Today, for the year’s end, an unashamedly chaotic wander through horror and crime films – and crime literature – connected by that wonderful actor and narrator Valentine Dyall. Come marvel at an adaptation of a Bulwer-Lytton ghost story, the thrills of hypnosis, curious Golden Age crime and Sherlockian connections, and even The Goon Show. It’s like an accident happened in our brain… with some fun audiovisual links as well.
“On all that it can reach within these walls, sentient or inanimate, living or dead, as moves the needle, so work my will! Accursed be the house, and restless be the dwellers therein.”
The Haunted and the Haunters: Or the House and the Brain,by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
One of our most popular articles over the last few years, much to our surprise, was our piece The Man in Black. A product of our love of old-style horror – on radio and in black and white films – it focused on Valentine Dyall, the eponymous narrator/actor whose voice chilled millions. And as there was plenty more to say, this year we decided to revisit this fine chap, with film reviews, and of course, more trivia. A quick recap may be in order first. Who are we talking about?
Valentine Dyall (1908-1985) was the true Man in Black, and it came about because of the BBC. In the 1940s and 50s, they aired a wonderful radio programme called Appointment with Fear. This was a series of dramatised horror stories which both drew on the classics and also invited new stories from contemporary writers. Each started with an introduction from the narrator, the Man in Black, either teasing the listener about the nature of the tale to come, or warning them of the terror that awaited them. Each show was about half an hour long. When Dyall started speaking, you knew you were in the right place. His voice was dark and distinctive (some called him the British Vincent Price), and he had a resonance which just oozed menace.
A stalwart of horror, crime and comedy, of film, TV, radio and the boards, Dyall’s career ran from1942 right up to his death, at the age of seventy seven, in 1985. And although best known for his voice, he was a tall, long-faced fellow who added visual gravitas to many roles. You may already know him from such unashamed horror films such as City of the Dead (1960) and The Haunting (1963), mentioned last time. Not all his films were winners, but one of his less successful ventures – The Ghost of Rashmon Hall (1948) – does bear particular attention for supernatural/horror enthusiast.
YOU SAY TOMATO, WE SAY RAMELSHAM
The Ghost of Rashmon Hall, released in the States as Night Comes Too Soon, is a peculiar, almost amateurish horror film which is quite flawed and yet still relevant to those interested in the genre.
One reason for its relevance is that it is (loosely) an adaptation of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s famous horror story, ‘The Haunted and the Haunters: Or the House and the Brain’ (1859).
Be warned that there are two print versions of the story – the longer, original one has more substantial debate and includes aspects (and a major character) not covered in the shorter version produced as a result of Bulwer-Lytton’s own revisions. The revised version is often reprinted as ‘The House and the Brain’ (someone better informed than we are might also know if this story had any influence on Richard Matheson when he wrote his 1971 novel Hell House).
Crucial to Bulwer-Lytton’s story is the power of mesmerism, as extended to include the possibility of moving the inanimate and the influence of dead ‘minds’ – or an echo of them – affecting the living.
“My persuasion is, that they [the malign phenomena under discussion] originate in some brain now far distant; that that brain had no distinct volition in anything that occurred; that what does occur reflects but its devious, motley, ever-shifting, half-formed thoughts; in short, that it has been but the dreams of such a brain put into action and invested with a semi-substance. That this brain is of immense power, that it can set matter into movement, that it is malignant and destructive, I believe…”
But to the film adaptation, which steals from, and messes generously with, Bulwer-Lytton’s story. It would only be fair to say that its flaws are not subtle ones. In many places the acting, even Dyall’s, is oddly stilted and even sometimes baffling. Characters stare at each other, into rooms or into the distance without obvious purpose; there is much locking and unlocking of doors and windows, also sometimes without clear reason.
Dialogue arrives suddenly, or ends just as quickly; debates make little sense, and leave the viewer trying to work out what these people have been drinking. None of this is helped by the antics of the orchestra, as the score seems to consist of breaking into random chords and themes when the conductor wakes up every so often.
Valentine Dyall plays a framing role as Dr Clinton, who describes past events to a disparate group of people gathered in the parlour of an old house. Most enjoyably, despite being called The Ghost of Rashmon Hall, the place in question is clearly referred to in the film – more than once – as Ramelsham Hall. Quite what happened there we have no idea.
Dyall is also a player in the events being recounted, which form the bulk of the film. The production itself includes some fairly cheap special effects. The unexpected vision of a chap in a striped pullover, for example, which may be intended to represent a long-dead sailor, reminds you more of a burglar or onion seller who has lost his way. And as for the scene around the accidental discovery of a large handful of wet seaweed, er…
On the plus side, there are quite effective shots of dripping taps and ruined rooms, which do add atmosphere, and intimate that something is certainly not right here. And for M R James fans, the film includes an odd element – every so often the male lead stares with alarm at a painting on the wall, which shows the (original?) hall at night. And at first there is an ominous figure in the foreground, then it has moved, and then it has gone. Distinct shades of James’s 1904 story ‘The Mezzotint’, yet this aspect is never explained.
In short, The Ghost of Rashmon Hall is worth watching for its spookier moments, its links to the original story, and to hear Dyall’s dark tones…
The film is free to watch here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2rbwd3
Anne M. Pillsworth and Ruthanna Emrys discuss ‘The House and the Brain’ in more detail on Tor’s website, here:
A DOCTOR CALLS
Mesmerism also plays a crucial part in the non-supernatural Dr Morelle: The Case of the Missing Heiress, based on the popular long running BBC radio series written by Ernest Dudley – with Valentine Dyall as Dr Morelle, an expert criminal psychologist (Cecil Parker was the original Morelle).
We mentioned this last time, but noticed recently that the film is available to watch online, so have provided the link. https://vimeo.com/86856759
For atmosphere, you have a journey past ‘Gibbet Corner’, a creepy house on the moors, a young heiress, a grasping uncle, and a strange Welsh butler (who talks to the unseen ghost of his long-dead dog), but rather than wicked spirits from the past, you will encounter only too human deceit and murder.
As in the radio series, Dr Morelle is an insufferable know-it-all, and treats his secretary Miss Frayle (played here by Julia Lang) once again as if she were a misguided idiot:
“It’s just as I feared. That girl’s sheer bone from the neck up.”
In this one, the mesmerism involves less the sheer power of the human mind, and more the ability to turn shiny things over and over until the victim goes blank. Needless to say, the multi-talented Dr Morelle is also a highly trained mesmerist, as well as a brilliant psychiatrist, a keen investigator, etc. etc. And Miss Frayle thinks he’s wonderful. As with most of the radio episodes, we remain surprised that she herself hasn’t shot or poisoned Dr Morelle by the end of it all.
The performances are mannered, but less ham than in The Ghost of Rashmon Hall, and Dyall’s voice is top-notch. Watch for the twist, mesmerism-linked ending.
A RIPPING PUZZLE
Our third Valentine Dyall film, Room to Let (1950), is a period mystery, harder to find, and yet holds a particular interest for us, as it was the first of three Hammer films to use Jack the Ripper as its subject matter – The other two were Hands of the Ripper (1971) and Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971).
This one concerns the arrival of a strange character, Dr Fell, at a London lodging house – not long after an asylum burns to the ground. Dyall is Fell, the secretive guest, and gives a sinister performance which is better than the script in general. This being 1904, and thus sixteen years after the Whitechapel Murders, people begin to suspect that the sinister Dr Fell might be Jack the Ripper, coming round for another killing spree. Which seems unlikely, but what the heck. An intrepid reporter investigates, and provides the framing device, looking back on the events.
Room to Let is an adaptation of the 1947 play by noted crime writer Marjorie Allingham – and hmm, here we have a lead character called Dr Fell. Curious, as the ‘other’ Dr Fell, an eccentric detective, was the creation of Allingham’s friend John Dickson Carr – who, as we mentioned last time, wrote or adapted many episodes of Appointment with Fear, the radio series which brought Valentine Dyall to everyone’s attention as The Man in Black in the forties and fifties. Dr Fell the detective goes back to the 1930s, and it seems unlikely that Allingham was unaware of the character. Carr stayed with her and her husband more than once, and in 1949, he presented them with a signed copy of his The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
In the end, Room to Let turns into a ‘locked room’ mystery, but the subject matter makes it still an interesting little piece.
THE DETECTION CLUB
In fact, many of the key Golden Age writers such as Carr and Allingham belonged to the same British club, the Detection Club. This was founded in 1930 by Anthony Berkeley, creator of Roger Sheringham, the amateur detective – and this is where trivia enthusiasts like ourselves could lose their minds completely, as interconnections with life and fiction were rife (we noted last time that the appearance of Carr’s Dr Fell was based on G K Chesterton, who was also in the Detection Club).
Take, for example, the matter of Professor Alfred Swain Taylor (1806-1880), called by some the Father of British Forensic Medicine.
Taylor was a pioneering toxicologist who was an expert witness in court a number of times, and wrote numerous medical papers, particularly on murder by poisoning. The detection of arsenical poisoning, being a serious concern at the time, was a particular speciality of his.
“Poisoning was rife in the nineteenth century, whether accidentally or on purpose: poisons were readily available contained in common household goods such as wallpaper and wrapping paper, beer and wine, sweets and toys, clothing (including hat trimmings), candles, coal and chemicals used on farms and parklands to exterminate pests. After numerous infamous criminal trials, the fear of it completely captured the public imagination and daily newspaper reporting reflected this everyday menace. In such circumstances, chemists and forensic toxicologists became heroes and Taylor was no exception.”
Corinne Hogan, Royal College of Surgeons of England
R Austin Freeman – another member of the Detection Club – admitted that he may have had Taylor at the back of his mind when he created his own investigating scientists character, Dr Thorndyke. And Berkeley, the club’s founder noted above, has a strand in his highly enjoyable novel The Poisoned Chocolates Case (1929), where suspicion falls upon someone precisely because they are in possession of one of Taylor’s texts on toxicology. So the old chap’s scientific name lived on almost fifty years after his death.
N.B. You can read much more about R Austin Freeman and Dr Thorndyke via noted Sherlockian writer/editor David Marcum, who has been reviving the entire Thorndyke canon. Next year MX Publishing will issue the last three of nine Thorndyke books. the 17 step program
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself is supposed to have met Taylor, well-known for his textbooks and his courtroom appearances. It has even been suggested that Sherlock Holmes’s experiments with chemicals and reagents owed something to Conan Doyle’s knowledge of Taylor – although the same could be said with regard to Robert Christison (1797-1882), the eminent Scottish toxicologist, so we won’t push that one too hard.
For those interested, Lynne Truss has a more recent reflection on the Detection Club which might be of interest: https://crimereads.com/an-evening-with-the-detection-club/
To over-egg the detective pudding, we might add that Valentine Dyall also played the role of Inspector Grice in two films based on crime writer John Creasey’s character The Toff – Hammer the Toff and Salute the Toff (both 1952). For those who don’t know, The Toff, aka the Honourable Richard Rollison, was one of those amateur upper-class period sleuths. Creasey, who wrote hundreds of novels under twenty eight pseudonyms, went on to form the Crime Writers Association in 1953.
SEX AND THE EGYPTIANS
Finally on the film front, we must mention Dyall’s role as the Egyptian mummy who narrates the 1970 sex comedy/horror film Secrets of Sex – later released in the States as Bizarre and Tales of the Bizarre.
Hard to describe, we can do little better than provide the IMDB summary for this whacked-out film:
“A brainy sex flick with a sense of humor, the film begins with a narrator/mummy who guides us through a number of vignettes promising to show what some of us go through in the pursuit of sexual pleasure. There’s a fabulous ten minute opening, where the half naked go go dancers have vegetables thrown at them. One of the tales features a female photographer who tortures a male model. Another has a female burglar (Cathy Howard) caught by the house owner. The craziest involves a nerd hiring a blond call girl (Sue Bond) in pursuit of a menage-a-trois with his pet lizard; and there’s an endearing misadventure with secret agent Lindy Leigh (Maria Frost) who does topless safecracking.”
Secrets of Sex was directed by Antony Balch, an experimental filmmaker who had collaborated with William S. Burroughs, which might explain some things; the executive producer was Richard Gordon, who was the producer of many horror films, including Tower of Evil, Inseminoid, and Horror Hospital. Gordon was also executive producer for the classic 1968 Fiend Without a Face.
This strange film, which does have sort-of-horror moments, was described by The Guardian as having “Flair, resource, and a splendid gothic dottiness.” Why a mummy is narrating it all, we have no idea, but the trailer gives you just a taste of what to expect…
VALENTINE DYALL AND AN ATTACK OF THE NEDDIES
After all that, we abandon the world of film, and leave you, dear listener, with one of Valentine Dyall’s pitch-perfect contributions to The Goon Show – ‘The Canal’ (1954).
In more sepulchral tones than usual, ‘Lord Valentine Dyall’ hams it up splendidly:
Lord Valentine Dyall: Neddie!
Seagoon: Father! You – you are Father, aren’t you?
Lord Valentine Dyall: Do I have to undress?
Seagoon: No, it’s just that you’ve changed so much. [Aside] And, dear listener, changed he had – he looked tired and weary – his eyes, his eyes were sunk back in his head, they were were bloodshot, watery and red-rimmed – what had caused this?
Lord Valentine Dyall: Neddie, we’ve bought a television set. But what are you doing back from school?
Seagoon: My schooling is completed.
Lord Valentine Dyall: Oh nonsense, you’ve only been there forty-three years.
A recommended listen, and a splendid encapsulation of all that is Dyall. ‘The Canal’ can be bought as part of various Goon Show collections, or found on OTR sites such as this one: the canal – radio echoes
Our first article on Valentine Dyall, with further audiovisual links and comments, is still available here: http://greydogtales.com/blog/man-black-appointment-fear/
Should you fancy a read, The Poisoned Chocolates Case is widely available in print and Kindle: the poisoned chocolates case on amazon
Ooo, that brought back memories for me! I remember, as a child, curling up with my Mum to listen to the radio. I can’t remember the program but it always started with a deep scary voice saying ‘This is your storyteller, the man in black’ and they scared the bejesus out of me!
He had a certain dark tone that stayed with you, indeed. Christopher Lee sometimes achieved that deep menace as well. 🙂