You’d have thought what with all the attention over the years, the surrealists would have pretty much hit the bottom in terms of “enlargements” for certain films. Surely Edna Romney’s 1948 cacklefest The Corridor of Mirrors has been done to death? And yet, it just happens that, while giving it a go on a cold December’s eve, we chanced upon an entirely undiscovered Special Edition. One which, you may be shocked to hear, made some entirely arbitrary and unhinged alterations, viewable only to those individuals who happen to turn on the subtitles on this particular version. It was thus only as a concession to the poor sound quality that we discovered these secret changes (we find them too amazing to be just captioning mistakes, and wish very much to read a deliberate arbitrary wickedness into them; the work of some maniac who alters proper nouns in obscure places…)
Among the changes we enjoyed most in this Secret Edition are the following.
A new locale has been inserted into the film, a place called “Nahandson”, presumably not far from London. Paul asks Mifawni if she has ever visited it.
Two new murderous aristocratic families have been added to the bloody annals of Renaissance Italy. Possibly rival houses. These are “The Porchers” and “The Bourgets”.
Paul casually uses the expression “a bat’s humor is in me sometimes”. Perhaps he is referring to his penchant for seeing the world upside-down, or for his preference for an insectivorous diet? Or perhaps he makes jokes using echo-location.
In addition, a few characters have been entirely renamed.
Paul’s butler is pointlessly renamed from “Mortimer” to “Baltimore”.
A reference to “Piranesi” is replaced by a previously unrecognized renaissance designer of high status clothing, cited as “Anasia”, after whom Paul designs his costumes for the ball.
Likewise, a reference to an Italian artist who painted the infamous portrait, Christiano Laurie, is renamed to the pseudo-irish, almost Dunsanian “Christopher o’Lore”.
But it’s not just people who get reworked. Paul refers to a previously unrecognized school of jewelry craftsmanship when he describes “a priceless piece of Monet-Source work.”
And moreover, this version of the film invents an enticingly titled British gossip magazine which the character Caroline cites: “The Panther”. We can only imagine the savage cattiness contained therein.
Finally, the designation of the murderer’s wax effigy at the end of the film is rechristened from “The Masked-Ball Murderer” to “The Mossbourne Murderer”.
It never ceases to amaze how a few hastily mumbled glosses and arbitrary changes can get the imagination going along, shall we say, “an alternate route”…
-Jason Abdelhadi and Amber Craig