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Cast and credits: Horrors of the Black Museum (1959) Produced by Samuel Z. Arkoff, Herman Cohen and Jack Greenwood; Directed by Arthur Crabtree; Screenplay by Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel; Produced in late October - late November, 1958; Released April 29, 1959.
The cast: Michael Gough (Edmond Bancroft); June Cunningham (Joan Berkley); Graham Curnow (Rick); Shirley Ann Field (Angela Banks); Geoffrey Keen (Superintendent Graham); Gerald Anderson (Dr. Ballan); John Warwick (Inspector Lodge); Beatrice Varley (Aggie, antique shop keeper); Austin Trevor (Commissioner Wayne); Malou Pantera (Peggy, Gail's roommate); Howard Greene (Tom Rivers); Dorinda Stevens (Gail Dunlap); Stuart Saunders (Strength-Test Barker).
The Plot: The movie begins with a so-called psychologist, who treats the audience to several hypnotic suggestions and then attempts to hypnotise everyone. It's the type of gimmick William Castle was noted for.
Michael Gough stars as writer Edmond Bancroft, who is behind a series of grizly murders. He hypnotizes an assistant (who is played as a sort of teenage Jekyll-Hyde character seeing as Producer Herman Cohen was the man behind the teenage monster movies) and sending him out to kill people using bizarre methods; then Bancroft writes sensational murder mysteries and continues to baffle Scotland Yard. Death by binoculars with spikes (based on an actual device that exists in a Scotland Yard Museum), Ice tongs through the neck, guillotine, knife in the heart whilst in the tunnel of love, electrocution ray and last but not least, death via vat of acid. While not taunting the police and writing books, his extra-ciricular activity is to create his own "Black Museum." Aside from the opening, the movie is actually pretty good.
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