THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. Universal, 1925. Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin. Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland, John Sainpolis.

Based on the novel Le Fantôme de l’Opera by Gaston Leroux. Directors: Rupert Julian; Lon Chaney, Ernst Laemmle, Edward Sedgwick (the latter three uncredited).

   October is the month I spend watching Monster Movies and reading scary books. I kicked things off with The Phantom of the Opera, directed by Rupert Julian, Edward Sedgwick and possibly others, and adapted by no fewer than seven writers from Gaston Leroux’s novel.

   Phantom has its moments, but overall it’s something of a mess — the result, no doubt of so many cooks at the broth, fingers in the pie, pigs at the trough or who-ever in the what-have-you.

   Universal did a lot of tinkering with this thing, adding and cutting scenes, restoring deleted parts and cutting added ones, and finally emerged with a rather disjointed film: a slow, mysterious first half capped by a horrific climax in the middle of the movie, followed by a colorful romantic interlude, trailed by some rather tepid serial-type chills, with a wild chase for the finish.

   A few pretty nice things creep out of the cinematic jungle though, mostly due to Lon Chaney and the incredible force of personality he brings to Eric the Phantom (Some reports aver that he directed his own scenes himself.) Chaney moves with a compelling balletic grace, and whoever directed his scenes knew how to play up billowing capes and staring skull-faces for all they might be worth.

   The Bal Masque scene is a riot of two-strip Technicolor dominated by Chaney’s Red Death, and the ensuing love scene among the statues achieves a fine romantic creepiness: the furtive lovers embracing under cool blue estuary in the night air, as a red-cloaked monster broods above them.

   Chaney’s acting is magnetic, and Mary Philbin puts visible enthusiasm — if no discernible subtlety — into heroine Christine’s histrionics.

   But it’s Norman Kerry as the nominal hero of the piece who walks off with the show: Aging, bland, over-groomed, dull and unimaginative, Kerry is everything the nominal hero of a Monster Movie should be.

   He has only to walk on screen to bore you to tears, and his declarations of undying love offer a listlessness that horror films were not to see again until the “living Dead” movies of the 70s.

   But wait, there’s more; where the heroes of most monster movies are merely dull and ineffectual, Kerry actually has to be led by the hand to rescue his beloved and finally faints dead away when things get tough.

   There are subversive tendencies in Monster Movies, where the bad guys we’re supposed to fear are always more interesting than the good guys we’re supposed to cheer, and there’s no better illustration of the concept than Norman Kerry in The Phantom of the Opera.

DOUGLAS RUTHERFORD – Kick Start. Walker, US, hardcover. 1973; Ballantine, pb, 1976. UK editions: Collins Crime Club, hc, 1973; Fontana, pb, 1975.

   The hero of this book is really not a person; it’s a motorcycle, a Norton Commando to be precise. And while reading the story isn’t as much fun as being able to ride as well as the protagonist does, it’s a close second.

   Kroll commits a crime, gets caught, and is recruited to penetrate an area ravaged by earthquake, accessible only to a skilled biker. He narrowly gets to his destination (a particularly good scene has him crossing a cracking dam), and then things get worse (the dam breaks; the race in front of the flood waters is another high point).

   One of the most entertaining things about the book, though, is the large number of flaws in the plot — or what appear to be flaws. The reader keeps thinking that the author is doing a really sloppy job, right up until the end, when suddenly the flaws are shown to be in Kroll’s interpretation of events.

   He’s been wrong all along; the reader has been right. And the bitterly ironic ending somehow seems highly appropriate.

Editorial Comment:  I regret to say that I have not turned up a cover image of the Ballantine paperback, but these two should easily do.

   Rutherford, whose full name was James Douglas Rutherford McConnell, 1915-1988, has a total of 25 titles in the Revised Crime Fiction IV, most of them dealing with motorcycles or motorcar racing (e.g., A Shriek of Tyres (1958), The Gunshot Grand Prix (1972) and Rally to the Death (1974)).

   Of more immediate significance, though, is that under the pen name Paul Temple, he co-authored two novels in that series with Francis Durbridge. See the preceding post.

PAUL TEMPLE – The Tyler Mystery. Hodder, UK, hardcover, 1957. “Paul Temple” was a pseudonym of Francis Durbridge and Douglas Rutherford. Reprinted as by Francis Durbridge: Hodder, UK, pb, 1960

    A solid entry in the long running series about debonair British mystery writer Paul Temple (“By Timothy!”) and his wife and partner in solving crimes Steve (Stephanie), the former Steve Trent, a Fleet Street reporter. She and her husband solve crimes while enjoying the pleasures of the leisured upper middle class English lifestyle.

   The Temples are something of a cross between Nick and Nora Charles and the Lockridges’ Pam and Jerry North (though considerably more sober than either), with Paul himself a bit of an Ellery Queen figure (at least the radio or television versions) appearing in some fifteen books written with collaborators like Charles Hatton, John Thewes and Douglas Rutherford (appearing under the Paul Temple byline). A good deal of the charm of the series involves the byplay between the attractive husband and wife crime solvers.

   In addition to the books, there were ten radio plays and serials, movies, a television series, and a long running comic strip by Alfred Sindall and others (updated to reflect the 1969-1971 television series).

   When Betty Tyler is found stuffed in the boot of an abandoned Jaguar strangled with her own scarf on the Chipping Norton Road outside Oxford, Steve Temple, recently moved into their new Eaton Square flat with their Cockney servant Charlie, knows Sir Graham Forbes of the Yard is likely to show up at any time to ask her mystery writer husband’s help, interfering with her plans for a trip to Paris to celebrate Paul’s latest book deal.

   Sure enough, Forbes (“a splendid example of an Englishman”) shows up on their doorstep with Oxford Constabulary Inspector Vosper in tow.

   Paul and Steve agree to do a favor for Forbes, but still are intent on keeping out of the whole thing and making that Paris holiday — which Steve emphasizes by humming “I love Paris” at key times when Paul is tempted to defect, but after a suspicious near accident on the way to investigate Paul and Steve can no longer avoid involvement. Especially after a call from Jane Dallas — whom Paul finds strangled in the bedroom of her flat.

   All the victims work for a chain of beauty salons owned by the mysterious fashionable Spaniard Mariano (“a drink like a prophet is never honoured in its own country”).

   Paul and Steve investigate and capture the strangler, but Paul knows the man with the scarves is only the front for the man behind the murders, and in true style throws a dinner party to gather the suspects and expose the killer with a flourish. There is even a bit of a surprise in the killer’s identity and of course a touch of drama in the capture.

   There is nothing surprising about the Temple books. They are competently written, feature a bit of mystery, a bit of detection, and considering their radio serial origin, contain a good deal of action and suspense.

   Four movies featured Paul and Steve Temple, with Anthony Hulme and Joy Shelton in Send For Paul Temple (1946), and John Bentley (who also played John Creasey’s the Toff in two outings) and Dinah Sheridan in Calling Paul Temple (1948) Paul Temple’s Triumph (1950), and Paul Temple Returns (1952), all directed by Maclean Rogers, who directed the two Toff films as well. (In Returns, Patricia Dainton replaced Dinah Sheridan as Steve.)

   I’ve seen Calling Paul Temple, and it is an entertaining B picture with some nice location photography in Cambridge, some solid thrills, and builds to a good climax.

   Francis Matthews (Dracula, Prince of Darkness and the voice of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s “Captain Scarlet”) played Temple and Ros Drinkwater Steve in the 64 episode Temple series co-produced with Germany’s ZDF (1969-1971). In addition in the mid sixties several of the radio serials and books were done for British and German television. Eleven episodes of the color episodes of the Temple series are available on DVD as of 2009.

   Francis Durbridge (1912-1998) was the Levinson and Link of British television. His popular serials included The Teckman Biography, The World of Tim Frazer, Melanie, Operation Diplomat, Portrait of Alison, The Scarf, and others. Most were also books.

   In addition his non Temple serials inspired films such as The Teckman Mystery, Postmark to Danger (Portrait of Alison), and the The Vicious Circle. His other series character, Tim Fraser, is featured in three books.

   The original ten Paul Temple radio serials are available as CD’s (a pricey Omnibus edition of all ten serials is well worth the price for the sheer hours of entertainment). In addition, there have been new productions as late as 2006, making a total of some twenty-seven Temple radio productions from 1938 to date.

   Postmark to Danger and at least one of the Temple movies are available on DVD on the gray market. Of the films, Postmark to Danger stars Robert Beatty and Terry Moore, and The Vicious Circle (1957) with John Mills, Roland Culver, Lionel Jeffries, Derek Farr, and Mervyn Johns has showed up on TCM several times and is well worth catching.

   Douglas Rutherford, the best of the Durbridge collaborators, and the only one to write as Paul Temple, was a first class action-suspense novelist whose own books were compared to Dick Francis. The novels under his own name always feature a background of racing cars and motorcycles, though the plots varied from crime, to murder, to spy-jinks. Barzun and Taylor had a few nice things to say of them in Catalogue of Crime.

   The Paul Temple books may sometimes show their origins as radio drama, but they offer pleasant thrills with an attractive pair of sleuths, and a bit of well done suspense and often clever mysteries.

   All of Durbridge’s books are worth reading, and hopefully more of the television serials will be finding their way onto DVD sets. When a German comic revealed the name of the killer in the German airing of The World of Tim Fraser, there was a major uproar.

   A modern American audience may not get quite that involved, but skillfully done fare along the lines of Durbridge’s radio and television serials, series, movies, and books are not to be sneezed at. These are well worth discovering and enjoying.

Editorial Comment:  Prompting the immediate posting of this review which David just sent me was, of course, my preceding review of Melissa, one of Durbridge’s many story productions for BBC-TV. The availability of the Paul Temple TV shows on DVD just a few months ago has only strengthened myresolve to obtain a multi-region player. The set is Region 2 only.

MELISSA. BBC-TV 3-part miniseries: December 4 through 18, 1974. Peter Barkworth, Guy Foster, Moira Redmond, Ronald Fraser, Joan Benham, Philip Voss, Ray Lonnen, Lyndon Brook, Elizabeth Bell. Story: Francis Durbridge; novelized as My Wife Melissa (Hodder, 1967). Director: Peter Moffatt.

   I have mystery writer Martin Edwards to thank for letting me know about this relatively ancient but remarkably well-preserved TV detective drama, first shown in the UK some 35 years ago and (believe it or not) available now in this country on DVD.

   Martin reviewed it on his blog back in June, and after his positive appraisal, I snapped it up from Amazon almost immediately. With the stacks of DVDs and shows on video tape all clamoring for my attention, though, I didn’t get around to watching it until the middle of last month.

   A piece of advice, if I may? If you’re a fan of complicated detective stories full of clues, false trails, mysterious happenings and twist after twist in the plot, don’t wait around as long as I did. Get this and watch it now. And do I mean that? Indeed I do. You won’t regret it. It’s fusty, it’s old-fashioned, and it’s absolutely terrific.

   Note that if you’re more of a fan of PI stories or hardboiled crime fiction, the recommendation I extend to you isn’t quite so urgent, but within its limitations, I think you might very well enjoy it too.

   I don’t know if a quickie, non-detailed recap will suffice, but here goes. A writer who’s been going through some tough times without a steady income allows his wife (Melissa) to go to a party with friends without him; when she calls him later to meet her somewhere, he goes, only to find her dead and all of the evidence pointing directly to him – and he has no alibi.

   Worse, a doctor specializing in neurological cases swears to the police that he was a recent patient, and so does his nurse, while Guy Foster, that’s name (played by a suitably rumpled and increasingly haggard Peter Barkworth) knows he has never seen either one before in his life.

   More funny business continues. By the time a second murder occurs, Foster is so wrapped up in elaborately phony (and highly unlikely) stories (although from his perspective, they are all perfectly true) he has nowhere to turn — until a chance comment he happens to make tells Detective Chief Inspector Carter (perfectly played by a suavely genteel Philip Voss) that the fantastic stories he’s been telling are the real truth.

   The story’s the thing in this case, and the only thing, with each of the first episodes ending in a beautifully constructed cliffhanger. I don’t imagine – no, make that I simply can’t imagine any killer going to such lengths to shift the blame to someone else, but it certainly creates a lot of fun for readers really, really fond of detective puzzles in their everyday brand of mystery fiction. In Melissa they’ll find something just as good, for a change, on the TV screen. Guaranteed.

   (On the other hand, I have to admit that Raymond Chandler might have found the overly elaborately and wholly invented affair utterly stagy and ludicrous, and therefore by extension, Raymond Chandler fans may very well follow suit. If you fall in the latter category, I can’t make you like it – but on the other hand, you might.)

   Other notes: Melissa was televised once before, as a 6-part mini-series beginning in 1964 with essentially the same characters (though not the actors) so I assume the story was the same.

   Another version appeared on TV in 1997, but the synopsis sounds makes it sound rather different in a number of ways. (The new guys who come along always seem to want to do that, for some reason.)

   Francis Durbridge, who wrote the story, is all but unknown in this country, but in the UK he was quite famous as a writer of detective stories and radio plays (e.g., Paul Temple), movie scripts and TV. The quickest way to check out his credits may be his Wikipedia page.