1965, dir. Harvey Hart, Leslie Nielsen, Peter Mark Richman;
IMDb /
allmovie
San Francisco, 1891. Playboy Brett Kingsford is secretly an occult
detective. When his best friend's fiancée comes to him describing her
husband-to-be's strange mental state, he starts to look into it.
This was intended to be the pilot for a TV series, The Black
Cloak. That wasn't taken up, so it was released on its own as a short
film. It's a little under an hour long, and it's a flawed gem.
For a start, Nielsen is in his straight-acting prime, between
Forbidden Planet and The Poseidon Adventure. Richman, as the best
friend, is also good, with a face that gradually becomes more drawn
and hollow as the tension mounts and it starts to look as though he
might be responsible (during his blackouts) for the Ripper-style
murders of a number of young women. Even Judi Meredith as the fiancée,
while occasionally annoying, does an excellent job of being the foil
to Nielsen's more serious hero. Other characters are clearly bit
players, but get the job done.
Another good point is the photography, in black and white for TV
broadcast. Combined with the solid production design, it lends an air
of elegance to the proceedings, even though if you pay attention
you'll notice that an awful lot is described rather than shown. (And
the clawed hands of the murderer look distinctly… rubbery.)
The script, by Barré Lyndon, is workmanlike rather than stunning;
Kingsford's playboy dialogue is overdone and tends to irritate, and
various sideways references to the Cthulhu mythos were probably
inserted by producer Jack Laird. On the other hand it's an attempt to
tell a rather more sophisticated story than was common in TV or film
at the time, and it largely succeeds: even what seems to be a pat
ending in the last ten minutes is mostly setup for the real
conclusion.
As a TV series, it might have been The Night Stalker twenty years
early. And it might have run out of ideas as that show largely did.
But what did get made is still rather enjoyable. At the time of
writing the film was available to view at
Dailymotion.
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