The Scare Salon

I’m actually kind of embarrassed to admit that I had never even heard of this movie (or the book on which it’s based) until someone recommended it to me a while back, telling me it was right up my alley. Said alley, or rather one of many alleys, concerns Victorian murder mysteries with real historical characters woven into the narrative. Think movies like From Hell or The Prestige, or books like Dan Simmons’s Drood. This particular film, 2016’s The Limehouse Golem, is along those lines and should appeal to anyone into British crime films or series set in the late 19th century. It’s a gorgeous-looking movie with stellar acting performances, a twisty mystery, and a fascinating setting amid the world of seedy, back-alley music halls.

The film was based on the 1994 novel Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem by Peter Ackroyd, a novelist and biographer known for his well-regarded nonfiction works on the lives of Charles Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Charlie Chaplin, and loads of others. Interestingly, in the United States, the novel was released under the title The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, presumably because Americans would have no idea who Dan Leno is, no inkling what a Limehouse is, and likely no clue what a golem is. The answers to those questions, in order, are 1. One of the most famous music hall comedians in the world in the late 1800s; 2. A poor and sketchy area of Victorian London; and 3. A creature from Jewish folklore that’s essentially a clay man brought to life with a magic spell.

Anyway, the movie adaptation stars Olivia Cooke as Elizabeth “Lizzie” Cree, a young woman who rose from dire poverty to become one of the most celebrated performers in the music halls of London. Though Elizabeth Cree is a fictional creation, several of the other characters who factor into the story—such as Dan Leno, Karl Marx, and George Gissing—were real historical people who lived in this time period.

At the beginning of the film (which is largely told in flashback), Lizzie is accused of poisoning her husband John (Sam Reid), and it looks like she’s probably going to hang. Meanwhile, there’s also been a series of brutal serial killings in Limehouse, perpetrated by someone the press have dubbed The Golem. In execution, the murders somewhat resemble those of Jack the Ripper, but most of this story is set about eight years before those happened.

The police are feeling the heat from the public for not being able to catch this killer, and they bring in a somewhat disgraced Inspector, John Kildare, to work on the case, but also to have someone to blame if they don’t solve it. Kildare, it turns out, has never worked a murder before even though he’s getting on in age, and it’s made very obvious that he’s been denied career opportunities because of rumors that he’s gay. The Inspector, by the way, is played by Bill Nighy, who’s great here; the role was originally offered to Alan Rickman, but he had to back out due to his declining health, and he sadly died several months before the movie was released.

Not long after his arrival, Kildare comes across a clue that the authorities missed: namely, he finds a very incriminating diary that seems to have been written by The Golem, only it’s scribbled in the margins of a copy of Thomas De Quincey’s essay On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts that’s held in the reading room of the British Museum. From this, Kildare figures that one of the four men who signed into the reading room on the day of the final diary entry has to be the killer; those four men were music hall performer Dan Leno (Douglas Booth); philosopher Karl Marx (Henry Goodman); novelist George Gissing (Morgan Watkins); and failed playwright John Cree.

Because Kildare knows that Lizzie Cree is currently on trial for poisoning her husband John Cree, and because he’s starting to suspect that John Cree might have been The Golem, Kildare goes to the prison to talk to Lizzie about the case, and the story then jumps back in time as she tells Kildare her story.

She relates that her single mother was abusive and that she (Lizzie) sewed and delivered sail-cloths for a living when she was a child. It’s also strongly implied that she was sexually abused by dockmen when she made her deliveries. After her mother died, Lizzie decided to follow her dreams of being a star and went to a music hall in Limehouse to find work. At first, she’s just a gopher, but famed headliner Dan Leno takes a shine to her and becomes her mentor. I like the way the relationship between Dan Leno and Lizzie is developed in the film; because Lizzie is technically a child when she arrives at the music hall, the movie could have gone the salacious route and had the very famous Dan take advantage of her. But he doesn’t; he remains a true friend to her, almost like a big brother, and genuinely wants to see her succeed. This, incidentally, seems to be what the real Dan Leno was like as well; although he was ravaged by alcoholism and died young at forty-three, he was extremely generous and beloved, establishing several charities to help out other performers who were down on their luck.

Soon enough, Dan recognizes Lizzie’s comedic talent, and the two of them start writing sketches together; Lizzie even starts performing and finds that she adores the spotlight. She soon becomes almost as famous as Dan himself and begins raking in the cash.

But Lizzie has greater ambitions. She doesn’t want to be just a clown in a tacky, low-rent music hall; she wants to be taken seriously and remembered long after she’s gone. Fate seems to smile on her when a journalist named John Cree starts hanging around the music hall and starts to take an interest in her; turns out John Cree is a playwright who thinks Lizzie would be perfect as the lead in the very serious play he’s working on, called Misery Junction.

This whole situation draws the ire of another performer named Aveline (Maria Valverde), who was after John herself, and whose jealousy causes her to try and sabotage Lizzie’s success at every turn.

A series of tragedies also seems to befall the company at the music hall once John Cree starts hanging around. A little person actor who grabbed Lizzie’s thigh one night at a dinner gathering mysteriously falls down the stairs and dies not much later, but because he was drunk, everyone assumes it was an accident. There’s also the matter of Uncle (Eddie Marsan), who owns the music hall, essentially blackmailing Lizzie into posing nude for him and forcing her to engage in some BDSM. When John Cree finds out about this, he asks Lizzie to marry him, thus making an honorable woman out of her, but then Uncle also turns up dead three days later.

Lizzie and John do marry, but it’s made crystal clear that Lizzie only agreed to the marriage for the role in the play, as she refuses to have sex with John. After he essentially rapes her on their wedding night, she nopes out of her wifely duties entirely and hires her rival Aveline as a maid in the household, with the stipulation that Aveline will sleep with John, thus leaving Lizzie to her own devices. Lizzie is the one with all the money and fame, after all, and she seems to be only using John as a ticket out of the music halls and into respectability. John knows this and resents his wife’s success, so the relationship is a rocky one, to say the least.

While Lizzie is telling all of this to the Inspector, Kildare develops very protective, fatherly feelings toward Lizzie, and is determined that she not be hanged. He has formulated a theory that John Cree was The Golem, and that Lizzie poisoned him after she found out his true nature. Kildare insists that if she were to tell this to the authorities, then perhaps she’d be seen as a hero and her sentence would be commuted. So there’s then a sort of race-against-time element as Kildare desperately tries to prove his hypothesis before Lizzie goes to the gallows.

As I mentioned, this is a fantastic, Victorian-era murder mystery with beautiful sets and costumes, some shockingly grisly violence, wonderful acting performances, a compelling story, and an interesting backdrop of working-class performance halls and old-school pantomime. The only criticism I can give it is that I guessed the big twist long before it was revealed, but that didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the story at all really, as I was so enchanted by the look and feel of the thing.

If you love British murder mysteries and particularly if you love anything having to do with Jack the Ripper or other late 19th-century crimes, this should be right in your wheelhouse, and I’m grateful that it was recommended to me, as I might not have seen it otherwise. As of this writing in December of 2023, it’s available to watch for free on Tubi, so give it a spin if it sounds like your kind of thing.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.