LAKE OF THE DEAD (1958)

 

(a.k.a LAKE OF THE DAMNED; director/screenwriter: Kåre Bergstrøm)

Review

In August 1958, a group of longtime friends head to a lakeside cabin to visit another friend, Bjørn Werner, who’s disappeared. Bjørn’s sister (Liljan), in this group, fears something has happened to him. Others, whose professions range from psychoanalyst to lawyer, dismiss Liljan’s fears.

When they arrive at the lake and cabin, Bjørn and his dog (Spot) are nowhere to be seen. The cabin door seems to open as if of its own accord, but the friends shake it off. With them is a local constable (Bråten), who helps them investigate Bjørn’s disappearance. Bråten tells them about the legend of the lake, cabin and the cabin’s former occupants, a hundred years ago─Tore Gråvik, a man with a wooden left leg, lusted after his sister, and when she took up with another man, he killed them before drowning himself in the lake. Since then, the story goes that whoever stays in the cabin will become possessed by Gråvik’s malevolent spirit.

The friends debate what to do next, each of them representing and stating their professional outlooks and making accusations, even as further weirdness occurs, e.g., a recurring, distinctive footprint around the lake and several characters’ efforts, some sleepwalking, others hypnotized, to drown themselves in the lake.

Is someone puppet mastering the situation to hide something about Bjørn’s disappearance? Or is the lake (whose idyllic shots are paired with Gunnar Sønstevold’s melancholic, restrained soundtrack) and its surrounding area haunted by Gråvik and others?

This seventy-seven-minute, black and white Norwegian film, based on André Bjerke’s 1942 mystery-horror novel (he wrote it under the name Bernhard Borge), is a visually striking, excellent work, with sharp, moody cinematography (courtesy of Ragnar Sørenson) and equally sharp editing (Olav Engebretsen). Arne Holm’s well-timed sound effects further LAKE’s effectiveness. Its use of well-acted characters-as-avatars-for-debate-points helps elevate LAKE to greatness, placing it next to spook house films like Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING (1963) and John Hough’s THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE (1973), as does Bergstrøm’s screenplay and direction.

LAKE’s players include source-novel author André Bjerke as magazine editor Gabriel Mørk.

LAKE is worth your time if you appreciate black and white films that ably mix atmospheric, lots-of-talking mystery punctuated with spooky events and elements, striking visuals, and offbeat endings. You might figure out what’s going on─it’s not difficult to do─but there are enough red herrings that, with a changed scene or two, it could’ve logically gone other ways as well. This is one of my all-time favorite spook house films. Director/screenwriter Nini Bull Robsahm’s remake was released in 2019.