Sep 041935
 
two reels
Sevenkeys1935

Successful author William Magee (Gene Raymond) makes a bet that he can finish a novel in 24 hours and heads to a secluded lodge, that’s closed for the winter season, to do so. The timid caretakers meet him there and give him the only key to the place before leaving. He adjourns to a room to write, but is interrupted by a string of mysterious characters, beautiful woman, and criminals (Eric Blore, Grant Mitchell, Henry Travers, and a host of others now mostly forgotten), a majority of whom have a key.

For a property seldom remembered now, Seven Keys To Baldpate certainly was popular in early cinema. And that popularity is why I’m including it. It barely counts as an Old Dark House film, or as a horror one, but it’s too important to the subgenre to skip. The 1913 novel, by Charlie Chan scribe Earl Derr Biggers, was immediately turned into a play be composer George M. Cohan (and no, he didn’t add music). It was very popular, both as an Old Dark House mystery and a parody of such, with the characters purposely one-dimensional representations of what you’d find in less self-aware mystery plays. It was translated into a silent film in 1916. Two more versions followed in 1917 and 1925, with the first sound adaption popping up in 1929. This is the second, and it would be followed by two more, in 1947 and in 1983, the last under the title House of the Long Shadows and including in its cast Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine.

All of which sets it with The Bat and The Cat & The Canary as a foundational story in the subgenre. It was these movies that were copied over and over for the next twenty years.

This one sets the tone properly with eerie sounds, frightened innkeepers, a raging and surprisingly sinister snowstorm, and talk of ghosts. It follows that with skulking intruders and mysterious guests, but by the time the third key has popped up, the uncanny atmosphere is already dispersing and is long gone before the first act is complete. This doesn’t ruin the picture, but is something of a disappointment for anyone looking for a few thrills. The later appearance of secret passageways and a murder do nothing to restore the creepy feeling.

So we end up with a goofy comedy mystery. It’s quickly paced, with most everyone speaking in quips and ripostes when not simply fulfilling their stereotypes. It’s amusing enough for it’s brief 80 minutes, but it doesn’t have any weight and I can’t imagine anyone caring about either the characters or what happens to them. They are all so preposterous, and the story is ridiculous. Everything about our lead is odd. He doesn’t act like a human. He’s brave to the point of insanity, totally unconcerned with things he should worry about, and is obsessive about the first girl he sees in the area. He’s funny from time-to-time, though less so than the scene stealing hermit and part time ghost (Henry Travers) whose hatred of women is a running gag, but he’s impossible to get invested in. And there’s a reason for that. In the play, everyone acts strangely because no one is who they appear to be. Everyone except the writer is an actor sent to distract him so he losses his bet. But then it turns out even that isn’t true as everything has just been the novel that the author has been typing the whole time.

However, for this version, the meta-narrative was pulled, as was everyone being actors, but their peculiar way of behaving was kept in. That leaves us with everything feeling false and silly with no explanation, and therefore, no point. That doesn’t mean it isn’t enjoyable. The 1929 version starring Richard Dix (one of those major stars of the ‘30s that’s vanished from popular culture) kept the meta-narrative, and it isn’t as entertaining as this one. The characters are false, but I don’t mind spending time with them, and it’s a nicely, if not particularly, artistically shot flick. Call it a diverting curiosity.