Master Mystery, The
Entry updated 11 November 2024. Tagged: Film.
US silent Serial Film (1918-1919). Rolfe Photoplays. Directed by Harry Grossman and Burton L King. Written by Arthur B Reeve and Charles Logue. Cast includes Floyd Buckley, Jack Burns, Charles E Graham, Harry Houdini, Marguerite Marsh, William Pike and Ruth Stonehouse. 15 episodes; total runtime 238 minutes. Black and white.
International Patents Inc obtains the sole rights to Inventions to suppress their manufacture: when one inventor threatens legal action, the company's President, Peter Brent (Burns), whose conscience has been troubling him, hands back the other's device and promises to do the same for other inventors. However, Herbert Balcom (Graham), the domineering Vice-President, harangues him for doing so and pressures him into provisionally agreeing to the marriage of his daughter, Eva (Marsh), to Balcom's wastrel son, Paul (Pike), to further his aim of controlling the company. But Eva's heart belongs to Quentin Locke (Houdini), the manager of Brent Laboratories, whom we have seen monitoring his boss's recent conversations with a covert listening device. Brent shows Locke a threatening note stating "if you persist in your course you will be struck down by the Madagascar Madness." It is signed "Q". Shortly after Brent meets Flint, a foreign representative of the company, who has a model Automaton and assures him it would be possible to transplant a human brain into a life-size version. Brent says the idea is ridiculous, adding that even if possible, its only use would be as a "terrible engine of destruction". Flint assures him that, after a recent trip to Madagascar, he has seen it can be done. We cut to a nearby cave where Q's gang (called emissaries) watch approvingly as an apparent Robot (Buckley) – referred to throughout as an automaton – carries a candelabra. The machine closely resembles a giant version of Flint's model.
Later that night the automaton fuses the electricity in Brent's mansion then swaps a candelabra for the one seen previously: in the darkness Brent lights up the replacement candelabra – whereupon he is driven mad by the fumes (see Poisons). We now learn Locke is also an undercover agent for the Department of Justice, seeking evidence that International Patents Inc is breaking the Anti-Trust Law (thus the dictograph). Later, the automaton and emissaries enter the house, the ruffians tying up Locke in a straitjacket whilst the automaton crashes through doors as it tries to kidnap Eva. On this cliffhanger the first part ends. Locke escapes to frustrate the automaton, which withdraws. When Balcom suggests the attacker was a version of Flint's invention, he disagrees: "I believe someone is in this thing that attacks us and calls himself 'Q'."
Episodes 3-6 are mostly lost, depriving modern viewers of Locke being dangled over a vat of acid and testing a "self-liberating diving suit". Episode 7's opening title card summarizes recent events: Locke has entered "the den of Dr. Q the mad inventor [see Mad Scientist] with Eva Brent. They are overpowered by a giant automaton and his emissaries, and Locke is strapped in an electric chair". The next few episodes have more perils and escapes, but the plot does not progress much until Eva is kidnapped with the intention of forcibly marrying her to Paul (to secure the company for Balcom). This fails (in the missing episode 11) and the paperwork is completed to give Eva control of International Patents Inc. Knowing he will be forced to resign and face prosecution, Balcom lures Locke to his house and Poisons him with chlorine gas; meanwhile Eva is Hypnotized by a whirling device and faces imminent death; whereupon episode 12 ends. The final episodes, 13-15, are lost.
Fortunately the novelization by Arthur B Reeve and John W Grey, The Master Mystery (1919), reveals more. Balcom dies in a collapsing underground passageway during a confrontation with Locke. Balcom's death releases Dr Q from his insanity: he explains he had – unknowingly – been the main beneficiary of International Patents Inc activities: on learning this he left the country, but his ship sank off the coast of Madagascar, killing his wife and, he believed, children. He survived, but the loss drove him mad and he conceived the idea of an "iron giant ... [with] the brain of a man who had died of a lightning stroke or other electric agency ... [giving] it volition, make it a superman without feeling or conscience". He built the body of the "iron giant" but got no further when Balcom found him and stoked his belief that Brent was responsible for his ills. Dr Q says Balcom was the person in the Automaton; but someone else has taken his place, as it now appears, and attacks them, so they retreat. The doctor retrieves the antidote to the Madagascar Madness and Brent is cured; Locke announces he has "been perfecting a special gun and an explosive-gas bullet" (see Weapons) which he believes can stop the Automaton. This fortunately proves to be the case when it breaks into Brent's mansion. Removing the helmet, "the contorted and dying face of Paul Balcom" is revealed. Quentin and Eva get married. There has also been a subplot involving Brent's secretary, Zita (Stonehouse), who is plotting with Balcom but drawn to Locke: it turns out Zita and Locke are not only siblings, but also Q's children, who a remorseful Brent had found and looked after.
The first two episodes of The Master Mystery set up the story and are moderately interesting, but what follows has little to hold the attention; even the lost ending sounds unremarkable. The close of each episode is usually a traditional serial cliffhanger, with Locke restrained and facing death, duly escaping in the opening of the next. Though Houdini's talents were remarkable, they do not transfer well to film and the viewer sees much strenuous wriggling.
The serial's main point of interest is the "automaton" devised by Dr Q: though ugly in design and with silly eyes, it does have a traditional robot appearance. Thus The Master Mystery is frequently said to feature a robot, helped by the reveal's occurrence in a lost episode. For most of the film the viewer is led to assume they are seeing either a robot or a human-shaped machine encasing a human brain (see Brain in a Box; Cyborg), though early on Locke rightly asserts it holds a whole person. However, given Balcom's age, the size of the metal body and its strength, what we are seeing is arguably Powered Armour. [SP]
links
- Internet Movie Database
- Internet Archive (surviving film)
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