Not dead, but liminal.

rmax304823

This isn't Val Lewton's best, although it's by no means a failure, given the strictures of the production -- budget, schedule, and so on.

The story has a handful of people quarantined on a Greek island so as not to spread the plague. Half of them die of the disease, two are murdered by a crazed woman who was prematurely buried, and one is a suicide. Only the gentlemanly host and the two young lovers survive.

The acting varies in quality, with Boris Karloff being noticeably more professional than anybody else, as the stern, protective General whose skepticism about vorvolaka (some kind of night-time demon from the grave) is finally ground away by the stress and by the whispers of the old crone who believes in the superstition.

Unfortunately, the script lets everyone down. Halfway through the film, the wind changes and the plague is forgotten. The rest of the story has to do with that escapee from the premature burial who runs around with a miniature version of Poseidon's trident, using it to the distress of the others.

It wouldn't be bad if the two sources of horror were somehow fused and hinged together -- the plague and the vorvolaka -- but they're not. The superstition actually arises out of an illness that has nothing to do with plague, as the film makes clear from the start. We wind up with the impression that we're watching the same actors in the same wardrobe on the same set -- but making two different movies.

The direction by Mark Robson is okay, and Lewton will have his little touches. The eeriest scene is a simple one -- a vulnerable woman in a peasant dress following the chirping of a bird through a dark and windy forest. Night. And she's all by herself. And there's a madwoman with a sharp object somewhere. Little Red Riding Hood all ready to be eaten.

But that's about it. Whatever scare factor is built into the movie comes from the images on screen, not from the story.

What always surprises me about Val Lewton's productions at RKO is that, even when they're no more than middling, they are B movies that manage never to insult the audience. They are never done by the number, or at any rate not by any numbers that exist outside of Val Lewton's head.

score 6/10

rmax304823 20 July 2006

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1424930/