dellascott2004

This film was quite enjoyable for what it was. A cockeyed optimist(Miss Jeff Daniels) buys a rundown colonial era inn with high hopes and decides to allow the current inhabitants, among them a scientist working on a device that will help the Allies win the war(Boris Karloff)and an old woman who obsesses about chickens, to stay on. Her bumbling ex-husband has followed her. The scientist is soon joined by the sheriff/coroner/justice of the peace (and purveyor of baldness cures),played by Peter Lorre. The big question is: Is there are or aren't there a room full of corpses in a secret room off the wine cellar? They have been experimenting on travelling salesmen who happen by the house,using the standard bulb- and- helmet type of contraption that should be familiar to moviegoers. Lorre's character packs a huge pistol and keeps a Siamese kitten in his pocket, claiming that "she has a incredible sense for crime and corruption." Good thing.

When I went to see this lesser known noir, the person introducing it described it as "almost a parody" of this kind of film and said not to take it too seriously. Nevertheless, it is a film about con artists and their techniques, and I love those. Especially well showcased is the technique of letting a mark think something is his or her own idea, and people are always more determined to do things that they think are their own ideas. The story features a group of globetrotting, high-rolling grifters led by John Payne and noir regular Dan Duryea, who decide to target a wealthy but naive young war widow(Joan Caulfield) with a scheme to build a youth center memorializing her husband. This necessitates Payne pretending to be a buddy of her late husband, who in reality, he had never met. At first the plan is to raise money from wealthy friends, but she then decides to bankroll the whole project herself. Things are further complicated when a sometime girlfriend of both of the men, played by a tough-as-nails young Shelly Winters, refuses to stay under wraps. This film seems to have been largely forgotten, which is a shame.

This film opens with three hip, cynical young Scottish professionals, David, Juliet and Alex (Christopher Eccleston, Kerry Fox and Ewan McGregor)who are looking for a fourth to share their spacious flat. That they aren't very nice people is clear in the opening scenes. when they taunt and mock the hapless applicants with insults and absurd questions, it is a foreshadowing of future nastiness and some of the choices they make. Finally an older man who seems to be their match takes the room, then immediately up and dies on them--and leaves a suitcase full of money. Did the guy commit suicide? And if so, why? More than likely the money came from some ill-gotten source, so why not keep it? But first, his corpse, which is, as Alex puts it, starting to "go off and smell" must be dealt with, hence the title. Scotland is such a great setting for a horror thriller, it's a shame more of them aren't set there. These are the people who gave us Burke and Hare after all. Add to that all the stereotypes about Scottish people and money and it's a perfect set-up for this plot. The sexual tension among the three also adds a suspenseful twist. Ewan McGregor was even more heartbreakingly handsome in those days, long before he was a Jedi knight, but in spite of that, he does an amazing job playing a lout.

It may be my imagination, but Danny Boyle seems given to "Clockwork Orange" references here as he was in "Trainspotting" (Watch for the scene at the charity ball with Ewan McGregor on the floor with Fox's foot on his face. There are others.) Nothing wrong with that. And as with "Trainspotting", there are some flights of pure fantasy, though none as protracted as the toilet scene.

Though not heavy handedly, I think that this film, perhaps even more so than "Trainspotting" makes a pointed comment on the spiritual condition(empty) of young people in the nineties. These are very much films of their time--they could not have been made in an earlier time, and not just because of explicit drug and violence scenes.