FANTASIA OBSCURA: Bisset Deserves More Than This Supernatural Dance with the Devil
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, though, if you’re on a serious budget, you find yourself willing to make a deal with the Devil, even if it’s only messing with the packaging to sell the product …
The Mephisto Waltz (1971)
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Directed by: Paul Wendkos
For some folks, 1971 was not a great year.
It certainly wasn’t great for 20th Century Fox. The film studio that rolled the dice on Doctor Doolittle and Hello, Dolly! had gotten snake eyes both times with those. They started the year auctioning off its production memorabilia, an event that drew celebrity bidders and earned them a few bucks. Budgets were so tight that for their third franchise entry, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, there were only three actors who were allowed to don the iconic “ape masks” while the rest of the cast were humans in modern dress. (This actually wasn’t 
a bad idea, in the end, though.) It got scary, the studio fighting for its life, trying not to be gobbled up by another outfit.
At this point, Fox’s slate was full of sparse fare compared with such past releases as Patton and Tora! Tora! Tora! The films that came out were less ambitious in their scope and feel, with films like The French Connection and Walkabout impressing their audiences with their realistic feel thanks to their cheap verite approach of using what’s on hand to work with.
And, they also got stuck with this:
We open with a couple in bed trying to ignore a clatter outside their window of their Hollywood Hills home. Paula Clarkson (Jacqueline Bisset), awoken, tries to get intimate with her husband Myles (Alan Alda), but he proves hard to wake up.
At this point, their daughter Abby (Pamela Ferdin) takes a message on the phone: Myles, a failed pianist who went into music journalism as a fall back, has just scored an interview with piano virtuoso Duncan Ely (Curd Jurgens). The interview starts off on a weird vibe, though, as Ely takes a good look at Myles’ hands and admires them. In fact, he gets his daughter Roxanne (Barbara Parkins) to give her opinion on them as well, and the Clarksons are both drawn in to Ely’s social circle of wild people up in the Hills faster than you can hum a Bob Seeger song suggesting folks in these circles.
Their entry into this society includes an invitation to a New Year’s Eve party that just explodes with libertine opulence, where Paula watches Duncan and Roxanne go way beyond mere familial affection:
(And yes, the mask the dog wears is the same type of ‘Kirk mask’ that would end up getting used in Halloween. The one used in 1978 was not inspired by this film; both productions needed a cheap prop, and this fit the bill nicely in each case.)
We soon find out why Ely really wants to be good friends with Myles: Ely is dying of leukemia, and he and Roxanne have the means by which Ely can move his soul out of his dying body into Myles’ healthy one, allowing him to live on. In fact, we even get to watch the process in extreme detail…
And it’s here that the film just falls apart, because it just doesn’t bother to hide anymore. One of the hallmarks of a decent work of horror is the use of the “unknown threat,” the menace that’s just out of sight, it’s shape suggested. There’s a threat out there, but you have no idea what it can do, how big it is, what it looks like if you dare to look. It’s what we don’t know that gives us the chills, not what we can measure and weigh.
And the sequence we get of Ely kicking Myles’ soul to the curb like a gentrifying landlord clearing out the building is just a few superimposed chyrons and a bad narration removed from being a YouTube “how-to” video. From there on, the film gives up any potential as a work of horror, stopping you from asking, “What is this that’s going on to these people?” and instead ask, “So how does Paula deal with this mess now?”
Because at this point this is essentially a film about Paula being dealt a bad hand in life, her husband not only dead but replaced, and we know more than she does and are waiting for her to catch up. It’s not a great position to be in as the audience, and the fact that we have over an hour from that point to sit through before she realizes what’s going on doesn’t buy her a lot of sympathy.
Lord knows, Bisset tries, and she makes a good run of working with the material she has. But the script by Ben Maddow (his last feature screenplay) based off of a potboiler by Fred Mustard Stewart doesn’t do her any favors. The work, taking its title from a Franz Liszt composition, might have benefited from some strong editing, say removing showing us Ely taking Myles’ body; having her find out the same time as we do what took place might have helped.
And that would be just for a start. There’s so much that goes on for that hour when Paula’s trying to catch up to us, so many bad choices by the writer and director, that you wish by the time we get to the end that she’d had better choices to make then. (Both were chosen for the film by the producer, Quinn Martin, whose only feature this was for probably apparent reasons. Martin would before and after this stick to television, including such series as The Streets of San Francisco.)
What’s especially frustrating is that Bisset’s character has all the heavy lifting to do here, but so few good choices for her character to make. Parkins certainly delivers pretty well as an antagonist here, but Alda is left adrift; having to play two distinct characters but not allowed much to do in the script for either makes it painful to watch. And other than Jurgens, who’s gone early on, there’s not much from any other players to keep this interesting other than Bisset.
And of all things, she and her character have so much to do, but Bisset gets second billing in the credits to Alda? #HollywoodSoMale, maybe…?
The good thing about a bad year is, it doesn’t last forever, so you can make mistakes like this and still be able to move on. Bisset was able to make better films with folks who weren’t producing them on the side away from their TV gigs, and Alda got a TV gig right after the film, landing the lead in M*A*S*H.
And Fox? For them, you can say since then that it’s been a wild ride, though they couldn’t escape what they tried to avoid in 1971…
NEXT TIME: Once upon a time, there was a film that no one today can properly watch…
…and no, not for reasons you may think…
