‘You haven’t much time for humanity, have you?’
‘I hate it.’
George S. Kaufman and Alexander Woolcott’s play The Dark Tower (1933) was first filmed in Hollywood as The Man With Two Faces (1934). This Warner Brothers British remake restores the title but changes almost everything else. The Man With Two Faces is a good/bad twin mystery (both faces belong to Edward G. Robinson) with a mesmerism angle whereas The Dark Tower is a circus-set update of Trilby (1894). To stress the point, the villain is frequently called ‘a new Svengali’.
Unshaven Stephen Torg (Herbert Lom), whose very name suggests we’re expected to hate him, begs for work at the struggling Empire Circus. The brothers who run the show – Phil (Ben Lyon) and Tom (David Farrar) – are minded to turn Torg away but he demonstrates hypnotic prowess by calming a runaway lion and gets hired. Torg exerts glow-eye power over Tom’s nervy aerialist partner Mary (Anne Crawford), enabling her to perform a tricky tightrope stunt without a parasol. This simple act turns the circus’s fortunes around. Torg arrogantly buys flash clothes and spends £40 on a roadster, which sets the supporting cast a-mutter, then parlays his importance to Empire into a full partnership. When a jealous Tom clocks him one, Torg fluences Mary to drop him during their act – which lays the aerialist up with broken legs.
The assumption is that Torg – who claims he learned hypnotism after being bullied for his small stature in an orphanage — is so obviously evil that audiences will understand why his co-workers, whose jobs he has single-handedly saved, not only hate him but constantly remind him of the fact. However, the finale ties knots in conventional morality. Torg is using his power to help Mary perform a high-wire stunt before a huge audience when Tom (supposedly the hero) calls out and breaks her concentration. Torg has to use extra hypno-powers to prevent her from falling to her death. Then, Torg is killed because Phil cuts the rope holding him up. However, lady sharpshooter Dora Shogun (Josephine Wilson) shoots Torg through the head while he is falling. In this film’s universe, attempted murder isn’t a crime. Dora takes the onus of guilt off her boss so the show can go on. So, after the matey good guys have nearly killed the heroine, they club together to kill the one man who has saved them all – and we’re supposed to be happy about it!
Lom, in his first major role, is so plainly the most interesting character in the film, surrounded by cheery stereotypes, that it’s hard not to share his resentment of the normals who scorn him. The film also never sells its key plot point: the usual reams of big top footage showcase folks in disguise (a tightrope clown), but not until the climax is Torg seen taking part in the show … yet he’s supposed to be the sole reason the circus has become a hit. ‘Bill’ Hartnell is excellent as stuttering press agent Jim Powers, who becomes more fluent when he has something to boost. With scant scripted material, Hartnell gives the character depth: Jim is in love with Dora but never mentions it, and is the only person to show uncoerced sympathy for Torg. Frederick Burtwell, however, is blusterily obnoxious as the old soak ringmaster who goes out of his way to be vile to ‘the little basket’ and gets knocked over in physical comedy bits which aren’t funny. Patricia Laffan, later the Devil Girl From Mars (1954), has an unbilled bit as a nurse.
Directed by John Harlow, who was inclined to vaguely mystic melodrama (Spellbound, 1941, While I Live, 1947) but also dashed off a couple of Sexton Blakes and Old Mother Rileys. Scripted by Brock Williams (A Place of One’s Own, 1945) with additional dialogue by Reginald Purdell. Circus provided by Reco Brothers. Editor Terence Fisher would later direct Hammer’s The Phantom of the Opera (1943), starring Lom as another hypnotic showbiz mastermind who dies in a fall saving the leading lady.