Scent of Mystery

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.

I love the IMDb. Where else can you get people commenting on a film they clearly haven't seen in the way it was first exhibited. Only one commenter claims to have seen it. The others saw a seventy-minute butchered version taped with a video camera aimed at a seventy-millimeter movie screen which is the ONLY time it ever aired on TV (in other words, it was never "sold" to TV). Scent of Mystery was a true oddity, but one I adored. The camera-work and sound recording were unbelievably brilliant, and the film was a lark. The smells were dispensed to each seat via a tube and by the time of the LA run they'd figured out how to "clean" the air between smells and it worked very well. As to Holiday in Spain, here we have people making comments when they clearly know not of what they speak. When Scent flopped big-time, it was sold to the Cinerama corporation. The film was converted into three-panel Cinerama, cut by twenty-five minutes (making its plot completely incoherent - of course, this is the version people are commenting on - well, not exactly - their commenting on the shortened version which was further shortened for its one-time TV showing), narration by Elliot was added (terrible), and the intermission point, which in the original was sublime, was moved up by twenty minutes and made no sense at all. Given that all but one of the commentators here have only seen the dreck that they showed on TV (completely faded print and missing sixty percent of its image), well, I find it a bit galling. The Todd AO image was and is stunning, the director of the film was the great cameraman, Jack Cardiff. And the sound - amazing eight track Todd-Belock sound system which, to my mind, has never been bettered. Not by Dolby, not by DTS, not by anything. And, just in case you think my memory may be faulty, I have just this day watched a seventy-millimeter print of the film, the shortened (but not as short as TV) Holiday in Spain - and that sound blew me away.

So, at this time, Scent Of Mystery is a lost film. It's never even been printed down to 35mm. It is uncertain whether any 70mm elements survive for the uncut Scent - there are 70mm elements (and even YCMs) for Holiday in Spain. If the uncut neg can be found, I am here to tell you there are plans afoot for a DVD.

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.

There was a race to get smells into films at this time. It was won by the Walter Reade organisation in late 1959 with a documentary called "Behind The Great Wall", which added smells after the film was completed, in a process called aromarama. "scent of Mystery" was produced by Mike Todd Jr. in 70mm, with the smells to be used as clues to the mystery. It was a lighthearted romp, beautifully shot in Spain, with Elizabeth Taylor as a guest star. It has never been revived, or put out on video.

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.