The Phantom Light
Tags: haunting

Plot synopsis:
Sam Higgins alights at the train station for the Welsh village of Tan-Y-Bwlch to take over the North Stack lighthouse, which is believed by the locals to be haunted. There, he meets Alice Bright. She asks him to take her along to the lighthouse, explaining that she belongs to a "psychic society" and wants to investigate the "legend of the phantom lighthouse". He turns her down.
Sam reports to Harbour Master David Owen, who informs him that Jack Davis, Sam's predecessor, "just disappeared", as did the chief lighthouse keeper before him. Owen confirms there was a major shipwreck a year ago, caused, so he believes, by the phantom light. Jim Pearce tries to bribe Sam to take him to the lighthouse; Sam guesses he is a reporter. Alice later overhears Jim ask about hiring a boat, so she tries her charms on him, but again fails.
When Owen, Dr. Carey and others take Sam by boat to the lighthouse, Carey examines Tom Evans, a mentally disturbed member of the resident staff. Evans tries to strangle the doctor, who decides he cannot be moved in his present state, to Sam's discomfort. Just to be safe, Sam ties Tom up. Sam's remaining assistants are Claff Owen (David's brother and Tom's uncle) and Bob Peters.
Then Jim shows up in a boat that is conveniently out of petrol. To Jim's surprise, he has a stowaway: Alice. Sam starts questioning his unwanted guests. Alice now tells him she is "an actress hiding from the police" because two admirers fought over her with knives.
Strange things start occurring. First a fire breaks out near Tom's bed. Then, Sam overhears Jim plotting something with Alice and admitting he is not a reporter. He fears they may be communist saboteurs. Jim has Alice hang a radio aerial out the window of the bunk room, but Tom (whom Claff has untied) sees her do it and sneaks up behind her. Fortunately, he hears Jim returning, so he hastily retreats to his bunk. When Sam shows up, Jim tells him he is a naval officer after wreckers out to sink the Mary Fern for the insurance, most of the shares being held by the locals. Then Alice informs him that she is a detective from Scotland Yard.
Jim starts to transmit a warning to the approaching ship, but Bob and Claff are rendered unconscious, the light is sabotaged, and a decoy light is turned on. After Jim sends Alice to fetch Sam, Tom knocks Jim out and disables his radio. When Alice and Sam return, Tom locks them all in. Jim, however, climbs down the side of the lighthouse and swims to the village to alert the coast guard. Claff wakes up and unlocks the door, allowing Sam to set about repairing the light. They overhear Carey talking to Tom and learn that the doctor is the mastermind. The Mary Fern is saved just in time. Then, trapped at the top of the lighthouse, Carey decides to jump.

Review: In '30's British films I've always liked the mix of pithy Music Hall humour, mild ghostliness, a frisson of sex, and manly London chaps saving the day, all displayed perfectly in the Phantom Light.
Director Michael Powell's best stuff was yet to come of course, but this can be seen as him still learning his craft practising with more inconsequential trifles.Gordon Harker here shines with some cracking comedy lines handed to him, as the new lighthouse-keeper at a rather ...
insular Welsh coastal village, apparently 200 years behind the times with Wrecking ships on the rocks still big business.
Ian Hunter is the manly Londoner with all the brains ...
er, I think this was his last British film until after the War ended.
He was the best King Richard Hollywood ever had!
Until the last reel Binnie Hale has no brains but admirably compensates with long legs.
Herbert Lomas perfects the character he particularly re-used later in Ask a Policeman and The Ghost Train - he was even back in Powell & Pressburger's I Know Where I'm Going!
But the film that borrowed the most from this was Arthur Askey's Back Room Boy from '42, it even looked the same inside the lighthouse!A pleasant 75 minutes spent in the company of familiar faces and story..
and a blonde on the rocks, if you please.
Very funny British Gainsborough Picture from 1935 with plenty of No-code 'damn' 'ruddy' and 'cor-blimey' -ies along with Binnie Hale's long legs and keen 'how about it' frankness, THE PHANTOM LIGHT is a bookend GHOST TRAIN fog bound mystery set on the shrouded eerie Welsh coast.
The photography and settings particularly in the quaint railway scenes in reel one and the village scenes near the end offer the viewer genuine storybook pleasure in that they look completely fake but are not at all.
It just happens to naturally all look like some plaster model.
Lead actor, music hall star Gordon Harker has some hilarious lines - particularly the closing one: "Lummy!
what a night" which would have rocked any Odeon theatre with gales of laughter.
Binnie Hale is the Brit Joan Blondell, all perky and silly and ready to cut up her trousers all ready to gad about the lighthouse stairways in hotpants and high heels.
Local Welsh eccentricness is on full display with plenty of Popeye style gnarling and eyeball flexing.
I thought it was hilarious as (later famous) Director Michael Powell was clearly getting his actors to have fun with their roles.
The local policeman is exactly like Constable Plod from the Noddy kids books..all tubby and bug eyed.
It is all silly and very funny.
THE OCTOPUS of 1935 is a good counterpart from the USA..
Ghostly goings on in the gloaming..
There's a nice undercurrent of comedy running through this otherwise standard mystery story.
Set in a "haunted" lighthouse on the supposedly lonely Welsh coast, there seems to be a remarkable crowd of characters bumping into each other at every turn.
The plot starts out promisingly with much talk of ghostly terror, but settles into a rather lame and predictable conclusion.The local Welsh villagers are mercilessly satirized as dim-witted, inbred provincials, in contrast with the smarty pants Londoners who've dropped in to sort out this here ghostly nonsense.
An apparently nymphomanic young blonde with no relevance to the story other than removing various items of clothing as things progress, adds to the sly humour.There's lots of excellent location cinematography of craggy Welsh rocks and crashing waves to provide a suitably moody background.
Taking all these elements together, I came away mildly entertained, although not mentally stimulated.
Good late night fun..
The Phantom Light is directed by Michael Powell and adapted from the Joan Roy Byford and Evadne Price play The Haunted Light.
It stars Gordon Harker, Binnie Hale, Donald Calthrop, Milton Rosmer, Ian Hunter and Herbert Lomas.
Cinematography is by Roy Kellino and music by Louis Levy.Harker stars as lighthouse keeper Sam Higgins, who gets more than he bargained for when he takes up employment at the North Stack Lighthouse out on the foggy Welsh coast.Some time before he formed half of the classic film making partnership with Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell was a 1930s purveyor of the "quota-quickie" British movie.
Not many of those films remain in print, thankfully this delightful blend of comedy and suspense is now in home format circulation.
Out of Gainsborough Pictures, The Phantom Light harks back to a wonderful time of sincerity in film making, the acting mannerisms are as correct as the dialect (it's so nice to hear the term Michaelmas used), the locale is beautifully realised and maximum dramatic impact is garnered from the minimalist settings (three parts of the film is set in the lighthouse itself).
Powell proves to be adept at eking out eerie atmospherics from the story, aided superbly by Roy Kellino's photography, while it's no small triumph to actually blend the comedy with the drama and not hurt the flow of the film.Tan-y-Bwlch and lummee, what a night!It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, Hale is annoyingly high pitched and shoe-horned into the fray, though her beautiful legs go up to her armpits and distract the red blooded amongst us, and the actual turn into the suspense realm comes, considering the running time, a bit too late in the story.
But the faults are actually minor ones and they don't ultimately affect the enjoyment on offer for the classic film fan.
It very much can be seen as a precursor and influence to the great Will Hay pictures, Ask A Policeman & Oh!
Mr. Porter, and if you want links away from the thematics and plotting?
Which are joyously similar, then Herbert Lomas was in Ask A Policeman and Louis Levy scored both.
It doesn't have the slapstick that dominated the Hay movies, here the wit is dry and neatly pitched as polar opposites are thrust together under one lighted roof, but this is more a light hearted thriller than a comedy drama.
With excellent locations used (Devon/Wales), and a director taking his early tentative steps to greatness (yes you read right), it's a film that has enough reasons to check it out regardless of story.
As it is, it's pretty darn good anyway.
And I'll be back to say the same thing after my next viewing at Michaelmas.
Superficially, this is just another of the many British comedy/dramas from the era.
It has a characteristic manner: a fellow with a humorous take on life, a pretty girl, some intrigue and danger.What sets this apart are two things.
The first is the setting in Wales, or more precisely among the Welsh.
Its an odd sort or layering for me since I think the 30's era English are as different, strange, quaint to me as the Welsh are shown here from the English.
The language is emphasized in the setup, first half of the movie.
At the end, there's a clear balance between evil Welsh and noble ones that come to the rescue.
That Imperial undercurrent!The second interesting thing is that the action, about 3/5s of the movie, takes place in an actual lighthouse, most at night.
There's lots of movement across different levels, as there must be, and some clever (from a staging point of view) movement from inside to outside.
I suppose the director made up much of how this appears as he went along.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements..
Average Pre-War Entertainment.
There is certainly more humour than horror in this rather slow moving offering from Michael Powell.
The acting is, in general, on the wooden side, although Gordon Harker as Sam Higgins does his best to lift the pace.
The plot is predictable after the first 15 minutes, although there are enough twists to keep the interest.
I was surprised at the number of people required to run a lighthouse only half a mile offshore, and the apparent number of hiding places on a bare rock, but this is just a detail.
Overall, nothing special, but pleasant enough not to be considered a waste of time..
good banter but too much banter not enough spooky lighthouse.
First off there is a very nice DVD of this mixed with some other British Thrillers.
Looks and sounds good.
That's great because the movie isn't too gripping and would dissolve with any distractions.
The movie is an odd mix of "silent" movie acting and a long set up that takes up way too much time.
The welsh village is fun and interesting--there are other later British films that have this same kind of small village opener with a stranger appearing and a mystery being resolved.
It's a formula that works more often than not.
But the movie fails to really evoke much spookiness of the lighthouse itself.
It's never interested in generating any suspense for very long.
Usually there is some very brief suspense moment, and it's just to set up more comedy.
The comedy is fairly funny but no real sense of danger is generated.
No sense of the story moving forward.
There are also touches from (then trend setting) Russian montage editing that seem kind of comical in an unintended way.
As you'd expect from director Powell there are a few nice camera moves and some good location photography.
A music score would have helped this film there is none at all, perhaps a cost saving element?
There are things to enjoy here but you have to get over the 30's cliché elements of "flapper girl" and "spunky-male-reporter" and these are pretty creaky indeed.
A movie that, perhaps in a very director Michael Powell way, flirts around with various quirky and occasionally unexpected ideas but doesn't commit to any of them enough to become a whole anything.
Other reviews of it being an OK time killer are valid..
In this 1935 Michael Powell quota quickie "the place is haunted and what's more blokes go mad and kill theirselves.".
Michael Powell made about 15 quota quickies in seven years during the Thirties.
These quota quickies meant two things: First, a lot of second-rate British movies were made.
Second, a lot of British filmmakers, like Michael Powell, learned their craft making these things.
Poor Sam Higgins (Gordon Harker, a fine, funny character actor who specialized in blokes).
He arrives in the tiny Welsh coastal village of Tan-y-bwlch to take charge of the North Stack lighthouse.
He gets more than he wanted.
Harker learns from the villagers that two previous light keepers disappeared and the man he's going to replace at the lighthouse is still out there, gone barmy.
Sam also hears about the ships that have gone up on the rockswhen the light goes outand a phantom light on the cliffs goes on.
By the time Sam gets out to the lighthouse it's pitch black with heavy fog.
The mad man he replaced has had to stay put because he's too sick to be moved.
It's not long before there are more people in the lighthouse than Sam wants, and not all of them he knows about.
The Phantom Light is funny, dark and dangerous, with a wonderful performance by Gordon Harker, all working class shrewdness and exasperation.
The movie is stuffed full of the things Michael Powell loved in a moviea wild countryside with beautifully photographed cliffs, rocky shores and heavy waves; the mysteries of mechanisms; extra time spent with quirkiness; lilting speech; and characters he makes amusing without looking down on them.
If you admire Powell & Pressburger's mature films, you might enjoy having this example of Powell's earlier steps.
Said Powell much later, "'I said 'yes' to this one right away, and never regretted it.
I enjoyed every minute." I did, too..
Never theatrically released and never broadcast in the U.S.A. U.K. release through Gaumont British: February-March 1935.
Australian release through Gaumont British: 26 June 1935.
75 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A new lighthouse keeper has to contend with wreckers, zombies, superstitious locals, a pushy girl and a mysterious yet overly persistent "reporter".COMMENT: Binnie Hale's performance may be a bit over the top so far as theatricality goes - as some critics have complained - but you must admit she's a most fetching heroine just the same.
And she isn't in the movie all that much anyway.
Gordon Harker has the star part, and a sterling job he makes of it, delivering his sharp Cockney lines with his usual witty relish and amusingly expletive exasperation.
Yet he can be seriously practical when the going gets rough.
It's a tailor-made role which will delight his fans.
The fine support cast includes Herbert Lomas (a "must" for this sort of spooky affair), Donald Calthrop, Milton Rosmer, many others, and last and certainly least Ian Hunter - though even he is bearable.A lighthouse of course is an ideal setting for murder, mystery and mayhem.
Director Powell not only makes the most of his setting, but he has done more.
The background not only becomes an integral part of the action, not only an atmospheric adjunct, but a fascinating vista in itself.
Powell's eye for the pictorial effectiveness of his real locations and the dramatic possibilities of real people employed as background extras, is constantly apparent.
In fact it's not going too far to say that the movie is often semi-documentary in approach, effectively anticipating this 20th Century-Fox style of the middle and late 40s.
Aided by superlative camerawork, The Phantom Light is a most entertaining comedy-chiller, limited only by a few obvious budgetary constraints during its action climax.
Light's Out. After being extremely enchanted by the brilliant films that I have seen of Michael Powells highly acclaimed work with Errnest Pressburger,I was thrilled to find out that one of the few surviving films that Michael Powell made before joining forces with Pressburger,had come out on DVD in France.Using Google to check that the DVD had an English soundtrack,I began to really look forward,at seeing how Michael Powell was,in his early,solo work.
Whilst I feel that the films pre-..."And Then There Were None" style lighthouse-mystery plot was done in a much stronger way,in the surprisingly thrilling 1942 film Back Room Boy,the early, energetic,directing and editing from Michael Powell and D.N. Twist always the films small settings a good amount of energy.The plot:Discovering that a secret attack is being planned for a cargo ship,undercover Police Officer David Owen,decides that he has to do everything possible to get aboard a near by lighthouse,which is meant to help guide the ships to the near by shore.When Owen arrives to a small village in Wales to meet the new main leader of the lighthouse crew (Sam Higgins),he is stupidly told by Higgins that he is banned from ever setting foot on the lighthouse,due to Higgins suspecting that Owen is trying to hide something (which,unknowingly to Higgins,is that he is an undercover cop)Feeling terrified at the risk of the ship being attacked,Owen is surprised,when a woman called Alice Bright offers him the chance to come along with her to the lighthouse,on her boat.When they have eventually get onto the lighthouse,Bright and Owen find out that Higgins is now scared half to death,due to his crew disappearing into thin air one by one.Whilst Higgins believes that this is being caused by a ghost on the lighthouse,Owen and Bright suspect that it is someone who wants to make sure that the oncoming cargo ship disappears,into the ocean forever.
View on the film: Although it takes a bit too much time for the mystery side of the movie's plot to really kick in,Michael Powell and editor D.N. Twist give the film a very snap pace,which most film makers would have struggled to build into the films gradual mystery.Whilst his directing is not as smooth and elegant as it would be in his later work,the rough edges to Michael Powell's very early style,actually helps the film massively,with the use of jump-cuts by Powell and Twist allowing a eerie sense of terror to enter the film,as each person on the lighthouse starts to fear that they will be the next one to "disappear".As well as the movie having a fun performance from Gordon Harker as the crusty old sea dog Sam Higgins,and Binnie Hale putting some extra excitement into the film as Alice Bright,who whilst fighting back in a very entertaining way,is also able to wear a very a head of its time short short skirt.Along with his fast-paced directing and fun cast,Powell also uses some brilliant real locations for the film,with the first half of the film showing a small country side area of Wales,and the second half of the film having a great claustrophobic fearful feel,with Michael Powell cleverly using a real lighthouse for each of his characters to disappear from,one by one.
Final view on the film: A slightly disappointing slow screenplay is saved by some terrific locations,a fun cast and interestingly rough-edged speedy directing,from the great Michael Powell..
"The Phantom Light" is a pretty ordinary British thriller.
It starts off very slowly but the second half works very well and the film was quite interesting.
The story involves a supposed phantom lighthouse.
After all, a false lighthouse light MIGHT prove beneficial if you want to make an insurance claim.
So, disguised like ordinary folks, Ian Hunter (working for the Royal Navy) and the rather annoying Binnie Hale (working for Scotland Yard) row out to the old lighthouse.
The problem is that IF someone there is involved in some conspiracy, which one of the people working at the lighthouse is responsible and how do they force ships onto the rocks?
If this film had been made in the States, I might think it was a B-movie--a relatively cheaply made film made as a second film in a double-feature.
This isn't necessarily a complaint--more just a comment about the style of film--breezy and entertaining though not especially deep or fancy.
Worth seeing as a time-passer.