The Amazing Mr. X

Image credit: Youtube

So it seems that from the ‘40s through to the ‘60s, gaslighting and driving women literally mad with tricks involving the paranormal were quite popular plot devices used when making horror movies. For some films it works very well, like in Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte, but others it’s a bit of a cheat. More than that, watching it as a modern viewer doesn’t really inspire the scares, rather an anger towards the patriarchy with many exclamations of “what a dick!” and “this is so backward”. At least this was the case with me watching The Amazing Mr. X. 

Set against a gothic backdrop of a seaside mansion atop a windy cliff, the film tells the story of mourning widow Christine who, 2 years after her husband Paul’s death, starts to hear his voice on the wind. After a haunting, she enlists the help of the mystic Alexis. But her sister Janet is suspicious of the mysterious Alexis and, along with Christine’s concerned fiancé she hires a private detective to prove his fraudulence. However, things take a turn when Janet falls for the charismatic character herself and during a séance the ‘deceased’ Paul appears and threatens to expose Alexis for the scam artist he is. 

Image credit: Streamline

This is a typical B-grade horror with seriously dated special effects, a weak storyline, and mediocre acting at best. Where you can say the movie does step up is in its gothic aesthetic. Not only does the central drama take place within a large house on top of a cliff, the perfect site for being haunted, the whole gaslighting and tricking women into neglecting their rational thought plays on that Victorian idea that women are naturally prone to hysteria or, in other words, are weak-minded. This is yet another film where men are the villains, and also the saviours while the women are technically the leads, but get derailed to the sidelines or sickbed because of gendered ideas that it’s easier to have a woman believe in ghosts than a man. In a strange turn of events and considering the time (1948) this actually works for the film rather than against it (though I was still muttering angrily at its sexism), as the gothic tropes of Victorian literature were all the rage when making horrors and thrillers back then. 

If you keep this in mind then you can sort of see why The Amazing Mr. X. is not such a bad movie. It’s dated and B-grade, but it doesn’t try to be anything else and stands solidly as a product of its time. 

Starring Lynn Mari, Cathy O’Donnell, Turhan Bey, Richard Carlson, Donald Curtis, and Virginia Gregg 

Year: 1948 

Rating: PG