Wed 7 Oct 2015
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: MAURICE SANDOZ – The Maze (Book and Film).
Posted by Steve under Horror movies , Reviews[8] Comments
MAURICE SANDOZ – The Maze. Doubleday Doran, hardcover, 1945. No paperback edition.
THE MAZE. Allied Artists, 1953. Richard Carlson, Veronica Hurst, Katherine Emery, Michael Pate. Screenplay by Daniel Ullman. Directed by William Cameron Menzies.
I love it when learning one thing leads to learning another.
When I mentioned to Ray that I was reading /watching this, he mentioned right back that it was based on a true story. This prompted a bit of research that led me to the story of Glamis.
Glamis Castle in Scotland is a place of legend, the setting of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, reputedly the scene of a card game between the laird of the manor and Satan himself, and the seat of an impenetrable mystery involving a secret room and an unseen denizen half-haunting the manse. This was the basic material that Maurice Sandoz took for his short novel, The Maze.
Like a classic ghost story, Maze is set in a frame, as an unnamed narrator tells of a chance meeting with Edith Murray, the kind of spirited old lady familiar to readers of this sort of thing. It seems that some years ago, Edith’s niece Kitty was engaged to marry Gerald MacTeam, who, as we get into the story, is related to the MacTeams of Craven Castle, which has a mysterious history and odd ways with its guests, who are forbidden to enter parts of the house and grounds and are locked in their rooms at night.
Sandoz throws in a few more teasers like this and promptly moves the plot along as an uncle dies, Gerald inherits the estate, goes to the castle to settle things, then abruptly breaks off the engagement with a letter that (fittingly for this sort of thing) foreshadows a grim tale to come and throws Kitty into tearful confusion.
But not for long. Aunt Edith isn’t the kind of lady to see young love go unrequited, and not many pages have turned before she’s a guest in the castle and busied with the usual night-time perambulations through twisty corridors and sinister paths, to a conclusion in the mysterious maze of the title.
I have to say though that I closed this book with a sense of mild disappointment. It’s smoothly written, suspenseful, and the illustrations (by Salvador Dali) are just dandy, but overall it lacked any real drama, and the resolution seemed just a bit too pat and convenient. Worth reading, but hardly memorable.
The film, on the other hand, is definitely worth your time. Directed by William Cameron Menzies (Things to Come, Invaders from Mars, etc.) in his best off-kilter style, it fairly drips with menace and gives real, visceral feeling to the creepiest elements of Sandoz’s book: the sound of something unworldly moving through the castle halls, the thing half-seen in the shadows which sanity must reject, and the palpable sensation of persons keeping a secret they wish they didn’t know.
Writer Daniel Ullman, who did his best work in B-Westerns, rings in the changes one would expect from Hollywood; here it’s young and attractive fiancée (Veronica Hurst) who instigates the investigation and heads it up when Aunt Edith (Katherine Emery) wants to back off. And when the end comes, it’s with a fine flurry of activity and jump-in-your-seat scares.
Richard Carlson, that reliable stand-up guy of 1950s sci-fi puts in his usual earnest performance, and Michael Pate, the vampire gunslinger of Curse of the Undead (1959) adds a bit of depth to his sinister butler part, but the film really belongs to Menzies, whose striking visuals and sense of pace keep things going wonderfully.
October 8th, 2015 at 8:40 am
I had not heard of either the book or the film, Dan, so thanks for that. Looking at the AFI write-up of the movie, I found the following bits of interesting information:
“The Maze was Allied Artist Productions’ first 3-D production. A 5 Feb 1953 HR news item noted that designs by artist Salvador Dali were to be used for the production, but they were not in the released film. The Var review noted that the film marked Veronica Hurst’s American feature debut.”
October 8th, 2015 at 10:48 am
Well done film though the ending means later viewings ate a bit marred. In a way it falls to the problem Jonathan and I discussed via Lovecraft and the ‘orful ‘orible thing lurking in the shadows syndrome.
Once you actually see the thing shuffling around the castle it is a let down,and while I have always admired and enjoyed this one as a small gem up to that point my understanding is that on release many audiences laughed at the reveal.
That said I agree with the review whole heartedly. It’s a handsome atmospheric old house/castle movie from a master of visuals.
October 8th, 2015 at 1:11 pm
By some sort of coincidence, Michael Pate was in one of two episodes of HAVE GUN WILL TRAVEL I watched last night. The credits were at the end, but I recognized him right away.
October 8th, 2015 at 3:47 pm
Pate was also Felix Leiter in the CLIMAX version of CASINO ROYALE With Barry Nelson though his Leiter was more Bond than Nelson. He played Indians in no few westerns and was a vampire gunfighter in one.
A varied career.
October 10th, 2015 at 3:14 pm
Wasn’t Sandoz the first commercial producer of LSD? Farrrr out irony if ’twas.
October 13th, 2015 at 1:01 pm
There isn’t a lot about the connection, but I did find this statement online:
[Maurice] Sandoz [was] a scion of the pharmaceuticals dynasty who supplied legal LSD to the medical profession into the mid-sixties…
http://www.librarything.com/work/2238333
October 14th, 2015 at 9:11 am
Another story based on the Glamis legend is Margery Allingham’s early “Albert Campion” detective story, variously known as LOOK TO THE LADY or THE GYRTH CHALICE MYSTERY. I know I’ve read a couple of other fictional treatments of the idea, but details escape me at the moment.
October 14th, 2015 at 1:07 pm
Thanks, Denny. Sorry that I missed the connection altogether, and it’s one I should have.
There is a historical mystery by Robin Paige entitled “Death at Glamis Castle,” about which PW says:
“The old story of the Monster of Glamis-a half-man, half-monster rumored to be a deformed scion of a noble family-gains new life when the castle’s labyrinthine quarters are used to conceal the presence of Lord Osborne, who lives in isolation, tended to by a small staff of servants. Osborne’s disappearance, which coincides with the brutal slaughter of a housemaid, proves worthy of the king’s attention when the Sheridans learn that the victim’s throat was slit in a manner consistent with the crimes of Jack the Ripper-and that Osborne is actually the king’s eldest son, Edward, duke of Clarence, himself a one-time Ripper suspect, whose death was announced by Buckingham Palace a decade earlier.”
I probably won’t go looking for this one, but for what it’s worth, there it is.