VHS : Mr.Sardonicus [1961]

Rating: - Castle's costume epic
I watched "Mr Sardonicus" shortly after "I Saw What You Did", and I was relieved to see that William Castle hadn't sunk into comedy territory for this one. It's actually made earlier, around the same time as Castle's other most successful outings, although, this is one of his lesser known movies. "Sardonicus" is a period piece beginning with a successful young doctor, who recieves a cryptic letter from his former fiancee urging him to visit her and her mysterious husband Baron Sardonicus at their remote mansion somewhere in the middle of Europe. She hints that she is in some danger, and as she is the only woman he has ever loved, he drops everything and sets off immediately. When he arrives he finds that Sadronicus is more than just a little strange, in fact he rules over the household like a tyrant, and never appears in public without wearing a strange face mask...

Much of the film is very reminiscent of Roger Corman's "Fall of the House of Usher", although without the fabulous colour photography and on a much lower budget. Although Guy Rolfe (who plays Sardonicus) is no Vincent Price, he does a very good job of selling the character as thoroughly unwholesome and with a very cruel streak. What impressed me about the film is that it is surprisingly harsh in it's depiction of Sardonicus' sadistic past-times. He keeps a disfigured manservant as his most loyal servant, and together they devise cruel tortures which are carried out on the only other member of the household staff, a terrified maid. As well as this, Sardonicus lures girls from a nearby village to his mansion for some kind of peverted sexual desires which are never explained or depicted on the screen. It's all very lurid and Sardonicus makes for a great villain with his immobile face mask and haughty clipped manner of speech.

Sadly what lets the film down is it's patently phony production values. The gloomy scenery (shown at length, unfortunately) from a carriage window as the young doctor travels to the Sardonicus dwelling is a very shabby studio miniature, and all the "external" scenes have a painted backdrop of sky that the actors seem about to hit their heads on at any minute. The interiors of the mansion also look very studio built, with very meagre trappings of supposed wealth that just seem to be whatever the set designers could find in the nearest props cupboard. The other big drawback is that Sardonicus exudes an air of power over his household, but there is no real evidence to support it, in fact the young doctor could easily disable, overpower or even kill his tormentor and flee the mansion if he chose to, but he never does. Of course, it would spoil the plot if any of the household showed any resistance to Sardonicus, so we just have to believe that he is somehow all powerful.

William Castle is again on hand as a show man, and this time he halts the proceedings in the last few minutes for the famous "Punishment Poll", where audiences are asked to vote for whether Sardonicus should be made to pay for his evil deeds, or be let off. Naturally, the "no mercy" option is deemed to have got the most votes, and the film ends with a mean kick in the teeth for our villain.

All in all, it's good fun, although the lack of budget really makes a difference. Usually Castle hides this pretty well, so it must be the period setting that makes the corner-cutting more apparent than it normally is. I can't help thinking of it as "Fall of the House of Usher"'s poor cousin, but it lacks the overblown hysteria and grand scale of that mini-epic. If Castle knew more about creating or sustaining a gothic mood, "Mr Sardonicus" could have been a significant work of horror cinema, as the events that take place in it could pack quite a punch if presented the right way...but Castle is having his usual fun with the material, and something that could have been sinister and quite unpleasant (the torture of the maid hints at a very dark mind at work) becomes nothing more than just mildly thrilling.

But William Castle is more about fun than terror, and we should appreciate his unique talents. If you look carefully at the one, fleeting exterior shot of Sardonicus mansion, you'll see that the layout of windows is designed to make it appear like a big grinning face, which I thought was a great touch. The acting is alll pretty good, with particular mention going to Oscar Homolka as the crazed manservant. That and the outlandish true face of Sardonicus that lies behind the mask give enough good reasons for the film to be worth watching.

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Rating: - The infamous William Castle "Punishment Poll" horror flick
With a film from producer-director William Castle the question is never what is the plot of the film but rather what gimmick has the master of horror schlock come up with this time around. For his 1961 release “Mr. Sardonicus” the gimmick was the “Punishment Poll,” which supposedly gave the audience the choice of how the film should end. Of course this is not going to be as much fun as the tingling seat, special viewing glasses for ghost-vision, or even the insurance policy to cover you in the event the film scared you to death, but you have to admit that even with DVDs there are limits to what can be done. The irony is that with the DVD format you really could choose between alternative endings—if only Castle had filmed one in the first place.

Sir Robert Cargrave (Ronald Lewis) is a noted neurosurgeon who is summoned from England by her former lover Maude (Audrey Dalton) to a castle in Gorslava where she lives with her husband Baron Sardonicus (Guy Rolfe). The baron always wears a mask when he comes out of his room and eventually he tells Sir Robert the story of a lottery ticket and a ghoulish visit to a graveyard at midnight. Sardonicus wants Sir Robert to use his skills to cure his affliction, even if it means using new and untested methods to gain success, so that Maude, who was married off by her father to the baron, might finally love her husband. When Sir Robert balks at the idea, Sardonicus reveals an alternative plan for making the baroness more sympathetic to his condition.

“Mr. Sardonicus” has every single one of the traditional elements of a gothic horror story. Our hero, a man of science, travels to a remote location in eastern Europe, where he meets the terrified local townsfolk, before heading on to an ancient castle on a hill surrounded by mist, where he is met by the deformed assistant to the mysterious baron, whose beautiful wife is held hostage to her husband’s dangerous whims. But the film creates a nice gothic atmosphere (until the end) and the production values do not cheapen the experience but compare quite favorably to the Universal monster movies of the 40s and 50s. Cargrave is a bland hero and the effectiveness of the film rests on the character of the baron, who cuts a compelling figure as he speaks from behind his mask. More than anyone else, it is Rolfe who prevents the films from descending to the level of camp, although Oscar Homolka as the baron’s disfigured but loyal servant Krull, turns in a solid performance along those same lines as well.

Rather surprisingly, not only the story of how Sardonicus came to be this way but our look at the man behind the mask comes rather early in the film, at which point this horror film starts to turn into a medical problem-solving effort. Then we get to Castle’s gimmick and the whole thing collapses. The “Punishment Poll” consisted of getting a rather large card when you entered the theater that could be raised to signify “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” when Castle appeared on the screen to conduct the poll. Supposedly the majority vote would apply, but Castle knew full well what his blood thirsty audience would want to see at the end of the film, so an alternative ending was never even filmed. Besides, Castle made it clear what sort of person would wimp out and give mercy to the title character.

The only problem is that the little boy in the back row could have come up with a more painful punishment for Sardonicus than this rather low-keyed ending. Equally important, Castle’s jovial appearance completely derails the film’s momentum and dispels the gothic atmosphere. “Mr. Sardonicus” is an interesting little footnote to the history of horror films and if you have never seen a William Castle film then sooner or later you should check one of them out. The key thing is that these are more about fun than they are about fright.