Sh! The Octopus

Directed by William McGann

Featuring Hugh Herbert, Allen Jenkins, Marcia Ralston, John Eldredge and Elspeth Dudgeon

A pair of bumbling detectives investigate a murder by a criminal mastermind known as The Octopus. The investigation leads them to an old lighthouse full of odd characters, who all the while are being menaced by… an actual octopus.

This parody of ‘old dark house’ type murder mysteries is so full of nonsensical madcap action that it is sometimes quite difficult to follow. We have people appearing out of nowhere and disappearing almost as randomly, hidden doorways, hidden agendas, spooky voices calling out cryptic threats, a pirate with a hook for a hand, characters who aren’t who they seem to be, occasional use of special effects for no apparent reason (check out the frogs stealing shoes), and one extremely effective use of early special effects when the villain is revealed. It crams an awful lot into fifty-something minutes, leaving a head-spinning sensation in its wake.

There is also an ending (with not one but two extra joke endings after it) that would have been extremely frustrating in any other circumstance. But in this case, where we have a film which frantically includes everything but the kitchen sink to slightly surreal effect, the ending only serves to enhance the strangeness of the whole thing. At least the conclusion gives something of an excuse as to why what passed before it made so little sense.

Worth watching? This is an incredibly odd comedy-mystery that doesn’t really work or make much sense, but coasts by fuelled by its own insanity and willingness to break the rules of conventional film making. It’s one of those films that really makes you wonder what they were thinking, and I would recommend it mostly to lovers of cinematic weirdness. I don’t regret watching it, mostly because it has been a long time since I saw a film this strange.

Truth in advertising? I kind of hate the awkwardness of the title, but it works well enough: 4/5.

Scared to Death (1947)

Directed by Christy Cabanne

Featuring Bela Lugosi, George Zucco, Molly Lamont, Nat Pendleton and Angelo Rossitto

‘Her heart’s in a very depressed condition – someone’s been giving her orders by mental telepathy!’

A fairly boring entry in the Old Dark House genre, this film suffers from a confused plot and being filmed in the most unnatural looking ‘Natural Color’ that you will ever see. It even fails to make good use of its central gimmick: that the film is being related in flashback by the corpse central to the mystery.

Flashback from Laura, the dead woman, lying in the morgue with no obvious cause of death found, to a few days earlier. She is anxious and irritable. Her husband, seeking a divorce which she won’t grant, thinks her mood may be related to some letters she recently received from overseas. Her husband’s father, Dr Van Ee (Geroge Zucco), also wants Laura out of their lives, and says that he has a plan to get rid of her.

From here, Laura is confined to the house and occasionally terrorised by things such as a mannequin head being sent to her in the mail, and a ‘green mask’ (appearing blue for some reason) periodically appearing menancingly outside the window. An excessive number of characters appear, including Professor Leonide (Bela Lugosi in full cape, hat, and Colonel Sanders-style tie) as Dr Van Ee’s potentially insane cousin, Leonide’s assistant Indigo (Angelo Rossitto, who does not appear to have any reason to be in the film aside from the novelty of Lugosi having a mini assistant), a newspaper reporter, his girlfriend, and painful comic relief in the form of a security guard and maid. The plot seems to disjointedly consist of one red herring after another, with many occurrences going completely unexplained (for example, the maid is hypnotised and thought dead for a section of the film, but it is never made clear who is responsible for this).

This confusing storyline is interspersed with regular appearances of the mask outside the window (apparently supposed to be terrifying?), and repeated returns to a shot of Laura’s corpse lying in the morgue. This happens many times over the course of the film. Every time we see the same shot of Laura, accompanied by a cheesy ‘oo-OOO-oo’ sound effect, and every time her voice gives a single sentence of uninformative commentary before we return to the flashback. These moments of narration are so poorly executed that they seem like a joke, and they cause jarring disruption to the flow of the film (such as it is).

The ending of the film [**SPOILERS**] takes an everything but the kitchen sink type approach, with a convoluted ‘explanation’ for the preceding events involving exposition of  Laura’s secret previous life as a professional dancer who sold her French resistance fighter husband out to the Nazis. This is followed by her death – as described in the title.

This film runs for just over an hour, but going round and round in muddled circles it often drags even given this short running time. With continual lapses in logic, poor attempts at humour and with the narration by the dead victim totally wasted, it is all a bit of a mess. And not a very entertaining one, unfortunately.

Worth watching? Not really. At best it has curio value, as Bela Lugosi’s only colour film.

Truth in advertising? Although the film is not frightening in any way, it does involve a character being scared to death. So the title is correct, at least in a literal sense. 5/5.