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There was a time when Diijon (Erich von Stroheim) was the greatest
stage magician of the country - but that was many moons ago, now he lives
at a cheap boarding house with his wife Victoria (Jeanne Bates), and they
can't always pay the rent even there as he doesn't work anymore, dabbling
in the supernatural instead, while his wife finds it hard to get a regular
engagement, as all she has ever done was being a magician's assistant ... Then
Tony (William Wright), a musician and old friend of Victoria's, moves into
the boarding house as well, and in no time at all, he gets them a stage
engagement - but Diijon messes up his hypnotism act the very first night,
and now he blames Tony on it (without and reason but pure jealousy), and
he accuses his wife of having an affair with Tony ... upon which she
leaves him - and soon she gets a singing engagement in Tony's band ... Diijon
has meanwhile perfected his grasp on actual hypnotism, and to prove
himself just that he drives a neighbour (Mauritz Hugo) into suicide. His
ultimate goal though is to have his wife shoot Tony dead right on stage
when they perform one of their acts. And wouldn't you know it, Diijon
succeeds, too - or seems to, because the gun Vitoria was supposed to shoot
Tony with was only loaded blanks, and seeing that Victoria was hypnotized
when trying to shoot him, Tony quickly and correctly blames Diijon - and
he's tracked down to the gun story he stole Victoria's gun from, where he
now defends himself with real weapons ... but accidently he lands under a
guillotine which is then triggered by a cat (!) - ouch! PRC-horrors
were definitely of the hit-or-miss kind, but The Mask of Diijon was
definitely one of the better efforts: Erich von Stroheim makes an
incredibly impressive villain, there are plenty of macabre touches
throughout, and for a change director Lew Landers makes attempts at
atmospheric filmmaking, and succeeds, too. That said, The Mask of
Diijon is at the same time a far from perfect movie, basically its
script doesn't seem to be wholly thought through or structured, most
characters apart from Diijon remain disappointingly flat, and the movie
flatly misses some of its best punchlines by quite a few feet for no
apparent reason other than being a bit too rushed. It's still worth a
watch, mind you, it's just not the film it could have been.
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