Strangler of the Swamp

An innocent man had vowed revenge on the lynch mob who strung him up and two generations of men have been dying along the bayou in mysterious ways ever since. The latest is the village ferryman whose granddaughter takes over his scow and falls for a young man whose father was also involved in the tragedy. Legend has it that the curse can be lifted if a descendant offers their life to the spectre and when it comes for the girl's beau, well...

German director Frank Wisbar re-worked his Reich film FAHRMANN MARIA for PRC and, like fellow émigré Edgar G. Ulmer, he knew how to make an atmospheric film on a shoestring budget. Set almost entirely in a fog- enshrouded swamp of gnarled trees and murky waters, the tale visually resembles it's predecessor but the theme has changed from a "love and death" fable to revenge from beyond the grave. In the original, Death itself had come to take Maria's lover but in the re-make, it's a vengeful ghost. Even so, both gals bargain for the life of their man.

B-movie bad guy Charles Middleton ("Ming The Merciless") was the vengeful cadaver in the mist and Maria was played by "Miss America 1941" Rosemary La Planche. Although Maria was the real hero, future producer/director Blake Edwards, of all people, played "the hero" and he wasn't a bad-looking guy. As far as Poverty Row chills go, STRANGLER is a cut above the rest thanks to an imaginative director.

Frank Wisbar is one of the more overlooked directors who came to Hollywood from Nazi Germany. He worked at the Poverty Row studio PRC and went back to Germany after the war. At PRC he made such curiosities as DEVIL BAT'S DAUGHTER and this little item, which actually remakes his own 1936 German film.

It's confined almost entirely to a foggy swamp (with some indoor scenes). The theatrical, atmospheric first act includes a striking scene of three old women standing like statues on the ferry, intoning their dire warnings as it goes back and forth, guided by the ferryman who is responsible for dooming the village. Wisbar evokes Greek mythology (Charon, who ferries people across the Styx; the Three Fates). The camera pans back and forth with the ferry of old people, underlining the stagnation, the fact that no one is going anywhere.

When the young heroine comes into the picture, she seems a breath of fresh air. But with her independent attitude in assuming the job of ferryman (inherited from her dad), she doesn't seem to realize that she too is going nowhere and may be doomed. Another breath of fresh air is the fact that her heroic young fiancee (Blake Edwards) can do nothing to rescue her, but on the contrary she must save him and the rest of the village from "the sins of the fathers." When you place this fable in its original context of Weimar cinema (its preoccupation with sins of authority figures and the previous generation) and the new threat of Hitler, you can see where Wisbar is coming from.

Well, it was not all that bad of a film.... I've seen better and I've seen worse. Worth watching if you want a different type of a ghost film and like the classics.

Easy story to watch: An innocent man was hanged, a confession made and ghost out for revenge. For me, the best part about the film was the fact it is set in the swamp - it has a creepy aura to it. I also liked the ferry - pretty cool way to cross the swamplands. What I was not crazy about the ending nor did I like the "romance" in this flick - wish the "budding romance" was left out and someone else rid the swamps of the ghost. Still an OK movie to watch.

6/10

"Strangler of the Swamp" is a very strange little picture from PRC, one of the so-called Poverty Row studios of the '40s; the same studio responsible for such wonders as "The Devil Bat" (1941) and "The Devil Bat's Daughter" (1946). This last film starred Miss America 1941, Rosemary La Planche, in the same year that she appeared in "Strangler." Here, she plays Maria, the granddaughter of a ferry boat operator in one of the most dismal-looking swamps you could ever imagine. Having felt lonely while working in the big city, what could be more natural than her taking over her grandpappy's job when he is killed by the eponymous swamp strangler, the pale-faced spirit of a wrongfully hanged man, eerily played by Charles "Ming the Merciless" Middleton? Whilst pulling this tow-rope swamp barge through its courses, Maria meets hunky Chris Sanders, played by Blake Edwards (yes, THAT Blake Edwards, almost a full decade before he was to begin his glorious career as a director). Anyway, cheaply made and studio bound as "Strangler" is, I suppose the picture does have atmosphere to spare. Shot mostly on darkened sets and with prodigious amounts of swirling ground mist and bullfrog croakings, the film does evoke a creepy bayou feel, and its brief running time (the whole thing barely clocks in under an hour) allows for zero padding. This is basically a minor little "B" picture, to be sure, that does what it sets out to do: tell a weird ghost story with absolutely no frills. The film is hardly ever scary, although there are several shots of Middleton's blank-faced mug that are fairly riveting. La Planche herself is very appealing, strange as her character may be (honestly, who would ever lay down in a pile of grass and swamp muck at night to take a nap?!?), and Edwards fine as the surprisingly UNheroic leading man. The DVD that I just watched features a battered-looking print with no extras, but I suppose we may never see this oddball curiosity look any better. Fans of '40s "B" horror may find the picture sufficiently rewarding to warrant a look; others, I feel, may find it a fairly hard pull.

It's really a pity more people haven't seen this little number from PRC - it has a tight story, good acting, amazing atmosphere, just everything so many of their features lack. The joke was, and in some cases remains, that PRC stood for Pretty Rank Crap (actually Producers Releasing Corporation). They kept Bela Lugosi from going hungry and delivered quite a list of entertainingly awful crud - I mean, they made Monogram look like MGM! Generally considered the studio where name actors went to pick up enough cash to pay off their bar tabs (which explains the presence of otherwise outstanding actors like J. Carroll Naish, John Carradine and George Zucco), by the law of averages, they were bound to hit the mark, once in a great while.

And here, they do. Despite, or perhaps because of the obvious sound-stage set, the film has an atmosphere of unreality, a similar effect attained in "City of the Dead" (1960) by the same means. Both films have an almost Lovecraftian sense of foreboding. The core of the film's success can be attributed to the "Strangler" himself, character actor Charles Middleton, perhaps most known for his turns as Ming the Merciless in the "Flash Gordon" serials and his menace of Laurel & Hardy in several of their shorts and features.

Please understand - "Strangler from the Swamp" is never going to give Hitchcock or the Val Lewton horror pictures a run for their money, but all in all, it is still a very satisfying film.

And yes, that Blake Edwards is THAT Blake Edwards!