : "What you need is a draw. Something unique that will bring people in. Something they've never seen before. I can give you that". He wants to work with the tightrope walker.
"Mary" (Anne Crawford) normally performs using a parasol for balance. "I can do the same thing through hypnosis", Torg tells Danton. "My mind will become her mind. She'll maintain her balance by a transferred force of thought. It will add an extra element of danger to her act. I promise you'll see an increase in ticket sales". Danton thinks it's a great idea, and Mary is willing to try it if it's safe. Torg promises her it is. Less pleased, though, is Mary's trapeze partner, "Tom Danton" (David Farrar), Phil's brother. He and Mary are unofficially engaged. "I don't want her risking her life with some Mesmerist"!
Danton's the boss, however, so Torg is brought in and he transforms the act into a success. The audience thrills to the sight of Mary gliding down the high wire unaided by a balance apparatus. Word gets around and the shows sell out. Now Torg demands a share of the business. Phil Danton agrees to make him an equal partner, which infuriates not only his brother Tom but also another performer, the Lady Sharpshooter. She believes Torg is evil and is out to destroy the circus, using Mary as his instrument. This isn't quite accurate, as Torg's now in love with Mary, but what he is out to do is to pull her away from Tom, using hypnosis as his rope. Torg's motive doesn't matter to the Sharpshooter. She threatens him to his face that he'd better quit.
It's an excellent set-up that combines the supernatural aspect of mentalism with hard-boiled revenge. Herbert Lom, who is best known for his roles as "Inspector Dreyfus" in several Pink Panther movies, is great as the spooky, sullen Torg, whose magnetism enthralls everyone around him, save Tom Danton and the angry Lady Sharpshooter. The hypnotism and circus context adds an eerie quality to an otherwise straightforward suspense plot. Some performance scenes run long, like the dancing in "Jungle Street Girls", but it's less obtrusive here. Maybe five minutes could be cut from the running length of 93, but it will not detract from your enjoyment of this unusual story. Two Big Thumbs Up for "The Dark Tower". It would make a great double feature with our next film, which also involves extrasensory perception.......
I'm talking about "The Clairvoyant"(1935), which we watched the night before going to Disneyland. It stars Claude Rains and Faye Wray as a man-and-wife mind reading team. He plays "The Great Maximus"; she is his prompter. Really they're a couple of charlatans who use memorised verbal cues to fool their audience. I was about five minutes in when I realized I'd seen it before, sometime in the last 19 months since we began watching movies on Youtube. I'm surprised I didn't remember the title, given that I've seen it that recently, but then again we've watched close to 600 films in that time, so maybe it's not so surprising that it slipped my mind.
Anyway, it's a doggone good flick. Rains and Wray fake their act to begin with. Then one night, a Mysterious Woman is in the audience : "Christine" (Jane Baxter) is the daughter of a wealthy publisher. She possesses the ability to send. In this way, she becomes an engine for Rains. Her power of thought transference turns him into a real clairvoyant. She continues to be present at his shows and soon he's predicting things like the winner of the English Derby. He becomes famous but the press has a field day when he's wrong. Once a charlatan, always a charlatan, right? Fay Wray is feeling neglected because her husband is spending all his time with Christine. He swears it's strictly for business reasons. "We need her, don't you see"? But Fay knows that Christine is in love with Claude and will steal him first chance she gets.
Or maybe not.
Rains ends up on trial, for causing panic with one of his predictions. He foresees a mining disaster in which a dozen of the miners are trapped. Many in the press, and some in the legal sphere, believe he caused the situation by preconditioning the workers with his prediction. The lawyers theorize that Rains made the miners nervous and and therefore they became distracted. The result was an inattention to their jobs that caused a flood in an underground tunnel. At the trial, Rains' spooky telepathic reception is presented by the prosecutor as something evil, just like Mr. Torg's hypnotic talent in "The Dark Tower" (see above). But the lawyers don't account for the willing participation of Christine. Is she the real clairvoyant, and Rains just her mouthpiece? More importantly, will Rains let go of her hold on him - an altruistic hold to be sure - in order to save his marriage? Fay Wray will eventually approach Christine for her help. "I know you love my husband but he's about to go to prison. You led him down this road. If you love him lead him off it". The trial takes a turn from there.
"The Clairvoyant" is filmed and acted in the mid-30s style of affected elegance. Fay Wray is noble as Rene, Rains' loyal wife, who steps aside when Christine comes into his life but never deserts him when the chips are down. As in "The Dark Tower", the dialogue delves below the surface into the subject of ESP, how it works and how, in this case, Christine's natural ability for thought transfer is absorbed by Rains, who was merely an impostor before they came in contact. It turns out they have compatible wavelengths ("she's like an engine for him", says someone), which also causes her to fall in love with him. He falls for her also, but in the end.......well, I won't tell you. Watch the movie for yourself and find out. It has the emotional/romantic context of a melodrama, with the eerie overlay of a suspense thriller. I give it Two Big Thumbs Up and highly recommend it on a double bill with "The Dark Tower". If you can't watch 'em both in one night, watch 'em two nights in a row. Good stuff for Halloween week. ////
That's all I've got for the moment. I'm back here at Pearl's, housesitting for a couple of weeks and helping to clear out the house. I'm also working like mad on my book, and because of the subject it's a great place to write. I've been asked "is it sad to be there"?, and the answer is yes, in the sense of the house being emptied. Pearl lived here for so long - 68 years - and many of her belongings were in place all that time. They became part of the spirit of her life, as the house did. Maybe that's why they call them "belongings", not because they belong to you, but because they belong with you. So yeah, that part's sad. But Pearl's still here, and I can feel her. I have a lot of experience with The Other Side and it just feels comfortable to me, and comforting to know that it's really All One Big Side with souls in different forms. Some of us are still in physical form (with our spirits inside our bodies), and others have left their bodies and are living as pure spirits! But they're all still here, still with us, and I find that incredibly reassuring. Earth is included in Heaven. Eternal life is real, continuing in another form, and we're connected by love and the unbreakable desire to remain together. I learned that when my parents crossed over (I like that phrase better than "passed away"), and I am feeling it again now with Pearl.
I have just begun reading the new Stephen King, "Billy Summers", about a hit man who takes on one last job. I'll be looking for previously unseen scary movies for us to watch this week, so stay tuned and have a wonderful day. I send you Tons of Love as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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