Horrors of the Black Museum
A series of three murders in bizarre circumstances within two weeks, all of the victims young, attractive, single women, and with no clues, suspects or apparent motives, Superintendent Graham and Inspector Lodge of Scotland Yard are baffled and exasperated and the people of London are nervous, the only person who seems to be thriving in the tense situation journalist and crime writer Edmond Bancroft, eagerly promoting his new book.
His column drawing on the details of the murders to thrill and titillate his ghoulish readers, Bancroft theorises that the latest killing was inspired by a weapon contained within Scotland Yard’s “black museum,” a semi-secret archive of implements and accoutrements associated with high profile cases, a collection which Bancroft hopes to supercede with his own similarly themed expansive collection housed in the dungeon of his mansion.
A British-American co-production filmed in the widescreen CinemaScope format showcased on StudioCanal’s new restoration, Horrors of the Black Museum was originally released in 1959, starring future Celestial Toymaker Michael Gough as Bancroft, bad tempered when he doesn’t get his way with those he considers beneath him and smarting that Scotland Yard dismiss him when he believes he should be brought in to consult on the investigation.
Instead, his anger is taken out on his mistress Joan (June Cunningham) whom he considers vulgar and common, while his assistant Rick (Graham Curnow) is bent to his will, his own life and relationship with Angela (Shirley Ann Fields) secondary to Bancroft’s petty demands, with only antique dealer Aggie (Beatrice Varley) seeing through Bancroft’s mask and dangerously trying to turn that to her advantage through blackmail.
Bancroft’s relationships built on mutual revulsion and exploitation, Horrors of the Black Museum is an awkward transition from the grandeur of ancient fogbound castle of Hammer’s films of the era to something more immediately relatable, a serial killer in the modernity of post-war London, Joan a stubborn survivor of the blitz who is incongruously eliminated from Bancroft’s tempestuous affections with a portable guillotine, one of many disparate elements which don’t come together to create a coherent whole.
Arthur Crabtree’s stilted direction not helped by the cumbersome cameras, the shock of the opening scene is not matched by the following acid baths, electrocution, false confessions and an awkward dance number where the onlookers seem mortified, and there is a sense that the promised horrors of the film are consciously underplayed in order to avoid censorious attention, the rushed funfair finale an abrupt interruption where the big wheel resumes turning as soon as the bodies are taken away by the waiting ambulance crews.
