The Glass Tomb

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")

The Glass Tomb (AKA: The Glass Cage) is directed by Montgomery Tully and adapted to screenplay by Richard Landau from the story The Outsiders written by A. E. Martin. It stars John Ireland, Honor Blackman, Geoffrey Keen, Eric Pohlmann, Sid James and Sydney Tafler. Music is by Leonard Salzedo and cinematography by Walter Harvey.

Pel Pelham's carnival is in town and the star attraction is Sapolio, a man prepared to be locked in a glass cage and starve himself for 70 days. But when a couple of murders occur at the carnival, the police become involved and suspicion starts to point its ugly finger.

Part of the Hammer Film Noir series released by VCI Entertainment, The Glass Tomb is an odd little picture that's more a collection of noirish traits and ideas than a fully fledged movie. Running at just under an hour in length, film hinges on the flimsiest of stories but just about gets away with it on account of solid performances and some spiky themes in the piece. In the mix are carnival outcasts, blackmail, murder, carnal desires, gluttony, addiction and a macabre party scene with a body upstairs kept company for some time by the murderer?! These are nicely presided over by Tully and Harvey where shadows are often prominent and a neon light and subway train serve the atmosphere very well. You do wonder what world we live in when people pay to watch a man just not eat? While the murderer is known to us from the first killing, thus there's no mystery aspect to hang your coat on. Though clearly the makers want us to observe how the murderer easily moves about this carnival group undetected and above suspicion.

Not comfortably recommended as a whole, but enough parts of the quilt for the noir fans to appreciate. 6/10

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.

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.

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.