Last night, in "Pit of Darkness"(1961), 'Richard Logan" (William Franklyn) lies unconcho in a WW2 bomb crater late one London night. A street kid, thinking he's dead, gives him a shake just in case. Logan wakes up. "Guess I got coshed..." he says, meaning conked on the head. "Yes, ya did, "says the kiddo. "I saw it, thought ya wuz done for. Two men standin' over ya, one tall, one short and stout. They knocked ya a good one. Are ya sure yer alroit?" "Yes, thanks." Logan is sore, but okay. He walks home, checking his watch, and when he enters his house, his wife says, "Richard! You're hurt! Where've you been for the last three weeks?"
Three weeks? All he can remember is going to his business office that morning. "That was this morning, wasn't it dear?" "No, it was three weeks ago! I even hired a private detective to look for you."
Richard has amnesia and can't remember the last three weeks of his life. Sound familiar?
His wife "Julie" (Moira Redmond) is at first suspicious. She thinks he's got another woman. "Does this look like another woman?" he says, showing her the lump on his head. Still, she won't let the matter go, and it gets worse when, while she's disputing his account, a woman does call, someone named Mavis, asking for Richard. Wife Julie is now very upset. She calls his doctor, a red herring character who never quite adds up. At first, you can't tell if they're trying to gaslight Richard and take advantage of him, which is easy to do to a person suffering from amnesia, if that sounds familiar also.
When a person knows they have amnesia, and senses they've been in an unusual situation, that person sets out to uncover the truth, especially when people are trying to gaslight and otherwise steer them in the opposite direction. Julie has no experience with this kind of stuff, so plot-wise it's natural that she's confused, but her mistrust of Richard is also a red herring. He's a loyal husband who has never given her any reason to suspect another woman.
The amnesia plot takes up the first 30 minutes of the movie, and though actual total amnesia of a three week period is infinitely more mentally and emotionally devastating than portrayed, and fucking evil beyond measure to do to someone deliberately, the filmmakers do a good job in showing Logan's frustration and his self-reliance in trying to reconstruct his memory through brief flashes of recollection. The recovery from amnesia is brilliantly depicted through audio triggers, like voice recognition and the remembrance of specific phrases, which is exactly what happens, in part. What also happens here is that his doctor tries to "explain" amnesia to him, but as anyone who's been though it knows, if you haven't experienced it, you have no idea (to quote Jeremy Irons). No doctor can explain it. Many doctors are self-important assholes anyway (not all, but many), and the amnesiac knows better than they do, which the movie also depicts to a tee.
The amnesia stuff, though generalized and not nearly as frustrating (and almost soul-destroying) as in real life, is better shown than in any movie we've seen thus far, because of Logan's isolation due to his memory loss, the people taking advantage of him, and most of all, his relentless determination to get his memory back, come hell or high water.
Once the crime plot gets going, we learn why he was missing for three weeks, and it has to do with the fact that he's a designer of safes. He knows how they're made, how their complex locks work, even the most sophisticated ones, and because he himself designs them. he can take apart a safe's lock piece by piece, and I shouldn't tell you any more, but a gang of crooks are aware of his expertise, and have tricked him into helping them with a jewel robbery. Now, with his amnesia, he worries that he's killed someone and doesn't remember it.
Wife Julie finally offers a clue having to do with a secretary at his office, and his phony-baloney doctor offers a passage from Shakespeare, suggesting the key to Richard's memory will be found within it's words. But how he knows its pertinence to the robbery is never explained. The heist sequence is good stuff, but it takes a back seat to the theme of marital trust (husband/wife redemption) and the amnesia plot, which is the major reason to see this movie.
When you've had amnesia, especially when it was deliberately administered to take your memory away so you won't remember what a bunch of rotten bastards did to you, you will spend your whole life trying to get it back. That's what this movie shows.
Two Huge Thumbs Up. The picture is very good. ////
Now, here's a different type of subject matter for you. We've seen plenty of Navy movies over the years, and you may even be able to think of a few involving the Coast Guard, but how about a Coast Guard specialty rank known as a bar pilot? That's the job of Johnny Weissmuller in our previous night's picture, "Swamp Fire"(1946). A bar pilot is a Coast Guard Captain stationed at the Louisiana delta who guides, or "pilots", cargo ships into the delta from the choppy waters of the Gulf of Mexico, up into the Mississippi River. The reason he's there is because of the numerous and dangerous sand bars that dot the delta; hence the name Bar Pilot. He knows the waters, knows how to guide the ships through the maze of sand bars. It's like sailing through a minefield. Sometimes there's heavy fog. "Captain Johnny Duval" (Weissmueller) is the best bar pilot there is. Having grown up in the delta, he knows the waters by heart.
But he's returning from war service, where he captained a destroyer in the Pacific and was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. He lost his crew, and, it is insinuated, his nerve. Now he's back home, psychologically hobbled, and working as a rowboat operator, taking people across the swamp. This is how he meets "Janet Hilton" (Virginia Grey), the arrogant, entitled daughter of land baron "P.T. Hilton" (Pierre Watkin), who has just purchased a huge tract of swampland that includes the duck hunting and lobster-trapping ground of local Cajuns, who've used it for decades. Hilton has put up "No Tresspassing" signs all over the swamp on land the locals rightly see as their own.
A romantic triangle or quadrangle is inserted between Johnny and "Toni Rousseau" (Carol Thurston), a local Cajun girl, and trapper "Mike Kalavich" (Buster Crabbe, doing a decent Cajun accent). The fourth member of the quadrangle is Janet Hilton, who wants Johnny Duval, but knows he's really in love with Toni, and so makes plans to cross her out of the picture. Mike Kalavich also lusts after Toni. Nobody really loves Janet, though she's beautiful, because she's also heartless. Johnny gets his bar piloting nerve back when he has to take over the wheel from a seasick captain. But then, another cargo merchant insists he pilot his boat through a pea soup fog and the guy dies and Johnny quits again, to go to work on land as an enforcer for P.T. Hilton's swamp property. Now the locals see Johnny as a traitor. The plot becomes a potboiler, and as Mike gets drunk at the local cafe owned and tended by a bat-wielding Willem Dafoe lookalike, he starts talking about how he's "a-gonna killa Johnny," not only for his jealousy over Toni Rousseau, but because Johnny is security-guarding Hilton's newly-purchased swampland, and Mike, who has trapped lobsters there all his life, is now considered a poacher.
Heavy drama ensues. At one point, Johnny Weissmuller has to wrestle a gator who's trying to make lunch out of Toni. I didn't care for this scene; the gator's just bein' a gator, why kill him?, and it later turns into a grudge match between the two Olympic champion swimmers, Buster Crabbe and Johnny, both of whom were also Tarzan. Johnny was the better Tarzan, but Buster is the better overall actor, quite convincing here as the resentful backwoodsman Mike. He sets fire to the swamp at the end, hence the movie's title. The plot is all over the map, and would've been better if they'd focused on the bar piloting, but it's still an interesting and different type of story that rates Two Bigs. The picture is so-so at best, soft to very soft, and damaged in places, but still very watchable. Highly recommended for its unconventional storyline. ////
And that's all I've got and we're all caught up. My blogging music is "Mr. Fantasy" by Traffic, my late night is still "Siroy, the King of Persia" by Handel. I also just downloaded an audio e-book from the Libe called "Skinwalkers at the Pentagon" (e-book cause it's the only format available), and it's a mindblower. If you are a fan of the Skinwalker Ranch phenomenon, it's highly recommended. I send you Tons of Love, as always.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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