A Man May Smile and Smile and Be a Villain...

Oh, that Baron Sardonicus. What a happy chap he must have been. Always smiling and grinning. And you just know he had a way with the ladies.

Unfortunately, between his lowly birth and the mask he wore, he suffered from an obvious inferiority complex -- which would not have been so bad if not for the way the not so good Baron felt the need to take it out on the world.

Then he married Maude Randall, a Victorian beauty who failed to appreciate his rather unique appearance. Ms. Randall had a former lover named Robert Cargrave, who had since come up in the world. He was once a lowly medical student but now he was a famous doctor with a thriving practice and he had been even knighted by the queen. Maude wrote to Robert and asked him to come examine her husband, warning him that it was most urgent to her well-being that he do so.

But what was up with the Baron Sardonicus? And what was up with the mysterious Krull, who is the Baron's very loyal -- and very creepy -- manservant? And what was up with the mysterious station manager who had all kinds of hints about the Baron that he dared not spell out? And why did someone put leeches all over the poor maidservant? For the answers to these and other questions, you have to see William Castle's 1961 production of Mr. Sardonicus, one of those old-fashioned horror films that seemed to work best as long as the late Castle kept off-screen.

But of course you all know how those horror movie director tend to be. Just as all actors live to play Hamlet, all horror movie directors live to play Hitchcock. And so did Castle. Thus, for the opening sequence, William Castle magically appeared in 1880 London -- almost as if he were a time traveler -- and proceeded to introduce himself to the audience as if he were an old friend -- or Alfred Hitchcock. Indeed, Castle did similar introductions for many of his films -- introductions which seemed like lowbrow knockoffs of the introductions Alfred Hitchcock used to do for the television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Poor Castle was never as memorable as old Hitch and I suspect that he knew that as well as anybody. Yet he managed to keep a sense of humor about himself just the same -- which is more than I could say about some modern directors.

To be fair, Mr. Sardonicus was one of Castle's better films and thanks to a good script by author Ray Russell, it remains very watchable despite the rather arbitrary use of torture as a plot device. Unlike some horror films from the early 1960s I could mention, it never descended to the Ed Wood level of badness but then again it was never comparable to the most inspired work of Hitchcock. Perhaps the best comparison would be to the Edgar Allan Poe movies Roger Corman was making for American International at roughly the same time. Like them, the movie was entertaining enough but in no danger of being mistaken for art by even the most liberal horror movie fan.

I must confess that as much as I liked the movie's old-fashioned approach to storytelling, I would liked the movie a whole lot more if Castle had not insisted in cutting in toward the end with a needless “punishment poll” sequence in which movie-goers were supposed to vote on the fate of a particular character. However, even that part did not subtract from what turned out to be a neat little B-film.

If I had only one additional quibble to make, it would be the fact that the one character I really wanted to see get a comeuppance never got one. Instead, the character was made responsible for punishing yet another character who also deserved a comeuppance.

Perhaps it was a bit too much to expect total justice in a film like this. Neither Russell nor Castle ever explained why the same servant who so eagerly tortured his fellow servants suddenly showed a twinge of conscience when it came to torturing a more aristocratic subject and I suppose we will never know why Castle insisted that one sadistic character got punished while another got off scot-free. Such is life and such is film.

Then again I suspect that both Castle and Russell realized that the only thing movie audiences would find as emotionally satisfying as seeing a sadist get his just desserts would be seeing the same sadist get a taste of his own medicine from another sadist. And indeed, if the sadists of this world have to pick on anybody, why not on another sadist? It certainly beats their picking on innocent victims. Of course, it would be far nicer if we would dispense with sadists in the movies altogether but unfortunately, no one ever bothers to listen to me about that.