Director Bernard Vorhaus’s The Amazing Mr. X is an all-but-forgotten near-classic of noir cinema which I cannot say enough about. Aside from its mold-shattering cinematography by John Alton, Vorhaus blurs the line between fraudulent manipulation and the unknown as he weaves a taut tale of unpredictable suspense and intrigue.
As Christine Faber (Lynn Bari) walks along the beach on her way to meet her soon-to-be fiancé, Martin Abbot (Richard Carlson), she hears what she believes to be her widow of two years, Paul (Donald Curtis). Mysteriously, a man by the name of Alexis (Turhan Bey) presents himself, speaking in cryptic tongues while alluding to Christine’s past before issuing her his card which declares him to a psychic consultant. Intrigued, she goes to him in hopes of contacting Paul as her younger sister, Janet Burke (Cathy O’Donnell), becomes infatuated with the mystic. However, Martin believes Alexis to be a fraud and sets out to prove it. Yet when Paul appears and Alexis is unable to account for his presence, a tale of murder and suspense quickly unravels.
The most distinctive feature of The Amazing Mr. X is Alton’s masterful cinematography, which oftentimes usurps George Barnes’s work on Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Unfortunately, some of the original stock was not be properly preserved and many of the stunning sequences crinkle and blur before correcting themselves.
However, as beautifully shot, framed, and lit as each and every scene may be, Vorhaus is to be doubly commended for his challenging script as he explores the realms of easily-discernable knowledge and the unknown. This theme is symbolized when we are first introduced to Janet, as her shadow creeps up behind Christine, holding what appears to be a gun before she steps into the light as the weapon reveals itself to be an inverted hairbrush. Throughout the duration of the feature, as quickly as a rational explanation is provided for one logical anomaly, Vorhaus convolutes his narrative, reminding us that human understanding is rarely as simplistic as a voting ballot, rather likening it to a Rorschach test. Sardonically, as soon as Alexis’s fraudulent nature is unveiled, his deception is aligned with the police detective, Hoffman (Harry Mendoza), as the latter entertains Christine with a barrage of slight-of-hand tricks. Instead of permitting his social criticism to end here, Vorhaus then turns the thumbscrews as the person whom Alexis is supposedly summoning, Paul, appears in the flesh, thus further exacerbating the division between the quantitatively valid and the indeterminate, making the entire production an intriguing inquiry into our epistemological limitations as we are left to judge whether or not there exists a staunch distinction between belief and knowledge.
The film does have its flaws however, thus–more than likely–serving as the alibi for why greater effort has not be expended upon the film’s legacy and preservation. The two sisters are all too gullible at times as they, more often then not, border on stock characterizations. Also, the plot sometimes feels as if it is about to waver into camp before veering back onto its noir tracts. Yet, these defects stand as mere moot points in relation to the history of the genre as the plot and craft offer much more by ratio as Vorhaus masterfully issues a succinct mystery, crime story, horror tale, and romance while never forcing the work at any point.
Obviously, the title of Bernard Vorhaus’s masterpiece, The Amazing Mr. X, has perhaps kept the film from gaining wider recognition as it insinuates a science fiction premise. However, analogous to those who have judged a book solely upon its title, bypassing the opportunity to benefit by what is contained within the text’s pages, few have done themselves the justice of reaping the rewards that is The Amazing Mr. X as this criminally neglected inquiry into human knowledge trumps many of the more famous films during the period and within the genre as it is, by the few who have seen the work, oftentimes compared to the works of Val Newton.
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