Harold Pelham: “Espionage isn’t all James Bond on Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Industry goes in for it too, you know.”
The movie Roger Moore made directly before taking over the iconic role of James Bond for over a decade starting in 1973, The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), co-adapted and directed by Basil Dearden from the novel “The Strange Case of Mr Pelham by Anthony Armstrong, is perhaps as un-Bond-like as possible (despite Moore uttering the quote above), which may be why the star also frequently suggested that this was his best film.
Harold Pelham (Moore) is in a high stress position at a marine technology company – in which a merger is being pressured from an outside company, which, when combined with his rather awkward version of a stiff upper lip attitude, has left his marriage with Eve (Hildegarde Neil) rather cool and aloof.
Starting the intrigue off from the very beginning, straight-laced Harold gets into an accident after rather oddly pushing the boundaries of speed and safety in his posh Rover P5B while driving home from work in London (ironically, the film’s director would die the next year in a car accident driving the same stretch of highway). Dying momentarily, when he finally arises, things will slowly seem bewilderingly unusual – may I just say, ‘you only live twice’.
As he returns to his ordinary life, people claim to have met up with him in multiple locations, including a snooker match, despite having been out of country on a vacation at the time, then, insinuations are made that he might have suggested to the other side that the merger should go through (though he never said that), and later, he arrives home to find an associate waiting for a meeting that he never booked. Furthermore, a striking female photographer, Julie Anderson (Olga Georges-Picot), bumps into him one night at a casino and seems to suggest that they are having an affair – but Harold only remembers ever seeing her for a short moment at the club he swims at. It also seems perplexing that a Lamborghini Islero has been spotted by his wife outside of their home for hours at a time while someone inside the vehicle sits there smoking.
Baffled by all of these strange anomalies, Harold attempts to unfurl the mind-bending mystery. . . only to miss his lookalike by mere moments time and time again. With his stress levels reaching utterly unhealthy heights, might this all be a clever ruse by the merger company attempting to make sure it goes through? May he actually have a doppelgänger attempting to assume his identity and take over his life? Could he actually be going insane with all the pressure at work and home? Or may he be having memory lapses after suffering some head trauma from the accident?
A movie that starts out rather pedestrian and then takes us down the proverbial rabbit hole – slowly becoming ever more eccentric and outlandish, the story has so very many influences. The original adaptation of the novel became a thirty minute segment of Alfred Hitchcock Presents titled “The Case of Mr Pelham” – directed by the Master of Suspense himself, and you can certainly see that Hitchcockian influence here. Likewise, it pulls plenty from both gothic horror (think terror, sexual repression, death and decay. . .) and neurologist Sigmund Freud, with concepts of the double meeting id and superego. You can also clearly see connections to a story like the “Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, with Harold struggling with his memories while trying to figure out what he has and hasn’t done. By infusing so very many themes and influences, it keeps the audience uncertain of where things are going, making for quite the unique and atypical ending.
A movie that gave Roger Moore a chance to show his acting chops, The Man Who Haunted Himself can perfectly be described as a cult classic. Living in an almost indefinable realm, it plays as drama, a mystery/psychological thriller, and horror – all while carrying with it a rather complex and messy romantic storyline. So, see Moore before his word became Bond – you might discover who lives and lets die.