CRY OF THE BANSHEE (1970), MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (1971)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *marvelous,* (2) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: (1) *poor,* (2) *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological*

In any arena of creative endeavor, the line between "really bad" and "really good" can shift with remarkable rapidity, to the extent that one can hardly credit that two time-adjacent works came from the same creator, or set of creators.

BANSHEE and MORGUE were both directed by Gordon Hessler, and one of the credited scripters on both films was one Christopher Wicking, who had also worked with Hessler on THE OBLONG BOX and SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN. Wicking collaborated with Tim Kelly on BANSHEE and with Henry Slesar on MORGUE, but it seems improbable that Slesar's participation made the later film so much better than the earlier one. It seems more likely that the respective creators of BANSHEE approached that film as nothing more than a job, while the ones who worked on MORGUE really "got into" their work.

One of BANSHEE's big weaknesses is that it doesn't actually have a traditional banshee in it. The being that's more or less supposed to be a banshee acts much like a garden-variety Judeo-Christian demon, summoned by a witch to take vengeance on 16th-century witch-hunter Lord Edward (Vincent Price) and his family. One can't help but wonder why the filmmakers even bothered to invoke the name of a Celtic death-spirit. The best guess may be that there was some vague intent to adhere to the putative religious mythology of Celtic pagans, rather than following the lead of many earlier witch-films, assuming that pagans worshiped the devils of Judeo-Christian lore. Yet the spirit invoked is so uninteresting that he might as well have been just another Christian demon.

The supernatural entity of the tirle is not the real star of BANSHEE, anyway, but Price's Lord Whitman-- but he too is blandly derivative. A couple of years, Price essayed a somewhat similar character, based on a historical witch-hunter, in the film WITCHFINDER GENERAL. Since the film was a box-office success, it seems likely that the filmmakers hoped to repeat that success by casting the famed horror-star in a similar (but wholly fictional) role. I can picture the writers talking it up, saying something like, "In WITCHFINDER GENERAL, Price tortured and murdered people who were only accused of being witches. We'll be really original: this time Price will still torture and murder, but he'll get his from a bonafide sorceress!"

In addition, Price's Lord Edward is joined by a whole family of corrupt nobles who share his fate. Yet the wider ensemble of characters makes clear that none of the writers-- which may have included Hessler, who claimed on a DVD release that he revised the script-- had the first idea as to how to make these hypocritical wastrels interesting. For some reason the script includes a moment in which one of Whitman's sons cows the lord's wife into having sex with him-- but apparently this was just an excuse to throw in a random sex-scene, since Lord Edward never finds out and the liaison has no real effect on the plot.One of Lord Edward's daughters is in love with a lowborn servant, but this romantic arc doesn't even affect the plot all that much when the servant is possessed by the demon, making him the catspaw in killing off the lord's family. (Guess the witch thought anyone working for Lord Edward was fair game, family or not.) Overall, though BANSHEE tries to sell itself on the same combination of lust and gore seen in WITCHFINDER, even these elements are dull, and Price, easily the standout performer, turns in a by-the-numbers job.

When comparing the imaginative scope of MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE with the paltry efforts of BANSHEE, one is tempted to agree with the saying attributed to many sources:

Stealing from one person is called Plagiarism, stealing from many is called Research

Like the great majority of films supposedly based on works by Edgar Allan Poe, MORGUE has very little to do with the putative inspiration. Even the 1932 Universal "adaptation" at least had a real ape in it, as did the Poe story, but this MORGUE lacks any "astounding animals," only men costumed in ape-suits. In fact, Hessler references the 1932 film by using certain elements, but only as elements in a play "within the play," so to speak.

The time is the early 20th century; the place is Paris. Most of the film's action centers around a theater that regularly gives Grand Guignol performances for the city's thrill-hungry populace. One play shows a version of Bela Lugosi's 1932 "mad scientist" threatening to torment a bound female victim by giving her over to the tender mercies of a caged ape.  However, some fiend causes one of the fake onstage murders to cause a real death. Enter the police, who investigate the theater's sole owner, Cesar Charron (a badly miscast Jason Robards) and, to some extent, his much younger wife Madeleine (presumably named for the doomed sister from Poe's "House of Usher").

The viewer knows, long before the police do, that this and other murders are committed by a man in a mask very reminiscent of the one worn by Claude Rains in the 1943 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA, though the murderer's played by the actor who played the Phantom in the 1962 version. But here the masked man's motives are closest to those of the Phantom from the original novel, for the police find it very interesting that Charron's company experienced a similar botched scene roughly ten years earlier-- a scene in which Charron's former partner Rene Marot (Herbert Lom) was burned by real acid rather than the fake variety. (This element also seems to have been borrowed from the 1943 Claude Rains film.) Also, ten years ago, the two theater-partners were also rivals over a woman, which is yet another similarity to the Gaston Leroux novel. The unnamed female character, who has one child by some unknown father, chose to cleave to Marot despite his disfigurement, but supposedly Marot went around the bend, killed the woman, and then took his own life. It's not clear exactly what happened to her little daughter, but at some point, she grew up to become the adult Madeleine, at which point-- one presumes-- Charron married her.

Even if the theater-director didn't have a name suggestive of the Greek conductor of the dead, most film-viewers would probably tip pretty soon that he's the only person with a good motive for disfiguring Marot. It's also no big surprise when Hessler reveals that Marot, an accomplished illusionist, faked his death via the old "Hindu suspended animation trick" (a reference to Poe's love of cataleptics, perhaps). Marot, whose mask adroitly conceals his patches of burned skin, continues to prey on other performers, because they helped buttress Charron's testimony that Marot slew Madeleine's mother. Charron of course is his final target, though Marot, like the Phantom, has different plans tor Madeleine, essentially the reborn simulacrum of her mother (MORELLA, anyone?) Indeed, one of Charron's female friends-- possibly an old lover-- cattily remarks to Charron, "You couldn't get the mother, so you married the daughter."

Madeleine (Christine Kaufmann), usually seen garbed in white, is one of the performers in Charron's plays, and so seems destined, like a lot of Poe women, to get absorbed in the schemes of men. To Kaufmann's credit, Madeleine doesn't come off as no more than a scream-machine, though she does exist to be terrified. She even has weird premonitory dreams of the man who killed her mother, even though she's never seen Masked Marot at the time of the first dream-- and even though it's eventually revealed that as a child she witnessed her mother's axe-murder, and not by Marot. Probably to no one's surprise, particularly thanks to Robards' listless acting, Charron turns out to be the real culprit in killing his original love-object, and framing Marot for the deed. One presumes that Little Madeleine simply repressed the sight of Charron killing her mother, to the extent that it didn't even com to the fore when she started sharing his bed-- though Marot's activities cause her memories to revive. Assisting Marot, and adding to the hallucinatory feel of the film, is midget Pierre (Michael Dunn), who also makes an appearance in a sequence that may or may not be a dream.

Thus Madeleine, unlike the heroine of Leroux's novel, is caught not between representatives of age and youth, but between two older men, both with some claim to being "father-figures." Given how stacked the odds are against the heroine, it's impressive that at the climax, she manages to bring about Marot's death after the fiend has slain Charron. And yet, she isn't entirely allowed to escape the fate usually doled out to Poe-heroines.

There's been much talk in reviews about how the studio cut MORGUE for general release. However, it may be that the cuts were to the film's benefit, for this film, unlike BANSHEE, sustains a lively mix of riotous carnivalesque imagery and brooding, surrealistic dream-scenes. As a mystery, it fails. As a delirious assault on the senses, MORGUE deserves more frequent "revivals."