The Maze – 1953

As a mystery/horror film, The Maze digs right into a 1953 obsession, that of evolution gone wrong, but combined with a Gothic "haunted house" story about how to keep a dark family secret very secret for literally hundreds of years (though they keep a copy of a book titled Teratology laying around in the open).

Richard Carlson stars in The Maze though the story really features Veronica Hurst's character trying to sort out the mystery, somewhat like Frances Dee's character dealing with an elusive question that looms over Val Lewton's 1943 I Walked With A Zombie. In fact, The Maze has a "night-walk" section that is reminiscent of a Lewton film, that transition visual that carries the viewer out of reality and into a heightened state of the fantastic, which director William Cameron Menzies does well, along with the heavy atmospherics pervading the rest of the film.

Carlson went on in the year after the release of The Maze in 1953 to deal with a wholly different evolutionary phenomenon in Creature from the Black Lagoon. A difference between these two films is that the film-makers at Universal want us to get a good look at the fast-swimming "Gill-Man" in their tale, but Allied Artists Pictures rations glimpses of the enigmatic subject of The Maze right up until the end. When the final reveal is made, getting to finally see the "gill-man" that lives in Craven Castle and frolics in the pool at the center of the maze out back, well, is it as earth-shattering as the story tried to imply? Not really, though not for lack of trying. Director Menzie's provides a good build-up, but ironically, this being a Menzie's movie and that director being noted for his excellent visual skills, the sight of our "monster" simply isn't good enough for sustained inspection, and certainly doesn't improve when we get to see it even more. Finally, unintentionally funny, we watch the "monster" progressing in a peculiar but obvious way up a flight of stairs (and looking a bit like a re-used green outfit from Menzie's more famous Invaders from Mars that released just a few months before The Maze hit theaters.)

Not counting the let-down of a less than stellar central monster visual, The Maze is otherwise a good-looking, likeable film that has a Gothic-madness to it, starting off with star Carlson frolicking in the waters of the Riviera, then shifting us to the Scottish Highlands (though we barely get to see Scotland outside of the grounds of Craven Castle). The cold waters of this latter place gets plenty of swimming-action, too, it's just not the happy, warm kind Carlson had on the Riviera.

Katherine Emery (as a level-headed Aunt) and Veronica Hurst (as the Nancy Drew-like ex-fiancé who won't take "no" as an answer) carry the film by doing most of our investigation and providing most of the drama. Carlson's cinema personality is eclipsed almost entirely by family-doom as soon as he inherits the title of Laird back in Scotland, quickly becoming grim-faced and backed-up by a equally grim-faced staff of servants. They're all dedicated to hiding what's really going on, and with very little dialogue coming from those sealed lips, we're left to other sources for any information or action.

Hurst, Emery and some side characters who gather in the castle toward the end, rather reminiscent of the travellers who collect together in the 1932 The Old Dark House, finally penetrate the wall of secrecy by a combination of pluck and planning. "Wall of secrecy?" Instead we should say, hedge of secrecy, referring back to the twisting walls of foliage behind Craven Castle, the locations of the locked-up, no visitors allowed The Maze.

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Original Page July 1, 2024