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When one bogeyman isn't enough, movie makers have simply doubled the ante with another. One of the most popular ways of doubling the horror is to use mirror-image miscreants--otherwise known as...
By JOE WINTERS Mirror, mirror, on the wall…who’s the vilest
one of all? You don’t need a mirror to answer that
question when an evil twin can provide all the explanation required. While
the possibilities for mischief and mayhem have their roots in classic literature (The
Man In The Iron Mask, The Prince And The Pauper, The Prisoner Of Zenda,
and Poe’s story, "William Wilson," to name a few), some of the deadliest
doubles can be found on the silver screen. In 1933’s The Sphinx, Lionel Atwill
is a deaf and dumb philanthropist who becomes curiously chatty at the scenes of his crimes
before casually walking away from the properly flabbergasted witness. Later at his
trial, “The Sphinx”, as he’s referred to by the press, is acquitted.
After all, how can a man born with paralyzed vocal cords talk after committing
murder or at any other time, for that matter? You are allowed only two guesses.
The movie was remade in 1942 as Phantom Killer
with John Hamilton (Perry White in the Superman TV series) in the dual role. In A Scream In The Night (1935), a
valuable ruby is the target of thieves, including scar faced Frank "Butch"
Curtain (Lon Chaney Jr.), It also gives the younger Chaney a chance to follow in the face-changing footsteps of his late great Dad who was no stranger to playing dual roles in silent films like The Blackbird (1926) and Mr. Wu (1927).
Junior also shows a hint of the likable traits of
his later Universal triumphs (Man Made Monster and The Wolf Man) and is
the main reason for seeing the otherwise lackluster A Scream In The Night. Boris Karloff fared much better in the
twin business when he starred in 1935’s The Black Room (Columbia) as
brothers Gregor (the bad) and Anton (the good). Their family legend states that when
twins are born, the younger brother will slay the older in the black room.
How will this come about when evil Gregor kills Anton first and then takes his
place? The answer to that is one of the film’s many
pleasures. Not to be outdone by Boris, Bela Lugosi was nonetheless undone by his dual role that same year in Murder By Television as a greedy businessman and his detective twin brother who solves the former’s murder.
Albert “Dr.Cyclops” Dekker would portray
twin brothers, one normal, the other deranged in Paramount’s Among The Living
(1941). Twins have proven to be a reliable gimmick in films, and a chance for a major star to show what he or she can do in two different roles that interact. Fans of Ronald Colman would get double the satisfaction with The Prisoner Of Zenda (1937), filmed a number of times, including 1952 with Stewart Granger, and in 1979 with Peter Sellers.
Olivia DeHavilland played twin sisters in The
Dark Mirror (1946), remade for TV in 1984 with Jane Seymore. Lookalikes would
figure prominently in Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) with Kim Novak the
dual object of James Stewart’s obsession, and in Brian De Palma’s Obsession
with Genevieve Bujold playing a dead ringer for Cliff Robertson’s late wife. Bette Davis played twin sisters, one of whom
murders the other and takes her place in Dead Ringer (1964), while Jeremy Irons
portrayed twin gynecologists with a mutual dependence on one another in director
David Cronenberg’s luridly disturbing psychological drama Dead Ringers
(1988).
While flesh & blood doubles proved fully capable of generating twice the mystery, supernatural twins could add an even eerier twist. An early example of this was The Student Of Prague, filmed in years previous to the 1926 version that starred Conrad Veidt as a socially frustrated young man who makes a deal with the Devil for a fortune in gold. In return, the young man need only surrender his
own reflection, his “second self” which steps right out the mirror and commences
to haunt the original. The story combines the story of Faust with Poe’s
“William Wilson."
In Dead Men Walk (1943) George Zucco
played twins, one alive and good, the other undead and thoroughly evil, a vampire
in fact, who tries to make life miserable for the living with the help of his maniacal
servant, played by the expert at playing maniacal servants, Dwight Frye. The idea of a vampiric twin was such a good idea Hammer Films used it in their 1971 Twins Of Evil. Playboy magazine’s first twin centerfold models, Mary and Madeleine Collinson, portrayed Maria and Frieda Gellhorn, one of whom would be lured down the blood red path by the undead Count Karnstein. While the twins were great to look at, the best acting
in the film would again be the work of Peter Cushing as the girls’ fanatical uncle,
faced with the prospect of destroying the evil one…but which one?
Sometimes you get only one chance at these things, so you’d better guess right.
In Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1961),
a witch/vampire (Barbara Steele) is executed, only to return centuries later with a plan
to replace her descendant. Vincent Price faced a similar situation in The
Haunted Palace (1963) as a man who inherits the house of his ancestor who was burned
at the stake for witchcraft years earlier and is ready to return for revenge and to mate
some unlucky maiden with his unholy master. 1968’s Spirits Of The Dead serves up
three tales of the supernatural. The second, based on Poe’s “William
Wilson," features Alain Delon as a cruel man haunted by his double. As in The
Student Of Prague, the man can’t destroy his second self without
destroying himself.
The Other (1971) based on Thomas
Tryon’s best seller, concerns twin boys representing good and evil. The concept of the do-it-yourself twin is
one that can prove handy on occasion, as it did for a certain Oriental mastermind played
by Christopher Lee in The Face Of Fu Manchu (1965). In the opening scene of
this first installment of the series of Fu films, the villain appears to go willingly to
his own execution. We know better, of course, and sure enough, it later turns out
to have been an actor hypnotized by Fu into losing his head, leaving the real fiend free
to carry out his schemes temporarily undetected. Another sort of do-it-yourself twins are found in Brian De Palma's excellent film Sisters (1973), where Siamese twins go under the knife to be separated. Yet, they never really are, mentally, and bloody murder results.
Before Hammer Films hit big time with their gothic
monster revivals, their top director Terence Fisher did a minor sci-fi drama in 1953
called Four-Sided Triangle. Two childhood pals grow up to become scientists
and invent a machine that duplicates matter. They both love the same woman whom
they’ve known since they were all kids. When the woman chooses one of
the men, the other uses the machine to duplicate the woman, with tragic
results. A more famous man-made woman, however, was the
robot in Fritz Lang’s futuristic silent epic Metropolis (1927). The
robot, the product of mad inventor Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), is transformed into the
evil duplicate of good-hearted Maria (Brigitte Helm) as part of a scheme to disrupt the
workers and keep them subservient to the privileged masters of the great city. One of the most frightening films to deal with
manufactured twins would be director Don Siegel’s classic Invasion Of The Body
Snatchers (1956), where seed pods from outer space take root on Earth and later pop
open to replace our friends and neighbors with unfeeling duplicates.
Feeding on the cold war paranoia of the time, the film was a hit and was later remade in
1978 and 1993.
Twins can be played for laughs, too, as in
Disney’s The Parent Trap (1961) with Hayley Mills. The movie may have
been the inspiration for TV’s The Patty Duke Show with the Oscar-winning
actress playing identical cousins. The twin aspect found its way into numerous
television outings including Lost In Space with an intergalactic desperado who
looks just like hapless Dr. Smith (Jonathan Harris, “oh the pain!”),
while the highest-rated Batman two-parter featured none other than Liberace as
criminal pianist Chandell and his gangster twin brother Harry. We’ve uncovered twins, both natural and
unnatural, of men, women and children. How do you top that? Why, with a twin
of Earth itself and its entire population! Doppleganger,
a German word for double, was also the title of a 1969 British movie, better known in the
United States as Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun. Roy (The Invaders)
Thinnes plays an American astronaut on a mission to a new planet detected on the other
side of the Sun and in an orbit identical to our own. Shortly after his crash
landing, he notices that everything is the opposite of the way it should be
(writing, placement of objects, etc.), but otherwise identical in appearance. As you can see, the conflicts and confusions of
being a twin can be quite tricky, as if life isn’t complicated enough already.
Knowing there’s someone running around who looks like you or like someone you know
can go beyond merely seeing double. Something to think about next time you look in a
mirror. Thanks, Joe! Watching "twins" terror flicks is certainly one way to double your shivers and double your scary fun. Article copyright © Joe Winters |
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