THE HUMAN MONSTER (1939)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

The British title of this thriller-- the first movie to earn a rating of "H" for horrific content-- was DARK EYES OF LONDON, the same as a popular 1924 source book by Edgar Wallace. I have read none of Wallace's works, but I will parrot the best known difference between book and movie: that in the former, two villains are in charge of the criminal enterprise, while in the latter, there's one villain playing two roles, and both are essayed by Bela Lugosi.

The less visible role is that of Dearborn, the soft-spoken administrator of a Home for the Blind in London, who pretends to be as blind as his charges. But his true identity is Doctor Orloff, who runs an insurance agency. Orloff sells insurance policies to wealthy men but also loans money to the policy-holders if they make the policies payable to the Dearborn Home for the Blind. Then Orloff uses an electrical device to execute the policy-holders, dumping their bodies in the Thames River. In these endeavors he's helped at times by the hulking blind man Jake (Wilfred Walter).

Scotland Yard inspector Holt (Hugh Williams) is assigned to investigate the surfeit of dead bodies in the river. Holt is also detailed to meet a New York cop visiting Scotland Yard, one O'Reilly (Edmon Ryan), a character whom I suspect was invented for the movie to add an element of wisecracking American humor. The two cops have a meet-cute with a lovely young woman named Diana (Greta Gynt), but she eludes the two of them. Later Holt meets her again, when Diana is called upon to identify the murdered body of her late father.

 Very atypically for most police inspectors, Holt gets Diana to accept a job at the Dearborn Home in order to poke around. This gambit inevitably ends with Orloff revealing his double identity to Diana before he attempts to kill her. Diana manages to turn Hulking Jake against Orloff and the two kill one another before the belated arrival of Holt and the Scotland Yard cavalry.

MONSTER is effectively directed by British raconteur Walter Summers and probably remains his best known work, though personally I prefer Summers' uncredited script-work on the silent version of SHE. Lugosi's double performances are similarly effective but not outstanding. Evidently this film had a great impact upon a young Jesus Franco, who reworked various elements of MONSTER into the first commercial horror film in Spain, THE AWFUL DOCTOR ORLOF.