Last night we saw a weird Noir from Lippert Pictures called "The Glass Tomb"(1955). John Ireland, in a rare non-sinister role, plays "Pel Pelham", an American promoter of freak shows who works and lives in England with his wife and little boy. As the movie opens, he's preparing to launch his latest spectacle: a vigil for "The Starving Man", a large Italian gent named "Sapolio" (Eric Pohlmann) who fasts for weeks at a time in front of spectators. His current record is 65 days; he promises Pelham he'll do 70 this time. He performs his starvations in a glass enclosure known as The Tomb, set up in a tent, where people buy tickets to come and watch (think of the feats of David Blaine for comparison). The problem for promoter Pelham is that he needs money to rent land for the show, so he goes to a bookie friend, a high roller he used to work for, and the guy loans him 300 bucks. The bookie asks a small favor in return. A gal is blackmailing him (it's not clear for what), and because she's a mutual friend of Pelham, the bookie asks him to go talk to her. "Ask her not to send me those letters anymore". Pelham goes to the gal's apartment, where she agrees to stop harassing the bookie. "I'm sorry, I don't know what got into me", she says. The issue, whatever it was, seems settled, and Pelham then goes downstairs in the same building to visit Sapolio the Starving Man, who lives with his wife in the apartment below. They're preparing for a party that night, to celebrate Sapolio's upcoming show, and a great feast is planned. All the fellow freaks from Pelham's sideshow circuit will be there. But Sapolio's wife discovers they are out of olives for her pasta, so he runs down to the store to grab a jar.
On the way out, he notices a man entering the upstairs apartment of the blackmailing gal, "Miss Maroni" (Tonia Bern) is her name. Sapolio doesn't get a good look at the man, but we do. He's "Harry Stanton", manager of the local circus (played by the evil-looking Geoffrey Keene, who always plays a bad guy and was in a million movies). Stanton corners and strangles Miss Maroni, then leaves her apartment and goes downstairs to the Sapolio pad and acts like nothing happened. The party commences, and everyone is having a blast. Earlier that day, Pel Pelham secured a show site for free, by talking the real estate agent into donating the land. The party is raging until the tiny piano player (Stan Little) steps out for a break. He goes upstairs to invite Miss Maroni to the party and finds her dead. The cops arrive soon after, and the plot becomes an investigation. It's not a whodunit, because we already know the culprit. It's more of a "will he get away with it", and does he have an accomplice? Well, he does not, but he does have an obnoxious man - a circus agent - who tries to blackmail him, because he knows that Sapolio saw someone entering the apartment, and he puts two and two together and figures it was Stanton, who arrived late to the party. This blackmailer keeps pushing his luck until he turns up dead later on.
But it isn't because of the blackmail. Stanton was prepared to pay him the money. It's because the blackmailer took things a step too far and kidnapped Pel Pelham's wife (Honor Blackman). He takes her for a joyride and tells her to tell her husband to lay off, because by now, Pelham is cooperating with the police, and if they catch Stanton, it will mean no more money for the blackmailer. This is all tightly wound around the carnival atmosphere of The Starving Man, who's later found dead in his Glass Tomb, the victim of a poisoned piece of ham, which somebody gave him through the mail slot. But who would sneak him a piece of poisoned food? Mr. Stanton, that's who. He can't have Sapolio talking to the police.
It's all stylishly done, with exceptional Noir photography, a great set for The Starving Man, and good 1950s English locations. The only problem is that the motivations of the killer and his blackmailers are not spelled out very clearly. John Ireland is great, as is Honor Blackman in a small role as his wife. There are characters galore, but the movie focuses on the colorful personalities of the circus people rather than on the intricacies of the plot. It is intricate, and there's a ton of stuff going on, but not enough is done to explain things, so at the end, when the killer is caught (after a ruse involving the alleged death of Sapolio), you are left wondering "why did he kill the girl in the first place? He's not the guy who was getting blackmailed." That would be the bookie at the beginning of the movie. I had to read an IMDB comment to find out that the killer was in cahoots with the blackmailing gal. He was her partner, and he killed her to prevent her from talking, after Pelham visited her and she agreed to stop blackmailing.
A script this complex needs more than an hour to be worked out, so we never get the exposition needed to fully understand what's going on. Still, the Joseph Losey atmosphere more than makes up for it (some say he directed, uncredited), along with John Ireland's performance and the wide variety of supporting players. Two Big Thumbs Up, then, for "The Glass Tomb". It's highly recommended, the picture is razor sharp and wide-screen and everything is excellent as long as you don't mind the confusion. ////
As for the previous night's film, how about a Sci-Fi Western? In "Ghost Patrol"(1936), Tim McCoy plays a government agent who's trying to find out what's causing treasury planes to crash over Chatsworth Park. We in the audience know it's a Death Ray, an EMP pulse coming from a scientist's lab below his house. Shades of Bela Lugosi in "The Invisible Ray", which also came out in 1936. In this movie, the scientist invented it for the military to use against enemy aircraft in the event of war, but some crooks have taken him hostage and are forcing him to use the pulse to stop the engines of treasury planes. They do this to Tim McCoy and he bails out before his plane crashes near Rocky Peak. After he gathers his parachute, he sees the crooks riding over to examine the wreckage of his plane, in which they find some valuable gubment bonds.
Next we see McCoy driving a motorcar with his sidekick "Henry" (James P. Burtis) in tow. They come across a pretty lass (Claudia Dell) standing by the roadside on Devonshire Street (which was a dirt road in those days), and after she shows him her hitchhiking technique, he gives her a ride to the Brent house, where her father the scientist (Lloyd Ingraham) lives. At first, McCoy doesn't trust her or her Dad, because he figures Dad is shooting the planes down of his own accord.
But then in town he meets some henchmen, who tell him to get out of town by sundown or else. Now he figures something is up at the Brent house and doubles back. Though the direction is brisk, the writing is poor in this film and nothing is developed. There's no memorable villain. More should've been done with the scientist and his death ray, but too much time is spent riding around in the Chatsworth Hills, in cars and on horseback. It still gets Two Solid Thumbs up, because Tim McCoy is great as always (and he's becoming another of our favorites), and there's a good finale when he chases the crooks into a mine shaft. But yeah, a great premise needed some much better writing. It isn't one of Sam Newfield's better efforts, but if you're like me, it's still worth seeing, because it's Tim McCoy, it's Chatsworth, and it's Sam Newfield.
I'll take that over a modern movie any day. ////
That's all I know for tonight. I hope your week is off to a good start. I'm listening to National Health and reading my ELP book. I send you Tons of Love, as always. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
No comments:
Post a Comment