HYSTERIA (Freddie Francis, 1965)

The eponymous Mr. Smith seemingly falls victim to more than amnesia; his mind betraying his actions, he fears that he has become a devious murderer without a corpus delecti. But in the Hammer idiom things are never quite what they scream.

“Chris Smith” awakes from a car crash without memory of his past, his only possession a torn magazine cover sporting the lovely visage of a beautiful woman. Does this woman hold the key to unlocking his past? As he recuperates, an unknown benefactor pays his medical bills and even sets him up in a penthouse apartment. Lurking in this empty building are disembodied voices and, strangely, two exotic birds in a gilded cage. Meanwhile, Chris hires a private investigator to discover the identities of his mysterious patron, the cover girl and himself! The tangled plot quickly becomes a web of writer’s conceit, becoming more convoluted than reason allows.

Freddie Francis helms this tepid thriller penned by Hammer journeyman Jimmy Sangster, imbuing the film with a visually arresting form which is often more interesting than the illogical plot. The opening montage foreshadows events to a snappy jazz beat, which seems better suited to a beatnik road film than a psychological thriller. The film quickly becomes talky and explanatory, revealing plot points through exposition instead of exhibition. The slow pace is burdened further by Robert Webber whose bland performance makes it difficult to empathize or care much about his predicament. But Francis captures Webber in intriguing mise-en-scene: a triptych in a mirror reflecting his fractured memory; or an extreme high-angle omniscient shot where Webber moves through the crisscross lines of an empty parking lot like a game piece; and framed through the metal bars of a birdcage. Thanks to Francis the film is technically sound, but the fatal flaw is embedded in the plot itself, as the tail (or tale) wags the dog.

A myriad of events must come together just right for this complex murder to be successful and ultimately, it’s not very believable. When the big reveal is exposed and Smith cops to psychological fraud, he becomes complicit in this humdrum battle of (nit)wits.

Final Grade: (C-)

THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (Terence Fisher, 1961)

Leon is born with tainted blood and position, cursed with both lycanthropy and dehumanizing poverty. Terence Fisher’s horror show becomes a metaphor of social hierarchy, of the diminished class struggling against the power of entitlement.

The first act is narrated by an omniscient presence, explaining the brutality of a local Baron and his cruelty towards the villagers, excising taxation without representation, bleeding the poor folk of their livelihood. A beggar stumbles into this morass and is caged, where he is reduced to pure animal instincts, imprisoned for many years in the tomblike dungeon. He eventually rapes a young servant and her child is born, not of man and woman, but of base vicious desire and trauma. Leon is eventually raised by a loving family, strangers who discover his pregnant mother drowning in a swamp, thus explaining the narrator’s identity. But Leon is a bastard who doesn’t stand a chance, as the tidal forces of destruction pull his soul apart.

Fisher focuses his story upon Leon and his knowledge of the beast that lurks within, his discovery that only love can tame the savage wraith. But his love is endowed to a wealthy landowner, and the pull of social gravity is a irrepressible as the moon’s ubiquitous presence. Leon is an innocent born into this mystical poverty, sharing the same birthday as the Christian savior and suffering the same sacrifice: he begs for death to save their souls. Like Jesus, Leon was birthed in a world of shit and treated as such by Pharisees.

Oliver Reed’s physicality is wonderful to behold, a grueling and growling ballet of blood, an extroverted performance that transcends subtly, like the clotted wounds splashed in bleeding Technicolor. The basic cinematography propels the narrative but doesn’t rise above the mundane, though a few interesting compositions exist. For example, when the baby Leon is purged we hear a howling before a baby’s cry, and the swaddled child is lifted up to the camera while a portrait of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus dominate the background, setting up the parable.



Final Grade: (B-)