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Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 13 |
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FORGOTTEN HORROR FILMS OF THE GOLDEN AGE #4
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Claude Rains' first film
after 'The Invisible Man'
of TheColumnists.com
After his stunning screen debut as "The Invisible Man" in 1933, Universal naturally wanted to bring Claude Rains back in another horror picture because he seemed so likely to be the next Boris Karloff. then the No. 1 name in horror.
But Rains was not so desperate for money, even in the midst of a world-wide economic collapse we now call The Great Depression, that he was willing to burden his future as an actor with the label "horror man." The distinguished stage actor who had been an acting instructor at England's Royal Academy--two of his students were Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud--had made up his mind to do serious film work in a variety of character roles, which he succeeded in doing over his long career, earning four Academy Award nominations in the process.
But for his very first picture after "The Invisible Man," Rains went back to his native England and took on the starring role in a very offbeat 1934 thriller with occult trappings called "The Clairvoyant," known as "The Evil Mind" upon its release in America the following year.
"The Clairvoyant" is a film that's been around the video bins for just about as long as the home video market has exisited. But the crummy condition of the tapes, most of them chopped up versions of the American version, has sort of wrecked the reputation of the film, which is the best "horror" picture Rains made until he finally agreed to play Lon Chaney's father in Universal's "The Wolf Man" in 1941, then came back to do "The Phantom of the Opera" in color for Universal in 1943.
There are all kinds of good reasons to
round up a copy of "The Clairvoyant" now and help rescue
it from the ranks of the Forgotten Horror Films of the Golden
Age.
I suggest you go the Sinister Cinema website (www.sinistercinema.com)
and order their version of the film, which is a very fine copy
of the British original made by Gainsborough Picures and released
by the Gaumont-British distribution company.
Claude Rains was one of the truly great character actors of cinema history. He had a magnificent voice and it's on full display in "The Clairvoyant" in his role as Maximus, a phony mind-reader who works cheap music halls until he suddenly--and inexplicably--develops a real ability to predict horrible disasters before they happen.
Normally, Maximus gets tips from his wife, Renee, about the items she gets from audience members, then asks Maximus to identify while he stands blindfolded on the stage. They use a system of code words that lets him know what she's holding even though he can't actually see it.
Playing Renee is the beautiful American actress Fay Wray, who had just become the world's first "scream queen" after her screeching heroine roles in "King Kong," "\Doctor X," "The Mystery of the Wax Museum," "Vampire Bat" and "The Most Dangerous Game." Wray was simiply exquisite in 1934, though she's a brunette and not the familiar blonde most of us remember from "Kong." This is a great chance to see her at her peak in a film most of you probably never have seen before.
In the story, based on the 1932 novel of the same name by Ernest (Ernst) Lothar, Renee accidentally gets locked out of the theater during her husband's performance one night and the clueless Maximum lurches around the stage, tripping over things and making a royal ass of himself while the crowd hoots and hollers "fake." Taking pity on him, a young audience member named Christine (Jane Baxter), who has her own clairvoyant abilities, links her mind to his--and suddenly Maximus looks into the future and sees a pending train wreck that will kill many innocent passengers.
Boarding the train himself, Maximus pulls the emergency cable, stops the train and then convinces a large number of passengers to get off with him and his family. They, of course, survive the crash that comes later, killing scores of people. Maximus gets huge headlines for this prediction, which he made on stage the night before, and is soon a theater headliner who also writes a column of predictions in the newspaper that the mysterious Christine's father publishes in London.
The film takes some unusual directions after that. Maximus' loyal wife is soon jealous of the time he's spending with the lovely Christine, but she has figured out he can't make his predictions unless Christine is around, so....what can she do but let them spend time together?
The major twist in the film comes when Maximus predicts a mine disaster that will kill hundreds of English miners. Corporate bosses shame the men into going to work anyway and when the disaster does occur, criminal charges are brought against Maximus on grounds his prediction and personal pleading with the men had created a panic that caused the mistakes that led to the mine collapse.
"The Clairvoyant" moves rapidly and is a beautifully crafted film, much better than most British films of the early 1930s. It was directed by veteran British filmmaker Maurice Elvey, who would film the spectacular science-fiction film "The Tunnel" the following year--known as "Transatlantic Tunnel" in the U.S.--and use sequences that look very much like the mining sequences in "The Clairvoyant."
The film also was written for the screen by a gifted pair of writers--Charles Bennett and Bryan Edgar Wallace. Bennett was one of the great screenwriters of the 1930s and the favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, whose films "Blackmail," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "The 39 Steps" and "Foreign Correspondent" all had scripts by Bennett. Bennett also wrote many non-Hitchcock classics, including the 1937 "King Solomon's Mines," the great 1938 comedy "The Young in Heart," Cecil B. DeMille's 1942 "Reap the Wild Wind" with John Wayne, Orson Welles' 1949 "Black Magic" and that great 1950 film noir "Where Danger Lives" with Robert Mitchum.
Bryan Edgar Wallace was the son of England's famous mystery/crime master Edgar Wallace and would remain a specialist in mystery/horror films well into the 1960s when he was writing films for Italy's gore king, Dario Argento.
The cinematography of Glen MacWilliams is also superb, concentrating on very tight closeups that make viewing "The Clairvoyant" on your TV set a special treat. Rains gets some truly memorable closeups when he goes into his clairvoyant mode, which make the goings-on really spooky.
"The Clairvoyant" also gives Americans a rare chance to see the beautiful and talented Jane Baxter in the showy role of Christine. Baxter was a major talent on the British stage and is best remembered there as the original heroine of "Dial M For Murder," playing opposite Michael Redgrave in the theater run.
But "The Clairvoyant" can be enjoyed as just a brisk little thriller with a wicked twist ending, even if you're not into the finer points of the film's pedigree. It's most definitely a forgotten film that we ought to start remembering soon.
©2009 by Ron Miller. This column first posted March 2, 2009.
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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