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Cheap fright films are not the stuff that gets film critics and historians off their high horses, usually. Such tawdry productions are mostly forgotten or made into fodder for snickering puppet robots and such. But sometimes such a "Creepy Cheapie" has a lot going for it--for example, a once world-famous actor and director reduced to low-budget outings and a script that, in the right hands, can thrill and chill an audience. Such is the case of the "Creepy Cheapie" under consideration here, which is why we're...
By RAYMOND L. BLAKEY Greetings HORROR-WOOD readers, I am back with another Creepy Cheapie. For those coming in late, as always, a Creepy Cheapie is a film made on a low budget, often extremely low, that has all the punch and thrills of a much more expensive film such as a Hollywood blockbuster. Not every low budget film can be a Creepy Cheapie. There has to be something particular, something of a special quality to make that distinction. Now, before I move on with today’s film I should mention its rather special origins. I received a correspondence from our dear Renfield one day telling me he had a movie he wanted me to cover that he thought was a Creepy Cheapie. This filled me with obvious trepidation of course, because what can one possibly expect our ghoulish miscreant of the World Wide Web to pull from his musty dungeons.
Still I took the plunge and gave him my mailing address. Hoping that I would not be taken in the night to some ghastly damp castle for some hideous experimentation, or more to the point for some hideous experiment’s dinner. But, my fears were nullified a few days later when the film arrived, and once I scraped off the bugs and dust I saw what he had sent me…The Mask Of Dijon (1946). This would indeed be interesting, but would it be a Creepy Cheapie?
As it turns out, yes it was a Creepy Cheapie, but only one factor allowed it to sail above and beyond the standard fair of the time. Dijon is a late run Poverty Row feature that hosted only two notable actors of any real merit. One was the always-exceptional Edward Van Sloan as Sheffield the magic shop owner and the other was Erich Von Stroheim as the title character.
The film is creaky, slow, made on no budget. In short it is a standard Poverty Rowe fair. But, it has a quality that makes it wholly unique to the typical Poverty Rowe production. It has a unique realism of characters. Though filmed in 1946, and featuring only two actors (Stroheim and Sloan) who would be remembered, everyone in the production was extremely professional. They created a very realistic tapestry of characters that are wholly believable and rich in development. The story is actually set during the Great Depression and it is wholly believable that every actor in this film had suffered through that miserable time and was all to familiar with the struggles that people had to endure with poverty. It probably also helps that many of these were low paid actors who were struggling from job to job at the time of the film’s production. It is that naturalism and reality that makes these people stand out from the usual shock films of the era, especially from the third-tier studios of the time.
Von Stroheim plays a famous Vaudeville magician by the name of Dijon who had a very strong career. In fact many characters in the film react to him like he was on an almost Houdini level of fame at the height of his career. Van Sloan plays a magic shop owner who at the start of the film is trying to help Dijon get his act started up again with a new Guillotine trick. In truth he is more inclined towards helping Dijon’s beautiful and kindly wife Victoria (Jeanne Bates) who suffers under the cruelty of Dijon. Dijon seems miserable, bitter, cold and crass throughout the entire film. Only later do we learn that he is actually on the brink of madness. In his mind everyone is against him and everyone is trying to make him look like a fool.
Enter Alex, a Vaudeville performer from Victoria’s past, indeed a former lover that now leads a musical road show. It seems the tabloids have mentioned that Victoria isn’t being treated very well by Dijon and since Alex still loves Victoria he actually came to town to check up on her. Dijon almost instantly hates the man. Alex moves into the same boarding house where Dijon and Victoria are living. We find out that the reason a famous magician lives in poverty now is because he gave up his magic act completely when he took up books on hypnotism. He has, in fact, become obsessed with the arts of controlling the minds of others through hypnotic power. It was something of a big fad that was winding down by the time this film was made.
Alex is determined to help and offer Victoria a deal that will allow Dijon to perform in the club his band is playing at. Dijon accepts the offer grudgingly, if nothing more to get peace from his wife. But the act goes awry and Dijon is convinced that Alex rigged the whole thing to make him look like a fool. This is the event that snaps Dijon’s fragile sanity and leads him on a unique murder spree. He uses a flashy lighter to hypnotize people into committing suicides and other horrible things. Eventually he even gains control over his wife who finally gets a brain and leaves the guy later in the film. She starts singing in Alex’s band. However, under Dijon’s power she begins to put together the pieces of plot, using a stage-gun from Sloan’s magic shop she attempts to kill Alex during her singing act.
However, her love for Alex causes something in her mind to override Dijon’s power and she takes the wrong gun from the shop. Once Alex realizes what has occurred he sends the police after Dijon. It is at this time that we are treated to the most famous bit of stock footage that was in almost every gangster film since the silent era. You know the footage I mean, the old style police cars and black sedans rushing out of a building and barreling down the street. Dijon tries to hide in the magic shop, but the cops realize where he has gone. The movie then turns into a James Cagney type of shoot-out and, after being shot, Dijon falls onto the Guillotine trick and is killed…once more allowing Poverty Row to slap the viewer in the head with another sudden and too-abrupt ending.
As I said, it is not a great film. But, it’s certainly not a horrible film either. As a relatively accurate character study of people living in the depression era, it’s exceptional. I do wish the ending had been a bit more consistent with the rest of the film and not degenerated into some rather pitiful cops and robbers’ affair. It really should have been Alex that confronted and helped destroy Dijon at the end of the film.
However to be fair, a realistic depiction of Alex’s character would not really make him the hero type that usually ends up in these kinds of situations. And, as I said before the true strength of this film lies in its truthful and realistic characters and performances. (To discuss more Creepy Cheapies, you may join the Creepy Cheapies E-mail list here.) Thanks, Ray. It's kind of sad to see the great Eric Von Stroheim reduced to acting in potboilers churned out by the most poverty- stricken of the Poverty Row production companies, Producers Releasing Corporation. But it's also inspirational to see his great talent emerge despite the low budget and breakneck production schedule. The Mask Of Dijon really is a nifty little shocker, with strong performances, an appearance by Van Helsing himself, Edward Van Sloan, some nice shadowy photography, and the old master, Von Stroheim, firmly in charge. It's the kind of film with the kind of cast that Universal should have done back then, if the "suits" at Universal had any clue as to the one film genre they had once owned and then squandered away. Article copyright © Raymond L. Blakey |
