Review #2614: The Maze (1953).
Cast:
Richard Carlson (Gerald MacTeam), Veronica Hurst (Kitty Murray), Katherine Emery (Edith Murray), Michael Pate (William), John Dodsworth (Dr. Bert Dilling), Hillary Brooke (Peggy Lord), Stanley Fraser (Robert), Lilian Bond (Margaret Dilling), Owen McGiveney (Simon), and Robin Hughes (Richard Roblar) Directed by William Cameron Menzies (#448 - Invaders from Mars, #449 - Things to Come)
Review:
Oh sure, why not go with the gimmick movie? This was the final movie to be directed by William Cameron Menzies (for which the credit is listed as "production designed and directed"), who you likely remember from such films as Invaders from Mars and Things to Come; he directed fourteen movies, four as a co-director. With this production, the film was based on the story of the same name by Maurice Sandoz (which apparently had illustrations from Salvador Dali), with Daniel Ullman serving as screenwriter. While it ended up as his last directorial effort, he didn't leave film entirely, with his last fieldwork being the associate producer and designer on Around the World in Eighty Days [1956]. Suffering from cancer, Menzies died in 1957 at the age of 60.
It really does depend on how much you can forgive from the ending. No, really, you either are into the movie for the atmosphere of being entrapped in a tight space and wondering just what lurks in the dark, moving around that has such a grip on one guy. I wonder how the 3D was for the movie when it was released. Sure, you only get the smallest of gimmicky stuff with a bat flying at the camera, but it's mostly a movie trying to make you feel like you're at a haunted house, filled with fog, only men for butlers, odd little trees and locked doors (and, for a thankfully brief amount of time, a narrator to foreshadow some of the stuff that happens). And yet...it just doesn't come all the way together. Hurst and Emery can only carry the movie (one of 80 minutes) before you start to get restless at the fact that Carlson does not make for much of a spooked man. For someone who is meant to try and stop people from coming in, he has the qualities of a stone statue that don't make for particularly interesting drama. His peril (suddenly looking older because, well, castle-aging) is as intense as a wet sponge. The group of friends don't even lend themselves to a potential body-count or anything other than the most mild of "oh hey, that's a person" reaction. It's all mood-based vibes on feeling the atmosphere and crushing feeling of the unknown and oh good grief, at a certain point, that's just not enough.
And then the moment of truth happens of when you get through a maze and figure out just what the hell is there. The following either sinks the movie into amusement or just takes the cake in sheer audacity, so the following lines will be marked in white for you to scroll if you are curious.
So, in the movie, a bunch of people eventually all come to the castle to confront the guy who basically ghosted them to live in the place with some servants. What they find is that there is a thing lurking around the manor at night while their doors are all locked. The thing that lurks in the castle is actually the real master of the castle, who is...a frog. No, really, the master is a person born in the 1700s that somehow never made it past an amphibious "embryonic stage" that made him only able to live a long time because he was a frog-like creature (who bellows like an elephant, by the way) that liked to swim in a pond. And then, with the powers of a frog (neat costume)...he gets spooked, runs and then falls from a balcony to his death when the others discover him. A *prideful* 200-year-old frog, dead from a fall. You see the frog-man for all of what, two minutes? He actually gets a gravestone at the end, stating "Sir Roger Philip MacTeam, Bart. of Craven, 1750-1953". Imagine if someone actually asked about that gravestone! I just couldn't help but laugh. You get looped in to watch a movie of shadows and fog with the bare minimum of curiosity of what's in the maze, and a damn frog is there! Maybe that Frogs horror movie made them scary, but shoot, who's afraid of frogs? My mom is one, but still...
Now, you might be wondering. How does the real master being...well, that...mean that a guy decides to drop everything and then go back to relative normalness when the macabre end comes? Well, it doesn't matter now, Carlson's character just...goes with it. I couldn't help but chuckle when the big moment came to go along with the eventual explanation, particularly for a movie that didn't even bother to have one of these people engage in real tension. They just...find the secret and then it solves itself in the most convenient way possible. Imagine if anyone else asks among the group about their experiences and they get...that for an explanation. As a whole, there are highlights to be found within its look and select moments from the crew of people having to deal in maze-bound terror, but I just wish I enjoyed it more. It's a curious movie, but it just wasn't for me.
Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.
