The Dark Tower

Murder under the big top has often been a favorite topic for the screen, especially when you add jealousy and rivalry to the mix. This is a British film made during the war years at a studio that was later bombed and put out of use.

HERBERT LOM has a key role as a hypnotist hired by the circus to give one of their high wire performers (ANNE CRAWFORD) the nerve to perform a dangerous act while under his positive spell. She's married to David FARRAR but soon attracts the hypnotist with her blonde beauty. BEN LYON is manager of the circus troupe. Lom wants respect and tells the circus manager he has the power to command success.

The plot ambles along rather pleasantly with just enough tension to keep the interest up as Lom soon becomes important to the circus because he has complete control over Crawford, much to her husband's dismay. There are a few surprises later on, when the high wire act under the hypnotist's guidance goes awry with tragic circumstances. An additional surprise is the twist given the ending.

Lom really steals the film as the hypnotist with magnetic eyes. David Farrar and Anne Crawford are both perfect as the husband and wife team torn apart by his interference.

Better than average circus drama from the U.K.

Nothing else on TV so found myself watching The Dark Tower on TCM. I found myself drawn into this, despite what seems to be clichés (but really weren't when the film was made). Well worth watching.

As a Doctor Who fan from way back when, what a thrill to have the original Doctor, William Hartnell (billed as Bill Hartnell) playing Jim.

I won't recount the story, but I really liked the peripheral characters especially the "naysayer" Annie Oakley woman. Most of the circus stuff was faked but there were some real gems worth watching. There is a wonderful sequence with a "clown" tightrope walker which I defy you to find better -- I was riveted to his performance.

Put it on your list of things to watch.

The Trilby&Svengali saga is given another version in The Dark Tower. This is a film made by Warner Brothers at its British studio facilities and it's a well done piece of work.

Ben Lyon is boss of a circus that's hardly the operation of Ringling Brothers. It's a failing small show and at the beginning of the film he can't even meet the payroll. Into his life walks Herbert Lom, a strange and brooding man who has a great gift as a hypnotist. On both animals and people.

The main attraction of the circus is the aerial act that Lyon's brother David Farrar does with Anne Crawford and Crawford has fears that may be insurmountable. With hypnosis not so says Lom and he hypnotizes her to conquer her fears. Pretty soon she's his puppet.

With his mesmerizing methods the show becomes a success. But Lom starts intruding on everything in the show and extorts a partnership out of Lyon. To a person they all hate him in the show save Crawford, but know he's their meal ticket. In the end something is done about Lom.

Lom is the center of this film, he gives a fascinating performance about a brooding and vengeful man. In a key scene with Crawford he tells of being bullied as a child and then discovering his gift made a lot of people bend to his will. A lot of bullied kids and former bullied kids who watch this film will cheer on Herbert Lom.

Don't miss this film if broadcast especially if you are fan of Herbert Lom's work.

Phil Danton runs a struggling British traveling circus. They're broke. When the lion escapes, hypnotist Stephen Torg (Herbert Lom) comes to the rescue. Then they have an idea to hire him. He could hypnotize trapeze artist Mary (Anne Crawford) to do a dangerous stunt.

Herbert Lom delivers good creeps. I can see much better use to hypnotize the audience in his own act. Dress him up like a wizard. Anyways, he needs to stay dark for the horror aspect. He needs to be the phantom of the circus. This could be a good horror movie, but it keeps pushing towards melodrama. The horror aspect of the story gets lost.

A curious little movie that deserves to be better known. Based on "The Dark Tower," a play by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woolcott, which was also the inspiration for the better-known "The Man With Two Faces," it shares little except for its title and the theme of hypnotism with the boilerplate melodrama by the two celebrated Algonquin Roundtable wits of the 1930s.

Well-acted,well-written, well-shot, and well-lit, this motion picture operates on two levels, both of them terrifying. Superficially, it's a neat horror film starring an excellent Herbert Lom as "Torg," a Peter Lorre-type -- a rather off-putting and unhappy gentleman from some Central European country who, while absolutely loathing people, can mesmerize them to do his bidding. Ingratiating himself into a rundown provincial traveling circus in a pre-war England -- think an anglicized "La Strada" -- he makes himself indispensable, turning around the fortunes of this one-lion show.

On another level, the circus can be interpreted as a metaphor for Nazi Germany, with the Lom character standing in for the master propagandist Dr. Josef Goebbels, sans a limp. Every utterance of his drives home this resemblance, as "Torg," morphs from just plain Torg to Mr. Torg to ... Doctor Torg, using his power "to cloud men's minds" to bully his way into a position of power. To draw attention to this subtext, the circus parade features a platoon of uniformed blondes marching with arms extended (are they Sieg Heiling?), and a Col. Blimpish ringmaster who could be a stand-in for Field Marshal von Hindenburg.

This secondary theme isn't all that obvious,and perhaps it may not even exist (as Sigmund Freud himself said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar) but for one viewer it does lift this 1943 movie out of the realm of still another film of fright and frisson and instead, with its unspoken chilling and sinister message, places it in Hell.