Prime Time: Cast A Dark Shadow (1955)

Dirk Bogarde is a ladykiller. That's not a spoiler. It's clear from the very first scenes of Cast A Dark Shadow. Bogarde plays Edward, a man who is married to the much wealthier, and much older, Monica (Mona Washbourne). He arranges for her to die in a way that looks like an accident, hoping to be the main recipient of her wealth. Things don't go entirely according to plan, but it doesn't leave Edward in a terrible situation. While still pretending to mourn the loss of his wife, he sets his sights on a new target, a widow named Freda (Margaret Lockwood). Freda has wealth, but she likes to ensure that their relationship is always managed 50/50, which leads to Edward potentially lining up his next victim, a woman named Charlotte (Kay Walsh).

Based on a play, "Murder Mistaken", by Janet Green, this is a wonderfully entertaining thriller that wrings humour out of the fact that our lead, a dastardly villain who just happens to have the charm and handsome looks of Bogarde, is driven into a greater state of desperation and impatience with every moment that sees him not being immediately rewarded for his misdeeds. It's not a film laced with obvious comedy, but it does seem to encourage viewers to relish Edward beginning to wriggle and thrash around as the worsening situation closes around him like a fishing net.

Directed by Lewis Gilbert, who has some great films tucked away later in his filmography (including a few Bond movies and Alfie, which features a character who could have easily taken a path to turn him into this character), this is a film that doesn’t take long to get going at all and then manages to maintain a brisk pace all the way to a fitting ending. The script by John Cresswell is twisted and witty, especially once Edward meets Freda, and this is a film that enjoys watching the main character deal with others around him, be they potential victims, a suspicious solicitor (played by Robert Flemyng), or even just a house servant (Kathleen Harrison) who needs coached and nudged in certain directions.

Bogarde shines in the main role, one that makes the most of his charm and allows him to convey an inner darkness, which he did successfully a number of times. Lockwood brings a different energy to the film, and she is a worthy “opponent” to Bogarde, with the two characters at times feeling very suitable for one another. Flemyng does well, and is allowed to be the one person suspicious of Bogarde’s character from the very start, and Walsh throws a spanner in the work in the third act, making you wonder what exactly the next move from our central character will be. Although she has the least amount of screentime, Washbourne does as well as everyone else, a sweet and oblivious victim who thinks she is set for a long period of happiness in her twilight years.

The ending, like so many from the yesteryear of cinema, is quite predictable, going by the code used to ensure that things always end with the needle of the moral compass pointing back to “true North”, but it is no less enjoyable for it.

Wonderful stuff, featuring a main character who you want to see get his comeuppance, but not until he has managed to dig himself into a much deeper hole as he grows more and more ill-tempered.

8/10

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Haunted (1995)

James Herbert is a fantastic horror writer and, arguably, the best writer within the genre to come out of the UK in the past 50 years. Okay, there's very stiff competition from writers as varied in style and content as Clive Barker, Graham Masterton, Shaun Hutson, Kim Newman and Ramsey Campbell but, to me, Herbert is at the very top of the tree. And deservedly so. Yet very few of his works have been made into films and even fewer have been made into great films (at the last count, by my estimation, that figure would be . . . . . . . . . . zero). I stumbled upon the works of Herbert like so many others of my generation. Basically, I saw copies of The Rats at almost every jumble sale and eventually picked it up, along with a copy of The Fog. Puff your chest up if you like but I'm pretty certain that many people born in the mid- to late 70s, as I was, thought that The Fog by James Herbert and The Fog by John Carpenter were one and the same until they eventually got around to reading the book. In fact, there may even be some people reading this now who never realised that the two stories were very different. Which brings me, in a ridiculously roundabout way, to Haunted, a movie based on the novel by James Herbert. I read the novel many years ago and really enjoyed it. It was a great read, not Herbert's best but very enjoyable nonetheless. I never managed to see the movie until now. Perhaps if I'd seen it back when it was first released I may have found it a bit more enjoyable but I strongly doubt it. Because the film is pretty rubbish.

The story is a pretty cliched one, but cliched doesn't always mean something bad. Aidan Quinn plays someone who doesn't believe in the paranormal and he's asked along to a large country house to help prove to an elderly woman (Anna Massey) that the ghost she thinks is haunting her house isn't a ghost at all. When he arrives at his destination, he meets a beautiful young woman (Kate Beckinsale) and then is soon introduced to her two brothers (Anthony Andrews and Alex Lowe). The siblings seem to take very little seriously and there are moments when they seem to be a little bit too affectionate to one another. But whatever is going on with this slightly strange family, there's a ghost to be disproved and that should remain the top priority.

Directed by Lewis Gilbert, who also co-wrote the script with Timothy Prager and Bob Kellett, Haunted has very little to praise. The acting is okay, with the lovely Kate Beckinsale being a highlight and a wonderful, though small, appearance by John Gielgud but the script is clumsy and awkward (in terms of exchanges of dialogue and the way details are revealed), the pacing is off and everything feels very . . . . . . stagey, despite some outdoor scenes. As much as I disliked, though certainly didn't hate, The Awakening, I now recommend that movie instead of this one to fans of Haunted, the novel.

Despite my disappointment in the movie, it's a hard one to rant about. The setting and some of the cinematography is lovely and it doesn't seem to deliberately try to insult the intelligence of viewers. Oh, except when it comes to using body doubles for nude scenes. Yeah, you know how body doubles work. You have stars that don't want to do nudity and so "inserts" are shot that give audiences a bit of naked flesh while the stars actually didn't disrobe, providing a nice (though I've always thought unnecessary) illusion. That's how using body doubles is supposed to work, at any rate. Not in this movie though, oh no. This is the film in which you get to see the faces of the doubles too. In fact, in one scene "involving Aidan Quinn and Kate Beckinsale" I actually saw that Aidan Quinn was no longer Aidan Quinn and I wondered if some different footage had been slipped in to the film as either some kind of joke I wasn't getting or some psychological horror that was never again mentioned. The simple fact is that it was all down to bad shot choice.

I'm sure that Haunted will appeal to some people but I can't think of any horror fans that it will appeal to. As a big James Herbert fan, I just grow more and more disappointed every time I see his work mistreated and not given a chance to connect with moviegoers. Maybe one day that will change. I've never stopped hoping that one day someone would, at the very least, see sense and adapt the superb Creed.

4/10

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