I don't know what's a bigger waste of time- watching THE STRANGE MR. GREGORY, aka THE GREAT MYSTIC, or writing about it. A 63 minute, five day Monogram quickie, with an unfortunately interesting kernel of an idea drowned in hack sauce, excellent performances and surprisingly top notch photography. Edmund Lowe plays a magician with a sideline in occult practices, especially the arcane feat of suspended animation. All well and good. After one night's performance a blow hard amateur magician takes his reluctant wife, Jean Rogers, backstage and for Lowe its kismet. She seems hypnotized by his gaze and, invited by the husband to a party, he resolves to pursue her, telling her it's inevitable. (At the party he exhibits a "trick" which is no more than a fancy knot for a garrote which mesmerizes the husband.) He sends her a dozen roses anonymously and eleven the next day and one less rose each day declaring she'll be his by the time a lone rose arrives.
By the time it gets down to three roses the husband is furious and resolves to tell off the magician. Meanwhile Lowe has made out a new will leaving everything to his brother, with provisions for his valet, whom he informs of his premonition that he will die a violent death soon. If he does, he makes the valet swear he will reveal nothing of the details of his death. Sure enough the husband arrives at the magicians house, is seen going into his study, and, after exiting, the valet finds Lowe dead on the floor, a garrote tied around his throat.
Soon enough the "brother" arrives but its clearly Lowe with a differently trimmed mustache. He has the valet write a description of the killing of his late master, naming the husband as the killer. Then Lowe strangles the valet.
From here on the movie just goes to hell. There is no preparation for the fact that Lowe REALLY is a monster, and yet he was the only interesting character in the picture. The husband is put on trial and Lowe shows up as a character witness against his dead "brother", whom he calls "insane", and the husband is convicted of manslaughter. Lowe pretends to romance Roger's pretty friend who pretends to be into it, but the whole affair is done so sketchily and perfunctorily there is no sense of anything happening (ie, there is no visible difference between interest and indifference) and soon Lowe is all over Rogers.
The whole scheme is so poorly thought out both on the level of the plot and in the sense that its actually happening that the wrap up makes very little logical sense. The premise comes apart when one thinks that a murder victim will almost certainly be autopsied and very few come back from that. (Early in the film a newspaper article about the record for self induced suspended animation resulted in a tragedy when the yogic master was mistakenly embalmed.) Inventing this brother is ridiculous because there is not one shred of evidence that he ever existed, a fact which even the usually moronic movie cops actually check. Lowe's gimmick was, of course, that he didn't actually die but framed the husband so he could get at Rogers by doing his suspended animation trick. He leaves his coffin and becomes his brother. There is a lot of nonsense about returning to the coffin and then being caught outside the coffin etc.
Its a Monogram quickie made for a per foot price for undemanding audiences so who cares? Still the acting and photography are both impressive for a piece of crap. Still there is a seed, no doubt planted by Miles Connolly, who gets story credit, of something else. The film fits the well worn pattern of the Svengali whose will overpowers the maiden who has to be somehow rescued from a fate worse than etc. But if one thinks about it, it is Lowe who is bewitched by Rogers, who throws away his career, his comfortable and rewarding existence, his faithful servant, his whole life in fact, just because of a pretty face attached to a woman who doesn't care in the least for him. Who is bewitched and who is the bewitching one. Logic says one thing, movie convention says another. To get from one to the other makes the plots just downright silly and a waste of time, even if it is only 63 minutes.
A word here about Edmund Lowe. Twenty years before Lowe was the co-star of one of the biggest hits of the silent era, the oft imitated WHAT PRICE GLORY? He made the transition to sound with no problem but at some point in the mid-thirties, began taking character parts in A's, then B-movie roles and then way down on the credits supporting roles before winding up on poverty row. He looks cruelly ill-used in Columbia's DANGEROUS BLONDES (1943) but THE GREAT MYSTIC was just one notch up from a Bowery Boys farce. Still he kept plugging away, giving excellently understated, serious and sincere performances, no matter how crappy the picture, and like the cinematographer here, the veteran Ira Morgan, never gives anything less than a totally professional effort. One is perplexed at the precipitous and unexplained fall from grace of Edmond Lowe. Unlike other stars, its not as if his 'type' had suddenly gone out of style (eg the Latin Lover) or that he became involved in some heinous scandal. That he was gay wasn't something that the general public was aware of and he was discreet enough inside the film community that it didn't attract the wrath of the moguls. He wasn't the type of such undeserved fame and wealth with the overwhelming sense of self importance like today's pop stars that it drew the collective schadenfreund of the industry. In fact he was immensely popular with the film community. So what happened to the career of Edmound Lowe?
