Movie Reviews for Writers: Horrors of the Black Museum
Horrors of the Black Museum is a grisly little thriller from the 50s that seems to be a lot edgier than what came before, even it if hints at the violence rather than reveals it through gore. It’s got the over-the-top craziness of character that much of transitional thrillers had, but it does move into a more grounded sort of mystery rather than the supernatural and or legendary (Bluebeard, etc.) thrillers.
It’s the first of what has been called Anglo-Amalgamated’s “Sadian trilogy,” along with Circus of Horrors and Peeping Tom (both of which are amazing crime flicks). These films focused on not just the mystery and the crime, but more so on the sadism and cruelty of the violence (often with sexual undertones). As I said, it’s one of the films that transitions from the Hammer supernatural horrors to modern killers and from early Hitchcockian mysteries to a more dramatic and dark crime story that doesn’t shy from the crime itself onscreen.
It’s also a film that features crime writer Edmond Bancroft, played by Michael Gough, as the main character. He’s covering a recent series of crimes for the paper, and he’s collecting them for a new book, based on weapons from Scotland Yard’s Black Museum. The Black Museum is a collection of murder weapons and other items used in solved crimes. I won’t ruin the plot, but the killer is revealed by the end of the first act, so it’s far less about the mystery of who is killing and more about whether or not the killer will get caught.
Around all that cinematic historicness, it also manages to say quite a bit (mostly in the first act) about writers and the way we treat our preferred genres.
Yes, my dear fellow creators — I’m talking about obsession.
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