The Maze (1953)

One of the downsides of Internet culture is that it's so hard to be surprised by anything anymore. There are months, if not years, of hype leading up to the release of most movies, with leaked set pictures being posted by bored extras, minor variations on superhero costumes being endlessly debated on message boards, and test screening reviews that reveal every major plot twist. It's hard to keep things fresh, to divorce myself from the media grind that surrounds modern movie-making and movie-going.

All of which leads to me watching The Maze. I knew little to nothing about this movie. I like to fill my Netflix Instant queue with stuff like this, so that as I look for something to watch, I can attempt to recreate the experience of going to a video store, where a random title that I might never have heard of might catch my eye and lead to an interesting discovery. My queue might not have the selection of a video store, but it is tailor-made to my own interests.

All I knew about The Maze was that it was a relatively obscure 50s horror movie with a bizarre twist ending. Also, it was originally made in 3-D, though I had to settle for two lousy dimensions. Here's the trailer, which touts both the twist and the 3-D and a really, really fake bat.

I like that the lead actor introduces the movie. This used to be a much more common practice- Alfred Hitchcock did a number of memorable trailers where he was featured, including this one for The Birds and this six minute (!) long one for Psycho. Compare that to this one re-edited in the style of the modern movie trailer. I think long-form trailers were more acceptable to the audience of the 50s and 60s because movie-going was still an entire evening out that featured cartoons, newsreels and double features. The language of cinema hadn't yet reached the hyperkinetic pace of today.

The concept of directly addressing the audience is actually the framework for the story of The Maze. As the movie begins, Katherine Emery, who plays the aunt of the heroine of the movie, comes out and speaks right into the camera about that crazy time she had in The Maze. I'm not really sure why this form of narration is used in the movie; she returns periodically throughout, but doesn't really do much to advance the narrative. I guess it's possible that they were trying to pad out the running time, or perhaps in some way try to make the viewers take the ending more seriously.

It really, really does not deserve to be taken seriously, though.

The plot of The Maze is straight out of a Gothic novel. A couple is engaged, but this is broken off when the man, Gerald MacTeam, played by Richard Carlson, gets called away because of his uncle's sudden death. Weeks go by, and his fiancee, Kitty Murray, played by Veronica Hurst, sends a number of telegrams which go unanswered. Finally, Gerald responds by breaking off the engagement and begging her not to follow him. Kitty, deciding something's up, travels with her aunt to the giant mansion where Gerald now lives.

The rest of the movie consists mainly of scenes of Kitty and her aunt sneaking around the mansion, collecting bizarre tidbits of information. The rooms are all locked from the outside at night, as is the titular maze. This does not stop them from hearing strange thudding noises from the corridor and finding odd, webbed footprints on the staircase.

At this point, I was really trying to guess what this bizarre twist would be. The movie, coming from the early 50s, came at a time when horror movies tended to be more rooted in realism, like the psychological thrillers of Val Lewton, rather than the costumed monster movies of the 30s. There were, of course, the ridiculous monster movies that came about because of the nuclear bomb, with giant ants or spiders or rabbits or whatever. The Maze, however, didn't seem to be a creature feature, but seemed instead to have more in common with the haunted house movie.

This in mind, I tried to figure out just what secrets could be lurking in the mansion's corridors, leaving webbed footprints. Was it a ghost? A hunchback? A creepy uncle with a predilection for cosplay?

Oh how wrong I was.

At the risk of offending the ghost of Richard Carlson, I will now reveal the shocking ending to The Maze. Anyone who wants to preserve this fearful secret should now leave the room.

Are you gone?

Ok, so the truth is revealed like so: Kitty and her aunt peek out of their room one night and observe a bizarre procession: Gerald, along with two servants, are descending the stairs with a large sheet covering something that is thudding along on the ground. The two women follow, and they end up in The Maze (the only time this location is actually seen in the movie). After a bit of running around, they happen upon the creature that was under the sheet, which turns out to be....a giant frog! The frog is more frightened of the women than they are of it, and it takes off back into the house, hurries up the stairs as fast as it's ridiculous giant frog legs will take it, and promptly jumps out a window to it's death.

None of this is made less absurd with the fact that, while it flees, the frog makes a sound exactly like a trumpeting elephant.

The movie ends quickly after, almost before the bizarreness of this twist is allowed to sink in. Gerald does offer a few words of explanation. Apparently, this frog-thing was actually his 200-year-old however-many-greats uncle, who was somehow born before he had been allowed to develop in the womb, which I guess means he became a frog. I have a feeling this particular plot point came about because someone noticed how young fetuses slightly resemble tadpoles. From such sparks the fires of genius are born!

(If you'd like to view the ending without actually sitting through the movie, you can watch it right here, as someone has gone to the trouble of uploading the entire movie to YouTube.)

This admittedly unexpected twist lead me to question the logistics of the man-frog's plans. Apparently, Gerald was meant to cut off contact with the outside world, as his ancestors had before him, in order to care for the Duke (for the frog-man is indeed a duke), and to preserve his secret. It seems to me that for one, the Duke may want to cut out his night walks when there are guests in the mansion, as people tend to want to investigate things that go bump (or hop!) in the night. And for another thing, why did he find it necessary to stick to the Maze of the title? He lives on a vast country estate; wouldn't he prefer to wander somewhere less constricting? But ah well.

The movie is based on a novel by Maurice Sandoz (cover pictured above), which had illustrations by Salvador Dali himself, so maybe the surreal imagery of a giant frog-man works better on the page than on the screen. Indeed, the basic plot, with its ancient secrets of genetic horror, could have come from some lost story by Lovecraft. But in the film, rather than being confronted with the indescribable, we are instead presented with a guy in a frog suit lumbering up some stairs.

Marcel Duchamp noted that sometimes what is great about art is the difference between the intention and the effect. If the intention of this movie was shock and horror, the effect was hearty laughter, and I was no less entertained for it.