As you could probably tell by my review of THE TINGLER not too long ago, I'm a pretty big fan of William Castle movies. His career started out strong with genre classics House on Haunted Hill (1959) and 13 Ghosts (1960), and I love those films to bits. Was this movie another delightfully spooky time capsule for Castles' career, or the start of his decline?
Only one way to find out.
Mr. Sardonicus is a 1961 horror film, based on a short called "Sardonicus" that was originally published in Playboy. Sir Robert Cargrave is an eminent surgeon who has developed a new technique for muscle relaxation. He is summoned by his one-time love, Maude, who is now married to Baron Sardonicus. When he arrives, he finds villagers who live in fear. The Baron is a strange man, not the least because he covers his face with a mask. Eventually, he tells Sir Robert the story of how he acquired his current affliction - his face is frozen and hideously disfigured. Despite Sir Robert's best efforts, he can't return his face to normal. The Baron however forces him to keep trying, threatening to harm Maude if he refuses.
When this movie first came out, attendees were given small white cards with luminous thumbs with which to vote thumbs-up or thumbs-down to vote on whether the main character could be pardoned or receive further punishment. Sounds pretty damn cool until you realize the technology to "choose" an ending didn't exist yet. William Castle filmed only one ending for the movie, and the "vote" was rigged by planting speakers in the theatre to vote for punishment.
The opening of this movie is probably my favourite movie opening of all time (Sorry ANTICHRIST). It is so damn perfect in fact, I had to include it here word for word.
"...This of course is London, and I am William Castle. oh, it's good to see you again my homicidal friends. this time our story is of a different kind. it's an old-fashioned story, full of gallantry, and graciousness, and ghouls. you know about ghouls, don't you? They are... well... let me find you an exact definition let me see... Goom. oh, that's an odd word. It means to search for game in the dark. ghost, ah here it is, ghoul: an evil being who robs Graves and feeds on Corpses. Ah yes, just an old-fashioned story. I hope you enjoy it. and I hope your nightmares are nice ones. So nice to have met you again"
HELL FUCKING YES. It perfectly sets the tone for this movie, which steals its opening trip to the big spooky castle straight from DRACULA. instead of DRACULA's tense as fuck journey through hell, however, the movie spends the first 25 minutes putting you to sleep with pointless plot details and masturbatory scenes of everyone telling Sir Robert how great he is. When we actually get to the mansion things start getting tense, as more and more of the Baron's abuse and weird sex stuff is revealed. but right as this movie comes to a tense low boil, we get a flashback that really should have opened this movie.
In what is by far the best part of this movie, Sardonicus tells his story to Sir Robert. He was born a farmer and lived a humble life with his father Henryk and his wife Elenka. Henryk bought a ticket for the national lottery but died before the drawing; after his burial, Marek and Elenka discovered that the ticket had won but had been buried with Henryk. Upon opening the grave, Marek was traumatized by the sight of Henryk's partially rotted, "grinning" face. I really wasn't expecting a movie this old to have some genuinely unsettling practical effects, and the reveal of this movie's grinning corpse is exactly that. It's made even more powerful by the incredible acting of Guy Rolfe, who is perfectly at home amongst other genre legends like LON CHANEY, BELLA LUGOSI, CLAUDE RAINS, and of course BORIS KARLOFF. Even just being in this movie would be one hell of a cool legacy, but lest we forget that In the 1990s Rolfe appeared in five films in the Puppet Master series as Andre Toulon himself.
The tone of the film bounces back and forth from a slow-paced thriller to a standard classic horror vibe, but more often than not it's just too slow to be as much fun as Castles's other movies.
But even so, a mid-castle movie is still a damn fine movie.
7/10
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