Escapement [The Electronic Monster] ** (1958, Rod Cameron, Mary Murphy, Meredith Edwards, Peter Illing, Carl Jaffe, Kay Callard) – Classic Movie Review 10,458

Director Montgomery Tully’s mildly intriguing 1958 British sci-fi thriller Escapement [The Electronic Monster] is set in France, with Rod Cameron as the obligatory imported minor US star as insurance investigator Jeff Keenan, who goes sniffing about on behalf of an insurance company after a film star dies in a car crash in the south of France.

The trail leads to an exclusive doctor’s clinic on the French Riviera where famous stressed-out people are being brainwashed with the help of dream-inducing tape-recordings. He finds there have been two other suspicious deaths, all three patients at the same private psychiatric clinic, where they were treated by electronic dream therapy, hypnotised, laid out in morgue-like drawers and left to dream for several weeks.

[Spoiler alert] There is a sinister plot as well as a mad doctor behind the charming idea of electronic dream therapy, and the clinic’s crazy ex-Nazi owner Dr Zakon, who is about to marry Jeff’s old flame Ruth (Mary Murphy), is using a dream machine to impose his will on the sleepers by altering their dreams.

It is cheaply made in black and white on a budget of $125,000. There is a down-at-heel cast and a modest production, but the B-movie crime horror mystery story based on Charles Eric Maine’s 1956 novel Escapement has flashes of vitality.

Producer Richard Gordon said there were major problems with the film’s special effects and that he had a dispute with UK distributors Anglo-Amalgamated, who did not want the movie to get an X certificate in the UK, whereas Gordon wanted more horror for the US market, so the film falls between thriller and sci-fi. But as a very early film about psychological manipulation and brainwashing it has and holds its interest.

Made by Anglo-Guild Productions, it was released in the UK by Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (1958) and eventually in the US by Columbia Pictures in 1960 as The Electronic Monster in a double bill with either 13 Ghosts or the Japanese sci-fi Battle in Outer Space.

It runs 80 minutes with the cut version runs 72 minutes.

Also in the cast are Mary Murphy, Meredith Edwards, Peter Illing, Carl Jaffe, Kay Callard, Carl Duering, Roberta Huby, Felix Felton, Larry Cross, Carlo Borelli, John McCarthy, Jacques Cey, Armand Guinle, Pat Clavin, Alan Gifford, and Malou Pantera.

Escapement [The Electronic Monster] is directed by Montgomery Tully, runs 80 minutes or 72 minutes, is made by Anglo-Guild Production, is released by Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors (1958) and Columbia Pictures (1960) (US), is written by Charles Eric Maine and J McLaren Ross (additional dialogue), based on Charles Eric Maine’s novel, is shot in black and white by Bert Mason, is produced by Alec C Snowden, Jim O’Connolly and Richard Gordon, is scored by Richard Taylor (musical director) and John Simmons (electronic music consultant), and is designed by C Wilfred Arnold

It is made at lowly Merton Park Studios, Merton, London, England.

The dream sequence is directed by David Paltenghi and shot by Teddy Catford.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,458

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