Both of these characters were wasted. Or perhaps they ARE wasted.
While The Living Ghost (1942) has many elements of a classic mystery, such as the missing wealthy man, his second wife and jealous daughter by the late first wife, various friends & relatives, servants, and the big mansion, it’s missing one vital element – a strongly written investigator role. Walter Craig is the missing banker, who entered his bedroom but never made it to the actual bed. After some futzing about with the police, one of the relatives suggests they bring in a private investigator, a man he knows who used to work for the prosecutor’s office and was one of their best. His name is Nic Trayne.
And what’s he doing now?
Why, he’s a professional listener. People who want someone to non-judgmentally listen to them pay $2 a session. He dresses up in a silly get-up, empties his mind, and has mastered an art that this reviewer has also mastered – the helpful grunt. For me, it goes like this – Oh, hi, you have a problem? Tell me about it. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh – Oh, you figured it out? Glad to be of help. Come back any time.
I think he has the pelt of an albino beaver on his head.
Although I must say Nic is better dressed than I.
And it’s an interesting and creative manner for adding color to a plot that might otherwise blend into all the other stories that use the other elements. The problem is that Nic, a former investigator, comes across as a scatter-brain. Do I find a scatter-brain credible as an investigator? No, and I’ll tell you why. To my mind, an investigator has to take in a number of facts, often unconnected on their face, classify them as to their criticality to the problem, and, keeping them in mind, construct a story that connects the facts and points to some conclusion. This alone suggests a mind that doesn’t leap like it’s been hit by an over-powered electrode every time someone opens their mouth. An investigator often also has to work under pressure, whether it’s time, danger, or some other factor. It’s almost enough to just have the rock-solid guy with a cig hanging from the corner of his mouth, uncaring about the world but for solving his client’s problem; it approaches genius when you see an investigator such as Sam Spade, clearly affected by a woman, still complete the investigation, sweating yet devious, and putting all the guilty away – including the dame. See The Maltese Falcon (1941) for a masterful example.
BUUUUT to return to the unfulfilled potential of The Living Ghost, although Nic initially demurs the thought of returning to investigation, the daughter, Billie, turns her wiles and intelligence loose on him and he soon succumbs – although he quickly admits he’s fully aware of her strategy. This appears to signal an interesting mind behind the silly mask of Nic – but it only really comes through once more.
Continuing onward, the missing man soon reappears in his own house – but incommunicado. He’s “cortically paralyzed,” a condition that may only be artificially induced using anesthesia and special medical gear. The police find that just such gear was delivered to a nearby house, purchased for rehab recently, and off Nic – and Billie – go to investigate. At this point, the ineffectuality of the lead character is compounded, because when Nic convinces Billie they’re trapped in the basement, she confesses her love for him, he gets in some necking time, and then admits it was all a trick. Chaos ensues, but they do find the medical gear, along with a bonus of some experimental subjects wandering the hallways.
Why did she fall for him? Beats the shit out of me. Either you write it off as one of those crazy dame things, or you condemn the scriptwriter to 20 years in the third circle of Hell. Personally, I vote for the latter. It really was jarring to see this bright, vivacious woman falling for this scatter-brain. (For those who wonder about me, I’m vague. Or so my Arts Editor tells me.)
Back at the house, and this is probably out of sequence, but one of the female relatives is a real whack-job, to the point where another relative says she’s been a member of every cult he’s ever heard of. She puts on a really good performance, suggesting that Nic is in mortal anger – and then we never see her again. So what was that all about? Just color? I was sad when she never reappeared. Especially when her eternally picked-on husband ends up dead in the garden, where incidentally Walter, the cortically paralyzed man, magically appears, manipulated to show up for reasons unknown. Maybe the TV editor decided to remainder her.
Eventually, Nic gathers everyone up for the classic big reveal, but with a twist. The realtor who sold the property housing the medical gear never met the buyer, but talked to them over the phone, so Nic arranges to have everyone record their voice on a wax record for later analysis by the realtor – but it’s a trap. Nic is ready and waiting when one of the friends shows up to kill him with a knife, and when the second wife rolls in to finish Nic off, the jealous daughter is ready and waiting and takes her down. So we learn that if Walter Craig, the wealthy banker, had died, the estate goes to the daughter – but if he’s incapacitated, the second wife takes over and can drain the estate.
So we have credible motivations, some fairly lively if not entirely vivid characters (the realtor is a real hoot and almost worth the price of admission alone), some of whom are wasted, and one investigator who shows some smarts in trapping the guilty, but is so … so … goofy that they might as well have substituted Gomer Pyle and achieved about the same effect.
And it’s not a good one.
This movie is fairly unusual for me, personally, in that it actually induced an urge to correct it. I really want to replace Nic the Investigator with someone more … substantial. He’d still need to be quirky, but something that didn’t annoy me. Maybe intrigue me. Hint at past wrongs, perhaps. The whole “professional listener” thing need not be discarded, but could be a signifier of some observation of criminals and victims over the years. And perhaps gives Billie, who needs more work herself, an actual reason to take a romantic interest in him.
Make him a real person.
Well, it won’t happen, but that’s how I feel after watching it.
BTW, I see it’s online. Maybe it’s better than the TV version we saw, but I’m not going to take the time to find out.
