L'homme au masque de verre

This is an early British Hammer film, but it was filmed in Italy and co-scripted by future Italian director Antonio Marghareti, so it also in some ways anticipates the later Italian giallo thrillers, mostly in its enjoyably absurd plot. In the creepy opening scene a man (Peter Van Eck) puts on a scuba mask (it's technically not a "snorkel") and hides under the floor boards in order to gas his sleeping wife from inside her locked room. The police naturally think its suicide, but the murdered woman's teen daughter (Mandy Miller) comes home from school and immediately suspects the truth--naturally since she earlier witnessed her step-father drowning her father. Everyone thinks she's crazy, of course, (even after he bumps off her little dog, "Toto", too). Her governess (Betta St. John )meanwhile is torn between her loyalty her apparently delusional charge and her attraction to the suave, seemingly distraught widower.

Now if this were a giallo there would be many more, no doubt very bloody, murders, the couple would graphically consummate their relationship, and even little Mandy would probably get in on the erotic and/or violent action somehow (i.e. check out the later giallo "Smile Before Death" which has a very similar plot, but with all these elements added in). But don't expect anything like that here. Still, this is very entertaining and has some ironic and effective twists at the end (the very last scene, however, is a terrible cop-out, no doubt tacked on to ameliorate the douchebags, I mean censors). The acting is indeed very good, especially that of Van Eyck and Miller (I hope this isn't the same Mandy Miller who later appeared in David Sullivan's horrible "Emmanuelle in Soho", but that seems pretty unlikely). You definitely want to check this one out.

No one could portray the role of a villain with more skill than

Peter Van Eyck. This film was made for him and if you can overlook the obvious predictability of it you will be more than compensated by its more than average share of suspense. Dont miss it if it comes around again, you wont be disappointed.

Set in Italy in an ornate villa, you see the crime from the beginning, and how it is pulled off in detail. An apparently fortune hunting husband, Paul Decker (Peter van Eyck), has put a powerful sedative in his wealthy wife's drink causing her to fall into a deep sleep, has taped up the windows, locked the doors to the room she is in, and turns on the gas in the room. He dons a snorkel connected to air coming from outside and stays in the room until the next morning when the servants arrive. He then hides in a section under the floor, with the opening to this compartment hidden by a throw rug. The servants find their dead mistress, call the police, and the woman's death is ruled a suicide. The murdering husband slips out and leaves after everybody has left the villa.

The dead woman's daughter, Candy, about 13, is not buying it. She says she saw the man kill her father - his death was ruled an accident - and says that her mother had no reason to kill herself, especially on the day she was returning home from boarding school. But nobody believes her and her stepfather has a passport stamped by the Italian authorities saying he came back to Italy from France the day after his wife died.

So the rest of the film is a tense cat and mouse game between Candy and her stepfather, with her trying to figure out how he did what he did, and with nobody believing her, and her stepdad doing a good job of playing the grieving husband. He charms the close family friend caring for Candy, and the police seem determined to close the case and call this a suicide because, after all, for the husband to have done it he would have had to be in the locked room the entire time that the gas was on AND live. Of course, the answer is in the movie title, and somehow I think Columbo would have had a harder look at the stepfather than the police did here. In fact, this is set up very much like an episode of Columbo - you see the crime, you see the criminal, but Columbo has to prove what he suspects going initially only on a hunch.

There is a terrific twist at the end and is well worth sticking around to see. Let's just say the ending is heavy.

Poor Candy Brown (Mandy Miller). She cannot get anybody to believe her. She's 100% certain that her cold blooded stepfather Paul Decker (Peter van Eyck) has murdered her mother, despite the evidence seeming to indicate that the woman committed suicide. Mandy, who also believes in her heart that Paul had similarly murdered her father once upon a time, sticks to her guns. But the adults around her keep stubbornly insisting that she *must* be making all of this up.

It's easy to be on Candy's side here. With so many thick headed adult characters, you truly feel her frustration and desperation. Will she ever obtain the proof she needs that Paul is a creep? People like her chaperone Jean Edwards (Betta St. John, "The City of the Dead"), Mr. Wilson (William Franklyn), or the hearty police inspector (Gregoire Aslan) refuse to take her seriously, even though she doesn't seem to be the sort of girl who'd be prone to flights of fancy.

The suspense lies not in a "did he or didn't he" scenario - we see Paul murder Candy's mother in the quiet, ingenious opening set piece. The title object plays a pivotal role. Rather, the tension arises in Candy's predicament, and whether or not she'll be vindicated before the evil Paul strikes again. And we know it's possible. The looks he keeps giving her show that he thinks that he'll have to kill her just to shut her up.

Efficient direction by Oscar winning cinematographer Guy Green ("Great Expectations", 1946) and sharp black & white photography make this a fine entertainment, as well as strong performances from all concerned. Miller makes Candy a sympathetic character, and with his facial features van Eyck was obviously a natural for screen villainy.

This viewer would suggest that fans of Hammer horror give features like this a try, just to show that the famed British studio wasn't just a one trick pony.

Seven out of 10.

A little-known picture sporting an amusing title, "The Snorkel" yet reveals itself to be an excellent suspenser; a genuine sleeper that may be finding some latter-day acclaim thanks to this great-looking print in the Hammer "Icons of Suspense" DVD box set. Released in 1958 by Hammer Studios, shortly after the famed British filmmaking independent began its reign of the Gothic horror niche with that year's "The Curse of Frankenstein," the picture is a tale of murder and suspense without being an actual mystery. In the film's very first scene, we are privy to the central murder and made aware of how the killer contrives to make his victim look like a suicide. Using the titular gizmo, Paul Decker (played with icy Germanic menace by Peter van Eyck) manages to stay alive in a sealed room while he asphyxiates his wife with gas. He then hides beneath a covered trapdoor in the floor, leading the local authorities in the French/Italian border region (the locale in the film IS vitally important to its plot) to automatically render that verdict of suicide. But Decker's stepdaughter, Candy (14-year-old former child actress Mandy Miller, here in her final film), knows better, already suspecting him of having drowned her dad several years before. Too bad, though, that no one will believe her, including her beautiful nanny, Jean (Betta St. John, who many viewers will recall from the 1960 fright classic "Horror Hotel"), resulting in quite a nail-biting game of cat and mouse between Candy and the increasingly dangerous Decker. And this desperate standoff between the two turns more and more suspenseful as the viewer wonders just how--or if--Candy will ever prove her claim to the authorities before the killer manages to finish her off!

van Eyck, it must be said, is truly excellent as the cold-blooded Decker, while Mandy, appealing as can be, proves herself a fine little actress as well; likable, cute and effective. The film's direction by Guy Green is gripping and often imaginative, and co-writer Jimmy Sangster (who seems to have been responsible for so many of these Brit thrillers) here provides quite the ingenious and clever story line. The film has been beautifully shot in B&W--the nighttime photography is especially gorgeous--and features any number of impressive sequences. My favorite: Paul tries to "save" (i.e., drown) Candy in the ocean. The film builds to an extremely tense windup, capped off by not one but TWO highly satisfying resolutions. Those viewers who had hoped for some kind of comeuppance as regards Decker will NOT be disappointed! In all, "The Snorkel" is surprisingly likable; indeed, I found myself enjoying it even more than the overly plotted 1963 Hammer film "Maniac" (also written by Sangster), which is to be found on the same disc. And oh...despite the "Maltin Classic Movie Guide"'s assertion that the running time for "The Snorkel" is a brief 74 minutes, the version that I just watched was more like 90. And that's a good thing. With a film like this one--a real treat for young and old alike, and one that you'll likely recommend to your friends--the more, the better!