The Glass Tomb

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.

An odd crime film with an American star and some players using American accents, no doubt a product of the UK-US film making agreement of 1948. Set in London, the story concerns Pel Pelham (John Ireland), a carny barker with a bright idea for show to pack in crowds. Believe it or not, his idea is to have spectators watch a man starve himself for 70 days, while enclosed in a glass cage (The Glass Cage is an alternate title of the movie). Suspending disbelief, we watch people line up to see this overweight man (Eric Pohlmann) deny himself food. But that's just background for the narrative. The interesting part begins when a young woman who lives upstairs from Pohlmann and his wife is murdered. Those of us watching the film know who the killer is, but it's up to police and Pel's ingenuity to uncover the perpetrator, not only of the woman, but of the Starving Man himself who has also been murdered since he was a possible witness. Featuring Sid James, Sidney Tafler, Honor Blackman as Pel's wife and young actor playing their son whose voice sounds like he's been dubbed by a woman. Preposterous? Yes. But it's rather fun to watch it all play out in 59 minutes.

One more example of what B movies can provide us, in terms of twisted schemes, inventive stories. This one is totally surprising, crazy, exciting. And seeing John Ireland and Honor Blackman can't be uninteresting. Plus, the sideshow setting, carnival surroundings are always perfect unexpected plots, such as this very one. Monty Tully was a prolific British film maker who brought us so many movies, not all at the same scale of quality though. But this one remains one of his ever best. Only the ending could have been a bit better; I expected something different, I don't know why. I recommend this film. Totally.

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")

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.