1980 Week: The Mirror Crack’d

          The Agatha Christie vogue that began with Murder on the Orient Express (1974) fizzled quickly, but not before several big-budget mediocrities were unleashed on the public. Of these lesser Christie adaptations, the British-made The Mirror Crack’d is interesting because it doubles as a catty story about Hollywood, complete with performances by several iconic American actors. The Mirror Crack’d doesn’t work for a lot of reasons, ranging from an inconsistent tone to the way the main detective is sidelined throughout most of the action. Viewed as glossy camp, however, The Mirror Crack’d offers minor distractions. Set in England during the 1950s, the story revolves around a group of Hollywood professionals visiting Great Britain for a movie shoot. Christie’s matronly detective Miss Marple (Angela Lansbury) happens upon the shoot at the same time a series of murders begins, so, naturally, it falls to Marple and her intrepid nephew, Inspector Craddox (Edward Fox), to identify the killer. In classic Christie fashion, the investigation reveals years of secrets and lies, all of which Marple explains in a lengthy final scene.

          The murder-mystery stuff is fine, if a bit perfunctory, so what really connects is the showbiz satire. Kim Novak and Elizabeth Taylor play aging screen queens who trade nasty barbs, while Tony Curtis plays the sleazy agent/husband of Novak’s character and Rock Hudson plays the director/husband of Taylor’s character. Naturally, there’s a mistress in the mix, as well. Made without any pretense to sophistication, the film is enlivened by bitchery. Looking in a mirror, Taylor’s character coos, “Bags, bags, go away, come back again on Doris Day.” Another gem: “I could eat a can of Kodak and puke a better movie.” You get the idea. Lansbury is great fun whenever she’s onscreen, and in retrospect her performance seems like an audition for the long-running TV series Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996). Yet for much of the movie, she’s absent, with Fox doing the heavy investigative lifting. As for the big names, Curtis, Hudson, and Taylor are cartoonish but appealing, while Novak is embarrassingly bad.

The Mirror Crack’d: FUNKY

Tales That Witness Madness (1973)

          UK-based Amicus Productions, a second-tier competitor to Hammer Films, earned a niche in the horror marketplace by making a series of anthology movies, nasty little numbers featuring terse vignettes grouped by framing stories. Examples include Tales from the Crypt (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973). The success of these pictures inevitably led other companies to ape the Amicus formula, hence this silly project from World Film Services. Although Tales That Witness Madness is a respectable endeavor thanks to decent production values and the presence of familiar actors, the script by Jennifer Jayne (writing as Jay Fairbank) is an uninspired pastiche of hoary shock-fiction tropes. There’s not a genuine scare in Tales That Witness Madness, and most of the humor is of the unintentional sort. Plus, the longest story is almost interminably boring.

          The picture begins with a shrink, Dr. Tremayne (Donald Pleasence), showing a colleague around a psychiatric facility where four odd patients are housed. As each patient is presented, his or her tale appears in flashback. The first bit, “Mr. Tiger,” features a little boy whose bickering parents discover the lad’s imaginary friend may not be imaginary. Next comes “Penny Farthing,” a drab yarn about an antique dealer getting possessed by the figure in an old painting. In “Mel,” the best vignette of the batch, an artist (Michael Jayston) brings home an old tree and then decides he likes the tree better than his wife (Joan Collins). The final sequence, “Luau,” is a tedious tale about people caught up in a ritual-sacrifice scheme. Except for “Mel,” which has a pithy, Twilight Zone-esque tone, the stories drone on lifelessly. (“Mr. Tiger” is fine, but the “twist” ending is so obvious from the first frame that there’s no tension.)

          The actors all deliver serviceable work, with young Russell Lewis (as the boy in “Mr. Tiger”) and Jayston (the artist in “Mel”) providing the most vivid performances. As for the leading ladies, Collins, who inexplicably spent much of the ’70s appearing in bad horror movies, does her usual shrewish-sexpot routine, while Hollywood actress Kim Novak—playing the lead in “Luau”—drains all vitality from the movie with her colorless non-acting. Director Freddie Francis, the former cinematographer who directed numerous frightfests for Hammer and Amicus (including the aforementioned Tales from the Crypt, among other horror anthology movies), handles this project with his characteristic aplomb, but even his smooth style can only compensate so much for the enervated nature of the stories.

Tales That Witness Madness: FUNKY