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‘He screamed he was innocent, but that didn’t stop them. It was then he said the curse.’
Available on YouTube, 1946’s Strangler of the Swamp is German director Frank Wisbar’s remake of his own Fahrmann Maria.
made in his home country in 1936, that’s also available on YouTube but it’s not the best print, nor does it seem to be complete,
so we’re looking at this version made for Poverty Row studio PRC after Wisbar came to America.
The story is a simple one; following the lynching of an innocent man, people keep showing up dead in mysterious and similar ways.
‘Have you forgotten Bill Jenkins who was thrown from his horse and choked to death by the rain?’
And locals believe that the ghost of the hanged man haunts the swamp.
The ghost’s face may be indistinct but cult film fans will recognise the voice of Ming the Merciless himself, Charles Middleton.
‘From my grave in the swamp not for the heart and soul of a cursed one filled with anguish to the brim I appear.'
From here the plot is pretty predictable but enlivened by creepy, if creaky, set pieces
and the ever present atmosphere.
Wisbar overcoming the limitations of PRC’s tiny studio, shooting the same cramped set from different angles.
Also raising this above the average is the character of Maria,
returning home after the death of her father to run the ferry not a job for a woman.
‘You’ve got to give up this ferry business’
‘I like my job, Chris, what else could I do.’
Maria, played by Rosemary La Planche, is a satisfyingly strong heroine, knocking back the local drunks,
‘You should marry, have a nice home’
‘I’m happy as I am .’
running towards danger...
#aarrrgh#
and not screaming when she finds it,
nor even when she comes face to face with the strangler.
She’s the lead and unlike many similar heroines of the era, she retains this independence right to the end.
'I can save him.'
Her love interest incidentally, and he is pretty incidental, is played by Blake Edwards
before he turned to direction and long before the Pink Panther brought him into the big time.
‘I don’t believe in the supernatural.’
That this film is remembered at all is mostly due to historian William K. Everson
who included it in his book ‘Classics of The Horror Film’, but even he is quick to stress that this is not an unsung masterpiece.
It’s one of the best films PRC produced but that’s not saying much from the studio that brought you The Devil Bat.
#WOOOOOOOOO# - you know the sound bats make.
However well Wisbar manages it, you’re always aware of the cheapness,
'Run till your heart bursts'
The love story is just tedious,
‘Are you in love with her Chris?’
and when the narrative moves from the swamp to talky interiors it becomes laboured,
as if struggling to reach its brisk 59 minute runtime.
‘I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I just wait for the stranger ti get us, like he got Jospeh.’
Everson acknowledged that in a book called Classics of the Horror film he was including something that was ‘far from a classic’
but he wanted to draw attention to it because both Strangler of the Swamp and Fahrmann Maria had been largely ignored
and that’s at least part of the reason we’re reviewing it.
The other reason is that, for its faults and a real lull in the mid-section,
it’s an enjoyable little thriller, and a testament to what a good director can do, even in straitened circumstances.
Thanks for watching. Have you seen Strangler of the Swamp and if so what did you think of it? What other forgotten B movies deserve a leg up?
Let us know in the comments below.