THE PHANTOM SPEAKS

 

THE PHANTOM SPEAKS (1945) is one of four films included in Kino's two-disc Blu-ray REPUBLIC PICTURES HORROR COLLECTION set. Two of the films--THE LADY AND THE MONSTER and VALLEY OF THE ZOMBIES--I've written blog posts about in the past few years. I covered THE CATMAN OF PARIS a few days ago. 

THE PHANTOM SPEAKS may have been new to me, but its plot elements are awfully familiar. A psychic scientist named Dr. Paul Renwick (Stanley Ridges) is convinced that the spirit of a person can exist after physical death, if that person's willpower is strong enough. Renwick believes he has found such a person in the form of Harvey Bogardus (Tom Powers), a gangster sentenced to die in the electric chair. Renwick visits Bogardus an hour before the murderer's execution, and impresses upon him the fantastical theory. A few days later Renwick makes contact with the spirit of Bogardus, and the criminal's will is so great he's soon able to take over the doctor and make him kill those responsible for his conviction. Renwick tries to resist, but Bogardus' power grows stronger and stronger. 

Stanley Ridges had already played a medical man taken over by the essence of a dead gangster in Universal's BLACK FRIDAY, a film THE PHANTOM SPEAKS has a lot in common with. PHANTOM also has a lot of similarities with THE LADY AND THE MONSTER, a movie Republic had made just the year before (Richard Arlen appears in both). Ridges does a good job, but it's hard to believe that the mild-mannered Renwick would be able to convince the hard-bitten killer Bogardus that if he just puts his mind to it, his spirit will live on. (Bogardus' "comeback" is accomplished so easily one wonders why all sorts of folks haven't done this already.) 

The idea of gangsters involved with people living on after death also reminds one of the Boris Karloff entries of the 1930s like THE WALKING DEAD and THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG. In his great book POVERTY ROW HORRORS!, Tom Weaver also makes a comparison of THE PHANTOM SPEAKS to SUPERNATURAL, a 1933 Paramount film that had Carole Lombard possessed by a female serial killer. This picture could also be called an ancestor to INDESTRUCTIBLE MAN, where Lon Chaney Jr. plays an executed killer who is revived to sow more havoc. All these movies are a lot more interesting than THE PHANTOM SPEAKS, which plods along most of the time. 

The main thing that makes THE PHANTOM SPEAKS stick out is the big-city crime element, although that's more fitting for the Pre-Code era. The ending is also notable for the fact that it is rather ambiguous, and might even be looked upon as a way to get around the Production Code. 

Richard Arlen plays the annoying newspaper reporter investigating the case (another element more fitting for a movie made in the early 30s). Arlen's character happens to be romancing Dr. Renwick's daughter, played by Lynne Roberts. This is a situation that one would think would offer some possibilities, but they never happen. Tom Powers does well as Bogardus, in a generic tough-guy sort of way. Marion Martin, who played all sorts of blonde showgirls in her acting career, plays another here as Bogardus' treacherous widow, but she doesn't get much screen time. 

Thinking about the supporting cast reminds me of something else Tom Weaver pointed out in the POVERTY ROW HORRORS! book--the fact that in the Republic horror film of the 1940s, the actors used in them, while competent enough, weren't nearly as notable or interesting as the performers who showed up in even the lesser Universal thrillers of the same decade. (Can you imagine, if, say Bela Lugosi played Dr. Renwick, or someone like Skelton Knaggs was an associate of Bogardus?) 

And that's the thing about the films in the REPUBLIC PICTURES HORROR COLLECTION. They're all decent enough, but they seem to lack something when compared to the Universal or even Monogram and PRC genre movies made during the same period. There's a few unique ideas scattered among the four films in the set, but they are not given the proper development. Republic just wasn't the studio for the type of material dealt with in movies like THE PHANTOM SPEAKS.