Another good recommendation from Stephen King’s Danse Macabre. Horrors of the Black Museum is a short fun movie with an intriguing premise: a crime journalist who orders murders so he can write about them and profit. That’s actually very similar to a real life case that happened in my city (you can learn all about it in the documentary Killer Ratings), so of course it caught my interest. The film has a charming old-fashioned villain in Michael Gough’s Edmond Bancroft, creative kills and a nice twist on the Jekyll and Hyde story, but I must say that what won me over was June Cunningham’s performance as Joan Berkley, the second victim and Bancroft’s lover. She’s a blonde bombshell with a fiery personality and a screen presence to match, who gets to say some of the movie’s best lines. Like c’mon, “less than an answer to a girl’s prayer” is a such a classy insult. Her death scene is also fantastic, unusual and brutal (for its time period), and the buildup to it has got the suspense and anticipation all horror films dream of achieving. Horrors of the Black Museum and Joan Berkley really deserve more recognition among fans of the genre.
Another good recommendation from Stephen King’s Danse Macabre. Horrors of the Black Museum is a short fun movie with an intriguing premise: a crime journalist who orders murders so he can write about them and profit. That’s actually very similar to a real life case that happened in my city (you can learn all about it in the documentary Killer Ratings), so of course it caught my interest. The film has a charming old-fashioned villain in Michael Gough’s Edmond Bancroft, creative kills and a nice twist on the Jekyll and Hyde story, but I must say that what won me over was June Cunningham’s performance as Joan Berkley, the second victim and Bancroft’s lover. She’s a blonde bombshell with a fiery personality and a screen presence to match, who gets to say some of the movie’s best lines. Like c’mon, “less than an answer to a girl’s prayer” is a such a classy insult. Her death scene is also fantastic, unusual and brutal (for its time period), and the buildup to it has got the suspense and anticipation all horror films dream of achieving. Horrors of the Black Museum and Joan Berkley really deserve more recognition among fans of the genre.
