A Study In Terror (1965)

It's 1888 in London, and Jack the Ripper has begun his serial killings of Whitechapel Prostitutes. Fortunately, a mysterious persons sends a set of surgical instruments only missing a post mortem scalpel, and carrying the crest of the noble family of the Carfaxes, from Whitechapel to consulting detective Sherlock Holmes (John Neville) and his associate Doctor Watson (Donald Houston), enticing the pair to take an interest in the murders. Why Holmes needs an invitation to investigate this type of public serial killings is anybody's guess.

Soon enough, Holmes pokes into the complicated net of relationships between the disgraced heir of the Carfaxes, his prostitute wife, shady bar owners, and a charitable doctor trying to change Whitechapel one religious hymn and moralizing speech after the other.

It will take all the detective's powers of deduction to catch Jack the Ripper.

If you go by Sherlock Holmes movies and novels, Moriarty wasn't the detective's only arch enemy, at least if you take the number of stories, novels, and - to a lesser degree - films, concerning Holmes's investigation of the Ripper murders into account. As far as I know, the first of the literary Ripper hunts took place in a German Holmes pulp novel in 1907, with A Study in Terror being the first (of only two) movies taking care of the case.

The film at hand (competently if not remarkably well directed by James Hill) does not keep too closely to the facts of the actual Ripper murders, and instead opts for somewhat cleaner killings of somewhat more attractive looking prostitutes taking place in front of the background of a Victorian age that seems half interested in veracity and half in looking good on screen. That's not a criticism of the film, mind you, for a more realistic treatment of the times would really leave no believable place for Holmes and Watson in it. One could, of course, have moral qualms about taking a real, horrible series of murders and making a piece of merry entertainment out of it, but there's also an undeniable attraction of mixing a historic truth (and mystery) of the Victorian age like these murders with one of the age's great fictions that overrides all moral concerns for hard-hearted me.

For a film about a truly gruesome series of murders that is at least superficially (that is to say, as long as everything stays photogenic and just a little quaint) interested in showing the horrors of poverty of the Victorian age, A Study is a pretty cheerful little film. There are some relatively graphic (for the time and place) murder scenes with very pretty Technicolor blood, but the film's tone is that of a merry little adventure where none of the deaths and none of the emotions are meant to have much of an emotional impact on the audience.

The feeling of watching a friendly lark is only further emphasised by the way Neville and Houston interpret their iconic characters. Neville's Holmes is clearly in the detective business to have some fun, visibly delighting in impressing his friend Watson (and here, these two characters are played as friends, quite unlike the Rathbone/Bruce pairing where Holmes is the kind of man who drags a mentally disabled guy around to look cleverer in comparison) with his deductions - a bit like a stage magician - and having the time of his life annoying officials, gentlemen and the lower classes alike; it's actually a very human approach to the character. Houston's Watson can best be described as "cuddly". He surely isn't brilliant, or even more than averagely intelligent, but seems the kind of guy who has his heart in the right place, typically giving emotional grounding to Holmes's intellect as will be the role of Watsons (poor bastards) forevermore.

As a whole, A Study in Terror is a fun little mystery that doesn't set out to explore any depths of idea or emotion, but that takes itself not seriously in such a pleasant manner it would take a much grumpier man than me not to be entertained watching it.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,mystery,james hill,john neville,donald houston

Unearthly Stranger (1963? 1964?)

Panicked and sweating scientist Dr. Mark Davidson (John Neville) speaks his terrible story onto a tape machine.

Davidson is a British scientist working on a way to transport humans to other planets through the power of their minds, whichever doctorate you may need for that sort of thing. While Davidson is on holiday in Switzerland, his project leader dies under mysterious circumstances that seem pretty unnatural for natural causes. Davidson is made the dead man's successor. What the security chief of the project, Major Clarke (Patrick "Lestrade" Newell), fails to mention to Davidson, but tells the scientist's boss and friend Professor Lancaster (Philip Stone), is the fact that this wasn't the first death connected with the project, or rather, related projects in the USA and the Soviet Union have taken the same losses, under the same circumstances. One might think someone or something does not want humanity to reach for the stars. And why is it that the dead man's blood contains a substance that can only be found in outer space? Davidson soon enough finds out that his job may be a death sentence, but, being British and all, he keeps comparatively calm and carries on.

During his Swiss holiday - which must have been pretty epic - Davidson also met and married his new wife Julie (Gabriella Licudi). Something is a bit strange about her, though: not only is her body language exceedingly weird, but one night, Davidson realizes that she sleeps with her eyes open, doesn't breathe and doesn't blink. And, as is revealed when Major Clarke investigates her background, she also does not seem to exist. Unlike the audience, Davidson isn't quite ready to realize the obvious at that point. It will, however, come to him sooner or later; perhaps too late.

Unearthly Stranger is a decidedly British production (as in, doesn't contain a visible monster and nobody who is square-jawed) directed by John Krish whose filmography suggests your typical journeyman film-maker to me, and whose work here shows a clear noir influence in his staging of emotional scenes as well as in his use of shadow and light. It's a fine little low budget SF/horror movie that convinces through a clever script, some excellent acting, and Krish's slightly melodramatic yet moody direction.

In style and content, the film has a lot in common with some of the anthology TV shows of the 60s, especially the original Outer Limits, sharing these shows' ability to take a silly basic idea and elevate it by treating it seriously and with an eye on contemporary anxieties, as a proper piece of SF horror should. Rex Carlton's script may play fast and loose with its science, it does, however, show a sure hand juggling the film's themes - the paranoia of the "they are among us" invasion movie, some surprising (in a film of this place and time) barbs in the direction of the classism of UK society, and the fear of (certain) men of women (especially well realized in the film's brilliantly creepy last shots). There's also a bit of the old "alien woman gets hit with human emotions" trope that wasn't much better in the 60s than it is today, but the film handles that part well enough not to annoy.

It's also only fair to praise the actors for helping the film work. John ("Sherlock Holmes"/"Well-manicured Man") Neville's performance is quite intense, selling the moments of paranoia and distrust as well as those of tenderness, while Licudi convinces by using a body language just alien enough to neither be too ridiculous nor too normal.

All in all, Unearthly Stranger is exactly the sort of film I'm happy too stumble upon: clever, cheap yet stylish, and pretty damn unknown.

 

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