Strangler of the Swamp (1945)

Frank Conlan: Joseph Hart

Quotes 

• [first lines] 

  [Christian picks up a corpse lying on the bottom of Joseph's ferry] 

  Joseph Hart : Can I be of any more help?

  Christian Sanders : No, thank you, Joseph.

• Martina Sanders : The strangler got him.

  Joseph Hart : Hah! You'd believe in anything, wouldn't you? Why doesn't he visit me? I live closest to his grave.

  Dark-haired Woman : He will! You, too, are a marked man.

  Joseph Hart : I'd like to see that old drunken card sharp again.

  Dark-haired Woman : He was all that, yes, and a no-good. But was he a murderer?

• Martina Sanders : And you got what you always wanted, didn't you, Joseph - his ferry?

  Joseph Hart : What do you mean?

  Martina Sanders : Nothing... nothing.

• Martina Sanders : Joseph, why have you let that rope hang all these years?

  Joseph Hart : It serves as a warning.

  Martina Sanders : As a warning? To whom?

• [discussing the noose that hung Douglas many years ago] 

  Martina Sanders : Joseph, we're going to take that down.

  Joseph Hart : No! It stays there. Since that's been there, there hasn't been any more trouble.

  Martina Sanders : There's been more trouble than ever since it hangs there! Have you forgotten Bill Jenkins who was thrown from his horse and was choked by the reins?

  Anna Jeffers : And Shelton, strangled by the pulley rope as he fell from his hayloft?

  Dark-haired Woman : And Henry Craig, throttled by his fishnet?

  Martina Sanders : And tonight his son, Bill, choked to death by the weeds.

  Joseph Hart : What's Bill Craig got to do with it? He wasn't even at the hanging?

  Martina Sanders : Have you forgotten Douglas' vow that he'll return to strangle all the hangmen and their descendants for generations to come?

• Joseph Hart : Douglas! Douglas! Have you risen from the dead? What are you trying to do, frighten me? I know it's just a trick of my imagination, but how is it I can see you? Where did you come from?

  Ferryman Douglas : From my grave in the swamp. Whenever the heart and soul of a cursed one are filled with anguish to the brim, I appear. Tonight, it's your soul that calls me.

• Joseph Hart : You're not real!

  Ferryman Douglas : Your guilty conscience is. The rope you hanged me with is real.