Grip of the Strangler (1958)

Truly Dreadful Film

the audience applauded

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This came on the Heels of the Hammer Explosion that Ignited a New Interest in Horror Movies. What Surprises in this Low-Budget Find is just how Violent and Sexy it is.The Killings are a Two-Step Ritual by the Demented Strangler...a Squeeze to the Throat and Multiple Stabbings with a Scalpel that can be Disturbing (especially in 1958). Gruesome Stuff.The Serial Murders also are Sexually Charged Female Teasing with Various Stages of Undress Unleashing the "Monster" Inside the Insane Schizo/Psycho.A Buxom Can-Can Gal in a Low-Cut Dress gets a Frontal Dousing of Champagne, for Example. The Knife is Seen On Screen as the Phallic Symbol it is.Karloff is Still on His Game and gives an Energetic Soft/Hard Performance that Showcases His Talent. The Supporters don't come off as well with Anthony Dawson Rising Above the Rest.Overall, it's a High-Caliber Retro Revival of the Universal/Lewton Years with a Distinctive Direction towards the Modern. An Underrated Movie that is Essential Viewing for Horror and Karloff Fans. Others Might Find it Better than They Expect.

Since having heard his name mentioned in Tim Burton's wonderful film Ed Wood,I have always been wondering when I should take a look at the work of actor Boris Karloff.As I was recently checking up titles that were featured in a sale on Amazon Uk,I was surprised to find this very interesting sounding Karloff mystery Horror film being sold at a fantastic low price,which led to me deciding that I would at last come face to face with a horror icon:The Plot:Heading on his way to be hanged for murdering a number of prostitutes and showgirls,Edward Styles yells out that he did not kill the women,and that his conviction is a miscarriage of justice.With Styles pleads being ignored as the last desperate words of a madman,he is hanged and then taken straight to the prisoners burial ground.Shortly before the coffin is nailed shut,a stranger suddenly appears and quickly chucks a knife (Styles alleged murder weapon) into the coffin.20 years later:A distinguish Victorian novelist and social reformer called James Rankin starts to take a look at the huge collection of cold/closed cases that the police have in their archive.Taking a peek at the files,Rankin suddenly experience's his interest being oddly drawn to the Edward "The Haymarket Strangler" Styles murder case,which he begins to suspect was carried out without every avenue having been looked at.Interviewing some of the showgirls/prostitutes that still work in Haymarket's most popular night time destination,Rankin's starts to get a strong suspicion that the long lost murder weapon could hold the key to the case.Searching high and low to find any trace of the knife,Rankin soon begins to suspect that the murder weapon may have been secretly buried with its most infamous owner.View on the film:Although the screenplay for the film by John Croydon was written super quick so that he could also write the script for 1959's First Man Into Space,I found the first half of the film to be a very enjoyable Victorian era Gothic Mystery.With Croydon having Rankin go on a "tour" which allows him to meet all of the dames and dirt bags who occupy the seedier side of the city.Along with including a small amount of fun smut from the showgirls,Croydon also does well at having Rankin's obsessive side slowly become more dominating as the film goes on.Disapointingly after the terrific build up of the first half,the second half of the movie turns all of that promise in to a real mess,which despite featuring a great performance from Karloff as the "gentle" Rankin,is let down by Croydon and director Robert Day (who would later direct the 1965 Hammer Horror She) pushing all of the wonderful foggy atmosphere right to the side,and replace it with a Hunchback like monster who,instead of looking like a terrifying monster,just looks (and acts) like a man with poor make up who has a deep desire to get closer to some beautiful dames.

This film bears the appropriate scars of the time :it begins with the obligatory prologue in the past which is perhaps the best scene: a man is hanged ,and people gather around the scaffold for the show.Later ,Rankin (Boris Karloff) is convinced that they hanged the wrong man and his hard task is to clear his name and to find the real culprit.Of course things will soon turn wrong.This is actually Stevenson's "Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde" revised and updated.The split personality has been used too many times to be really absorbing.The only relatively endearing character is the wife who has always known but...

"The Haunted Strangler" has been compared to "Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde" and to the Val Lewton horror productions at RKO, and it's easy to see why. Boris Karloff is Rankin, a novelist with a devoted wife and loving step-daughter. Twenty years after the hanging of the notorious Strangler, Rankin develops a theory that the hanged man wasn't guilty at all, but that it was the pathologist in the case, Tennant, who half-strangled and butchered those five women. With the help of a psychiatric intern, and against the advice of his friend Burke (Anthony Dawson), the police detective, Rankin investigates the case and finds evidence incriminating Tennant. Shortly after the Strangler's execution, Tennant was found to be suffering from fits of paralysis and violent outbursts, followed by amnesia for the events. Tennant was ensconced in a mental hospital but escaped with the help of a nurse who had fallen in love with him. About half-way through the film we learn that Rankin himself was Tennant, and his now loving wife was the nurse who helped him. But by this time Rankin has begun to suffer again the murderous paralytic rages and the amnesia that follows.It gets kind of confused somewhere around here. Rankin's recent spells seem to be triggered by the scalpel that was missing from Tennant's collection of surgical instruments. When he grasps the scalpel, Rankin turns into a twisted wreck and he murders without reason. Poor Karloff's face wears a prosthetic or two that twists it all out of symmetry and gives him a look that is at once demonic and full of pain, as if he were suffering the grandfather of all abscessed teeth. On top of that his hair gets messed up. If he first set out to find Tennant guilty, he now must run around trying to convince others that he himself is Tennant.Well, Jeykll and Hyde, yes. Tennant/Rankin is an upright man, no question about it, and his paralytic self is a raving, murderous animal who leaps about to a dissonant, tinkling score. The ego and the id. But Val Lewton, no. Everything in this film is overdone. The acting is in-your-face and not always convincing. The performance of the Newgate turnkey is positively painful. Rankin's butchery isn't as explicit as it would become in the slasher films but it is on-screen butchery. And there is an unnecessary scene of a prisoner being whipped at Newgate Prison. The whipper is a cliché -- a big, fat, bald, sweating sadist. The dialog is entirely functional, without the spark of any inspiration, and the period detail perfunctory. The direction is of the same quality, everything spelled out as if for an audience of children. The scenes in the madhouse are filled with the hoots and howls of the insane so that the hospital sounds more like a zoo. (Alas, this was likely to be too often true before the chemical straight jackets of phenothiazines were discovered in the 1950s. That was the second revolution in mental health. The first was the unchaining of the maniacs at La Bicetre by the humanitarian Philippe Pinel. Before that, they weren't zoos but infernos.) But then -- everybody seems to shout. They run, they shout, they wave their arms and disfigure their faces with emotions unless, like the intern, they are utter blanks.In the end, I felt sorry for Karloff. The actor, not the character. He was seventy or thereabouts when this was shot and, as good natured as William Henry Pratt was, he probably joked about the role. Still, thirty years beyond Frankenstein and he's playing another monster.