The Dark Tower (1943)

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Best movie ever!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Financially strapped circus manager Ben Lyon (as Phil Danton) hires hypnotist Herbert Lom (as Stephen Torg) after the latter helps capture an escaped lion. Fortunes turn when Mr. Lom is asked to use his hypnotic prowess to enhance stunts performed by trapeze artist Anne Crawford (as Mary). Her high-flying partner and boyfriend David Farrar (as Tom) becomes an obstacle when Lom wants to control Ms. Crawford. We assume Lom wants to romance Crawford, but the story seems to stall in this area, just as it gets going. Poor Mr. Lyon is easy to control without hypnotism. Perceptive Josephine Wilson (as Dora Shogun) lives up to her name. The characters and production make it an engaging melodrama.****** The Dark Tower (10/18/43) John Harlow ~ Herbert Lom, Ben Lyon, Anne Crawford, David Farrar

A curious little movie that deserves to be better known. Based on "The Dark Tower," a play by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woolcott, which was also the inspiration for the better-known "The Man With Two Faces," it shares little except for its title and the theme of hypnotism with the boilerplate melodrama by the two celebrated Algonquin Roundtable wits of the 1930s. Well-acted,well-written, well-shot, and well-lit, this motion picture operates on two levels, both of them terrifying. Superficially, it's a neat horror film starring an excellent Herbert Lom as "Torg," a Peter Lorre-type -- a rather off-putting and unhappy gentleman from some Central European country who, while absolutely loathing people, can mesmerize them to do his bidding. Ingratiating himself into a rundown provincial traveling circus in a pre-war England -- think an anglicized "La Strada" -- he makes himself indispensable, turning around the fortunes of this one-lion show.On another level, the circus can be interpreted as a metaphor for Nazi Germany, with the Lom character standing in for the master propagandist Dr. Josef Goebbels, sans a limp. Every utterance of his drives home this resemblance, as "Torg," morphs from just plain Torg to Mr. Torg to ... Doctor Torg, using his power "to cloud men's minds" to bully his way into a position of power. To draw attention to this subtext, the circus parade features a platoon of uniformed blondes marching with arms extended (are they Sieg Heiling?), and a Col. Blimpish ringmaster who could be a stand-in for Field Marshal von Hindenburg.This secondary theme isn't all that obvious,and perhaps it may not even exist (as Sigmund Freud himself said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar) but for one viewer it does lift this 1943 movie out of the realm of still another film of fright and frisson and instead, with its unspoken chilling and sinister message, places it in Hell.

Herbert Lom plays a hypnotist in this thrilling British film noir. The young Lom seems an uneasy cross between Peter Lorre and Charles Boyer. The plot is gripping. It's familiar but beautifully executed here. As an audience of one, I was on the edge of my chair.The entire cast is excellent. The feel of a circus is real: It reminded me from time to time of an earlier great movie about a circus: "Freaks." And even the props are good: The laughing sailor is horrifying. When the circus owner shows this device off, members of his troupe laugh. But I was horrified by the grotesque laugh and jerky moments.The main draw is Lom's brilliant performance. He is meant to be creepy, and he is. But, often shown in close-up, he is also handsome. And that too is part of what makes the beautiful tightrope walker fall under his spell.He is a force of evil. Yet we are not, I think, meant to despise him. He has a few lines about the unhappy childhood that made him yearn to be taken seriously.This little known movie deserves a wide audience and great a critical acclaim

Last night three Warner Brother - Teddington Studios (U.K.) films were shown for the first time in decades and the first time on American television. All three were good productions, but this one is worth talking about first - it was the first big role that that fine character actor Herbert Lom ever got in British film.Born in Czechoslavakia, Lom came to England in the 1930s, and began acting in bit parts. But he has a face which is photogenically handsome but sinister, and soon began getting better and better roles - not all of them villains (his ruthless gang boss in NIGHT IN THE CITY has a legitimate, deadly gripe against Richard Widmark). He would also do well in comedies, playing with his villainy in THE LADYKILLERS and as "Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus" in the "Pink Panther" films.Here, he is Torg, later Mr. Torg, and later (for publicity) renamed Dr. Stephen Torg. He is a tramp who stumbles into a dying circus run by Ben Lyon (Phil Danton) and his brother (and trapeze star) David Farrar (Tom Danton). Tom's wife Mary (Ann Crawford) is his trapeze partner. The circus is collapsing for want of customers, and the players not paid. But Phil explains things to them, and they agree to keep going on for awhile. But the lion escapes from it's cage, and after the lion tamer collapses nobody knows what to do. Except Torg. He has a powerful command in relaxing the lion slowly, and getting it into the cage again. Everyone is impressed, particularly Phil and his publicity man Jim (William - here Bill - Hartnett, of later "Dr. Who" fame). They allow Torg to work for the circus. An idea is suggested concerning one of Mary's delicate high wire acts - what if Torg hypnotized her so she did not need her parasol for balance. Tom, of course, is against it, but Mary is willing to do it. And it works.Soon, due to Jim's publicity, the crowds start showing up. This is fine, but the circus people (except for Mary) don't like Torg. He is arrogant, and won't do his share of the work moving objects about when setting up and tearing down the campsites. He also does not care for any of their feelings. When the ringmaster Willy (Frederick Burtwell, in a nice comic performance) starts telling him off, Torg quietly informs him that with his usefulness to the circus he is irreplaceable, whereas ringmasters are easily replaceable.Tom is definitely angry with Torg - he sees Mary slowly falling more and more under Torg's influence. She even misses helping take down the camp at one point. Torg, who has forced Phil to make him a partner, takes her for a drive in his new MG. Here Lom has his best moment in the film - he's allowed to tell Mary what is behind his flawed character. He had a wretched youth in a children's home, and was bullied because he was small. It's actually quite touching as Lom demonstrates Torg wasn't made like he was by nature, but by the human race itself. It explains how he gained his arrogance by his powers of hypnosis, and how he really was potentially a better person than he became.Mary at this point rejects Torg's offer to marry her. She still loves Tom. Shortly after Tom knocks down Torg after an argument. And soon after that - there is an accident in an aerial act leaving Tom badly injured. It seems Mary claims as her hold fails she is too tired. Later she can't remember this. And Torg is smiling.Ever since George Du Maurier created "Svengali" in Trilby, hypnosis was seen as a potentially sinister force. John Barrymore played Svengali in the film of that name in the 1930s, and there were other similar films (both dramas and comedies) since then. This film treats the subject with some dignity, even having a psychiatrist examine Mary at one point. The entire cast is quite good (even Lyon's American accent is tolerable after awhile), but it's Lom's sinister Torg that holds it together best, and which opened his future career so well.