THE HEADLESS GHOST (1959)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

HEADLESS GHOST is one of those inconsequential flicks that's less interesting as a story than for its production history-- and even that's not all that fascinating, even for fans of the collaborations of Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel. 

In the mid-fifties Cohen and Kandel had scored with their "teenaged monster tetralogy," and they followed up those efforts by filming a horror-film in Great Britain, HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, which launched Michael Gough's career as a horror-headliner. But the filmmakers wanted to pair MUSEUM with another film in order to distribute a double-bill, so Cohen and Kandel cooked up this ghost-comedy, shot on some of the MUSEUM sets. 

GHOST barely runs over an hour, and that's due to the thinness of its premise. Three exchange students-- Danish Ingrid, and Americans Bill and Ronnie-- join a tour of a British castle. Bill and Ronnie are both interested in Ingrid, and the fact that the film ends without her making a choice either way shows how little the writers cared about the resolution of that conflict. The three collegians elect to hang back when the tour concludes and the castle doors are closed, because Ingrid is fascinated by the rumors of ghosts.

Sure enough, when the three adventurers are on their own, one ghost emerges from a painting and claims that the place is swarming with other specters of the family that owns the castle. Almost all of the spirits would like to go to their eternal rest, but they can't do so until the teenagers help end a curse on the family. The curse focuses on the ghost of Sir Malcolm, who got his head chopped off in life and can't rest until some version of his undead head and body are joined. The painting-ghost seals up the castle doors and windows so that the young people can't get out until they end the curse.

This weak premise is just an excuse for the three youths-- and somewhat later, some British bobbies-- to run around the castle, not really doing much of anything until Ingrid is able to enact a ritual that unites Malcolm's cranium and corpus. It's very dull and unfunny, though Sexy Scandinavian Siren Lilliane Soutane spruces up her scenes nicely. Yet it may be a barometer of the team's talent that even when TRYING to put together an insubstantial quickie, they still came up with one interesting scene. At one point, Ronnie comes up with an excuse to send Bill off on an errand, which gives Ronnie time to lure Ingrid into a room and romance her. Ingrid seems amenable, but they just happen to choose a room in which a lord murdered his wife out of jealousy. Every time the teens get near the bed, they hear the voices of the lord and his lady, with her pleading for her life and him raging with jealousy as he stabs her. For some reason, the irritated Ronnie passes a remark about the female ghost, and Ingrid yells at him, since being female she automatically sympathizes with the feminine spirit. That's the end of their little tryst, for Bill shows up the next minute, and all three proceed to encounter other ghosts doing forgettable stunts. That tiny "war between men and women" schtick isn't enough to make me raise the film's mythicity-rating above "poor," but it keeps the flick from being totally worthless.