aka The Glass Cage

• Directed by Montogomery Tully
• Written by Richard H. Landau, based on the novel The Outsiders by A.E. Martin
• Starring
  • John Ireland
  • Honor Blackman
  • Geoffrey Keen
  • Eric Pohlmann
  • Sidney James
• Produced by Anthony Hinds

The Glass Tomb was the last of the suspense pseudo-noirs co-produced by American distributor Robert Lippert and British Hammer Films (though it won’t be the last one I review — because that’s not the order they’re presented in the boxed set, that’s why!). Looking at the result — a tepid open mystery¹ whose window dressing crowds out the plot, barely making it to hour-long feature length — it looks like the partnership ended one film too late. There are plenty of story elements and set pieces here which could have been entertaining if fully developed in their own features, but here they seem more like a heap of leftover ideas swept together as the offices were being cleaned out. Maybe we can dub this “shepherd’s pie filmmaking.”

Five-decade movie workhorse John Ireland is our American star de rigeur, playing small-time carnival promoter Pel Pelham. How small-time? The big attraction in the show he’s about to mount is a professional starving man: doughy Sapolio (Eric Pohlmann) professionally locks himself in a glass enclosure (thus the title) and goes without food for two months or more. And people are supposed to buy tickets and come into the tent to watch Sapolio not eat. I’m trying to think of any time in my life when I was so bored that that would count as entertainment.

This isn’t the worst picture of Pel sitting on the furniture. Trust me.

To put together the money for the show, Pel goes to his old friend and former business associate Tony (Sidney James), now a successful bookmaker, who asks Pel for a small favor in return, one that isn’t even shady or tawdry. Tony’s about to get married, but an old flame named Delores is sending him needy letters which hint at blackmail. (They hint so subtly that I really don’t get the problem; is any woman marrying a bookie going to be devastated that her man used to have other girlfriends?) Tony gives Pel the most recent letter and asks him to gently go and ask Delores to knock it off.

By coincidence, Delores lives in the flat right above the Sapolios. By further coincidence “Delores” is actually Rena Maroni (Tonia Bern), daughter of the circus owner who gave Pel his start, and possibly an old flame before he settled down to boring domesticity with wife and child. (Mrs. Jenny Pelham, the model of loving and sexless purity, is played by none other than Honor Blackman, aka Pussy Galore.) By further further coincidence, on the night that the Sapolios throw a small party for other carnival people to celebrate the upcoming show, Rena’s apartment is visited by a mysterious person with whom she wants no more contact, who strangles her before leaving. By further further further coincidence, as said person is leaving, someone at the Sapolios’ party opens the door and recognizes him as Harry Stanton (Geoffrey Keen), the “Great White Father of Show Business,” known and loved by everyone at the party. It’s assumed he’s come for the shindig, and so he enters and mingles until the body is discovered (by the piano-playing midget, in case you were wondering — he went upstairs to use the common bathroom and got the wrong door). Quickly, Inspector Lindley (Liam Redmond) is on the scene, questioning all the partygoers, including Pel.

“You don’t believe me? I swear, that stuff’ll stunt your growth!”

So first the movie looks like it’s going to be a character study of a man who betrays the principles and tries to conceal it from his obligious family, but what Tony the bookie asks of Pel isn’t sinister. Then it looks like it’s going to be a shady love triangle, either Pel-Tony-Rena or Pel-Rena-Jenny, but there’s neither hanky-panky nor even the weak threat of it between Pel and Rena; if they ever were an item, they must have fallen apart through mutual and amiable boredom. Then, with the murder and Inspector Lindley’s entrance, it looks like it’s going to turn into a “cozy,” in which all of the suspects are in an enclosed space and are questioned until clues start to add up (though open cozies don’t work too well).

Now, it seems that it’s going to be a blackmail story. We’ve already been introduced to Rorke (Sidney Tafler), though his role is never really explained; he once touts himself as some kind of unofficial “freak police,” keeping tabs on all those showbiz types. Whatever his day job, he’s deliberately annoying, and all the carnies hate him. He has some information to the effect that Stanton and Rena had been spending time together, puts two and two together, and goes to Stanton with a ransom demand. But Stanton simply turns belly-up and pays, so that doesn’t really pan out as a storyline, either.

Say, isn’t there supposed to be a glass tomb in this story somewhere? The tent and exhibit are put up, and with a much hoopla as they can manage, Sapolio is sealed into his enclosure. Pel busks his heart out in promotion, and they end up with more ticket-buying customers than I would have predicted. But Sapolio’s got something on his mind, too; he caught sight of Stanton as he first went up to Rena’s apartment, but didn’t get a good enough look to recognize him, despite wracking his brain. (If the appearance of that same person in his own apartment the same evening doesn’t connect the dots for him, I doubt anything will.) But because Pel suspects Tony murdered Rena, he tells Stanton that Sapolio might put the picture together if he thinks hard enough, which means that Stanton’s got reason to find a way to murder the man in the glass tomb…

“Come on in — see a man who’s thankfully much smaller than his picture behind me!”

The acting is professional overall (the worst actor is the midget piano player), and John Ireland does his busking well, but the ironic post-modern can’t help but smirk at his “Step right up, ladies and gentlemen!” act and marvel that such performances ever sincerely sold anyone on anything. Part of the problem there, naturally, is that he’s selling the (to me) unsellable: tickets to come in and spend a few minutes watch a man go about his life in a transparent enclosure for two months. Wheee. On the other hand, if this movie accurately represents British carnie culture in the ’50s, then it was a pretty thin pool. Despite Rorke repeatedly referring to everyone involved as “freaks,” the only two who show any visible signs of sideshow status are the midget piano player and a slightly-above-average “giant” Russian titled, naturally, Ivan the Terrible.

What hurt the movie more than its anemic set of attractions is the problem that, having no clear idea where its dramatic focus lies, it lets opportunities for suspense and drama pass by. Rena’s death is staged so lethargically before dissolving to another scene that, until we got back to see her dead body on the floor, I thought she was simply trying to dissuade Stanton from kissing her. And two of what should have been the most dramatic moments of the story are given to us entirely off-screen. In one, Tony takes a gun and meets Rorke, who’s trying a bit of the blackmail on him too; they struggle for the gun, and Tony winds up dead. We only find this out when Rorke relays it to Stanton. In the other, Pel’s wife Jenny is abducted by a man she’s never met before, who threatens Pel through her to stop nosing about in Rena’s death (like he’s doing much of that). Instead of SEEING any of this action — or, really, anything that gives Honor Blackman more to do than stand around like domestic stage dressing — we get that scene thus: Pel arrives home late to find his son Peter home along, eating unconcernedly out of the fridge, with Mom nowhere to be found after school. As soon as Pel’s got Peter in bed, Jenny comes in the door, artful smears of distress on her cheeks, and tells the story of her abduction.

Talking about these events are no substitute for presenting them. But instead of seeing the dramatic actions which could have held the audience’s attention, we get a scene in which Pel talks to Stanton while the latter is in the bathtub. (And this isn’t a hot tub at the gentleman’s club or anything; it’s pretty clearly the bathroom of a private residence. The backstory between Pel and Stanton that lets such meetings take place, I’m happy not to know.

Um… hubba?

Of the few Lipper-Hammer coproductions I’ve seen, which are all being marketed under the blanket banner of “Hammer Film Noir” by VCI Entertainment, this is the one with the least real noir content. Pel never enters a shadier world than the one he inhabits, and is quite comfortable with, from the first scene; he’s never asked or forced to compromise his principles; he’s never placed in a dramatic vice between his honor and his passions, or any of the other tense situations of personal compromise that characterize the best noirs. (The obvious casual history between Pel and Rena is a red herring, as their single meeting doesn’t lead to any tryst, or even any longing looks, nor does Pel’s chance meeting with an old girlfriend right before her violent death ever register on Jenny’s radar.)

Despite this, the movies does contain some of the strongest (to the point of being blatant) visual nods to the noir genre. Rena’s apartment faces a blinking neon sign — funny how there’s no hint of it from the Sapolios’ apartment, just below — and by the time her body is discovered, it’s raining outside, leading to a striking if unoriginal tableau as the police come in and investigate her darkened apartment, stepping around her body illuminated only by the neon through the rain.

“Why’s everyone so down on shepherd’s pie? I think it’s great!”
Every movie deserves one moment of memorable genius, though, and this movie does have that: When Rorke first meets Stanton to discuss his blackmail demands, they meet in a public place — a subway station. Rorke stands with his back to the tracks as he makes his veiled threats, and as the train passes by time, the sound of his voice fades out and we hear only the roar of the train as we watch Stanton’s face. The train passes; Stanton gives into Rorke’s demands; and as Rorke turns to leave, his parting shot is, “If I had been standing where you are, I would have pushed.”

I don’t think that one scene is enough to save The Glass Tomb from the annals of obscurity, but at least it meant that the barely-an-hour I spent watching it wasn’t entirely wasted.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 5
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 0
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0

1. In an “open” mystery, the audience sees the murder and knows the identity of the killer from the beginning; think Columbo. In a closed mystery, the audience discover the clues along with the detective; think Murder She Wrote. [back]