Scent of Mystery

Scent of Mystery, which is also known as Holiday in Spain. Stars Denholm Elliott and the talented but mysterious Peter Lorre. at the beginning, the card tells us we're going to see the original Smilebox version. wikipedia dot org shows us that this is a curved version of letterbox filming, where the camera tries to show things from the viewers point of view, curving around the viewer. then we spend a lot of time, as the butterfly flies over Spain. Elliott is "Larker", the writer who has created mystery stories about his private eye. and Lorre is his taxi driver. i guess because he's a mystery writer, he thinks he is caught up in a local incident, and they drive all over Spain following Mrs. Jordan (Beverly Bentley, who was married to writer Norman Mailer). and of course, we end up in Pamplona, during the running of the bulls. at one point, Peter Lorre even jokes about being in Casablanca years ago, stealing someone's wife. it kinds of plods along, as the story and the taxi tires go flat. a couple plot twists and turns, as Larker tries to help save the attractive young lady. Directed by Jack Cardiff, who won for Black Narcissus. and one of only three films produced by Mike Todd junior. (his dad, Todd senior had invented several filming techniques, before passing away a couple years back. and was married to Liz Taylor.) this adventure is like a slow, low-budget north by northwest. The best part of this film is the scenery! beautiful mountains, castles, views of Spain.

Englishman Oliver Larker (Denholm Elliott) is on vacation in Spain. He doesn't speak the language. He hires taxi driver Smiley (Peter Lorre). He thinks that he has stumbled upon a murder attempt on an unknown blonde woman.

This movie apparently came with a few gimmicks. It had Smell-O-Vision system and shown in Cinerama. I just simply watched it on TCM. While it maintained the curved picture, the smells can't be transferred. It's still interesting to see Peter Lorre at the end of his career. It's also interesting to see old Spain. I love the locations and the real people. The best scene may be the running of the bulls and it's nothing more than a traffic jam to the story. It was probably interesting to have the smells. There is a lot of interesting stuff other than the main story. I would also prefer to have less narration. This is better as a travelog.

The cinematography is great, as expected with Jack Cardiff directing. A lot of the shots are ingenious. The story, or lack of a story, is terrible. Denholm Elliot, usually an engaging actor, walks through the film in a sleepy state looking like he's waiting for direction. I can't blame him for that. Peter Lorre is his taxi driver, at least in closeups, and his wisecracking guide. The Cinerama filming is a real treat for me. I've seen several roadshow movies in Cinerama including Ice Station Zebra. Diana Dors has a way too short bikini cameo. The film should have been built around Dors in that bikini. Elizabeth Taylor, wife of the producer, pops up at the end.

I have been tempted by the Belock/Everest Records/Todd AO link up in terms of LPs, Around the World in Eighty Days, and highlights from Mike Todd's Broadway shows and the Night in Venice, where I think one part of it was filmed in Todd AO. You can hear the front 5 channel sound compressed into remarkable standard 2 channel stereo on the 80 Days LP.

I know the 6 channel Todd AO sound was Westrex and entirely independent of Belock recording but the later development of 8 channels held the possibility of rear stereo effects, the 6 channel format having mono rear sound, but in this case of smello vision one of these channels was also used to steer the scent effects.

I have spotted a Scent of Mystery soundtrack LP from Everest Records and wonder whether it is worth getting in terms of quality of the music on this film.

This may have been a cinematic dead end. But the real bad thing that happened was the tragedy of Mike Todd's premature death in that plane accident.

This is a most interesting discussion and I thank the others for their helpful comments, especially the guy who speaks from first hand experience and who commented on the great sound...that's why I am curious about whether it supplied rear stereo and what the prospects of the LP. I imagine this all predates any form of dolby encoding so the notion of being able to extract a pro logic surround sound from a two track stereo source did not exist.

I was at the premiere in Hollywood (1960) - A first-date thing ......

Didn't know what to expect .. but the pipe tobacco and peach smells (among SEVERAL more) were astounding! Each time you smelled the perfume... you KNEW something bad was going to happen! .....

I don't know how they did it, maybe a hose or fan mounted on the seat in front of you, but when the scene changed, the smell did too !! NEET!

If I remember correctly, the program LISTED all the smells you would encounter during the film as well.

Needless to say, the food smells probably helped the concession stand because the lines were a mile long !!

My date was NOT impressed... (should have made her buy popcorn!)

Too bad, This film followed the 3-D craze and is now gone.