Grip of the Strangler (1958)

aka The Haunted Strangler

England in the late 19th Century. Writer, social reformer, and kindly man of reason James Rankin (Boris Karloff) has a rather revolutionary idea: wouldn’t it be helpful to the cause of actual justice if poor people accused of a crime would have some kind of lawyer defending them? He believes the best way to reach this goal is to re-investigate the case of the Haymarket Strangler (who actually stabbed his victims after strangling them a bit because he only had one hand, yet still a “strangler” he is) and prove that the man committed and hanged for the case on the thinnest of evidence was in fact innocent of the deeds. He even has a candidate for the actual killer – the doctor who performed the autopsy on the hanged man and disappeared soon after. Proving his theory should give Rankin’s cause a very helpful bit of publicity.

However, there’s something more going on than meets the eye here. Rankin isn’t just more passionate about the case than a proper gentleman of his time was supposed to, he is growing downright obsessed, leaving politeness and even the law by the wayside to get at the information he needs, pulled by some internal need that clearly confuses himself in his calmer moments. He’s even going so far as to bribe a prison guard to let him have a crack at exhuming the condemned man’s body, or rather to get his hand on the murder weapon the true killer used he believes to be inside it. And it’s true, he does indeed find the weapon he seeks. But once Rankin touches it, he seems to become possessed by the spirit of the killer, his facial features stretching into those of a man after a very bad stroke, one of his arms becoming useless and his personality turning animalistic and murderous. Is he actually possessed by the spirit of the dead murderer, or will the film find a more polite, non-supernatural solution?

Of course Robert Day’s film will, as is sadly all too typical of a 50s horror film – and it is a horror film as much as it is a mystery, whatever certainly internet movie databases say. However, in this particular case, not going the supernatural route is simply the better choice, turning what could easily be a film about a man possessed by capital-E Evil into one about a good and decent man haunted not just by the parts of himself that are neither, but also by mental illness, also turning the film into something of a tragedy. As in any good ghost story, he is also haunted by the past, in this case a past he doesn’t know about yet feels drawn to uncover unconsciously.

While it certainly portrays Rankin’s mental illness as something monstrous, dangerous and evil, Grip of the Strangler’s treatment of what is actually going on with him, and the way his society deals with people suffering from a mental illness, is surprisingly progressive for a movie from the 50s. The film not only takes the psychoanalytical jargon it spouts seriously, it is also clearly wanting its audience to be horrified by what we see of the time’s mainstream idea of the treatment of the mentally ill. It is, however, enough of an exploitation film to clearly also find a ghoulish delight in portraying that treatment, but then, it wouldn’t be much of a horror film if it avoided horrifying us. Its sympathy is very clearly with Rankin despite him being a brutal murderer of women; there’s not misogynist enjoyment in the fact, thankfully, but the film sees Rankin’s murderous side as a sad thing as well as a horrible one, mourning the good man who wants to better the world as well as his victims.

Why this works as well is it does isn’t just on account of a script (by John Croydon and Jan Read) willing to add emotional complexity to the horror tropes it clearly also deeply enjoys using, but also thanks to a really wonderful performance by Karloff. Like quite a few of the classic horror actors of his generation and the one after, he is as believable playing the kind and good man Rankin as he is when he does a pretty spectacular piece of physical acting to show us his other side, making the man likable and intelligent, fully understanding and portraying the pathos of the situation as well as the menace. And menacing Karloff is of course, too, doing the strangler bit with wild abandon and an intensity that makes it perfectly reasonable that most people can’t even identify Rankin as the Strangler.

On the direction side, Day knows what Karloff and the script provide him with, putting every nuance Karloff gives him to great use, while at the same time also using all the cinematic techniques you could learn from the best of Universal as well as the productions of Val Lewton. So there’s much meaningful contrast between shadow and light, and a degree of intensity you not always get from 50s British genre cinema not made by Hammer. The film does show rather more than a Lewton film would have, is a bit less intelligent than the best works of Lewton, and can be more frank than you would have gotten from Universal.


It’s a really impressive mix of old-fashioned spookiness and at the time newer ideas about what could be done with cinematic horror.