The Maze

You can sense the 1950s in the American film The Maze. It has that particular B-movie quality, but you can also see the effort to give the viewer a specific experience, to really make him or her scared in the movie theater, even if the tools used to do so did not necessarily succeed at all costs. The effort was there, which counts, and the result is also worth your attention. The film does not offend even after more than sixty years. (11/01/2018)

Already ridiculed in its day, this film is based on a derided novel by Maurice Sandoz, interesting perhaps only because it was illustrated in 1945 by Salvador Dali himself. It's hard to write about this film and not to spoil the plot twist at the end that is the only memorable thing about the whole film. Until then, or rather until the 'intermission' two-thirds of the way through (yes, even such a short film had its 'Intermission'), we are in a drab castle setting with five actors and only two bats on strings and one gimmicky view of a maze out the window to break us out of our lethargy. There's woefully little to work with here at all, we only see one entrance corridor for almost the entire film, but it's understandable, there wasn't much money involved (it was only 2 months from pre-production to final release). Well, at the end, a monster appears... well, let's say a monster, but one you won't forget till the end. Even in its time, which was rich in naive films, it provoked volleys of laughter from the audience. It may have been meant to be scary, I don't know what the filmmakers intended, but you want to feel sorry for it, hug it and pet it. That's all I'm going to say :o) The film was shot in simplified 3D, which was just beginning at the time, so in some scenes the objects and actors "throw themselves in your face" (the opening dancer, the bats, the monster jumping out the window). Summary? I'll give an overrated 3 stars, I actually miss oldschool naive B-movies like this nowadays. They don't scare or disgust you, they caress your viewer's soul (05/17/2024)