BY HANK REINEKE
Basil Dearden’s intriguing The Man Who Haunted Himself is a feature-length remake of a
thirty-minute televised episode of Alfred
Hitchcock’s Presents. That episode -
from the 1955 program’s first season - had the distinction of having been
directed by the maestro of suspense himself. It was one of only a handful of dramas in the series that Hitchcock
chose to helm. The episode was based on Anthony
Armstrong’s short story (later novelized) “The Strange Case of Mr. Pelhamâ€
(Methuen & Co. Ltd., UK, 1957). The
book was later published that very same year in the U.S. as part of Doubleday
& Co.’s fabled “Crime Club†series.
Armstrong’s psychological thriller had been originally
published in the November 1940 issue of Esquire
magazine. The short story was later re-sold
and re-published in June 1955 as part of Ellery
Queen’s Mystery Magazine… which is likely where Hitchcock became acquainted
with it. (If interested, the entire
first season of the Hitchcock program, including “The Case of Mr. Pelham,†can
be found on one of the Alfred Hitchcock
Presents sets issued by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment in 2006. That is, of course, assuming you can get the
discs to play; there were all sorts of unwelcome pressing issues associated with
that DVD set).
Kino Lorber’s Special Edition Blu-ray of The Man Who Haunted Himself is a
co-venture with Britain’s StudioCanal label. It’s the second digital copy to make it onto my groaning shelves. StudioCanal issued the film in 2013 as a
Region 2 DVD and this UK edition was generous in their bonus supplements. The StudioCanal set included a standalone
thirty-four minute “music suite†of composer Michael J. Lewis’s memorable score,
a 2005 recorded commentary featuring Roger Moore and Bryan Forbes, the original
theatrical trailer, image galleries and even a PDF of promotional materials
used to market the film in 1970.
This new release on Blu by Kino here in the U.S. welcomingly
ports over the Moore/Forbes commentary (moderated by Jonathon Sothcott, author
of The Cult Films of Christopher Lee. The Sothcott tome might be of some additional
interest as it carries a preface by none other than “Sir Roger Moore (O.B.E.).â€
This Kino release also includes the film’s original trailer (as well as
trailers of three additional Moore films, Gold,
Street People, and The Naked Face.) We’re also treated to an informative bonus
supplement that features director Joe Dante and Hitchcock historian Stuart
Gordon musing on the film’s back stories and production history.
Though The Man Who
Haunted Himself is mostly regarded as a thriller in the Hitchcock tradition,
Dante suggests it serves as a genuine horror film as well: there are moments in
the film, he contends, that can still send a “chill up the backs†of movie-going
audiences. Dante and Gordon both reference
the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode
of 1955 as the film’s immediate forebear, but Gordon suggests that Armstrong’s short
story goes back even further in conception. He proposes the story is essentially a reworking of the Hans Christian
Andersen fable “The Shadow,†first published in 1847.
Roger Moore had offered on numerous occasions that his
turn as Harold Pelham was a personally rewarding one. For a graduate of the London’s prestigious
Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Moore would often commiserate he was rarely
given the opportunity to be “dramatically stretched†in his chosen profession. Certainly his popular TV roles as
cosmopolitan playboy-adventurers Simon Templar and Brett Sinclair – not to
mention his casting as the longest-serving James Bond – hadn’t allowed Moore to
demonstrate his mettle as a “serious†actor.
The
Man Who Haunted Himself certainly is more representative of his
abilities, with Moore estimating Basil Dearden and Michael Relph’s screenplay
as “one of the best scripts I’d ever read.†There’s even a tease of what was soon to come buried within the dialogue. Discussing the possibility of internal leaks
of confidential and sensitive information, Moore confidently cautions his worried
colleagues that acts of industrial “espionage isn’t all James Bond and Her
Majesty’s Secret Service.†For Moore, it
soon would be.
Moore’s performance is undisputedly wonderful in this,
though in my estimation the film – while never uninteresting - remains an
intriguing curiosity with an unsatisfying and confusing finale. Others have found the film to be an
under-appreciated off-the-radar masterpiece. Moore gets to play two characters in this, the colorless Harold Pelham
as well as his own calculating doppelganger. Basil Dearden’s direction is top-notch (and dizzyingly unorthodox in a
scene where Moore and eccentric psychiatrist (Freddie Jones) discuss the state
of his declining mental health). The Man Who Haunted Himself would,
tragically, be Dearden’s last feature film effort. The helmsman of such films as Woman of Straw and Khartoum, Dearden would die from injuries sustained following an
automobile crash on the M4 in 1971. Ironically, this is very same stretch of highway that Moore’s Pelham fails
to circumnavigate near the film’s beginning. He loses control of his Rover while driving recklessly at 110 kilometers
per hour. The calamitous car crash
results in Pelham suffering a near-death experience which, essentially, ignites
the tale that will unwind.
(Above: U.S. paperback novelizaton.)
Released in the UK in 1970 to disappointing reviews and a
mediocre box-office, Moore would blame the film’s failure on the marketing of
the production. He suggested a
behind-the-scenes rift between EMI and the film’s principal champion Bryan
Forbes, then Head of Production, had doomed the film to box-office
oblivion. Belatedly released in the U.S.
in the autumn of 1971 - usually as the under-bill to such less cerebrally ambitious
productions as Hammer’s Lust for a
Vampire or the even less thematically tied and daft “Carry On†series, the
film was eventually sold to American television. This is where NYC-area viewers such as myself
were introduced to it as one of the more unique - if disappointingly “monster-lessâ€
- entries of WNEW-TV’s Saturday night Creature
Feature presentations.
The film is a particularly English production, and it’s not
only due to the movie’s use of such London landmarks as the Thames, Big Ben,
the Houses of Parliament, Hyde Park, and the Reform Club as backdrops. This should not be all that surprising as The Man Who Haunted Himself was merely
one of several modestly-budgeted but ambitious productions green-lighted by
Forbes and Associated British Productions to assist in the resurrection of the
then sagging British film industry.
In some ways it can be argued that Pelham’s dilemma was tailored
to exploit an existential nightmare of all “keep-a-stiff-upper-lip†Britons: to
have one’s good name and reputation sullied by forces beyond one’s control. Moore’s Pelham is a button-down, businessman
of rigid habits, almost completely lacking a carnal appetite. His wife (Hildegarde Neil) and two sons,
while neither unloved nor uncared for, seem mere auxiliary trophies of his
success as a businessman. Pelham is, as
the song goes, “a well-respected-man-about-town.†But ultimately he’s a colorless
English gentleman: a sober, derby-topped, bumbershoot-carrying associate of a valuable
marine engineering firm.
His doppelganger is, on the other contrary, a womanizing,
gambling scoundrel who engages in “non cricket†business practices. “I don’t recognize the man sitting acrossâ€
the table, opines one disgusted senior colleague of more rigid principal. The line is delivered after the doppelganger
brags of a successful - if back-handed - below-board business maneuver. The doppelganger is, as a psychiatrist explains
to the weary genuine Pelham, his exact opposite, a physical manifestation of
his suppressed id. By the film’s end,
Moore’s Pelham will become totally unstrung when, in a tense sequence, he
finally comes face-to-face with his body-double. In an earlier sequence, one of the
doppelganger’s romantic liaisons greets the authentic Pelham at her door - a
scant few minutes after the double has departed from it having already satisfied
his sexual desires. “You’re never the
same man twice,†she tells him.
In the final
summation, The Man Who Haunted Himself is an imperfect but compelling thriller.
It also stands as testament that Roger Moore’s acting talent could, when called
upon, exceed well beyond the arched-eyebrow that was his trademark.
(For coverage of "The Man Who Haunted Himself", see Cinema Retro issue #2.)
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