The Glass Tomb

John Ireland wanders through this B movie like a penniless child in a nightmare candy store! As a freak-show promoter, he is compelled to bankroll a corpulent carny who, billed as The Starving Man, draws crowds to watch him go foodless for 70 days! Instead of turning on the two like hungry lions, mobs of curious Brits pour continuously forth to goggle the decidedly ungaunt attraction while he shaves, sleeps, and so on. Somehow, two murders occur in the midst of the mess, and so the rub. One has to wonder if the whole production (the movie, not the sideshow) is a joke on the audience, since the film is peppered with crude carnality symbolism and (for the fifties) sly sexual innuendo and double entendre. If one has a taste for oh-so-awful flicks and fool-the-rubes humor, this might be worth a peek.

It would be foolish to expect much from a Hammer low-budget, B-programmer and all one one can really say about this one is that it could have been far better.

A previous reviewer has suggested that a certain Joseph Losey may perhaps have contributed to the direction and if that is the case, credited director Montgomery Tully cannot shoulder all of the blame. Cinematographer William Harvey has provided oodles of high contrast lighting to impart the 'Noirish' look whilst Leonard Salzedo's score is suitably carnivalesque.

The customary Hollywood import here is John Ireland, whose glum persona one either takes to or one doesn't whilst quintessentially English Honor Blackman as his highly unlikely wife is obliged to adopt an American accent of sorts. Excellent support from Sid James as a bookie, Sydney Tafler as a blackmailer and Geoffrey Keen for once on the other side of the law whilst an assortment of colourful fairground characters make a lot of noise, notably Eric Pohlmann whose macabre 'starving man' act is one that hordes of gullible irks are prepared to part with money to see. The climax is ludicrous but the film had to end somehow.

Bound to have its devotees, this one is really for Hammer completists.

Strange but fun and short film.

John Ireland does a nice job as a carnival barker, Pel Pelham, who organizes specialty acts. His big one is the Starving Artist, where a man Sapolio (Erich Pohlmann) goes on display in a glass box and doesn't eat for 70 days, trying to break a past record.

As he was with the carnival, Pel has many people in his life from that world.

Sapolio, happy for the work, throws a party. During the festivities, a woman upstairs is murdered. She was blackmailing a friend of Pel's, a promoter who is in fact bankrolling the Starving Artist show. Pel visited her and asked her to stop.

Sapolio tells Pel he saw someone go up the stairs but can't remember details. When the killer learns this, Sapolio becomes a target.

Pretty routine, but it had a certain warmth, odd as that may sound. The carnival people seemed like a big family, and Ireland was fond of them. I kind of liked it.

John Ireland is a carnival barker starting out with a show on his own. It's a "starving man" act, in which Eric Pohlman is put on exhibition; for seventy days, Ireland tells the crowds gathered in front of the big tent, he will not eat. One shilling for adults to see him, six pence for children. It all seems rather foolish and tawdry, but Ireland has a lot of friends, and they get together to throw a party as he moves up in the world. Everyone is having a great time.... until a girl upstairs is murdered. Inspector Liam Redmond asks Ireland to keep his ears open.... but Ireland thinks he knows who did it.

It's an intriguing venue for a murder mystery, and the set-up reminds me of some of Fredric Brown's murder mysteries from the 1950s. However, there's no sense of a separate society among the carney people and the public; the latter may be suckers, but society is viewed as a continuum; Ireland is married to Honor Blackman, and they have a son. Everyone lives in flats, and Redmond thinks it's all perfectly ordinary. It's what you get when you remove the technique from film noir, and place it in an ordinary world: rather disappointing.

The carnival barker Pel Pelham (John Ireland) borrows some money with his friend Tony Lewis (Sidney James). In return, he convinces his friend Rena Maroni (Tonia Bern), who was Tony´s mistress, to stop blackmailing him. Pet wants to promote a side show with her neighbor Henri Sapolio (Eric Pohlmann), who is a starving man. Sapolio and his wife decides to give a party at their apartment and Sapolio glances at a man leaving Rena´s apartment. Later they find that Rena was murdered and the police suspect that one guest is the killer.

"The Glass Tomb", a.k.a. "The Glass Cage", is a mystery film by Hammer that was classified as film-noir in a recently released DVD Box. The storyline and the screenplay are flawed and weak but fortunately the movie is short and watchable. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "A Gaiola de Vidro" ("The Glass Cage")