The Snorkel (1958)

Load of rubbish!!

Captivating movie !

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

A surprisingly good British B-Movie from the reliably excellent Guy Green that most people don't know and have never seen but which has built up something of a cult reputation. That fine German actor Peter Van Eyck is the killer who fakes his wife's death by suicide but who remains the prime suspect in her murder in the eyes of his teenage step-daughter, (the once hugely talented child actress Mandy Miller not making a very good transition into adult acting; this was to be her last film). It's hardly Hitchcock but it's nicely plotted and well directed by Green. It also makes good use of its Italian locations and if it remains a minor work in the Green canon it is still a very enjoyable genre piece.

Minor but entertaining Hammer thriller, not quite reaching the heights of other entries in their "psychological thrillers" ouevre, but still effective.The film starts right off with it's main murderer on screen committing his evil deed, clearly establishing his (and the film's) gimmick of the snorkel used as an accessory to murder. So from the very beginning we know this is not going to be a whodunnit. What we have here instead here is a "who will find out" plot. Once the opening credits have finished, the main plot of the film starts with the daughter of the murder victim feeling almost positive that she knows who is responsible for the deed but at the same time, unable to prove it, as nobody has been able to work out how the act was committed, and therefore the killer has got away with it. The more agitated the daughter becomes, the more the killer starts to see her as a threat to his freedom, and so a cat and mouse game starts to build as both try to outwit each other.This sounds complicated, and it is, but the roles in the film are quite well defined. The killer is a creepy but charismatic older man, able to convince everyone that he is actually mourning his dead wife, and the "suspector" is a teenage girl who everyone thinks is just over imaginative. I could almost imagine William Castle making this film! The acting is very good, and it's all very British and proper. There are plot twists and the climax is clever and worth waiting for, although as a whole the film has dated somewhat. Quite hard to see now, seemingly only available on the Sony 6 film box set DVD "Icons of Suspense", which is worth a purchase due to it having 5 other hard to see Hammer thrillers. So "The Snorkel" gets a thumbs up from me.

Sensitive Mandy Miller was Britain's top child star of the 1950s (until Hayley Mills came along) and really dazzled critics in her (almost) first film "Mandy". While she never again gave such an outstanding performance and left films while still a teenager, "The Snorkel" (suprisingly her last feature film) will always be remembered as a career highlight if only for it's gimmicky slant on the old "locked door" murder mystery. Anthony Dawson, well known for his villainous roles (especially as Ray Milland's former school fellow in "Dial M For Murder") provided the story and some really nice locations were used at the Villa della Pergola and Savona and Liguria, along the Italian Riviera.Candy is convinced her step father Paul (Van Eyck) has killed her mother, just as she believes he killed her father but no one believes her. She is right though, as viewers see in a gripping start to the movie - he does it by making it look like suicide by being able to stay in the room via a trap door under the rug and by being able to breath through a snorkel. And that is what the police can't get past - if he did somehow manage to kill Candy's mother, how did he breathe? Smart Candy starts to figure it out immediately, especially when she sees a poster advertising the joys of snorkeling.This is an excellent "why won't anyone believe me?" story really helped by the main character's (Candy) resourcefulness and determination. Candy realises she will have to dig up proof on her own - starting with Paul's passport, if, as he claims, he was in France at the time, his passport would be stamped right??? Actually Toto, Candy's little cocker spaniel is right on to things - finding the trap door and back at the hotel ferreting out Paul's snorkel. It seems wherever Paul hides it playful Toto fetches - by the look on Paul's face things are not looking too good for Toto. Jean (Betta St. John), Candy's governess, is around but she is no use as she has come under Paul's spell and is viewing Candy more and more as a troubled young girl.The last ten minutes are nail bitingly suspenseful. Paul decides to go to France, to get away from Candy's relentless accusations but his hotel is only just over the border, giving him all the time in the world to return at night to murder whoever he likes and he does slip back via ----!!! He has lured Candy to the villa by impersonating a policeman over the phone and she almost becomes victim no. 4 but Jean, in an unusual case of the smarts, has alerted people that Candy may have gone to the villa to take her own life!!No one could play the cold as ice killer better than Peter Van Eyck, with his startling blonde crew cut and menacing manner. He is not particularly cool, calm and collected when he realises he may be trapped under the floor boards and only Candy is there to hear his muffled cries. But she then does a "Gaslight" with her "it's just my imagination, it must be!!" Will she alert authorities or keep that detached look on her face all the way to the airport???

This is an early British Hammer film, but it was filmed in Italy and co-scripted by future Italian director Antonio Marghareti, so it also in some ways anticipates the later Italian giallo thrillers, mostly in its enjoyably absurd plot. In the creepy opening scene a man (Peter Van Eck) puts on a scuba mask (it's technically not a "snorkel") and hides under the floor boards in order to gas his sleeping wife from inside her locked room. The police naturally think its suicide, but the murdered woman's teen daughter (Mandy Miller) comes home from school and immediately suspects the truth--naturally since she earlier witnessed her step-father drowning her father. Everyone thinks she's crazy, of course, (even after he bumps off her little dog, "Toto", too). Her governess (Betta St. John )meanwhile is torn between her loyalty her apparently delusional charge and her attraction to the suave, seemingly distraught widower.Now if this were a giallo there would be many more, no doubt very bloody, murders, the couple would graphically consummate their relationship, and even little Mandy would probably get in on the erotic and/or violent action somehow (i.e. check out the later giallo "Smile Before Death" which has a very similar plot, but with all these elements added in). But don't expect anything like that here. Still, this is very entertaining and has some ironic and effective twists at the end (the very last scene, however, is a terrible cop-out, no doubt tacked on to ameliorate the douchebags, I mean censors). The acting is indeed very good, especially that of Van Eyck and Miller (I hope this isn't the same Mandy Miller who later appeared in David Sullivan's horrible "Emmanuelle in Soho", but that seems pretty unlikely). You definitely want to check this one out.