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MovieMail's Review
The beautiful Hedy Lamarr stars as a woman who thinks she is losing her mind in this ripe slice of Hollywood Gothic. An uncanny, dreamlike atmosphere pervades, says Barney Kelley.
If you want to try this perilous experiment at home, you will need a dash of romance, a good helping of melodrama and a whole lot of warped psychology. Mix in a test tube and stand well back...
This ripe slice of Hollywood Gothic begins, appropriately enough, on a dark and stormy night. It's the early years of the last century and Dr Huntingdon 'Hunt' Bailey (Brent) is heading back to New York. Another passenger is startled by the storm outside and Hunt calms her down. This is 'Cissie' Bederaux (Blakeney); grateful for Hunt's help, she tells him about the family she is returning to, her brother Nick and his beautiful but highly strung wife Allida.
In New York, Hunt learns Cissie has died; intrigued by her stories of her family, he accepts an invitation to meet them. Allida (Lemarr) is as beautiful as he'd heard and he's soon entranced. But Nick (Lukas) warns that she is at risk of insanity. As he gets closer, Hunt finds himself in ever greater peril.
There's no getting away from it: this is a dashed odd piece of work. Made during Hollywood's brief obsession with damaged minds (Spellbound, amongst many others), it presents itself as a thriller but seems less interested in the plot (which develops in ways that should surprise no one) than with creating an uncanny atmosphere.
Jacques Tourneur was fresh off his acclaimed horror movies (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie) when he made Experiment Perilous; this film continues the ideas he developed in his earlier work, unsettling rather than startling the audience and emphasising the dreamlike aspects of the story.
Intriguingly, it anticipates many of Hitchcock's films – especially Under Capricorn, The Paradine Case and Marnie – but perhaps the best comparison is The Spiral Staircase, another film about a damaged psyche, set in the early 1900s. Oddly, that stars George Brent too. Was he trying to tell us something?
Made during the greatest period of Jacques Tourneur's career but still little known, Experiment Perilous might be an an oddity, but it's a fascinating and worthwhile one.
A melodrama set at the turn of the 20th century, Experiment Perilous stars Hedy Lamarr as the beautiful, mysterious Allida Bederaux.
In 1903, kindly psychiatrist Doctor Huntington Bailey (George Brent) meets a friendly older lady during a train trip. She tells him that she is going to visit her brother Nick and his lovely young wife Allida. Once in New York however, Bailey hears that his train companion has suddenly died. He visits the couple and, suspicious of the husband's treatment of his lovely young wife, is soon drawn into the dangerous task of attempting to free Allida from her insanely jealous husband.
