Cheap Strangler of the Swamp (DVD) (Frank Wisbar, Rosemary La Planche) (Frank Wisbar) Price

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Customer Reviews of Strangler of the Swamp

Such a movie is Strangler of the Swamp. It's not heavyweight, the story isn't classic, but it's carried out subtly and, as others have noted, with a great deal of atmosphere.

The movie takes place in a little town separated from the mainland by a swamp. The swamp can only be crossed by an old-fashioned rope ferry--the kind where a ferryman pulls the boat back and forth for a small fee. The town has a nasty secret--the old ferry operator, Ferryman Douglas, was wrongfully accused of murder and virtually lynched. His ghost haunts the swamp and quietly strangles those who killed him and their families in ways that seem accidental.

The gloomy atmospehere is so nicely done that when the pretty granddaughter of the most recent ferryman, killed by Douglas, shows up, she is like a bright light. She decides to remain in her home town as the new ferry operator, like a Lovecraft character drawn back to an ancestral horror.

This short piece lasts less than an hour, but the time is just about right. The oppressive atmosphere of the swamp and constant mist create a mood of corruption as certainly as a Tennessee Williams novel. The avenging ghost, played by Charles Middleton, is a spectral character, little seen but readily identified by his strong rich voice.

Ferryman Douglas' killings seem less a stalking horror than a rough justice on this secretive little town. In a poignent moment, Douglas pulls the boat across and tells his passenger, who now understands who he is, that "once this was my boat," a plain statement that tells us of a simple life ended by others' meanness.

For the price, worth a place in your library if you like the ghost story genre.

Great atmospheric film
I don't remember seeing ever seeing this one as a kid in the 1970's, but it's pretty cool if a bit simplistic. It's only about an hour long and it's almost like watching a play. The swamp is richly spooky, and the strangler delivers the goods.
If you like older, classic horror, this one's worth a look.

Twice Time Around
Strangler of the Swamp is a poverty-row remake of German-born director Frank Wisbar's more prestigious Fährmann Maria, filmed in 1936, during the rise of the Nazi regime. The original version is recognized today as a true landmark of German sound cinema. It's American counterpart, made for PRC, when Wisbar had emigrated to the United States in the early forties, necessarily pales by comparison. However, there's a certain dignity, even charm, in a film conceived as nothing more tan second feature fodder. The story is simple enough: the ghost of an unjustly executed ferryman preys on the men that accused him of murder, years before. Wisbar's production gets adequate performances from Rosemary LaPlanche (Miss America, 1941), future movie director Blake Edwards in a leading-man role, and perennial favorite Charles "Ming the Merciless" Middleton as the avenging specter, and boasts superior low-key photography, art direction (mainly two set pieces) and an original musical score. As such, it has little in common with PRC's standard fare and compares favorably with Edgar Ulmer's films for the same studio. While no masterpiece, this is a better-than-average companion piece to Wisbar's own Devil Bat's Daughter, also released in 1946.