The Dark Tower

An Early British "Horror" Film that was virtually Unseen in America until recently. The Circus really does have a Sleazy, Sinister side and has been Exploited in a number of Films and it usually is quite an Effective Backdrop for Suspense and Quirky Characters. This Movie Displays that Creepy Environs.

Herbert Lom's Uncanny Performance as Torg, a Name that in itself Evokes Shutters, is the Mesmerizing Force behind this Offbeat Penetration into the Mind of a Desperate, Powerful Individual that literally Seduces his way to the (Big) Top. An Allegory of another Master Mind Manipulator.

A Spellbinding Film that is an Unusually Dark and Disturbing War-Time Entry. Made at a Time when Germany was under the Sinister Spell of a Real "Svengali" named Hitler.

Nothing else on TV so found myself watching The Dark Tower on TCM. I found myself drawn into this, despite what seems to be clichés (but really weren't when the film was made). Well worth watching.

As a Doctor Who fan from way back when, what a thrill to have the original Doctor, William Hartnell (billed as Bill Hartnell) playing Jim.

I won't recount the story, but I really liked the peripheral characters especially the "naysayer" Annie Oakley woman. Most of the circus stuff was faked but there were some real gems worth watching. There is a wonderful sequence with a "clown" tightrope walker which I defy you to find better -- I was riveted to his performance.

Put it on your list of things to watch.

Enjoyed this British film which is about a Circus called the Danton Empire Circus which is having some financial problems and has to create some new acts in order to keep in business. A drifter, Stephen Torg, (Herbert Lom) appears one day and is able to calm a lion which has broken loose and out of control around the circus grounds. Stephen is looking for work and is hired by the circus manager and meets up with Mary, (Ann Crawford) who is a high wire artist and her partner Phil Danton. Stephen Torg uses hypnosis on Mary and permits her to take some very daring tricks on the high wire act and it becomes an instant success. Stephen becomes very popular with the audiences and is very resented by the circus company, however, Mary is in his complete control and he steals her from her boyfriend Phil Danton. Great entertaining film, don't miss this one. Enjoy.

The Trilby&Svengali saga is given another version in The Dark Tower. This is a film made by Warner Brothers at its British studio facilities and it's a well done piece of work.

Ben Lyon is boss of a circus that's hardly the operation of Ringling Brothers. It's a failing small show and at the beginning of the film he can't even meet the payroll. Into his life walks Herbert Lom, a strange and brooding man who has a great gift as a hypnotist. On both animals and people.

The main attraction of the circus is the aerial act that Lyon's brother David Farrar does with Anne Crawford and Crawford has fears that may be insurmountable. With hypnosis not so says Lom and he hypnotizes her to conquer her fears. Pretty soon she's his puppet.

With his mesmerizing methods the show becomes a success. But Lom starts intruding on everything in the show and extorts a partnership out of Lyon. To a person they all hate him in the show save Crawford, but know he's their meal ticket. In the end something is done about Lom.

Lom is the center of this film, he gives a fascinating performance about a brooding and vengeful man. In a key scene with Crawford he tells of being bullied as a child and then discovering his gift made a lot of people bend to his will. A lot of bullied kids and former bullied kids who watch this film will cheer on Herbert Lom.

Don't miss this film if broadcast especially if you are fan of Herbert Lom's work.

A curious little movie that deserves to be better known. Based on "The Dark Tower," a play by George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woolcott, which was also the inspiration for the better-known "The Man With Two Faces," it shares little except for its title and the theme of hypnotism with the boilerplate melodrama by the two celebrated Algonquin Roundtable wits of the 1930s.

Well-acted,well-written, well-shot, and well-lit, this motion picture operates on two levels, both of them terrifying. Superficially, it's a neat horror film starring an excellent Herbert Lom as "Torg," a Peter Lorre-type -- a rather off-putting and unhappy gentleman from some Central European country who, while absolutely loathing people, can mesmerize them to do his bidding. Ingratiating himself into a rundown provincial traveling circus in a pre-war England -- think an anglicized "La Strada" -- he makes himself indispensable, turning around the fortunes of this one-lion show.

On another level, the circus can be interpreted as a metaphor for Nazi Germany, with the Lom character standing in for the master propagandist Dr. Josef Goebbels, sans a limp. Every utterance of his drives home this resemblance, as "Torg," morphs from just plain Torg to Mr. Torg to ... Doctor Torg, using his power "to cloud men's minds" to bully his way into a position of power. To draw attention to this subtext, the circus parade features a platoon of uniformed blondes marching with arms extended (are they Sieg Heiling?), and a Col. Blimpish ringmaster who could be a stand-in for Field Marshal von Hindenburg.

This secondary theme isn't all that obvious,and perhaps it may not even exist (as Sigmund Freud himself said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar) but for one viewer it does lift this 1943 movie out of the realm of still another film of fright and frisson and instead, with its unspoken chilling and sinister message, places it in Hell.