50's British Horror Part Eight

ALIAS JOHN PRESTON 

(1955)
Dir - David MacDonald
Overall: MEH

Christopher Lee fans may rejoice at this obscure B-feature that he starred in for the American Danzinger brothers; pre-Hammer and in the title role no less.  Alias John Preston is a pedestrian affair from top to bottom, one that was clearly a rushed work and made on the cheap to slap on the bill of a comparatively more memorable A-production.  It runs a mere sixty-six minutes so one could hardly complain that it overstays its welcome, but it also represents an interesting historical footnote for Lee who had delivered few if any performances with this much screen time beforehand.  While his American accept slips regularly, he still proves himself to be an intimidating presence as a mysterious wealthy man who arrives in a small community, charms many of the locals, buys up property, gets himself on the city council, gets engaged to a bank lender's much younger daughter, and shows increasingly evidence that his mental facilities are on the fragile side.  The narrative loses its intrigue once Lee starts explaining his detailed and disturbed dreams to a therapist, at which point it crawls to an inevitable finish that everyone will see coming.  Also, director David MacDonald merely points the camera at his actors in order to get the job done, so there is no sense of style or agency anywhere to be found.

1984

(1956)

Dir - Michael Anderson

Overall: GOOD

The first theatrically released adaptation of George Orwell's famed novel, 1984 took its cue from the BBC production from two years prior.  Tweaking the ending of the source material while adhering to its nightmare-via-oppression tone, these are ideas that would continue to get expressed over virtually every other totalitarian sci-fi work going forward.  Not without its foibles, the relationship between Edmond O'Brien and Jan Sterling is abrupt and feels forced, intentionally to a point considering that the story exists in a world where feelings of love and personal closeness are foreign to everyone.  Still, their romantic bond is further hindered by O'Brien's oafish performance.  Once again though, it makes sense that his perpetually nervous Average Joe would stand out enough to Sterling, even if their chemistry is consistently lacking.  Besides that, director Michael Anderson handles the ever-imposing reach of Big Brother accordingly, providing only fleeting moments away from its all-powerful eye, or so our hapless protagonists are lead to believe.  The inevitable third act is when things kick into higher gear and doubles as the moment where O'Brien finally gets to let loose, all-in-all creating an agreeably paced and chilling cautionary tale of humanity's potential downfall.

 

THE SPANIARD'S CURSE

(1958)

Dir - Ralph Kemplen

Overall: MEH

 

A bog-standard thriller without any oomph, The Spaniard's Curse also stands as the only directorial effort from editor Ralph Kemplen.  Kemplen also co-authored the screenplay along with Kenneth Hyde and Roger Proudlock, which is an adaptation of Edith Pargeter's 1958 novel The Assize Of The Dying.  Things begin promising enough with a likely innocent and ill-stricken man being convicted of murdering a young lady actor, the man going on to curse the lot of people responsible for his condemnation.  Once some curious younger people begin investigating the details, (including the wise-talking news reporter son of the Judge), the film settles into scene after scene of characters walking into rooms to ask other characters questions.  Kemplen has no sense of pacing from behind the lens, though there are one or two suspenseful sequences that finally arrive in the third act which indicate who the culprit has been all along.  The music is curiously inappropriate at times, as if taken from more cheerful melodramas. doing the opposite of creating a tense atmosphere in the process.  Performance wise it is fine, since British thespians were by and large able to adequately deliver even humdrum material such as this in a manner void of scenery chewing.  That said, some pizazz on the actor's parts would have actually helped matters since few things need more assistance than an uninteresting murder mystery.