The Peters and their little girl move into a house that was once the scene of a grisly murder, and soon blood seeps from the walls and the pet cat is dead. The neighbors try to help but the poltergeist activity only seems to happen when there is an eyewitness; such as the dual knives suddenly appearing, or a severed hand in the fridge, or the moist memorable scene of the child’s birthday party showered with clotted blood from a burst pipe! Cut to: months later, the once poor couple living the high life in Hollywood, rich from the film and book rights from their experience…which was all an elaborate setup, devised by their “realtor”. But the child becomes the true victim of the fraud, unable to differentiate fantasy from reality, her childhood haunted by these nightmare occurrences. She cuts to the chase…and the bone.
The episode is obviously a stab at the pronouncement of the Amityville Horror, home to a real homicide but claiming demonic presence for profit.
Final Grade:(B-)
Peter Cushing once again brings an elegant and redeemable quality to the secretive baron; an impulsive man whose morality is eclipsed by his quest for knowledge. In one scene, the baron is introducing the new doctor to the "special” patients and he claims that one suffers from a God complex: this patient is not the only one to be afflicted as such. Cushing’s delivery is pitch-perfect as the comment is sarcastically directed at those who sent him to his death (Judges, Politicians) though it is darkly self-reflective, unconsciously passing judgment upon himself. The baron is not quite as evil as depicted in the previous film, but he does instigate a suicide and segregate the patients (though seemingly incurable) who have qualities he would like to dissect. Cushing looks gaunt and tired which lends a cruel realism to the role of a scientist maddened by a dark age of Puritanical values, pushing his own ethics towards the lunatic fringe.
The assembled creature is pitiful and truly the victim, sewed together and born into a world of lunacy, surrounded by the mentally injured and handicapped. In a surreal narrative twist, the baron decides to breed the monster with his mute female assistant for reasons that make little sense, but it leads to beauty saving the soul of the savage beast…while the monster is torn to shreds by the brood.
Final Grade: (B-)
A group of British soldiers slog through the swamp, their morality strangled by the thick jungle and the unfortunes of war. Val Guest directs this gritty and brutal story of a British Captain and his maddening dilemma, a man who decides that there is no justification in war…only means to an end.
Val Guest captures the stinking and sweating morass of the Burmese jungle like some fatal disease oozing from the very pores of the weary soldiers, fear of death etched upon their weary visages. Though obviously filmed on a soundstage, the believable acting and omnipresent jungle sounds weigh heavily upon the visual veracity of the tale. Guest eschews a musical soundtrack to heighten tension and allows the chirping of birds and inhuman howl of monkeys to imbue the film with an almost documentary style. A wonderful tracking shot through the swamp introduces us to the tired soldiers as they stumble upon a seemingly innocuous village. But they are soon ambushed by a Japanese patrol and innocent villagers are cut down in the crossfire. As the British bury the bodies of the dead there is no acknowledgment of responsibility: this is war. It soon becomes obvious that this is a bleak tale with no facile answers to easy questions.
Captain Langford discovers an important coded map and must make a captured Japanese sympathizer talk, but he can’t execute this man who may be able to decipher the code. Instead, he orders the execution of two civilians in order to convince the enemy to cooperate. The film doesn’t shy away from his decision with a melodramatic last minute reprieve or miracle: Langford has them murdered. Is this a war crime? The arguments are for and against are mouthed by the Priest, a newspaper correspondent, and the grunts under his command. Langford gets the information he needs from the sympathizer then has him executed to protect this important secret: the map shows the date, time, and exact places of a massive sneak attack on the British defenses in Burma. Langford’s questionable actions could save thousands of British lives.
The captain sends a small detachment into the jungle with the map to attempt to reach British command. He remains behind with a contingent to defend the village and buy time so the radio transmitter can be repaired. But Guest shows the audience a scene that Langford is unaware: the map never makes it to its destination because the soldiers are ambushed and killed. With the hope that he can radio the map coordinates, Langford and his men desperately defend the village but are captured and the survivors interrogated.
The Japanese commander is shown without prejudice, a soldier who must extract information from Langford in the same way Langford had to interrogate the sympathizer. Here all soldiers are faced with unfortunes decisions and are portrayed as neither monsters nor martyrs. The fear is palpable and suffocating and the outcome predetermined. These are men who realize that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or their own.
Final Grade: (A)
Dr. Rollason is a British Botanist (expertly portrayed by Peter Cushing) who is investigating the fauna and flora of the Himalayas. He teams up with the ugly American adventurer Tom Friend (an unsympathetic performance by the dimensionless Forest Tucker) in search of the mysterious Yeti. Rollason wishes to learn and study from a live specimen, to examine the possibly intelligent creature with care and respect, while Friend wants to kill the beast for his traveling carnival, his love of money the root of his downfall.
The film may be read on two levels: one is the impotence of British Colonialism as Rollason represents the foreign invader, a virus that taints the cellular structure of the seemingly uneducated Sherpa. The Llama is the voice of reason and asks Rollason to leave in peace…but it’s too late: the Americans are on their way. The “civilized” culture subsumes and destroys the native population, malformed with greed. It is also an indictment of American values, as each becomes a violent caricature of gun wielding miscreants, who eat their just desserts. Both cultures are denounced as the Llama remains without sin, and the Yeti forever wait the endgame of the Cold War apocalypse for the right to inherit the Earth.
Val Guest uses shadow and sound to great effect without revealing the abominable riddle that stalks the mountain, a pulsing suspense of howling wind and stinging snow. He smartly chooses to keep the creature off screen until the brief revelation, where eyes gleam with gentleness and aged wisdom, and we are left to wonder who is the real monster.
Final Grade: (B)
