Story Idea

Along with producer/screenwriter John Croydon (using the pseudonym John C. Cooper), Jan Read expanded her story outline for Stranglehold into a screenplay which became Grip Of The Strangler in England and would be known Stateside as The Haunted Strangler (1958). Also behind the scenes was executive producer Richard Gordon, whom Karloff had first met about ten years earlier. At Karloff’s request, Mr. Gordon helped set up the deal, and the newly-formed Producers Associates Ltd. would produce the black-and-white film at Britain’s oldest movie studio, Walton. The story opens at Newgate Prison in 1860, where one-armed convicted murderer Edward Styles, labeled the Haymarket Strangler, is hanged to the delight of a cheering crowd who found entertainment value in public executions, just as people today will tune in to be transfixed by the morbid "realities" of television. Shortly after, as the body is stuffed into a casket and treated with quick lime, a shadowy figure slips an unseen object into the box just before it is sealed. Twenty years later, novelist and social reformer James Rankin (Karloff) seeks to prove that if Styles had had proper legal representation, the man would have been acquitted. Rankin suspects a Doctor Richard Tennant who disappeared, along with a nurse, shortly after the crimes were committed. It was Tennant who performed the victims’ autopsies. Tennant patronized The Judas Hole, the dance hall where one of the victims performed. It was Tennant who then vanished from a hospital following a breakdown at Styles’ funeral. Also missing was a surgical knife from Tennant’s medical bag. Soon Rankin deduces that the scalpel must be in Styles’ coffin. An interview at The Judas Hole with singer Cora (Jean Kent) who had identified Styles as the murderer years ago proves unsatisfactory. Rankin’s own wife, Barbara (Elizabeth Allan), pleads with him to leave the case alone, but his obsession only increases. A visit to the uncooperative Newgate Prison Governor (Leslie Perrins) is further aggravated by the sight of a prisoner being whipped, which causes Rankin to pass out. Even the discovery of his stepdaughter Lily (Diane Aubrey) being kissed by his young assistant Ken (Tim Turner) sets Rankin off. That night a prison turnkey (Max Brimmell) directs Rankin, for a fee, to the grave of Edward Styles. Rankin, alone now, digs for his proof, and, sure enough, the knife is there! But upon clutching it, a strange thing happens. Rankin’s left arm and hand twist, the right side of his face contorts, his breathing becomes heavy and his behavior is clearly changed. Has Rankin become possessed? He returns to The Judas Hole and partially strangles young singer Pearl (Vera Day) and, with the crisscross slashing style of the Haymarket Strangler, finishes her off with the blade. The unrecognized Rankin escapes and later reverts to normal with no memory of the crime. When he confronts Barbara with the belief that he himself is Dr. Tennant, she confirms his suspicion and reveals that it was she who was the nurse that helped him escape all those years ago. As a young widow with a child, she saw in Tennant a troubled man who needed her help and who could help her build a new life. She knew nothing of his murderous lapses, but now she learns as her husband transforms before her eyes, chokes her and follows through with the knife, which he then hides on a nearby bookshelf, and departs. Returning as his normal self to his home and the sight of investigating police headed by Superintendent Burk (Anthony Dawson), Rankin confesses but is not believed. The turnkey denies having helped Rankin into the cemetery. Finally, the grave’s headstone has been switched, so Rankin has no proof at all. Now raving, Rankin is committed to an asylum where, in the privacy of his cell, the sight of a gas lamp’s flickering flame resembling a knife triggers another transformation. Rankin tears out of his straight jacket and escapes from the cell. He slashes a guard’s face with glass and kills a prison maid for an encore. But home is where his favored weapon is, so Rankin/Tennant returns for it. There he lunges toward Lily, but the faces of his past victims begin to haunt him, he regains his sanity and lets her go. He knows he must return the knife to the grave. He does, with Burk and others in pursuit. As Rankin pleads with Burk to see that the knife is buried, the corrupt turnkey orders the guards to fire. With his dying breath, Rankin urges Burk to bury the blade, stating "It belongs here, with me." Brutal prison conditions and the cruel treatment of the mentally ill, the latter prevalent in Bedlam, are on hand in The Haunted Strangler with Boris on the receiving end this time. And he’s quite up to the task, running the gamut from gentleman and energetic investigator to lunatic and murderer, all with conviction. The transformation is in the tradition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, only psychological instead of chemical. To achieve the effect, Karloff removes some false teeth. One hand curls, stiffens and raises toward his chest while an eye squeezes shut and some remaining teeth protrude from one side and clamp down on his lower lip. It’s a bit of a gamble, but it pays off much the same way as the initial stages of John Barrymore’s Mr. Hyde conversion back in 1920. While The Haunted Strangler is not without flaws (for example, the box containing evidence in the Jack the Ripper case, when Jack didn’t make the scene for another eight years), its still a ripping good yarn on its own. Part detective mystery, part horror, part psychological drama, part social commentary, and with even a dash of musical thrown in, it came at a time during the sci-fi boom of the Fifties when gothic terror was just making a comeback, courtesy of Hammer’s Curse Of Frankenstein (1957).