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Synopsis:
Under the cover of one of the worst fogs in its history, London
experiences a wave of violence. While walking to his club, Lord
Montague (Roland Young) is suddenly caught about the throat by a
garrotte. The fog parts momentarily, a woman screams....and Montague
escapes with his life. At Scotland Yard, a shaken Montague tells his
story to Sir James Rumsey (Claude Fleming). Rumsey tells him that
the attack upon him was the fifth of the kind that day – and that
the other four victims are dead. Upon seeing the victims’ names,
Montague cries in horror that he knew them all; that they were all
officers in his regiment. Rumsey decides that the rest of the
officers must be gathered together for their own protection, and
agrees to have them assembled at Montague’s London house. Arriving
there, Rumsey and his subordinate, Inspector Lewis (Clarence Geldart),
are startled by a scream. They find that a séance is under way,
arranged by Lord Montague’s sister, Lady Violet (Natalie Moorhead),
and conducted by the Chinese medium Lee Han (Kamiyama Sojin), who
Lewis knows has a criminal past. Sir James also recognises Dr
Richard Ballou (Ernest Torrence), Violet’s fiancé. After the séance
has broken up, Sir James explains the situation to Ballou and
Violet, telling the doctor that his experience in mental illness may
prove a valuable asset. Eight of the nine remaining officers of
Montague’s regiment arrive; the latecomer is Major Mallory (John
Miljan), who was horribly disfigured by shrapnel and has been
suffering the effects of shell-shock since his service. Unaware of
the danger that threatens them, the officers greet Montague warmly.
Finding that he has not the heart to tell them the grim truth,
Montague encourages them to join him in the kitchen, where together
they prepare a bowl of punch. Meanwhile, Mallory arrives: he
declines to join the others. The officers carry their punch
upstairs, where they hear of Mallory’s presence. Montague rushes
ahead to greet his friend with a slap on the shoulder – only to have
him slump to the floor.... Dr Ballou pronounces Mallory dead, and
adds that there are marks upon his throat. Rumsey then tells the
others that the officers of their regiment are being systematically
murdered. He also points out that since the house was guarded by his
men, Mallory’s murderer must already be amongst them. Even as the
others react to this in outrage, an hysterical woman forces her way
into the room. She demands to know which officer is Lord Montague
and, when he identifies himself, promptly faints in his arms.
Recovering, the woman reveals that she is the Lady Efra Cavendar
(Dorothy Sebastian), daughter to the late Marquis of Cavendar, who
years earlier was drummed out of the regiment in disgrace. Moments
later, another stranger arrives: Abdul Mohammed Bey (Boris Karloff),
a lawyer, who brings with him a copy of the Marquis’s will. The
officers learn that under this will, half of Cavendar’s enormous
fortune is to be divided amongst them....and consequently, that all
of them have a motive for murder....
Comments:
Although European audiences had from the beginning embraced films
dealing with the supernatural – and although those films, when shown
in the United States, had upon the whole been successful – it would
be the sound era before the horror film, as such, established
itself in Hollywood. Throughout the silent years, film fans looking
for chills were forced to choose between the physical horror of Lon
Chaney’s macabre but real world-based thrillers; historical horrors,
such as – Chaney again – The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, or
The Man Who Laughs; or the pseudo-horrors, in which terrifying
events either turned out to be “all a dream”, or were dismissed at
last with that bane of all horror fans, a rational explanation.
Even this implied licence to thrill went too far for some, with the
result that a dispiriting number of horror films of this time are
actually horror-comedies....and if you think the Odious Comic
Reliefs of today are unbearable, you should meet the ancestors!
However, a few film-makers did grasp the idea that as long as you
were prepared to explain away the apparently mystical goings-on in
your story – and never mind how unbelievable your explanation might
prove to be – you could frighten the audience as much as you liked,
and get away with it. Then, too, the belief that “real” violence was
somehow less reprehensible or disturbing than supernatural violence
was widespread (as indeed it still is), meaning that you could chalk
up whatever body count you fancied, as long as a good old-fashioned
psycho-killer – or better yet, a greedy relative set to inherit a
fortune – proved to be responsible for it, and not a ghost or a
phantom or a vampire.
Which brings us to
The Unholy Night, a film whose significance today – aside
from the appearance in an unbilled supporting role of a future star
– lies chiefly in the fact that it seems to be sound cinema’s
earliest surviving attempt at a true horror movie. (A silent version
of The Unholy Night was shot simultaneously, as was often the
case during this transitional period, as well as, more unusually, a
French language version, Le Spectre Vert; both are presumed
lost.) The film is an uneasy blending of the styles discussed above.
The prevailing nervousness about unadulterated horror is evident,
but although the film features a smattering of fairly painful
“comedy”, it is kept to a relative minimum; and the scares, when
they come, are played straight. Typically for the time, however,
although the film is sincere enough in its attempts to disturb the
viewer, much of its horror content proves to have little to do with
the actual story. This includes the skeletal figure that lurks
behind the opening credits, the apparently disembodied head that
floats above those gathered for a séance organised by Lord
Montague’s sister, Lady Violet, and the Montague family ghost, who
never does put in an appearance. Also typical is the film’s plot,
which is convoluted beyond any possibility of grasping it upon a
first viewing (a second will confirm the suspicion that it makes
precious little sense); and the way it suddenly throws about a dozen
characters at the viewer with a minimum of introduction....and then
starts killing them off before we’ve even begun to put names to
faces! The Unholy Night’s vintage is also evident in the,
shall we say, equal vintage of its cast. In 1929, the cult of
youth was yet to get its death-grip on Hollywood’s consciousness.
Not only was there no perceived need to give younger viewers a
character they could supposedly identify with (something I always
found rather insulting), but there was no hesitation in casting
actors who were in every way adults in roles that today would come
with an upper age limit. In The Unholy Night, this attitude
gives us the fifty-one year old Ernest Torrence as Dr Richard Ballou,
who as Lady Violet’s fiancé is the closest thing this film has to a
romantic lead (although he may also be the murderer....but that’s
okay); and makes harder to swallow the subplot of the Lady Efra
Cavendar, who according to the terms of her father’s will becomes
the ward of the remaining officers of the regiment. Now, Dorothy
Sebastian certainly wasn’t old when she made this film; but
on the other hand, she was self-evidently beyond the age of
requiring a legal guardian! – and no number of references to her by
the other characters as “this young woman” and “young lady” is going
to convince us otherwise!
The opening of
The Unholy Night demonstrates that, whatever the film’s
shortcomings, its heart is in the right place: this sequence is
genuinely startling. Our story is set in London, which is
experiencing one of the worst and longest lasting fogs in its
history; and under this cover, an epidemic of violence has broken
out: murder, robbery, rape....and the attempted garrotting of the
Earl of Montague; an attempt thwarted when the fog parts just long
enough for a woman nearby to catch a glimpse of the attack, and –
quite literally – to scream bloody murder. (One does wonder in
passing what all these people are doing out in this fog.) The shaken
and breathless Montague finds himself at Scotland Yard, and here
The Unholy Night’s problems begin in earnest.
It is well
documented that during the early days of sound, film audiences were
addicted to the cinematic equivalent of watching paint dry. Ignoring
silent films of great artistry, they would queue instead to watch
movies entirely bereft of skill, drama and imagination – just so
long as they made a noise. Taking this lesson to heart, the makers
of The Unholy Night put a great deal of effort into creating
a constant cacophony on their soundtrack. (There is one exception to
this rule, one sequence accompanied, and rightly, by absolute
silence. Ironically, it is the most memorable moment in the film.)
Some of this is effective, with the London fog being pierced by
traffic noise and car horns; by foghorns from the Thames; by
screams, and gunshots; and even by the strange tapping sound that
precedes the attack upon Lord Montague (a noise that later proves to
bear a curious resemblance to that made by the wooden leg of
Montague’s manservant and former sergeant, Frye). Less welcome is
the film’s tendency to fill potential dead air by dragging out its
dialogue scenes to unendurable length, as with the first scene at
Scotland Yard, during which his lordship is permitted to give a
tediously circumlocutious description of what went on in the fog. I
have a lot of affection for Roland Young as an actor, and given the
right kind of material, he could be wonderfully funny. This
sequence, however, as well as later ones in the film, is predicated
upon the mistaken assumption that anything that comes out of his
mouth is automatically funny, and the more of it, the better. So it
is that Sir James Rumsey and Inspector Lewis are forced to sit and
listen (showing rather more patience than this viewer could
muster, frankly) as, rather than describe his attempted murder, Lord
Montague pleads for, dissertates upon, and consumes large quantities
of, brandy and soda.
(Giving writers Ben
Hecht, Dorothy Farnum and Edwin Justus Mayer the benefit of the
doubt, this may have been intended as a piece of Prohibition-era
audience torment.)
It is not the
rambling dialogue, however, that a viewer of The Unholy Night
is likely to end up with embedded on their memory, but something far
more painful. Lord Montague, although something of an aristocratic
ne’er-do-well, has a distinguished war record; and the exigencies of
our plot see the remaining officers of his regiment gathered at his
house. No sooner have these gentlemen exchanged greetings than they
burst into song – as they will do again and again – and again and
again and again – throughout the rest of the film. You may or
may not remember much of the story of The Unholy Night, once
it is done, but I can guarantee that you will come away from
this film with a deep and abiding horror of “Auld Lang Syne”, the
officers’ anthem of choice. The only possible comparison with this
torturous over-use of a song that I can think of comes in On The
Beach, which suggests that, faced with their impending doom,
Australians will find nothing better to do than gather in groups to
sing “Waltzing Matilda” – and there, at least, the solemnity
of both the film itself and the version of the song chosen works to
keep audience reaction in check. Here, the effect is
hilarious and excruciating in about equal measure. There will even
come the suggestion, late in the film, that not even death
can put a stop to this unconscionable carolling!
In between brandy
and sodas, Lord Montague does manage to provide the police with a
description of the attack upon his person, and has the grace to
apologise for his previous assery (is that a word?) when the patient
Sir James finally informs him that his attack was the fifth of the
kind – the other four victims not having had Montague’s luck.
Montague’s general distress at this news then escalates into
near-hysteria, when he learns that he knew all the other victims;
that they had all been officers in the same regiment during World
War I. When Sir James urgently presses for more information, the
stunned Montague reveals that there are now only ten of them left,
as that morning there had been only fourteen, their scanty numbers
being the result of their regiment having served at....Gallipoli.
At which point, as
you might imagine, this viewer of The Unholy Night sat
bolt upright and really began to pay attention. And to giggle
uncontrollably. And then,
when we were finally introduced to the other officers of the
regiment and given the opportunity to observe them under pressure,
to surrender myself to the darksome pleasures of
Schadenfreude; the
gentlemen in question revealing themselves, singly and collectively,
as a bunch of sneaks, klutzes, screw-ups, hysterics, prima donnas,
and literal criminals; in short, as exactly the kind of people you
would expect to find in charge at Gallipoli.
You’ll have to
forgive me if I allow myself to be distracted for a few moments from
the main story of The Unholy Night, and to focus instead on
the tantalising question on how this subplot was actually meant
to be taken. Frankly, if I thought the implications of all this were
intentional, I would call The Unholy Night a satire to rank
alongside the Michael Palin-Terry Jones penned Roger Of The Raj,
which climaxes with the sequential mass suicide of its
officers, all for committing heinous crimes against the honour of
“the regiment”....such as passing the port from left to right
instead of right to left.
There might, of
course, have been a specific reason why the writers of The Unholy
Night chose Gallipoli as the background to their story....but in
the absence of any solid evidence, I am compelled, however
reluctantly, to conclude that the use of that particular example of
military madness, and the apparent satirical intentions of the
exaggerated depiction of the regiment, was probably just a perverse
kind of happy accident; an example of Americans trying to “do
British”, and going completely over the top.
Pity.
Oh, yeah – The
Unholy Night! The remaining officers are gathered, under police
guard, at Lord Montague’s palatial London home. The last to arrive
is the disfigured and shell-shocked Major Mallory (John Miljan’s
gruesome makeup is another sign of the film’s willingness to disturb
the audience), who refrains from joining the others in the kitchen,
where they are brewing a diabolical bowl of punch, and – what else?
– singing. When Montague hears that Mallory has arrived, he
rushes in to greet his old comrade, slapping him on the shoulder –
only to have Mallory slump to the floor, dead; apparently strangled.
Sir James breaks the grim news that since his men are on guard all
around the house, the murderer must be inside.... The
officers have barely had time to react with suitable indignation
when they receive another shock: the arrival of the Lady Efra
Cavendar, daughter of the late Marquis of Cavendar, who was once
also a member of the regiment, but drummed out in disgrace under an
accusation of cheating at cards. The Marquis later encountered his
old comrades again – at Gallipoli, while fighting for the
Turks! (From a certain perspective, one can hardly blame him.)
Captured and sentenced to be shot, the Marquis nevertheless managed
to escape – and to plot against his double condemners an elaborate
revenge.
The details of this
plot are revealed by yet another unexpected arrival, the lawyer
Abdul Mohammed Bey, who with a lot of evil smirking announces that
the Marquis’s will bequeaths the half of his fortune that does not
go to Efra, a full million pounds, to be divided amongst the
surviving officers, and also appoints them Efra’s joint guardians;
this on the grounds that “nothing so soon causes discord among
friends, and destroys character, as the sudden inheritance of
wealth”; and further, that “when money fails, nothing so quickly
causes discord among men as a beautiful woman.” As it turns out, the
Marquis knew his men: the words are barely out of the lawyer’s mouth
when those officers who have not already mentally spent their sudden
windfall – some of them needing money rather urgently, as we
soon learn – are smoothing their moustaches, straightening their
collars and licking their chops as they leer at Efra. Sir James
points out the obvious – that everyone present had a motive for
murder – and Efra suddenly exclaims that she knows one of the voices
in the room, that she overheard one of the men present
conspiring with Abdul....if only she could be certain which....
Instantly, the gentlemen of the regiment launch into an orgy of
recrimination and accusation and tale-telling and finger-pointing
and generally coming apart at the seams. Chalk one up for the
Marquis of Cavendar.
With an effort,
Lord Montague pulls his comrades back into line; and, ashamed of
themselves (and rightly so), they try a little re-bonding by – sigh
– singing “Auld Lang Syne”. The officers then retire for the night –
but that’s hardly the end of the night’s drama. While all of this
kerfuffle has been going on, we have had leisure to observe that Dr
Ballou is giving new dimension to the expression behaving
suspiciously....and he continues to do so after the officers
have gone to bed. For one thing, he starts messing about with
Mallory’s dead body. For another, he secretly signals to someone out
in the garden. But Ballou is not the only one to start behaving
suspiciously: Mallory does so, too, inasmuch as he soon as
the clock has struck midnight, he gets up and starts walking around;
not behaviour one generally sees in a dead man. Soon, a length of
cord in his hand, Mallory is creeping silently into the bedroom of
one of the officers, Colonel Davidson. A single horrified cry splits
the night....
The next morning
sees Sir James Rumsey pacing the library, watch in hand, as he waits
for the officers to join him. He will wait in vain. Shortly comes
the revelation that not just Davidson, but every single officer
has been murdered....with the exception of Lord Montague....
Here we have the
unquestionable highlight of The Unholy Night, a magnificent –
and silent – panning shot down the length of a corridor, past
the bedrooms where the murders have taken place, which reveals
corpse after corpse after corpse, until the final door is mercifully
swung shut.
A suicide note is
soon found: Mallory’s, confessing to the mass slaughter. His body is
also found, out in the garden; really dead this time, a dagger in
its heart.
In one sense this
would seem to be the end of the matter, but Rumsey is convinced that
the mentally shaky Mallory was someone else’s puppet. Montague is
the obvious suspect, since as last man standing he has just
inherited the Marquis’s million pounds (and, by implication at
least, Efra and her fortune as well). Rumsey’s suspicions,
however, light upon Dr Ballou. Ballou, after all, was apparently
unable to tell that Mallory was not dead, but catatonic: another
legacy of his service days. (The marks found on Mallory’s throat are
never explained, mind you.) Moreover, Ballou is engaged to Lady
Violet, who is her brother’s heir; so that if anything should
subsequently happen to him....
Ballou and Rumsey
clash violently, the unlikely outcome being Lady Violet’s
re-summoning of the mystic Lee Han and the staging of a second
séance, one intended to call upon the spirits of the murdered
officers, in the hope that they can reveal the identity of the real
killer....
The Unholy Night
being a horror movie of 1929, there is both more and less going on
here than meets the eye; and whether the viewer is amused or
disappointed with the denouement of the story might depend
upon how familiar he or she is with the conventions of the genre at
that time. At any rate, a full ten minutes is spent at the
conclusion of the film explaining the convoluted events that we have
just witnessed. (Humorously enough, in spite of this, a great many
things are never explained at all!) One is likely to come away from
all this with the feeling that with respect to the question of
producing real horror movies, the studio executives were
worrying unnecessarily: if audiences of 1929 were able to swallow
the “explanation” served up at the end of The Unholy Night,
then dealing with the truly supernatural should have been a breeze.
I cannot close this
rumination on The Unholy Night without commenting upon one
aspect of the film that, while it would have meant little or nothing
to its original viewers, delivers to modern audiences the film’s one
genuine shock. Unmentioned in the opening credits is the actor
playing the lawyer Abdul Mohammed Bey: Boris Karloff. That in itself
is not shocking, of course: before his belated stardom, Karloff
racked up more than seventy-five appearances in small supporting
roles, most of them unbilled. What is likely to catch modern
viewers by surprise, however, is that Karloff’s performance in this
film is....absolutely dreadful. The bizarre garbled accent
that he assumes, which is part French, part “Arabian”, part
pidgin-English and, I swear, part Lugosi, is bad enough
(although that wouldn’t stop him using it again two years later, in
the serial King Of The Wild); but his acting is nothing short
of embarrassing. The gap between the Karloff we see in The Unholy
Night and the Karloff we are used to is simply staggering. There
is not the slightest indication here that only two years later, the
man would rocket to instant superstardom with a performance
celebrated to this day for its delicacy and nuance; still less that
he would go on to a lengthy reign as one of the horror genre’s best
and most beloved actors. In the course of The Unholy Night,
we are more than once witness to the rising of the dead; Boris
Karloff’s career is proof that the film industry is sometimes
capable of even greater miracles.
Want a second
opinion of The Unholy Night? Visit
1000 Misspent Hours – And Counting.
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