This May brings a remake of early 80s all-timer, Poltergeist, the latest in a long (long) line of cinematic reboots, retreads and more. By now, the ubiquity of reimaginings has rendered their existence less of a transgression than ever, with Poltergeist barely getting anyone up in arms. At the same time, the concept of remakes is an ever-hot point of contention among genre fans. Refusing to indulge in broad dismissaland maybe in a bit of cautious optimismwell spend this May looking at, and defending, some of the better redos in horror cinema.
Wait, theyre remaking that film? Its hardly that old! The original is perfectly finewhy dont they just leave it alone? Why is Hollywood having this accomplished director retrace his steps by redoing his own film? Hollywood is officially out of ideas!
It seems we encounter the above chatter (or some variation of it) on a constant basis these days. With each remake announcement comes the declaration that Hollywood has finally reached a saturation point and gone creatively bankrupt. However, heres the thing: theoretically, we could have heard the same sort of stuff in 1946, back when Frank Wisbars The Strangler of the Swamp entered production at Producers Releasing Corporation, the latest in a long line of low-budget B-movies hailing from Poverty Row.
Granted, we have to imagine that anyone would even care given the post-World War II hysteria or that anyone would even know about the production since the world wasnt nearly as connected 70 years ago, but the sentiment stands: here was an accomplished director doing grunt work down on Poverty Rowand redoing his own film, Fährmann Maria, to boot.
All of this is to say that Hollywoods penchant for revisiting titles is obviously nothing new. Even if you ignore the fact that early cinema constantly readapted popular literature from its outset, its clear that the stuff that upsets genre fans today has a precedent that stretches back seven decades. Strangler of the Swamp might not be the first remake, but it is one of the most curious early cases, since it sees a director attempting to rework his own preoccupations within the confines of the Hollywood B-movie scene; sort of a precursor to The Five Obstructions, as Wisbar found himself working on both a limited budget and schedule. By the time any uberfan of Fährmann Maria caught wind of Strangler of the Swamps production, its likely that the films week-long shooting schedule would have already yielded to the editing bay, where the film was trimmed to a lean 58-minute runtime.
And yet, all of these limitationsnot to mention Poverty Rows reputationcan be deceiving since PRC otherwise gave Wisbar carte blanche on Strangler of the Swamp. Despite its status as a pulp and B-movie factory, Poverty Row more than occasionally yielded its fair share of auteur-driven projects (theres a reason Godard idolized Monogram Pictures, plus the Poverty Row model later endured for years on the exploitation and drive-in circuits). Strangler is one such instance. Rather than completely translate his original film, Wisbar instead transplants its imagery, characters and themes, and reworks them into the context of a familiar Hollywood staple: the wrongly accused man returning from the dead to exact vengeance on his executioners.
The noose literally dangles over the titular setting in Strangler of the Swamp, a stage-bound marsh shrouded in fog and dim lighting, where, according to an opening narration, old legendsstrange talesnever die. The ferryman is an important figure in this almost forgotten hamlet: charged with the task of shuttling passengers from shore-to-shore, he carries the good and the evil, the friendly and the hostile, the superstitious and the enlightened, the living andsometimesthe dead. The evocative prologue recalls the dark fairy tale leanings of Wisbars earlier film and establishes a moody, spectral atmosphere of a film haunted by unrested spirits.
Ferryman Joseph (Frank Conlan) laughs off stories of a vengeful wraith as old wives tales, at least until he comes face-to-face with the phantom (Charles Middleton) and winds up on the wrong end of a makeshift noose fashioned out of swamp vines. His death brings his granddaughter Maria (former Miss America Rosemary La Planche) to the village to assume his ferryman duties, confront her familys role in the swamps curse, and perhaps fall in love with a local man (Blake Edwards). As more of the ghosts hangmen turn up strangled, Maria becomes desperate to lift the Stranglers spelleven at the cost of her own life.
As this synopsis represents about 90% of its plot, suffice it to say that Strangler of the Swamp doesnt thrive on intricate storytelling, but is rather a phantasmagoric mood piece, a sort of campfire tale committed to celluloid. Many of its weaknesses become strengths, particularly its cloistered backlot staging, which transforms into an unreal collection of sinewy trees and fog. When characters ride into its ghastly heart, it recalls Charon ferrying lost souls into a dreamlike underworld. This hamlet has become death and Maria its Orpheus attempting to outrun and reverse its hold on these frightened souls.
In an early example of the horror genre resembling a snake eating its own tail, Wisbar borrows Val Lewtons aesthetic, a style already on loan from the German Expressionist movement of his homeland (Fährmann Maria itself being a prime example of the form). Unlike Fährmann, Strangler isnt virtually silent, but its chiaroscuro compositions share DNA with their Expressionist forbearers, and the film flourishes in a similarly ethereal atmosphere. With Halloween looming on the horizon (a dance is scheduled, provided the Strangler spares anyone in town), the world around these characters has blurred the lines between the living and the dead. Middletons face is appropriately obscured throughout, his body eerily flitting about the mise-en-scène with crude, but effective special effects.
Its acting is similarly stage-bound but earnest, and La Planches turn especially wouldnt be out of place in a Lewton production. Wisbars camera allows her face to become a rare source of radiance in this shadowy underworld, while her romance with Edwards harks back to the directors preoccupation with purity in the midst of darkness in Fährmann. Strangler might be an early template for the slasher film, but Wisbar is less concerned with strangled corpses than he is love, forgiveness and redemption. At its climax, the films spirituality and optimism becomes more pronounced, and its here that Stranger surprisingly proves to be just rich as its predecessor.
Released in the twilight of Weimar cinema, Fährmann Maria takes on the tenor of an allegory: in that story, Death itself (personified as a government official) ferries across in search of a soldier fleeing from war. With Nazism firmly entrenched, such an ambivalent film criticizing the futility of war was perhaps considered too subversive (critics have noted that Peter Vobs Man-in-Black pointedly resembles Nazi stormtroopers), and Wisbar soon emigrated to America. When Wisbar transplanted the framework of his tale to Poverty Row, it obviously lost some of this very specific subtext, but its perhaps not a stretch to assume that his revisiting its themes wasnt coincidental.
World War II still cast a long shadow over the globe, particularly over those whose lives it disrupted. Though Strangler of the Swamp might not be as obviously allegorical as Wisbars earlier work, its themes resonate in a similar manner: the Strangler is a blight of hatred and an avatar for a destructive cycle of revenge, one that must forgive and be forgiven so that the world around him can escape darkness. Purgatory is a recurring theme: not only is the Strangler doomed to wander the earth, unable to ferry across to the afterlife, but so too is the town caught in its death grip, its new ferrywoman incapable of moving on with her life due to the sins of her ancestor. Meanwhile, the films director found himself a stranger in a foreign land during a transitional career phase (Wisbar would eventually return to West Germany).
Given what the worldand Wisbar himselfhad endured for the previous decade, one can understand how this might have been an appealing catharsis. What appears to be a typical Hollywood B-movie redux suddenly feels more profound and personal. If every modern remake felt like such an insurgent exploration and displayed the same sort of artistry, perhaps we wouldnt cynically question their existence.
Not that Wisbar had much time to dwell on it, of course, as both he and La Planche soon found themselves on another PRC backlot shooting Devil Bats Daughter, a cheap, sequel-in-name-only cash-in of a Bela Lugosi vehicle from six years earlier. It turns out that isnt a new Hollywood phenomenon, either.
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Brett Gallman is a member of the Online Film Critics Society. He was raised in and around video stores and hasnt stopped talking about horror movies ever since. You can find him on Twitter @brettgallman.
