The Amazing Mr. X –1948

Review: The Amazing Mr. X –1948

Actor Turhan Bey had a princling bearing in his films, which are primarily B movies, and like a number of other actors (for example The Amazing Mr. X co-star Richard Carlson, an actor with an even longer list of B-movies) Bey seemed to fit perfectly within the truncated budget and stylings of B film productions. The Amazing Mr. X is a bit of an oddity, though, because it is certainly a B film, but the cinematography by John Alton has a quality well beyond any typical B film fare, and director Bernard Vorhaus employs unusual camera angles and some inventive (and effective) visual story telling that is also beyond the scope of a typical B film. In fact, Vorhaus' enthusiasm in the visuals goes right to the edge of being "fair." For example, a very early scene has the film star Lynn Bari going out on a balcony that overlooks the Pacific Palisades coast and as she stands pearing at the ocean, a shadow appears on a set of drapes behind her that looks like a woman advancing forward with a gun.... but it's just another star of The Amazing Mr. X, Cathy O'Donnell, walking out onto the balcony with a hairbrush in her hand. This can be seen as a cheap B-movie appeal for a "thrill," or it is actually a warning to the audience about what's ahead in the plot: trickery all around.

Turhan Bey usually provides built-in humor in his portrayals, sometimes that significantly amplifies the barely submerged goofiness of a story he is in (for example The Mummy's Tomb, 1943), but in The Amazing Mr. X, the funny in his line readings doubles-back on itself, because the character he plays, a greedy but world-weary charlatan spiritualist named Alexis, thoroughly dedicated to fleecing his victims, also suffers from a dose of imposter-syndrome. The character recognizes the motivations driving his victims to him and the goal of substituting the past for the present. He exploits this by faking a psychic bridge of contact between themselves and the dead people they long for from their past. Alexis has an efficient money-making operation (helped along by actress Virginia Gregg portraying clever assistant Emily) that starts to wobble once Alexis gets mixed up with the sisters played by Cathy O'Donnell and Lynn Bari, the latter a widow and the former a very naive younger sister who Alexis can read, and manipulate, like a puppet.

The film shows us the tricks and fakery that make a con work, and there is an impressive array of different elements used, especially research into a potential victim's past, dredging up old stories and traumas. As far as actual séances go, Alexis uses a lot of 1948 technology like tape recordings, machinery, sound effects, dark rooms containing hidden devices, plus Turhan Bey's own trance-like acting when the lights go down and the ghosts come out.

A year earlier than The Amazing Mr. X, the A-film production starring Tyrone Power Nightmare Alley appeared, featuring a somewhat similar story line in which a greedy and cynical spiritualist con man named Stanton Carlisle paid the price for dabbling too much in cons, self-delusion, guilt, and simple human degradation. On the other hand, when the end credits for Nightmare Alley roll, he's still alive, though reduced to the lowest rung in the carnival hierarchy, playing the part of the "geek" in the sideshow. Not the case for Turhan Bey's Alexis in the gothic, and somewhat noir-like The Amazing Mr. X. He might be a crook and a cynical sociopath to some degree, but he won't cooperate when an actual psychopath (played by Donald Curtis) appears on the scene and injects himself into the spiritualist racket, intending to murder the older sister and forcing Alexis to marry the younger one in order to steal the women's large inheritance.

You'd think, despite his obvious distaste for murder, Alexis would be onboard for such a potentially huge windfall, but a wrinkle has appeared: though he's been feigning affection all along, he's feeling protective about the younger sister (played with a glistening sheen of youthful, and foolish, naivete by Cathy O'Donnell who is better known for the youthful, but not foolish, Wilma in the 1946 Best Years of Our Lives) and murder just doesn't fit into Alexis' glamorous, crooked and sad, but non-lethal, con. So he turns the tools of his trade onto the would-be murderer.

The plot for The Amazing Mr. X isn't particularly complex, and after he takes a few bullets in his mission to save the two sisters, Alexis seems surprised, and says "I guess there must be a better side to my nature." But its not just the life-saving that makes the Mr. X in The Amazing Mr. X weirdly endearing: he's got a pet raven that does tricks and is an apparent doppelganger for him in toto (a similar connection shows up in the 1994 superhero film The Crow) and there's also the standard hallmark of a cinematic hero, whether A-film, B-film, or Z: he can't abide innocence being assaulted, and Cathy O'Donnel's Janet is so (sometimes hilariously) gullible, yet guileless, the con-man ends up conned by his own con.

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Original Page May 21, 2025