In truth, the opening isn't too promising. The protagonist, a young man whose recently deceased father was a prominent judge, has a disturbing dream. The nightmare reenacts his father's vehicular death in a special effect that looks shoddy even for its time. His mother and sister are drawn to an imposter, a seductive man they accept as the husband/father. Shrouded in thick fog, the whole dream feels corny and overdone.
Once the young man had awoken I was still skeptical. He and his friends are wholesome quasi-teens straight out of an Archie comic (although as Riverdale demonstrates, sexed-up hipster Archie characters aren't necessarily an improvement.) Will his Hamlet thing with his mother and her new boyfriend really make a compelling film?
But something happens in the course of the movie. A real sense of menace creeps in. The villains played by Warren William (best known as the first actor to play Perry Mason onscreen) and Charles Arnt are evil, and this is obvious to the audience, but they're savvy enough to cover their tracks. Hero Paul and his small circle of loyal friends really do have their work cut out for them.
Ulmer had earlier directed the Karloff-Lugosi horror film The Black Cat. He was generally adept at working with poverty row budgets. The same year as Strange Illusion he directed Detour, a tough noir that's become something of a cult classic. So Strange Illusion has been somewhat overshadowed. It's ultimately effective, though, and feels like it had to have been an influence on David Lynch.
2 comments:
Naturally enough, after reading your review of Strange Illusion and also having overheard Jer tell you about Detour, I had to look up the wikipedia entry about Edgar Ulmer. His very interesting brief life story there included the fact that after his success with The Black Cat he and a producer's wife fell in love with each other, an affair that resulted in her divorce and their subsequent marriage. I guess that could have been fine except for the small matter that the producer was the nephew of the guy that headed Universal. That's why Ulmer was relegated to making B movies. The good news is he basically did okay and he and his wife had a long and happy marriage.
I'm looking forward to seeing Strange Illusion after reading your descriptive review. Yes, it would appear even the highly weird David Lynch stood on the shoulders of a giant.
I hadn't really delved into Ulmer's personal life. It certainly seems to have been an eventful one at times. Love conquers all, and "all" might include your job. But I'm glad he and Shirley were happy together. He at least had a talent for doing more with less, so it's not like he was totally defeated.
Lynch had antecedents, some domestic and some foreign. In the American market, at least, I don't think there was a recognized demand for movies that were deliberately weird. But some pretty strange movies were still made, intentionally or not. Some were even successful. Saw another one Friday night, which I'll be at liberty to discuss.
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