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Koukol 5 wrote:

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Has anyone seen this film?
Is it any good?
I've read that it has some pretty good atmosphere.

I have and I liked it a great deal. It is the cheapest of low budget movies with a lot of dry ice effects to hide the cramped sets. The acting is for the most part barely okay. On the plus side it is perhaps the most unusual horror film to come out of old hollywood, has loads of atmosphere, and Charles Middleton with his gaunt features and deep voice makes a strikingly effective ghost.

STRANGLER OF THE SWAMP has a 6.8 rating on the IMDB which makes the highest rated of the poverty row, or even clearly B level horror throwaways from the smaller major studios, of the 1930 through 1960 era. It actually has a higher rating than WHITE ZOMBIE. Definitely worth checking out.

I can't agree that this movie needs a "remember it's from Poverty Row" defense. It is simply a good movie and well above average when measured against the major studio horror productions. Not the best, but way above average.

The Strangler was handled wonderfully. After his creepy first appearance, he is only glimpsed watching from the fog three times during the bulk of the movie. I think this made him a formidable nightmare figure. He was kept remote and ominous, never fully in focus, merging with the fog. In a subtle touch, he remained slightly out of focus even when inside a house late in the movie. Charles Middleton's gaunt features and excellent delivery ideally reinforced and complemented the visual image. The Strangler is a memorable "monster" and one of the very few from the classic era worthy of comparision with the Universal gallery.

Overall, the movie was well crafted, the plot and characters rather carefully outlined to move toward the climax. Certainly, the movie is given depth by the fact that the ghost was the victim of a lynching and the guilty community is unwilling to face up to its guilt. The scene in which Old Christian condemns Maria for being the granddaughter of a murderer and is in turn confronted with his own greater guilt by Chris laid bare this theme.

All in all, loaded with atmosphere which few movies of the time can match, with a great "monster" or "ghost", and a depth behind its main themes which puts it into a different class than most forties horror movies. I did not find it at all dull or slow. It plays like an ancient fairy tale, with its young heroine improbably but appropriately beautiful and courageous. It turns on its head the usual order of things in classic horror movies in which the helpless heroine must be saved from the fiend by dominant males, usually an authority figure. In this one, the authority figure is hopelessly flawed, the hero helpless, and it is only the courage and character of the heroine which saves the day.