Everybody seems to be down on Lawrence Harvey for playing not just this cad, but many others, so that they find him dislikeable. But if one is going to play cads, one should very definitely come over as dislikeable. For the record, and for those who don't go far enough back, when Harvey became a world star, and during his years in the U.S., he appeared on any number of talk shows (including Jack Paar's and Johnny Carson's) and he was always an absolutely delightful and very loquacious guest, who could give Robert Morley a run for his money when it came to story-telling and general commentary. Indeed, I remember Paar once commenting (I think while going for a commercial break) something like, "Well, we certainly don't want to interrupt you - not that it's likely we ever could!", so Harvey put on a good act on the screen. Anyway, this is really a quite amazing film debut for an actor who was only 19 at the time, and while everyone else is quite good (and Ms. Osmond, whom I cannot recall seeing before, is absolutely gorgeous in the same way that the young Patricia Medina was), it is Harvey's performance as a man certainly a decade older than the actor who really holds the film up and keeps it going. Shades of the precocious Orson Welles, but even Orson was well over 19 when he got into film. Actually, the only thing really wrong with the movie is the God-awful opening and closing sequences with George Melachrino, surely amongst the most gratuitous scenes ever filmed for a movie like this one. The film isn't as creepy as some have indicated, but the scene with Harvey playing a demonic piano while a shadow on the wall plays an equally demonic violin should stay in the memory.
Review of House of Darkness
