Acting as a pilot episode for a sci-fi anthology series, “The Psycho Ward,” The Case of the Vanishing Gods from the creative mind of Ross Lipman draws influences from shows like The Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Tales from The Crypt and combines them with one of the historical clip shows you’d find on the likes of CNN.
Its focus is on the history of “throwing voices” and the evolution of ventriloquism, particularly as portrayed in media. Besides the aforementioned clips from media, which I will come back to, this is done through puppetry. A fitting choice.
There were two main puppets, the Doctor and his patient, Hugo. While the Doctor was a more traditional marionette, Hugo was a ventriloquist dummy that had been strung up like a marionette. It was an interesting choice. In fact, despite being a hybrid documentary on ventriloquism, they only ever treated Hugo as a puppet and never had a person throw their voice on screen for him. Perhaps, this was because, as commented within the work itself, you can’t tell real ventriloquism from fake in a film anyway. Or maybe it was to buck expectations.
The other puppets were utilized in telling the history of what became known as ventriloquism, from the Ancient Greek belief that the people who could throw voices were prophets. Some of these puppets’ designs were very interesting, and there were some very cool uses of light and shadows used to capture the sequences of the history they were portraying.
After the Ancient histories, it moved to the main focus, the history of modern ventriloquism and how it’s been portrayed in media. Starting with its very first appearance in cinema, in a SILENT FILM. I laughed out loud. It’s hard to think of anything less suitable for a silent film than ventriloquism, as the act relies so much on sound.
From there, it showed the talkie version and slowly started moving through the years of ventriloquism appearances, aka the clip show portion. As it went on, the clips started to get less fun and more sinister. Some of the clips used were very familiar to me while some I was seeing for the first time. I had thought I’d outgrown my fear of sentient dolls on a murderous rampage, but I did start to re-evaluate that belief. One thing’s for sure, if I ever saw a doll coming at me and go under a bed/sofa, there is no way I’d bend down to look under it because that way only leads to pain.
I will say perhaps there were too many clips movies/tv, and they went on for too long because I found they became a bit repetitive. The best use of clips were the ones that were shown on their own with contexts, like the silent one, or ones that were unique like “Nina Conti with Nina Conti,” because they provided something you couldn’t find similar already cut together by searching for horror movie dolls on YouTube.
The concept has promise but it needs some finessing. I would guess a significant amount of their budget was spent on puppets and clearances for clips, but they would’ve been better served to put some of it towards the scenes that took place in their doctor’s office/the psycho ward because the production design and the cinematography of these scenes, with the exception of some nice close-ups of Hugo’s eyes while he was getting hypnotized, had a home video quality to them that didn’t mesh with the rest of the film.
It ends with a non-ending, telling you there’s more and to come back to “The Psycho Ward.” Now, unfortunately, I was unable to re-watch it so I couldn’t check to see the exact phrasing and see if it meant to imply other cases, AKA other histories to uncover in this storytelling method, or if it meant ventriloquism specifically. If it was the latter, it breaks away from the anthology world it was harkening back to, which tended to be one-offs. I’m unsure of where they intend to market it, as at 72-minutes with a three-act structure it doesn’t fit with any of the current broadcast models.
The concept is interesting, and it conveys historical information in entertaining ways. It might have gotten a little overzealous with the clips in the second and third acts, but it was unique and I left with a greater appreciation for the history and the art of ventriloquism, as well as humour about the futility of trying to capture that magic on camera. Perhaps that is why we’ve taken it to such a place of darkness in the stories we choose to tell surrounding dummies, instead of ones of soothsayers and prophets.
It played at Locarno Film Festival in their Histoire(s) du cinéma section.