A Face in the Fog (1936)
IMDb meta-data is 1 hour and 1 minute of Dali time, rated 4.5 by 131 cinematizens.
Genre: Mystery
Verdict: Pea souper.
It opens with Major Student Talent sitting in an upstairs apartment while Quasimodo climbs into a window of another room. When she realises this ogre is about, MST runs to get a coat, a matching handbag, the iPhone, a magazine, Opal card, puts on lipstick, and barely escapes from Quasi. She nips out the front door past the doorman and hails a cab driver smoking nearby. He obliges but as he opens the door for her, he falls down dead. As scriptwriting would have it, just then a sedan appears with two dauntless journalists aboard who stop for her, and the MST is saved! Whew! What a start to the treacle.
That’s quick! Everything slows down from there.
Were they journalists or coppers, I was never sure. Maybe they weren’t either.
It seems the ogre Fiend, Quasi to his buddies, is murdering theatrical people. Some critic! He knows who he doesn’t like!
Turns out MST is a journalist who alleged in print that she knew the identity of Quasi, though in fact she didn’t. Her aim was to draw Quasi out, which she did, but she had no plan when he came out. She is a journalism graduate for sure. Blunder ahead. Blame others. Repeat.
While the several (I lost count) victims are d-e-a-d there are no marks on them. Huh? The coroner decides to go back to Med School. There he finds the victims have been instantaneously poisoned. But ‘How?’ everyone asks. ‘Who cares,’ replied the fraternity brothers.
Here is the one idea in this celluloid: Quasi has a cap-gun that shoots frozen bullets containing condensed Tweets that poison instantly and seal up the entry wound with chewing gum. Get this, and get it straight, he carried these bullets around in a cigarette case in the breast pocket of the suit he wore under the cape. By the miracle of stupidity the frozen bullets do not thaw, but remain frozen. One cold-hearted dude is he.
By some strange coincidence all the victims come from one Broadway production. Plod did not fathom this. A rival producer/writer appears to offer solace and assistance and hangs around. Get it? Get it!
There is some incomprehensible dialogue about another hunchback who is too shy to appear. The comic irritation stumbles around amusing the likes of the President in Thief.
There is never any explanation of why the villain affected the hunchback, except to invoke German expressionist films. For that it works.
Geez, who’d thunk it, but the other producer/writer is mowing down the cast of his rivals to bankrupt them as revenge for not paying overdue fines at the library, or something. He has custom-made hunchback cape in the latest Paris fashion.
The soundtrack is terrible, attuned to a silent movie schlock film. Well, this is schlock but not silent.
The end. Very welcome words they were, too.