Short-Order - MR. HUMPHREYS AND HIS INHERITANCE (1976)

After I did my article on Whistle and I'll Come to You I rewatched the first of the M. R. James adaptations I'd seen, A Warning to the Curious, which was excellent, and decided that if one of them can be great they can all be great.  This led me to checking out the only one of the BBC James adaptations to get an official DVD release in the states, 1979's Casting the Runes.  It blows.  That is, aside from a hilariously fake giant rubber spider and the worst floating head effect I've ever seen.  If those things float your boat, that is.  Fortunately, a special feature on the DVD put things back on track; it was a true short film adaptation of a James story I'd never heard of, Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance.  Presented as part of a beautifully dated 70's music show called Music Scene, the short was introduced by Philip Wilby, the man who wrote the score, urging viewers to consider how the music was written to aid the horror and furthermore to discuss it in class or work or whathaveyou.  While that intro might be the best thing ever broadcast I can safely say that the film itself is pretty dang good, only taking 16 minutes but sticking in the viewer's dreams for much longer than that.

The eponymous Mr. Humphreys has just inherited, quite unexpectedly from a distant uncle, a semi-grand old country house.  His uncle was apparently a strange man, strange enough that his body isn't kept in the family vault, and the property features a large hedge maze, the gate of which features a plaque reading "SECRETUM MEUM MIHI ET FILIS DOMUS MEUM" (MY SECRET TO MYSELF, AND THE SONS OF THIS HOUSE).  Mr. Humphreys is as naturally curious as every other James protagonist, so he goes in, and at the center finds a pedestal with a metal orb on top*; the base reads "TERRITORY OF DEATH", which is enough to get Humphreys to temporarily retreat.  He investigates further in an attempt to get the maze cleaned up enough for general use (as his uncle forbade visitors from using it), but despite Humphreys's insistence that mazes are easily understood he can't begin to predict what might be preventing him from mapping the maze...or what lies beneath its center.

Working on a more modest scale than Whistle and Warning, Mr. Humphreys is just right.  As with Whistle and Warning, the key to good James adaptations appears to be Location, Location and another dose of Location for good measure (I can't wait to see what could be done with "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook"), as the country house is both properly old but also eerily unkempt.  Once again James's ideas are engaging and unique, drawing the reader/viewer in with elements that surprise in how creepy they are in his hands.  As per the much-hyped music, it's actually pretty good, created in that brief window when horror scores could be somewhat Avant Garde.  It's a lot like Gerald Busby's score for Robert Altman's 3 Women, and much like Busby Wilby little to nothing else to his name as a composer, which is a it unfortunate as I'd like to hear more from him.  It's also quite a bit like the classical music Frank Zappa wrote in the 60's with its heavy emphasis on winds and thick harmonic scoring.  If anything is wrong with the short it's its pacing - too much wandering around for this little time, and an ending rushed enough that the narrator can't even finish his sentence before the end credits start rolling.

Perhaps there's virtue in not overstaying one's welcome, and at a scant 16 minutes there's really no time, or reason, to complain.  I found an upload and included it below, but if you don't like watching a TV short being played by an outmoded video player on a new video player (with a bit of lag and missing the Music Scene intro) you might want to hunt down that Casting the Runes DVD, if only to laugh your ass off at floating heads and funk-music intros.  Either way Humphreys is a quick-'n'-satisfying way to get your James fix and a worthy interlude to its larger cousins.  And remember, if a hole mysteriously appears in a map you're making, don't look in.

~PNK

*The spiderweb budget for this short must have been through the roof, let me tell you.