The Horla

Vincent Price was another of the honorees during Summer Under the Stars last August. One of the movies that I hadn't seen before and recorded was Diary of a Madman. I finally got around to watching it recently, and now can review it here.

The movie has an opening scroll about how Man is supposedly the master of all the animals, but then there's something called the Horla, which is the master of Man as it can control Man's will. We then cut to a funeral in 1880s France. The funeral is for the respected judge Simon Cordier (Vincent Price). As his friends leave the cemetery, there's some discussion over whether his death was accidental or a suicide. Simon left some instructions behind about what to do if he died, which means he somehow expected his otherwise sudden death to occur. Those instructions involve opening a locked box. Inside that box is a diary, so we can have the inevitable flashback....

Some time back, Simon is informed of a prisoner who is about to be guillotined for having committed a murder. That man, Girot, wishes to see Simon before the execution, and there's some though that there may be a real confession. Instead, Girot continues to insist, as he did during the trial, that something inside him forced him to commit the murder and that he couldn't control himself. We then see a strange green glow coming from the Girot's eyes as he proceeds to attack Simon. Simon defends himself, but in doing so Girot dies. No murder charge or anything like that, and besides, Girot is probably better off having died like this instead of being guillotined.

But if you've seen a movie like the 1935 Mad Love (or any of the other versions of the "Hands of Orlac" story), you can guess what that green glow is about. Not tht the characters would have any idea. So Simon is mildly alarmed when a picture of his late wife and child shows up back on the wall of his library where it had hung before their deaths many years earlier. And he sees some sort of writing in the dust in his attic. His two servants insist that they had nothing to do with it, of course, and they're telling the truth.

Besides, more strange things start happening to Simon in other places, like his office, where the servants have never been. That green glow was a manifestation of something called the Horla, a malevolent force which is able to inherit the mind of Man and able to take it over, controlling Man's will. And there was one inside Girot which was in fact the cause of the murder. It left Girot's soul during that scuffle in Girot's cell and enterted Simon's mind.

Eventually, the Horla reveals itself to Simon, because in addition to being malevolent, it's hubristic, thinking there's no way anybody can stop it. Is there in fact no way to stop such a force of evil? Simon's going to try to find a way if he can, even if it kills him.

Diary of a Madman is fairly ludicrous stuff, but Vincent Price is able to make the material work just like he did with so many horror films in this era. The sets look low-budget, but the colors are garish and that somehow helps with the atmosphere that pervades the movie. Diary of a Madman is definitely worth a watch.