Horrors of the Black Museum

Horrors of the Black Museum
Blu-ray
VCI
1959 / 93 Mins. / 2.35.1
Starring Michael Gough, Shirley Anne Field
Written by Aben Kendel, Herman Cohen
Photographed by Desmond Dickinson
Directed by Arthur Crabtree

A dull novelist but an inspired serial killer, Edmond Bancroft collects rare artifacts with that special someone in mind—just now he’s gifted a pretty ingenue with a pair of binoculars that eject steel spikes into the user’s eyes. If only she’d known that before looking through them. This is the opening scene in 1959’s Horrors of the Black Museum and it sent shock waves through America’s drive-ins—a bloody shot across the bow as audacious as the slashed eye in Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou. Buñuel’s surrealist classic was a visceral wake-up call, but Arthur Crabtree’s film was a different kind of shocker; what might have been a pointless exercise in sadism was distinguished by the grandiose presence of Michael Gough, the man born to play Edmond Bancroft.

A crime reporter covering London’s seedy side, Bancroft has grown bored with the workaday murders on his beat and decided to cut out the middle man; he commits the crimes himself and details their gruesome aftermath in his newspaper column: The macabre cartoonist Gahan Wilson said “I paint what I see.” Bancroft’s manifesto is “I chronicle who I kill” and he’s built a shrine to those accomplishments based on Scotland Yard’s own “black museum.”

Those unfortunate figures come from all walks of life—sometimes Bancroft’s subjects are picked at random like the poor woman on the wrong end of those binoculars, others of his crimes are the result of a business partnership gone bad, like the antique dealer who provides Bancroft with the arcane devices he uses in his killing sprees; when the old shopkeeper threatens to expose his extracurricular activities, Bancroft silences her with a pair of ice tongs.

Bancroft has a bum leg and relies on a cane, usually a lazy screenwriter’s device to indicate a damaged soul, but Gough—always an operatic figure—wields that crutch as an unspoken warning to anyone who gets in his way, like Joan Berkley, a floozy with a heart of gold whose companionship comes with a price tag—a fee the prickly novelist is willing to pay, as far as it goes. Played by an unassuming British model named June Cunningham, Joan has her fun picking Bancroft’s pocket while insulting him to his face (sadists need their punishment too), but she goes too far when she questions his virility, “Without your cane you’re half a man!” That may be true but it’s a bridge too far for Bancroft who arranges a gruesome revenge using one of his more extravagantly offbeat gadgets, a portable guillotine.

Installing an enormous blade above a woman’s four poster bed is no small task and the typical handyman won’t do the trick—Bancroft gets by with the help of a young assistant named Rick. The boy is compliant to a point, but violence is not in this kid’s nature, which is why Bancroft uses a mix of drugs and hypnotism to keep him line. Rick toes the line in other matters; his girlfriend is a stunning redhead played by Shirley Anne Field who doesn’t need drugs to hypnotize anyone. Her devotion to Rick is too much for Bancroft who prefers his “relationships” with no strings attached; “No woman can hold their tongue, they’re all a vicious, unreliable breed.” At last we’re given a clue to Bancroft’s character—though it was no surprise to those who’d been paying attention to producer Herman Cohen’s other films.

After a colorless start to his career in the early fifties, Cohen began to find his niche when he, like the mad scientists in his films, began to target teens, specifically the pompadoured greasers who were crowding American drive-ins. Cohen had his first viable hit with I Was a Teenage Werewolf, a 1957 monster mash he produced and co-wrote with his Black Museum collaborator Aben Kandel.

He would stick to that template over the course of his next three films, each one featuring a belligerent father figure (or in the case of Blood of Dracula, mother figure) who maintains a near-supernatural hold on their young protégés. With Black Museum Cohen found the perfect conduit for those characters in the form of Michael Gough; as the teeth-gnashing egoists of 1961’s Konga and 1963’s Black Zoo, the actor was outrageously effective and more fun than a barrel of gorilla suits. What a great Batman villain he would have made.

When Black Museum opened in New York in April of ’59, ticket buyers could be forgiven for thinking they were seeing a movie called Hypnovista—that phrase took up almost half of the movie poster and overpowered the actual title (this was a strictly American phenomenon, the gimmick went unseen in Britain). Ticket buyers were lured to the theater with a promise of a literally hypnotic experience that would give the audience something akin to a 3D-like experience.

The short promotional film preceded the title sequence of Black Museum and featured the dubious talents of Emile Franchel, a psychologist who hosted a weekly TV show, “Adventures in Hypnotism.” The audience at RKO’s flagship theater in New York would have not only “experienced” Hynovista but a live demonstration from Franchel himself.

That 13 minute film is included as an extra on VCI’s new Blu ray release, and with the help of Studio Canal and their 4K master, Horrors of the Black Museum looks dramatically better than ever before. Photographed by Desmond Dickinson, the interiors can appear blandly lit but once the mood changes to horror, Dickinson’s work grows inspired, painting the frame with deep, velvety shadows and intense colors. VCI has also included a few homegrown extras including a new feature-length commentary from film historian and artist Robert Kelly, and an archived commentary from Herman Cohen. There’s also a recent interview with Shirley Anne Field, a photo tribute to Cohen, and an archival phone interview with Michael Gough. Both the British and American theatrical trailers wrap up the package.

Here’s Mick Garris on Horrors of the Black Museum: