Some years ago, when movies in VHS videocassette format were still commonly being sold in charity shops, I saw in one such shop a very strange horror movie that I'd never heard of before - Mr Sardonicus. The tantalising description on the reverse of its cover sounded very intriguing, but as this was long before I owned a smartphone there was no way that I could find out anything more about it straight away, so I didn't buy it. Back home, I did read about it and wished then that I had purchased it (I still own a functional videocassette player), but as the town where I'd seen it was a long way away I didn't go back.
I pretty much forgot about the movie afterwards, but during mid-September 2019 I saw by chance on ebay a VHS videocassette of it. So what did I do? I forgot to put a bid on it, and only remembered a couple of hours after the auction had expired! Happily, I later found a second one and used the Buy It Now option. It arrived on 3 October 2019, is in mint condition, so I duly planned to view it asap.
In fact, "duly planned to view it asap" ultimately transformed into "in due course", because an entire year subsequently passed by without my having watched this movie, but on 1 November 2020 I finally did – so here at long last is my take on Mr Sardonicus.
Directed by none other than famed American horror movie producer/director William Castle, filmed in glorious b/w, and released in 1961, this very bizarre film is based upon a short story by Ray Russell (who also wrote the movie screenplay). It is set in the early 1880s, and features eminent London physician Dr Robert Cargrave (played by Ronald Lewis), a pioneering researcher in muscular paralysis, who receives out of the blue one day an urgent letter from erstwhile sweetheart Maude (Audrey Dalton), who is now the Baroness Sardonicus, having become the second wife of the mysterious Baron Sardonicus (Guy Rolfe) of Gorslava. This is a remote (and fictitious) Central European country where the Baron owns and resides in a lonely, set-apart castle. Maude states in her letter to Dr Cargrave that her husband the Baron wishes to see him and that it would be beneficial to her own well-being if he were to come as soon as possible. Dr Cargrave still retains feelings for Maude, so without delay he journeys to Gorslava, where he is met by the Baron's taciturn one-eyed manservant Krull (Oscar Homolka), who transports him to the castle by carriage.
Once there, Cargrave is met by the Baron, a tall, arrogant, imperious figure instantly rendered both memorable and mysterious by the full-face mask that he wears, and of whom the servants and also Maude are all clearly frightened. After entering one room to discover a female servant tied to a chair and screaming as leeches attached to her face suck blood from her skin, Cargrave demands to know why he has been sent for and what is happening at the castle. In reply, the Baron recounts the spine-chilling history of how he, once a poor Gorslavan peasant, came to own such a spectacular edifice and why he wears the macabre facial mask.
SPOILER ALERT – IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THIS MOVIE'S PLOT SHOCK OR HOW IT PLAYS OUT, READ NO FURTHER!!
Years ago, the Baron was simply Marek Toleslawski, an ordinary farmer, and was married to his first wife, Elenka. One day, Marek's father Henryk, also a farmer, who lived with them, showed him a Gorslavan national lottery ticket that he had purchased as a present for Elenka during his recent visit to a nearby city. However, Elenka showed no interest in it, because Henryk was forever purchasing such tickets and not once had any of them ever been winners, so Henryk tucked it inside a pocket in his waistcoat. Tragically, he died later that same day from a sudden heart attack, and was duly buried by Marek and the local gravedigger. Time passed, then one day the winning ticket numbers of that selfsame lottery draw were finally published, and to their delight Marek and Elenka discovered that the ticket purchased by Henryk for Elena was one of them! Their delight soon turned to despair, however, when, after vainly searching their house for the ticket, Marek realized to his horror where the missing ticket was – still inside the pocket of Henryk's waistcoat, the waistcoat in which he had been buried!
Spurred on by Elenka, whose desire for money far exceeded her love for her late father-in-law and also for her respect relating to the sanctity of his final resting place, Marek visited Henryk's grave that same night, dug up his coffin, and prized it open – but the horror that met his eyes, his father reduced to a skeleton, caused him to scream out with fear and shock. Although Marek finally remembered to take out the ticket from his deceased father's waistcoat pocket, he stumbled back home almost in a trance, groaning and whining pitifully. Still in this terrible state, he entered his house and thence his unlit bedroom, where his wife heard him moaning but was unable to discover why – until she lit a candle, looked at him, and screamed! The face of Marek was totally transformed – with its teeth fully bared, his mouth was stretched into a hideous maniacal leer, his facial muscles frozen into a horrific rictus grin that never relaxed, thereby preventing him from talking and rendering him scarcely able even to eat. Such was the terrifying visage that confronted her and the realization of what had caused it, Elenka's mind snapped and she committed suicide.
Marek hid his fearful face behind a mask, and with the substantial money gained via the winning lottery ticket he was able to purchase both the title of Baron and the castle, where he lived in seclusion from then on, subsequently marrying Maude but neither giving nor receiving any love in relation to their union. Desperate to reverse what had happened to him, the Baron became very learned in medicine, received professional coaching in how to speak again using his throat muscles, and even purposefully chose the name Sardonicus for himself, deriving it from the risus sardonicus or rictus grin condition resulting from tetanus or strychnine poisoning in which the facial muscles undergo a sustained spasm of paralysis, just as his own face had become paralysed by his shock in seeing his deceased father's appearance inside his coffin.
Yet despite experimenting with all manner of folk treatments (hence the leeches attached to the servant's face), as well as hiring the most proficient physicians from across Europe to attend him, the Baron has been unable to effect any improvement to his grotesque condition. After monitoring from afar the highly impressive advances in paralysis treatment achieved by Cargrave, however, and mindful that he could utilise Maude very effectively as a powerless pawn in persuading the doctor to assist him in his quest for a cure, the Baron had made her summon Cargrave to their castle to treat him.
This is what Cargrave now attempts, but once again, just like all of his predecessors experienced, it is all to no avail. Revealing his hatred for Maude and his all-consuming, wholly unscrupulous obsession for a cure, however, the merciless Baron swiftly informs Cargrave that if he doesn't do something that succeeds, he will order his manservant Krull to slice Maude's facial muscles in order to render her face deformed too. It also transpires that it was the Baron who, in a fit of violence, had blinded Krull in one eye, thereby leaving Cargrave in no doubt that his threat to have Maude disfigured is no bluff.
The only treatment remaining for Cargrave to try is one involving the injection into the Baron's face of an extract from an extremely poisonous South American plant that can effect muscle relaxation in animals, but which has never been medically tested upon a human. The Baron states that he is willing to receive the injection, but on the clear understanding that if it kills him, both Cargrave and Maude will be hideously mutilated by Krull in the castle's torture chamber.
And so the extract is duly injected, and, to everyone's amazement, it works! The Baron's facial muscles are finally relaxed, dispelling at long last his hideous rictus grin and returning his face to its normal former state. But Cargrave warns him not to attempt speaking, eating, or drinking straight away as the facial muscles need some time to regain their strength after having been frozen for so many years. In response, the Baron writes out a marriage annulment, freeing Maude to leave with Cargrave and start a new life together.
This they do, departing the castle at once and heading to the nearest railway station in order to depart from Gorslava to London with all speed. Just before their train arrives, however, a very flustered Krull appears at the railway station to inform Cargrave that the Baron's facial muscles still haven't regained any strength, and he therefore requires Cargrave's further assistance without delay. In reply, Cargrave reveals that the injection was a sham. There was no poisonous extract – he had merely injected harmless water into the Baron's face because he had realized that the facial paralysis was not physical, merely psychosomatic. Indeed, the Baron requires only to be told that he can speak, eat, and drink again in order for him to be able to do so. Consequently, Cargrave instructs Krull to tell this to the Baron when he returns to him. Krull nods, deep in thought as he rubs the socket where his right eye had once been, then heads back to the castle, leaving Cargrave and Maude to board the train and leave Gorslava and the Baron forever.
Unexpectedly, the movie then pauses at this point, cutting to a scene in which, equally unexpectedly, director William Castle asks the movie's audience to vote on how they would like to see the movie end. When originally shown in cinemas, every moviegoer was given two cards, one with a thumbs-up picture, the other with a thumbs-down picture, and Castle asked the audience to hold up whichever card expressed how they wanted the Baron to be treated in the movie's closing scene – thumbs-up for him to receive mercy for his vile actions and threats, thumbs-down for him to be suitably punished for them instead. In short, two alterative movie endings had supposedly been filmed, and the audience was now being asked to vote upon which one they wanted to see played. Castle then makes out that he is counting the number of cards being shown for each of these two alternative outcomes, before announcing that the thumbs-down, punishment option has won, and so it will be this ending that will now be shown.
The movie is duly returned to, showing Krull arriving back at the castle, where, lying in a totally straight-faced manner, he sorrowfully informs a panic-stricken Baron that regrettably he had arrived at the railway station too late, that Cargrave and Maude had already departed on the train. Krull then sits at the dining table and with evident relish begins eating and drinking directly in front of the Baron, who in a frenzy tries to force some food and wine into his own mouth but all in vain, yet never suspecting that he himself has the power to unfreeze his face, that its frozen state is not real, that it is all in his own mind. Only Krull knows this, but by not telling the Baron and thereby consigning him to a slow, torturous death by starvation, he is finally and fittingly obtaining his blinded right eye's long-awaited revenge upon his sadistic master and mutilator.
Bearing in mind that the hideous visage of Baron Sardonicus is the crux of the entire movie, it is actually shown only very briefly and sparingly following its shock debut when suddenly revealed in full and in close-up to the terrified eyes of his first wife Elenka in their candle-lit bedroom. This is because creating it involved actor Guy Wolfe wearing such extensive make-up and primitive, highly uncomfortable facial prosthetics that he was unable to do so for more than a short period at any one time. Hence the Baron is mostly seen wearing his full-face mask.
Also worthy of note is that in spite of Castle supposedly allowing the cinema audience to choose which ending should be shown, no footage of the thumbs-up merciful ending has ever been found by movie historians, and there is no evidence that cinemas were ever furnished with two separate endings for the movie or that any actual counting of the cards took place at cinema showings. Moreover, the punishment ending is the one that appeared in Russell's original short story upon which this movie was based. In short, the merciful ending probably never existed, with the voting ploy simply an on-screen gimmick, but a novel, memorable one, nonetheless – just like the movie itself, in fact. (Having said that, the horrifying fixed grin is a motif by no means unique to this film, as any Gotham City fan will readily testify via super-villain the Joker, and also as any devotee of early movies will confirm via a 1928 American silent film entitled The Man Who Laughs, directed by Paul Leni and starring Conrad Veidt in the leading role, which was based upon an 1869 Victor Hugo novel of the same title.)
If you'd like to see a trailer for Mr Sardonicus, be sure to click here to watch William Castle revealing his unique (albeit humbug) voting option as well as selected scenes from this extraordinary movie.
And to view a complete listing of all of my
Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly
accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!
I love this one.
ReplyDeleteIf I'm not mistaken there was only one card given to audience members with two thumbs on it, one pointing up - one pointed down. The audience members could simply flip the card to show either the up or down thumb.
ReplyDelete