Something Creeping in the Dark (1971)

It was a dark and stormy night.  Ten jerks find themselves in an old, dark house, and weird things start to occur.  This is the premise for Mario Colucci’s Something Creeping in the Dark (aka Qualcosa Striscia nel Buio aka Shadows in the Dark), and this set up, if nothing else, is one of the most clichéd of the horror and mystery genres.  The reason is obvious.  Storms act as visual portents, bad omens of things to come.  They also give dramatic tension to scenes, because the characters are usually a bit stressed from the effects of the storm (the dangers of driving, being stuck out of doors in the rain, etcetera).  Maybe they bicker more than usual.  Maybe they’re a bit more anxious or cranky.  But, assuredly, they reveal themselves, because the strain and tumult of the tempest makes them forget their normal polite facades.  The director opens this film with his characters driving through the rain, and many shots are obscured by it, keeping the viewer off kilter, never quite sure of what they are seeing while still being recognizable enough.  Like the characters, the audience becomes embroiled in the restlessness of the environment in this way.

Storms also act as a means to gather a disparate group in one location and see what happens when things go south.  Here, the characters wind up in the manse of the late Lady Sheila Marlowe (a clear reference to Christopher Marlowe, the author of Doctor Faustus, played in portraiture only by Loredana Nusciak), a place that looks as ornately musty yet still kind of like a medieval dungeon as any ever put to film.  Rather cleverly, the film gives us an Agatha Christie-esque layout, and the expectation is that any oddities that happen will be explained away by the end as the doings of a human.  It’s a classic weird pulp framework, those stories that, essentially, became the formula for every episode of Scooby Doo (and quite a few gialli).  However, Colucci takes a sharp right turn and brings the actual supernatural into the mix, and the film plays both sides of the fence up until its conclusion, even while it tells us flat out that a specter is involved.  This is done by the introduction of Spike (Farley Granger), a “homicidal maniac” whom Inspector Wright (Dino Fazio) has captured and is bringing to justice.  This means that the characters can act out some of their darker impulses, because they have an easy scapegoat.  For example, Joe (Gianni Medici), the housekeeper, threatens his girlfriend (Giulia Rovai) with murder, knowing he can lay it off on Spike, who makes a habit of escaping throughout the film.  Sylvia (Lucia Bosé) fantasizes about seducing and then murdering Spike, a sharp contrast to the dull, bitter relationship she has with her husband Don (Giacomo Rossi Stuart).  Basically, the storm washes away all but the innermost desires of the film’s characters.

Something Creeping in the Dark is a brooding film, filled with a sense of doom, and it contains much superficial philosophical musings on existential matters.  The characters recognize their flaws, and the inescapability of their situation traps them inside themselves (in much the same way that they are trapped in the house).  They are left to act out their repressions or be consumed by them (possibly both).  The ghost of Lady Marlowe is the impetus for this.  She passes from character to character, possesses them for a time, and either kills them or shows them up for what they are.  Susan West (Mia Genberg) is the flinty assistant to Doctor Williams (Stelvio Rosi).  The doctor was en route to perform an emergency surgery, something which he quickly gets over when he finds out that he won’t get there in time.  Susan clearly harbors unspoken feelings for him, and Marlowe provides her the opportunity to express them.  Yet, after they consummate, Susan doesn’t feel freed of her emotional constraints.  She feels violated instead of satisfied, and she rejects Williams’ attempt to console her.  Rather than bring them together at long last, the playing out of Susan’s desirous impulses may keep them apart forever because her agency was taken away (or was her “possession” an act she now regrets?).  

The filmmakers portray Marlowe’s ghost via a high angle tracking camera (with fish eye lens) that floats down hallways, extinguishing lights as it approaches.  It is an omniscient viewpoint, and Marlowe is, virtually, God (and a capricious God, at that).  She toys with her playthings, enjoys making them dance for her amusement.  It is also conceivable that Marlowe’s possession of various characters is her own attempt at breaking out of her purgatorial/existential prison, of finding some meaning to the spiritual torment she is in.  Finding no satisfaction in this, it’s just as easy to kill her toys in a spiteful, childish lashing out against ineluctable circumstances.

The film is difficult to recommend, though I really would like to.  It takes tropes and plays with them, juggling between the corporeal and the preternatural.  It is loaded with style, and Colucci dives into some psychedelia, but he makes it work by anchoring it within his characters’ minds rather than as some overwrought visual display to take the audience on a “freak out.”  The director also takes about a half a page from Robert Wise’s book (i.e. his direction of the superlative The Haunting), using suggestion as much as he does directness.  It is entirely possible that human hands are behind the film’s nefariousness.  It is entirely possible that the human hands behind the film’s nefariousness are being manipulated by a supernatural force.  It is entirely possible that a malevolent spirit alone is behind the film’s nefariousness.  And Colucci allows that it may be all three simultaneously.  The major problem with the film is that it is both repetitive and sluggish.  Spike makes off into the nearby woods and has it out with the cops not once, but twice.  The Spike character is also, in my opinion, underutilized, considering his potential (and Granger’s talent; he does give his all here).  When the characters aren’t standing in the living room talking circularly or shooting barbs at one another, they are in their individual rooms talking circularly or shooting barbs at one another.  Interesting ideas are brought up and then left floating, and the climax is both predictable and a bit silly in its aftermath.  Something Creeping in the Dark is a film worth seeing (I finally made up my mind), though maybe not on a dark and stormy night, because you may fall asleep during it.

MVT:  Colucci brings a thoughtful sense to his direction.

Make or Break:  The séance scene is tense and creepy, while being distinctly Italian and a little goofy.

Score:  6.5/10

The Cat And The Canary (1978)

The year is 1904, and on the grounds of Glencliff Manor a cat is hung to death before it can snatch the oh-so-tasty canary that hangs above its head (surely not a metaphor?).  The adolescent killer goes undiscovered.  Thirty years later, the remaining relatives of rich eccentric Cyrus West (the magnificent Wilfrid Hyde-White) gather on the estate to hear the reading of his will.  But there’s a catch.  If the initial beneficiary is declared insane or deceased (and old Cyrus know that his clan is predisposed to insanity, so either way is a safe bet) within the next twelve hours (say, over night), a secondary beneficiary will be named.  Oh, and a psychopath who thinks he is a cat has escaped from the local mental institute.  Let the games begin.

So goes the plot for this, Radley Metzger’s adaptation of John Willard’s 1922 play, The Cat And The Canary, arguably one of the most famous examples of the Old Dark House subgenre.  Generally speaking, they center on a group of characters forced to stay in said house, and they get picked off one by one until the killer is usually unmasked at the finale.  Tonally, they are predominantly a mixture of Comedy and Thriller (the 1939 version of this story starred Bob Hope, just to give you an idea).  They are also loaded with characters almost all of whom have some deep, dark secret which makes them a suspect at some point of another.  The Old Dark House is also considered quaint, even antiquated, not only because of when it was prominent, but also because of when they are typically set (roughly the same time periods, but generally accepted as the first half of the twentieth century).  This attitude is reinforced in this film by the symmetrical, traditional compositions.  But the real star of this type of film is the house itself.  It is loaded with sliding bookcases, hidden staircases and rooms, and is gothic in the extreme.  Characters will often be pulled offscreen from behind some false wall as some other character occupies him or herself, oblivious to the goings-on.  Without the mysteries of the house, these films wouldn’t be what they are, and they wouldn’t be as fun as they are, the same as luchador films wouldn’t be the same without luchadores.

The manor and its riddles are all about the unknown, and its clandestine nooks and crannies reflect the unraveling of the characters’ secrets.  The characters don’t even have to be inside the labyrinthine conduits in the walls.  So, as the Cat scurries around behind the scenes, we discover things.  For example, Harry (Daniel Massey) was on trial for accidentally killing a patient while he was intoxicated.  Cicily (Olivia Hussey) shot and killed an employer who allegedly attempted to rape her.  Of course, our hero Paul (Michael Callan) crows the most about how bad a person he is, while actually being the lily-whitest of the bunch.  It should also be noted, that Callan is consciously channeling Hope in his delivery as the heroic poltroon, but he really doesn’t hold much of a candle, to be honest.  Metzger’s (and cinematographer Alex Thomsen’s) camerawork favors low angles and long shots (very often extreme long shots), making the people small in frame.  The house looms over all of them, a reminder of their past mistakes, that which has brought them to this state and formed their lives and livelihoods.  Similarly, the Cat is the punishment for the sins of the characters, as well as being a sinner.  Essentially, the house is the mouth; the Cat is its teeth.

I came to the work of Radley Metzger fairly recently, and I think it bears stating that this particular entry in his filmography contains absolutely no nudity (with the exception of a bit of Carol Lynley’s cleavage) or sex for those only familiar with his name in the realm of erotic pictures.  Outside of the fantastic visual sensibilities the man displays (in what few films I’ve seen), he also has a fascination (which I share) with film and reality in a metatextual sense.  This notion is incorporated into The Cat And The Canary, as well.  Cyrus announces his beneficiary at a dinner he hosts for the house guests.  How does he do this, you ask (being the decedent and all)?  He filmed his part in the dinner years prior, and this is projected (along with synchronized sound via a cylinder phonograph) onto a screen at the head of the table.  Cyrus is framed in such a way that, outside of his being in black and white, he does appear to be present at the meal via the magic of intercutting.  He also dictates the menu for the meal, controlling the reality of the characters from the beyond by way of film.  There is also an absolutely marvelous piece where kindly, old housekeeper Mrs. Pleasant (Beatrix Lehmann) moves behind the movie screen and appears onscreen, serving Cyrus with exceptional timing and orchestration.  Then, as she paces off screen-left, she emerges back into the real world.  She not only crosses the time barrier in this way, but she also makes herself part of the film, and the film, because of this interaction, once more lays claim to the reality of the story.  During this scene, there are shots focusing on the projector and phonograph in the foreground, while the actual humans in the scene are blurred out in the background.  Cyrus may be onscreen, commanding their attention, but the true master sits behind them, unnoticed as anything other than a machine, though without it none of this would be possible.  This is further cemented by the instances when Cyrus will pick up and flip through cue cards in the event the sound fails.  In other words, even if he can’t be heard, the film’s mastery of this world will still be felt because he can be seen, and his confidence in sight over sound is telling.  Interestingly, Cyrus also insists that he doesn’t want to be remembered forever, yet his recording of himself for the future testify to at least some small nod to immortality.  Ironically enough, the effort needed to preserve film does mark its impermanence, and these films, having served the whole of their purpose, will likely be discarded.  Not immortality, but an additional thirty years isn’t too shabby a number to tack onto a lifetime.

MVT:  Metzger takes it, hands down.  I can’t speak for his oeuvre in total, but from what I have seen, I’m shocked he isn’t recognized more widely for his talent and skills as a filmmaker.  I suppose it’s part of the stigma of his work in pornography, and I think it’s a damned shame, frankly.

Make Or Break:  Watching the dinner scene play out was mesmerizing for me.  Ostentatious?  Maybe.  But mesmerizing all the same.

Score:  7/10