Hammer & Thongs

CHRISTOPHER LEE FILMOGRAPHY Circa 1976

2012-01-28T10:17:00.001-05:00

This is a photo that came attatched to the introductory letter to the Christopher Lee International Fanclub. I have also scanned the initial letter that promises a signed photograph for every member. I have that photo with a beautiful blue ink signature from Mr. Lee himself! The photo depicts Christopher Lee in a white suite holding binoculars with a mansion in the background. I wonder what movie that image is from?

CHRISTOPHER LEE BIOGRAPHY Circa 1976

2012-01-08T18:12:00.001-05:00

A mimeographed biography that was part of the Christopher Lee International Fanclub newsletters that I purchased in the estate sale last year. I do have about ten more copies of both Lee and Peter Cushing fanclub issues each, but I need to take the packets apart to scan. I'll work on it and meanwhile, you're welcome to download each issue in my archive. It would be a shame to lose these to the sands of time, as there are many personal anecdotes and photos that I've never seen reprinted anywhere else!

CHRISTOPHER LEE INTERNATIONAL FAN CLUB (AUTUMN 1976)

2011-12-03T22:06:00.001-05:00

PREHISTORIC WOMEN (Michael Carreras, 1967)

2011-10-23T09:43:00.000-04:00

A tribe of beautiful women worship the extinct white rhino, their insufferable men relegated to grim impotence who are now replaced by an gigantic artificial phallus. Michael Carreras usually produces Hammer films but adequately directs this tepid tale of gorgeous women and tribal rhythms set amid the temperate savannahs and jungles of Bray Studios. This ho-hum drama has two good reasons to view...and they both belong to Martine Beswick! Ok, so we never get full frontal and all the women a drop-dead beautiful with perfect hair and makeup, but the self-assertive Beswick as the evil Queen steals the film. She moves like a jungle cat stalking prey, her lithe disarming sensuality dominating and nakedly severe. My disbelief was terminally suspended, not with the very absurdist concept of the story itself, but in the fact that the “hero” David spurns her aggressive advances!

The convoluted plot has something to do with a tribe forced into bondage because the white man has slaughtered the last albino rhinoceros, and David is magically thrown backwards into time to correct the sins of his fathers. He does this by freeing a tribe of blonde women and their spurious spouses all at the expense of a bevy of raven haired matriarchs. Is this a metaphor concerning the failing of male entitlement and the rise of feminist empowerment? Or a subversive metaphor about the fall of British Imperialism? Or could it reflect the fear of interracial marriage and racist propaganda? Well, I just think it’s a rather ignorant Eurocentric story about the mysteries of darkest Africa told like a juvenile adventure story. Carreras pads the film with too many dances and ceremonies but the actors fulfill their roles with utmost integrity, emoting the cheap dialogue with gusto and verve. This is a film that is actually better (though not by much) than it has any right to be.

Final Grade: (D)

THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN (Jimmy Sangster, 1970, UK)

2011-10-11T19:51:00.000-04:00

Victor plays with divine fire but instead of giving it to mortals, hordes this messianic power to sate his voracious intellectual appetite, sacrificing morality for immortality. Director Jimmy Sangster stitches together droll comedy and horror tropes, revealing the origin of the failed protagonist from the four humours of bathos.

The horror of Victor Frankenstein resides not in the beast born of stitch and staple, but in the cold dark pit that substitutes for empathy, a carnivorous void that consumes knowledge for the sake of self. The story begins with Viktor idly dissecting the female anatomy as he sits through a boring lecture, lost in electric dreams. He challenges his professors and decides to leave school to focus upon his masters thesis: to create mankind by his own hand. After murdering his father, he inherits title and estate, as well as a buxom maid to fulfill his dietary needs and continues with his experiments.

Ralph Bates plays Frankenstein with a cold self assurance tinged with a wry humor, spitting aspersions and venom with a grin and firm handshake. It’s a wonderful performance because Victor’s actions are despicable, yet somehow he remains marginally sympathetic. He is adored by Elizabeth, the beautiful daughter of part number 25, and in her time of need subjugates her into physical and emotional bondage. Truly a cad! Once he finishes his pet project, the stumbling monster (played by David Prowse) initiates murder and mayhem which Viktor uses to his own advantage. The plastic and putty makeup is awful, with Prowse display the emotional range of a vole, neither imbuing the creature with sympathy or malevolence: it makes one yearn for the days of the sad eyed Christopher Lee as the tortured servant of a demented mind.

Sangster’s film is rarely laugh out loud funny but is laced with black humor: a horror noir. Frankenstein makes his monster in his own selfish image: a patchwork forgery.

Final Grade: (C)

LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS (Number Two; July 1981)

2011-10-02T12:36:00.001-04:00

More Hammer goodies from your humble host! I've posted all the issues I own of HAMMER COLLECTOR'S CRYPT (hope you've downloaded and enjoyed them all!) and now I have one issue of LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS. This issue is a tribute to Terence Fisher with great interviews and insight into his career, with other interesting articles about our favorite studio. My favorite article is an interview with composer James Bernard whose Hammer scores are too often overlooked by cinephiles. I think the eerie and unsettling musical riptide he created for THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT made the film much better than it actually was and remains one of my favorite Hammer scores.

UPDATE 10/10/2011: I was asked to remove the links by Richard Klemensen owner of LITTLE SHOPPE OF HORRORS. I will definately respect his wishes since this issue is available from him directly as a reprint HERE.
This issue (and the many others!) are worth every penny with expansive articles, interviews and great photos.

NEVER TAKE SWEETS FROM A STRANGER (Cyril Frankel, 1960)

2011-09-17T09:29:00.000-04:00

Children become a sweet confection for a sick and twisted man who hides behind his reputation, a festering sore in a diseased community whose only reaction is denial. Cyril Frankel directs this honest and compelling drama concerning the dirty secret and shame of child sexual abuse as it pertains to the social macrocosm and familial microcosm. This is one of the most realistic films concerning this taboo subject that I have ever seen, and in my experience it portrays the emotional trauma of the victims (both parents and children) as it often manifests eschewing dramatic license.

The premise of the film concerns an elderly giant in the community, the founding father Clarence Olderberry, who is accused of offering candy to two little girls in exchange for their undressing and dancing naked for his satisfaction. When the parents of one girl discover this crime, the film follows their trials and tribulations in court and in the community. Considered outsiders, they are shunned and despised not for telling lies…but for having the nerve to file a criminal complaint and upset the status quo of their tiny community. Mr. Olderberry it seems is a dirty secret that is ignored and considered harmless because, well, he has never actually ‘touched” a child. Wow. I wish I could say this attitude is relegated to the past but it taints the minds of current attitudes and mores, a shame that lingers like a creeping malignance in a cancerous society.

The film is raw not with social conscience but human consciousness, with the girl’s parents fighting for justice and living through the brutality of the criminal justice system that allows a nine year old girl to be exposed once again before strangers. The court room scene is dramatically anxious and realistic, as the defense attorney gleefully rapes the victim once again by twisting words and details creating a smothering tsunami of emotions. The defense attorney would not be allowed to ask questions that are speculative, so that line of attack would have been denied by the judge. And make no mistake; this little girl is attacked by counsel even though her story is consistent and true. The absolute power of the narrative is that the girl’s parents believe her and accept her honesty (I wish that were always true). Their reaction is believable as they accept the veracity of her story but weigh the pros and cons of ‘going public”. But their decision to seek justice (not retribution) soon portrays the old pervert (in the mind of the ignorant) as the victim!

Freddie Francis lenses the film with wide angle compositions that create a palpable tension with temporal use of empty spaces and medium shots crowded with accusations. The opening shot is fantastic as the children jump from a tree swing and run towards the mansion where the creepy dude haunts the attic rooms. The triptych composition keeps the tree in focus on one side and the swing framing the other, while the children recede in importance as they run towards the house: this is all shot in deep focus so the children can be seen to disappear, the tree swing representing a solid but vanishing childhood, soon overtaken by the trauma of victimization. Frankel’s solid direction carries the film towards it’s brutal climax, where Francis once again shines with a chase through the woods that ends in an abandoned house, like a mind dirty with the cobwebs of an ugly past. And surprisingly enough, the film is honest and forthright and doesn’t give the audience the happy ending, upsetting expectations with the death of a child. Or more precisely, the sexual assault and murder of a child by a child rapist. This is an important Hammer film that should be recognized as a classic.

Final Grade: (A)

THE HAMMER COLLECTOR'S CRYPT #27 (Summer 1981)

2011-09-11T11:11:00.001-04:00

THE SNORKEL (Guy Green, 1958)

2011-09-07T23:57:00.001-04:00

A killer lurks beneath the surface of suspicion, breathing air in a noxious environment of murderous intentions. Director Guy Green balances a thrilling story with beautiful compositions, tightening the improbable machinations of murder and teenage angst into a suspension of disbelief.

Green was the cinematographer for David Lean's first two films GREAT EXPECTATIONS and OLIVER TWIST, imbuing each with a grim yet austere look of classic literature imprinted upon celluloid, framing scenes with slightly skewed angles or focusing upon the skeletal and bleak environment to create a sense of 19th century dis-ease. As director, his eye for capturing a scene with simple detail and the monotonous dread of routine elevates his film above the typical Hammer tropes. The film begins with a murder in progress with no build up or explanation, using mis en scene to convey murderous details. The two glasses of milk (one half-drunk) explains the sleeping woman without trite exposition, and as he tapes the windows and doors from inside we begin to wonder what the hell he's up to. When Green suddenly cuts to the man in a scuba mask it's like the shocking revelation of some alien horror. By explaining the murder in the first act Green heightens the tension as the precocious teenage daughter Candy and her dog Toto begin to figure out the crime, and the nanny Jean whispers implications of act and intent.

Candy begins to drown in frustration as the child who cried wolf, once again accusing her step-father of seemingly impossible crime. As she suffers we empathize with her plight, admiring her headstrong attitude but also realizing that she is still a gullible child, easily lured into a trap by a cold hearted killer. And her step-father Paul is a sociopath wearing the mask of innocence, a monster who subsumes the role of victim. He is reminiscent of Joseph Cotton as Uncle Charlie in Hitchcock's penultimate film SHADOW OF A DOUBT, casting a hypnotic aura of charm and virile grace. The ending balances on the edge of brilliance, evoking the existential and ironic O'Henry twist perfected by those purveyors of nightmare at E.C Comics (pre-code, mind you).

Final Grade: (B)

CASH ON DEMAND (Quentin Lawrence, 1961)

2011-08-14T10:35:00.000-04:00

A man must suddenly face his trial balance, his viperish authority now reduced by fear and crushing anxiety, an automaton now unable to suppress his human nature. Quentin Lawrence directs two of Hammer’s most elegantly acerbic and witty actors in Peter Cushing and Andre Morrell, as they duel with words and morals that begin to decode the enigma of complex ethics and sacrifice for duty.

The plot is a basic heist case that focuses upon a bank manager Fordyce (Cushing) and a thief Hepburn (Morrell) masquerading as a security director from the “home office”. But the story eschews genre tropes and becomes a paranoid and focused character study of the uptight and airtight banker Fordyce, locked in his own vault of personal horrors. Fordyce is an arrogantly small man who rules his staff with clockwork precision and attention, a micro-manager who is as infuriating as he is dull. Fordyce doesn’t demand respect since he doesn’t care what his staff thinks of him, he demands absolute obedience. He looks down his raptor-like nose at his employees, treating them with disdain and contempt. However, Cushing is able to mold his character into a complex human being, as the dark waters of neurosis boil to the surface. We see the man beneath the stoic mask. Hepburn is the gentlemanly and roguish thief, one who is seemingly driven to crime by the sheer pleasure of pulling off the perfect caper, but also a blunt man who will victimize for profit.

The film utilizes a static location to great effect, mostly set within the confines of the manager’s office, like a shrine to a peon, where a man over time has been reduced to a phantom haunting his own life, ethereal yet ghastly to his subordinates: it is the environment of a dead man who has yet to surrender the ability to breath. Hepburn is the devil with the details, he is the catalyst for Fordyce to recognize his weaknesses and offers him salvation. Though Hepburn is a thief whose intent is the 97,000 pounds, he seems just as interested in cursing his nemesis in order to save his soul. This is reflected in the final scene when Hepburn makes his confession and absolves Fordyce of sin. In this case, the profit belongs to Fordyce but not in a measurable way that can be jotted down in a accounting ledger.

Final Grade: (B)

THE HAMMER COLLECTOR'S CRYPT #25 (Autumn 1980)

2011-08-07T22:42:00.002-04:00

SHE (Robert Day, 1965)

2011-08-04T18:27:00.000-04:00

To obey immortality is to concede one’s soul, sacrificed upon the golden alter of greed. Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee try their best to elevate this mundane adventure tale above its humble Hammer origins, imbuing every inflection with Shakespearean delight, imposing their very essences upon the weak narrative. SHE is a film that is about a half hour too long and two millennia short.

The premise is rather ludicrous as Englishman Leo Vincey is stalked by a cadre of mad Egyptians, throwbacks to their ancient origins, ruled by an immortal matriarch who subjugates by fear and oppression. Leo somehow resembles the dead lover of Ayesha, murdered over two thousand years ago and identified by a forged profile on a golden amulet. I thought it looked like Bill Clinton, so maybe not the best evidence to base a civilization on. However, Ayesha is sure so she kidnaps Leo, gives him a ring and a map, and tells him he must traverse the burning desert and face many trials until he reaches the city of Kumar, where he will be rewarded with power, riches, immortality…and her sensuous embrace.

The trials consist of being lost in the desert without water, attacked by black robed marauders, and just general physical and emotional dehydration. I suppose the budget went to Ursula Andress and travel expenses for the location shooting, instead of some cool Harryhausen creature discomforts. The story devolves into a love triangle (that ends badly for the beautiful Ustane) with tepid dialogue and head-scratching infatuation. The set design is typical Hammer, reducing an entire civilization to a throne room and antechamber….and a bad matte painting.

SHE has a rather droll set of main characters but is supported by an excellent cast, including a cheeky Bernard Cribbins as Job, Cushing’s manservant and compatriot. Their fate is much more interesting.

Final Grade: (C)

THE HAMMER COLLECTOR'S CRYPT #24 (Summer 1980)

2011-07-22T09:14:00.003-04:00

THE SATANIC RIGHTS OF DRACULA (Alan Gibson, 1974)

2011-07-17T09:53:00.000-04:00

The Prince of Darkness rises once again into the modern world: this time, to spread a far deadlier contagion than mere vampirism! Director Alan Gibson confuses horror convention for spy drama, giving birth to this stillborn tripe that is MOD SQUAD meets DRACULA; an idea worth its weight in camp but played without humor...only thick gothic humours.

Christopher Lee’s final appearance as Dracula at least allows him more dialogue instead of relegating him to a caped corpse hovering over frightened girls. Unfortunately, Lee doesn’t appear until half-way through the picture and the obtuse plot fails to demonstrate the need for Dracula, thus there is no suspense or tension as we await his ethereal presence. Lee is delightfully wicked but it’s Peter Cushing as Van Helsing who gets the majority or screen time (and dialogue). Cushing’s elegance and professionalism makes this a better film than it should be, and he devises an original way to destroy, once and for all, his immortal nemesis: by a crown of thorns!

The bland story revolves around powerful men participating in a secret satanic cult, but is a mish-mash of spy games and gothic horror. Shaggy-vested assassins on motorcycles, security systems, and micro-cameras become the arsenal for a impotent branch of the government's own secret service. The film spends too much time blathering exposition instead of showing us, and Gibson’s innumerable close-ups become visually tiresome and dull, much like a bad television episode.

The finale involves Dracula being led into a hawthorn bush, as if guided by more than chance (and Van Helsing). Dracula suffers his own undead torment before the hero stakes him and watches him dwindle away to ashes and dust. Forever. Thankfully.

Final Grade: (D-)

THE ANNIVERSARY (Roy Ward Baker, 1968)

2011-07-09T09:26:00.000-04:00

Three men are reduced to apologetic little boys by a snarling raving Cyclopes, a matriarch who poisons her children with venomous abuse. Roy Ward Baker's camp comedy is high on overwrought burlesque but light on humor, an obnoxious bore empty of message or meaning.

Bette Davis' whiplash persona dominates the film but soon becomes a tired tirade, her inherited name evoking the Objectivism of Ayn Rand's grand protagonist but here only producing a null personality. Mrs. Taggart is obnoxious and pretentious, castrating her sons and reducing their paramours to servants, seeking any inherent weakness to poke and prod. The verbal barrage is meant to be funny but soon becomes rather annoying, as the film focuses on the snap/crackle/pop of insults but fails to create any sympathetic character or plot design. The sons are weak and underdeveloped while the spouses are too possessive or nagging: who really cares what happens to anyone in this horror-show?

Baker fails to elevate the story beyond its stage appeal and it becomes visually exhausting as actors hit their marks on cue, reducing the film to a well rehearsed performance. This is one anniversary to never celebrate again.

Final Grade: (F)

THE HAMMER COLLECTOR'S CRYPT #23 (Spring 1980)

2011-07-03T23:05:00.001-04:00

DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE (Roy Ward Baker, 1971)

2011-07-01T23:22:00.000-04:00

A tale of suppressed sexuality leads to an ejaculation of bloodshed and orgy of carnage. Roy Ward Baker's quixotic direction makes this film much better than it ought to be, utilizing nice transitions, cross-cutting, and eerie compositions that makes the film visually arresting even when it stutters narratively.

The opening credit score stinks of a sickening romanticism which fails to match the film's dark riptide, a visual contradiction to the violent first act. The very first scene depicts a dark shadow stalking a prostitute in Whitechapel, an obvious Jack The Ripper plot device, and a brutal murder cross-cut with a local butcher slaughtering a rabbit: what an excellent setup! As the butcher slices into the animals stomach, a red gash of blood splatter upon a poster warning of the Whitechapel killer. This is soon revealed to be a flash-forward and the story regresses to explain the skewed morality of the good doctor that has brought him to this fearful fate. Jekyll’s good intentions lead him to commit horrible acts, believing that the murder of a few women may be a corruptible means, but the end is all that matters: to live long enough to cure all human disease. His serum, made from the hormones of freshly slaughtered women, has an unusual side effect in that it turns him into a woman, and soon a battle of the sexes ensues.

The subtext can be read as propagating Victorian era sexual regression. Like Stoker’s DRACULA, the story’s eroticism is a weapon for the monster (both Jekyll and Hyde) and only the pure of heart and body remain unharmed. The doctor’s upstairs love interests (brother and sister!) are only endangered when they give in to physical pleasure, seduced into bestial behavior. The victims of the bisexual protagonist are of course female prostitutes, well-endowed and beautiful avatars of 19th century fantasy. Jekyll himself is subrogated by his love for Susan, consumed by this petty human desire cast in the vile mode of archaic misogyny. Everyone who lusts for sex is victim or victimized.

Baker’s direction is wonderful. In the shot of the first transformation, he uses a seamless 180 degree POV technique that follows Jekyll as he crashes and thumps about the room to fall exhausted in a chair. The camera pans up (still without edit) to see his reflection now transformed into her! He films Jekyll through red glass or fractured mirrors, distorting his/her identity.

The denouement makes very little sense as Jekyll commits one final murder (for no apparent reason) and flees the police, still fighting a war of sexual dominance. His fall from grace is malformed and unsatisfying.

Final Grade: (B)

THE HAMMER COLLECTOR'S CRYPT #22 (December 1979)

2011-06-25T23:09:00.002-04:00

RASPUTIN, THE MAD MONK (Don Sharp, 1966)

2011-06-22T18:39:00.000-04:00

A mad monk sacrifices upon the alter of hedonism, infused with carnal sins worth forgiving, an intervention of divine attention. Don Sharp transforms the historical figure of Grigori Rasputin into a man of diabolical and supernatural intentions, a caped horror cliché seducing women and drinking from their voluptuous bank accounts.

The true star of the film is Christopher Lee whose intense and exaggerated performance is a riot of both humor and violence, his every line a shouted command with eyes that scar the conscience. Rasputin heals the meek with hands aflame, and devours life with a sinful conflagration. He hypnotizes women and revels in lust and larceny, eventually gaining advantage through manipulation and mayhem; a prescient parable of modern politics. Rasputin is self-absorbed and seeks power to quench his voracious thirst and becomes an unsympathetic character study, an aberration that haunts the freak show. He begins the film in ragged brown robes of a suffering pilgrim, rises to the status of white robes where his healing talents are used for positive means (though the ends are still selfish), an finally meets his brutal fate in the red robes of hellfire. Rasputin is a caricature, a vampire who feeds on others, and it's a shame that the film didn't explore his dual nature; the religious zealot versus the polemical politician amid the Russian revolution.

Final Grade: (C)

THE HAMMER COLLECTOR'S CRYPT #21 (Summer 1979)

2011-06-19T11:18:00.000-04:00

Last year I purchased a collection of miscellaneous papers and golden age (pre-code) horror comics from an Estate sale. Included in the box were Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing Fan Club mimeographed magazines (with autographed pictures!!) and a modest collection of HAMMER COLLECTOR'S CRYPT newsletters. I'm going to scan and post the Hammer newsletters because they are rare and pretty cool, a time machine into the past before Hammer made a comeback of sorts. It's also neat to see the items for sale: who wouldn't give their eyeteeth to buy some of these collectables at 1979 prices? Please enjoy these and keep watching this blog as I post more issues every week. Click on the link to see al 16 pages!

https://picasaweb.google.com/100522347611882827220/HammerCrypt21?authkey=Gv1sRgCOmix5bmybS1WA#slideshow/5619942548522294482

THE GORGON (Terence Fisher, 1964)

2011-06-12T01:42:00.000-04:00

Beauty is possessed by the beast whose writhing gaze turns flesh into stone, and hardens the heart of her ardent lover. Director Terence Fisher is inspired by Greek mythology but forsakes details (Magaera is one of The Kindly Ones, spoiled of jealousy and ripe with fury, not one of the titular Gorgons!), to create an eerie metaphor of small town ignorance that sparks violence and one man’s destructive domestic dominance.

A village suffers the fate of the full moon as its inhabitants die systematically by being “Gorgonized” (yes, that term is used in the film): that is, they are turned to stone. The local Dr. Namaroff covers up this particular fact and buries the bodies quickly while forging autopsy reports. His lovely assistant Carla can turn a man’s specific organ to stone with her fiery hair and matronly passion, but suffers from blackouts…on the nights of the full moon. When a local girl is murdered and her lover seemingly commits suicide, the Coroner’s Inquest shouts its final judgment against the wishes of the dead boy’s father Professor Heitz: it was a murder/suicide. The Professor is a stranger in this strange town, threatened by the police and torch-wielding villagers who attempt to chase him away to allay their guilty conscious, to conceal their dreadful ignorance. He is lured to the deserted Castle Borski which looms like some skeletal sentinel above the town, by a sing-song temptress and he too gets rocked. Professor Heitz’s son Paul then journeys to this rural charnel house to investigate and uncovers a bedrock conspiracy that must be shattered to fracture the two thousand year old curse…and save his true love.

Fisher suffuses the film with the right amount of energy and exposition, charging headlong through plot points gaining frantic momentum, while allowing the characters room to exist beyond the need for narrative fodder. Peter Cushing as the possessive Dr. Namaroff and Christopher Lee as Dr. Meister both fulfill their rolls with scene stealing aplomb, while Barbara Shelly as the cursed victim and Richard Pasco as her infatuation are also exemplary. Fisher’s use of saturated daytime colors and thick nighttime shadows is a juxtaposition of chilling intent, and the use of reflections in mirrors and pools of turgid water or the soft surrah of a Siren’s call are palpably delicious. The final scene is the great reveal, and when the Gorgon appears it’s a rather mundane head-severing climax. The ending is a bleak morass of nihilistic proportions, as Dr. Meister remains the sole (or soul) survivor; everyone else just got stoned.

Final Grade: (B)

THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (Terence Fisher, 1958)

2011-06-05T22:49:00.000-04:00

Viktor Frankenstein in one step ahead of the guillotine and trades a priest’s death for another chance at forging life. Terence Fisher’s blackly humorous sequel doesn’t suffer from a irony deficiency, as the Baron must transplant himself into a new village under an assumed name, then suffer another kind of transplant with a little help from his friend.

The first scene picks up from the epilogue of THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN as the Baron is being led to his execution. A subtle gesture to a deformed assistant and the hooded executioner while a priest babbles biblical nonsense, cuts suddenly to the rusty blade descending: a quick jump cut juxtaposes a man’s scream over the drunken laughter in some nearby tavern, as two bumbling alcoholics bicker and argue about completing a mysterious job for a few dollars. Of course, they dig up the unmarked grave and discover a cheap wooden coffin with Frankenstein’s name carved upon it: inside is the beheaded corpse of the priest.

Dr. Stein now has a successful practice in a far away town and is blackmailed by another physician, who knows his secret identity. With the help of their deformed assistant, the two scientists place his brain into a healthier body but Dr. Stein seems nonplussed with the cannibalistic side-effects of his last operation. Interestingly enough, the new creation becomes infatuated with a buxom nurse and destroys his old body, starting life anew by burning away the past. But he is victimized and his brain damaged, devolving into animal instinct, craving human flesh. With part of his mind intact, he understands the beast he has become and curses Frankenstein before a large crowd, revealing the Doctor’s secret.

In a neat twist of fate, Frankenstein is murdered by the very patients he was helping to heal (though he never wasted parts) and his cohort cuts out the brain and transplants it into a Peter Cushing look-alike. He is now Dr. Franck in London ready to see his first patient. But is he competent…or cannibal?

Final Grade: (B)

HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR, EPISODE 1: THE HOUSE THAT BLED TO DEATH (Tom Clegg, 1980)

2011-05-30T00:03:00.000-04:00

A couple move into a dilapidated house, a run-down sepulcher now occupied by the spirit of greed. What at first seems to be a typical haunted house film that relies on genre tropes soon turns the corner into sublime prevarication, where the supernatural becomes the super rational.

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-)

FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL (Terence Fisher, 1974)

2011-05-24T19:57:00.001-04:00

The Baron’s sanity is hidden within the confines of an asylum, his insidious collection assembled into a caricature of humanity. Hammer’s fifth installment of the patchwork franchise finds the Baron as a more affable protagonist, attempting to pacify the criminally insane and ease their maladies, though never hesitating to utilize disposable body parts for his experiment.

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-)

TWINS OF EVIL (John Hough, 1971)

2011-05-18T17:20:00.000-04:00

A tale of two men who worship different sides of the same ignoble entity, realizing their potential with the blood of innocents. John Hough's divisive drama splits one beautifully naive sister from her libidinous twin as a metaphor depicting the cruelty of good intentions refracted through a glass darkly, a vampiric reflection of vile deeds.

The premise concerns waifish twin sisters who are forced to live with their uncle, the detestable Gustav Weil (pronounced vile), whose bible thumping leads to witch burning. Weil isn't concerned with trials or evidence; he and his brotherhood are judge, jury, and executioner, murdering any woman of questionable lifestyle. Karnstein is a local Count who is immune to local law and custom, a man who revels in the basest of desires. Though Weil and Karnstein are dead set against one another, they are twins of evil deeds. The Count soon tires of the bloodletting and becomes a vampiric minion of Satan. The classic vampire tale is not much concerned with the undead; it is a cautionary Victorian tale of the women who enjoy their sexuality...and the dire consequences.

Hough’s direction is unremarkable and the editing confusing as characters move from scene to scene outside of narrative time. He shoots the night sequences in bright daylight, using blue filters to give the illusion of darkness, but the long shadows and blue sky dispel disbelief. Peter Cushing as Weil is wonderfully brutal and immoderate, a departure from the elegant heroes he so often portrays. The nudity is abbreviated while the cleavage is maximized to great effect, but the blood flows more freely than either.

Final Grade: (C)

THE MAN WHO COULD CHEAT DEATH (Terence Fisher, 1959)

2011-05-14T19:22:00.000-04:00

Portrait of an artist as an old man hidden behind an illusion of flesh and bone, one gland away from the tomb. Director Terence Fisher directs this talky and rather mawkish tale of jealousy, betrayal, and temporary immortality.

Georges Bonnet is a renowned artist and doctor who has lived for over a hundred years. Every ten years, he must undergo an operation (that only his now elderly colleague can perform) to replace some mysterious gland in his abdomen. As the time grows ever closer for the surgery, he becomes devoured by madness and must drink a bubbling potion before he rots away.

The film begins in 19th century Paris as Bonnet greets his guests to reveal his new creation, a bust of the lovely Margo. But the sudden appearance of Janine (the beautiful and classy Hazel Court!) a past model and lover sparks his burning desire to stay alive...and give her his fleshy gland! The film has only a few sets and becomes too talky as characters regurgitate exposition, revealing the past and present tense through terse dialogue, thus suffocating suspense and interest. Anton Diffring portrays the antagonist Bonnet and is hilariously prone to starring off-camera in key scenes, while Christopher Lee is unceremoniously relegated to a secondary role (though he is magnificent, as usual). The narrative calculations just don’t add up as it attempts to multiply suspense by adding a Detective, hot on the trail of a missing women. The film is visually interesting with Hammer's slavish attention to period detail in the costumes and set designs.

Finally Bonnet is consumed in a squelchy and searing climax of gooey makeup and kerosene. The film builds to just this moment but fails to deliver a gory denouement and becomes a bit of a meltdown...err...letdown.

Final Grade: (D)

YESTERDAY'S ENEMY (Val Guest, 1959)

2011-05-08T11:44:00.000-04:00

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)

THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN (Val Guest, 1957)

2011-05-03T15:02:00.000-04:00

Two disparate men search for the mystifying and elusive Yeti in the shadow of Mt. Everest, good intentions eclipsed by the ugly demon of avarice. Val Guest directs this metaphysical and metaphorical tale that may be set atop the highest mountain but casts a dehumanizing shadow into the deep valleys of the human soul.

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)

THE MANIAC (Michael Carreras, 1963)

2011-04-30T17:25:00.000-04:00

A young girl is sexually assaulted by a stranger and her father tortures the perpetrator, losing his mind in the emotional conflagration. Years later, an unlucky American finds a place in this broken home and suffers the fiery consequences. Michael Carreras’ proficient thriller may be lacking in internal logic but burns like an acetylene torch.

Paul is a young American, exiled to a small French village after settling affairs with his girlfriend, where a stiff drink leads to his dropping a stiff in the drink, so to speak. He flirts with Annette, the beautiful waitress whose dark eyes mirror her troubled past but Paul is seduced by her Mother-in-law Eve, who owns the bar. This ménage a trios is a triple threat and Paul soon follows his heart instead of his morals. After discovering the dark family secret (Eve’s husband is sentenced to an Asylum for murdering the rapist who molested Annette), Paul decides to help Eve with a plan to help her husband escape and start a new life. Paul even balks at the idea since he’s sleeping with a married woman, and he knows Eve's husband doesn’t take to having his family ‘spoiled”, but Eve convinces him that the marriage is mutually ended. Why Eve doesn’t just legally divorce her husband is never explained, but Paul’s good intentions pave the road to hell and brimstone.

The black and white cinematography is exceptional adding to the gritty realism with Cinemascope compositions shot on location, and chiaroscuro effects that deepen the suspense. The film slows considerably when the inspector appears and spouts exposition like a narrator, insulting the audience’s temperament. Carreras smartly cuts away at the film’s explosive nexus of events though the surprise is properly foreshadowed, and the last scene utilizes oblique angles and dizzying heights that bring the thrilling climax crashing to the ground.

Final Grade: (B)

HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR, EPISODE 7: THE SILENT SCREAM (Alan Gibson, 1980)

2011-04-23T23:06:00.001-04:00

A convict’s humanity is transformed into nothing more than Pavlov’s dog, a groveling animal reduced to behavioral impulses. Alan Gibson directs this taught thriller that eschews the supernatural for the purely rational, an experiment of Mengeleian proportions where empathy succumbs to the scientific method and sadism takes the path of least moral resistance.

Peter Cushing portrays a seemingly gentle pet shop owner whose sympathetic visits to prison inspire Chuck to set his life straight. When Chuck is paroled, he is offered a job in the dank shop but soon becomes its victim, locked in a secret room, a cage without bars. His very nature dooms him, baited to commit a theft by his criminal impulses and his screams ring loudly from thick walls, freedom an electric discharge. The once friendly mentor is revealed to be a Nazi fugitive from one of the many Death Camps, his cruelty hidden beneath a veneer of aged wisdom. Chuck’s wife falls prey to the fatal trap and together they escape into another private hell, isolated from a world only yards away.

This is a nasty tale of greed and failed salvation, where a criminal momentarily reverts to past behavior and pays an unjust price while his wife becomes collateral damage. Though the sadistic Nazi meets his Munch-like fate, here there are no survivors: only animals in invisible cages.

Final Grade: (B+)

STOP ME BEFORE I KILL (Val Guest, 1960)

2011-04-17T22:06:00.001-04:00

A race car driver finds his life stuck in neutral after a terrible crash on his wedding night, his emotions twisted metal and impotent rage. Val Guest directs this thriller with the accelerator pushed firmly to the floor, a narrative that races through red flags towards a surprising climax.

Alan Colby is a world famous race car driver who can no longer run at full speed, suffering post traumatic stress that relegates him as a passenger to his docile wife. He must conquer the consuming fear of loss of motor control as his hands become weapons, murderous entities that seemingly act of their own accord. Unable to be physically aroused by his beautiful bride, he lashes out with unbridled violence, nearly strangling her with intimacy. Denise sticks by his side and seeks the help of a psychiatrist, but first Alan must swallow his pride and purge his guilty conscious.

Val Guest imbues the film with a riptide of dialogue as the characters trade barbs and malicious tirades, or collapse into crippled silence worn out from the maelstrom. Overlapping conversations heighten the sense of dynamic tension as Alan spins out of control while his wife stands by her man. Dr. Prade utilizes psychiatric gimmicks that would make professionals cringe (oxygen deprivation, drug therapy, hypnotic regression) that works well as a plot device, and finally gets to the root cause of the association between the crash and his urge to strangle his wife. It’s a clever link in the chain of events, as Alan is a man who controls his life with his hands, thundering horsepower his heartbeat…and it’s his hands that betray him. The suspense mounts between the trio: will Alan be cured, are Dr. Prade’s intentions therapeutic, and is Denise faithful?

Though the story relies on pop psychology (but so does Hitchcock’s SPELLBOUND) the final suspension of disbelief becomes refreshing and enlightening. The film begins with a car crash and fortunately doesn’t end as one.

Final Grade: (B-)

THE MUMMY'S SHROUD (John Gilling, 1967)

2011-04-07T22:01:00.004-04:00

Once again a Pharaoh’s curse is used as a convenient convention to resurrect the shrouded monstrosity whose rest is less than peaceful, murdering all who defiled his sacred tomb. John Gilling recycles the same tedious revenge scenario that is dominated by an excessive prologue (narrated by an uncredited Peter Cushing) that has to tell us instead of show us, so the first ten minutes become boring exposition.

The story’s fault lies not so much in the boilerplate plot but in creating unlikable characters. The greedy businessman Stanley Preston is so abrasive that the only frisson is awaiting his demise…which is woefully unsatisfying. Hammer wunderkind Michael Ripper gets a great part (and the majority of screen time) as the belittled aid de camp to Preston, and his death is wonderfully developed and sympathetic. But little tension is created as the narrative shambles along towards its climax as the good guy scientist and his busty protégé must discover the nexus between the nasty murders and finally unwrap the mystery.

THE MUMMY’S SHROUD is rather bland except for Michael Ripper’s slavish performance which imbues the film with emotion, while the dead eyes beneath the frightful Mummy makeup are disarming. Otherwise, a mundane addition to the Hammer oeuvre.

Final Grade: (C-)

THE CAMP ON BLOOD ISLAND (Val Guest, 1958)

2011-04-03T13:20:00.013-04:00

A stolid group of British POWs must contain an explosive secret from their captors or suffer the fallout. Val Guest directs this grimy sweathouse potboiler with a straightforward capacity of violent perception, as the ignoble Japanese soldiers are relegated to brutal masters without humanity, an insufferable truth averred to by survivors.

The violence begins as a skeletal soldier digs his own grave and is then machine-gunned into oblivion while the entire camp is forced to watch. The Japanese Major laughs and rebukes the British prisoners, a man without heart or conscience. He is opposed by a British Major who knows the score (and it’s not in their favor) and motivates his men to survive day by day, hour by hour, to do their duty in order to live…because the alternative is to die at the hands of savages. Here in this dank sepulcher of razor wire choked by the endless jungle, faith becomes as useless as coded verse; war’s hellish parable. Make no mistake, this is a tale told from one perspective, the Japanese relegated to caricature and the captives portrayed as heroic though still humanly fallible. David Lean’s epic BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI is a drama of men playing at war with its morality firmly displayed on a tattered sleeve; Val Guest’s film depicts desiccated and shriveled men refusing to die who have realized that war is no game.

Final Grade: (B)

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (Terence Fisher, 1959)

2010-12-18T21:11:00.001-05:00

A canine curse stalks the Baskerville heirs, its howl a death knell heard from the foggy moors to the grandiose mansion where the current Lord resides. Terence Fisher directs Hammer’s only adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s deductive detective, derived as more of a horror story than criminal investigation though still races at breakneck speed towards a bloody denouement.

Peter Cushing is excellent as the smarmy and pernicious Sherlock Holmes, his mannerisms as active as his mind: though Holmes is absent for most of the second act, Cushing steals the film in every scene. Christopher Lee as Sir Henry Baskerville, the latest target of the supposed curse, is woefully underwritten, relegated to plot device instead of proactivity. Andre Morell imbues Dr. Watson with a Doctorial wit, elevating him from bumbling sidekick to Holmes’ elementary peer.

The story is redacted then reduced to its basic elements, cutting to the narrative bone to allow complexities and exposition to be replaced with suspense and blood while everyone seems to be running in every scene. One great scene has Watson investigating a light in the mansion’s attic window: a shadow stalks him as he nears the door until he is lost in the penumbra, consumed by the mysterious perpetrator. It’s a momentary but neat effect and one of many flourishes that guide this towards Hammer tropes which inexplicably condemns it for Doyle purists.

The curse is revealed to be a shaggy dog story, and Holmes, once again proving his intellectual superiority takes full credit for services rendered.

Final Grade: (B+)

FRANKENSTEIN MUST BE DESTROYED (Terence Fisher, 1969)

2010-12-09T19:36:00.000-05:00

Victor Frankenstein has become a monstrous creation, his scientific obsession giving birth to murderous intent. The fifth film in the Frankenstein oeuvre depicts the Baron as corrupted and tainted by his desire to create life, an inhuman morality that feeds his vices: it is not blood that runs through his veins but bubbling toxins and viscous fluids, like the beakers full of mysterious liquids in his laboratory. In contrast, the creature whose brain he replaces becomes the most human, his plea for compassion and recognition eclipsed by the foreign vessel he now inhabits, unrecognizable by his loving wife.

Director Terence Fisher sets the tone in the opening scene with a gruesome beheading: as Frankenstein escapes, the plot becomes a police procedural with a bumbling Victorian Era Columbo hot on his trail of murder, blackmail, and rape. The Baron soon descends upon a town haunted by the mindless lunatic that was once a brilliant professor; a man locked in an asylum who discovered the secret spark that eludes Frankenstein. Peter Cushing exudes an evil charisma, turning his usual gentlemanly charm into a psychopathic rage, resorting to blackmail of a young doctor then raping his wife. It is a despicably sincere performance and one of Cushing’s best, as he plays against type and suffers his poetic justice.

The story has some nice touches which create suspense and sympathy, such as the young wife who buries a corpse in the backyard, only to have the water main burst: the shot of the body exhumed by the torrent, its palsied hand seeming to point its delirious accusation is wonderfully realized. The creature becomes a sympathetic link in the narrative chain: though the brain of the professor, a one-time collaborator with Frankenstein, is awakened in a new body, he is expunged by his doting wife and seen as a monster. He didn’t ask to be cruelly transformed and he seeks vengeance upon the one responsible. But the plot has one major flaw: Frankenstein transplants the brain of the dying professor into the body of a murdered surgeon, because he needs this professor’s secret to allow him to complete the operation successfully. It’s circular logic, as Frankenstein does complete the operation thus he never needed the professor to begin with.

Frankenstein is a modern day Prometheus, but he is consumed by the fire he sought to control.

Final Grade: (B+)

TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (Peter Sasdy, 1970)

2010-12-04T21:20:00.000-05:00

Three unwise men seek the company of the damned, wishing new experiences that transcend physical pleasures and unwittingly awaken the undead. Director Peter Sasdy drags out the first act and drains the film of all tension, virtually leaving a dried husk of a story that becomes risibly interesting due to skewed and competent cinematic compositions.

The three wealthy “gentleman” are mere plot devices that power the mechanics of Dracula’s vengeance: Hargood is despicably unlikable, Paxton is a meek follower, and Secker is the intellectual and the most interesting of the terrible triumvirate. Unfortunately, the film focuses primarily upon Hargood (whom we pray to dark gods gets his comeuppance!), a violent patriarch who disallows his stepdaughter Alice to romance Paxton’s son Paul…for no other reason than Hargood is a total asshole. The old men conspire with the bedeviled Aristocrat Courtley, a young man denounced and expunged by his own family but inhabiting a shady brothel. The whorehouse scene is full of buxom young ladies flashing breasts, a sensual snake dance, all imbued with homo eroticism: here, the Victorian Age meets the Psychedelic 60‘s. Courtley becomes the most interesting character, sporting groovy sideburns and spitting venomous expletives, a man absorbed by the dark side. He convinces the old men to purchase a box full of Dracula’s possessions, recovered in the film’s introduction by an antique collector who witnessed closing sequence of DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE, and together they perform the Black Mass of red powder.

Courtley is subsumed by Dracula after drinking the clotted concoction, and now the titular undead haunts the abandoned Church, gives his bloody kiss to Sacker’s daughter, and hypnotizes Alice: all to seek revenge on the three men who caused his servant’s demise. As Paul follows the advice of his father’s dead cohort, he races against the setting sun to reach Dracula’s tomb and save his true love. In a nice finale, Dracula is driven towards a plate glass window adorned with a crucifix, and we see the desecrated Church as it once was, as a house of god, and a ray of son-light beams through the window causing him to fall upon the altar as the Lord’s Prayer echoes throughout the gothic antechamber. Skewed POV perspectives create a vertiginous climax as Dracula, descending like a fallen angel, disintegrates into red dust once again. Maybe this time they’ll properly dispose of his remains. Then again…maybe not.

Final Grade: (B-)

DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (Freddie Francis, 1968)

2010-10-12T16:36:00.000-04:00

Two men must discard the nihilistic pantheon of the void and grasp the sharp edge of true faith because their very souls are at stake. Director Freddie Francis focuses his cinematic talent upon the seductive Count and his virginal bloodletting, telling a tale of ravenous sexuality and revenge.

The story begins with blood-soaked hemp that rings the chimes at midnight, when death rattles it last breath upon a frightened village. The nameless Priest is lost in the shadow of doubt, consumed by Dracula’s castle that still looms above the town like a deadly sentinel, a beacon of evil in the starless night. When the regional Monsignor visits, he must put the fear to final rest, and he and the Priest hike towards the malignant edifice with a cross to bear. The Priest can go no further and succumbs to his sickening fear, while the Monsignor claims the unhallowed ground in the name of The Lord with a giant crucifix. A storm causes the Priest to stumble upon his rocky descent, both spiritual and physical, and spills his faithless blood (by chance) into the mouth of Dracula, held in a frozen stasis.

Dracula has now risen not so much from the grave (he wasn’t buried) but from a frozen pond, with the Priest as his human lackey. The fanged antagonist seeks revenge on the Monsignor for consecrating the isolated castle, and tracks him down to raise Hell. A subplot involves the Monsignor’s daughter Maria and her affair with a baker’s son Paul, an avowed atheist who worships upon the altar of scientific method, creating a religious melodrama. Dracula easily seduces and infects the buxom tavern wench Zena who has a crush on Paul, and uses her to lure Maria to her everlasting doom.

The story is infused with lascivious humor, such as the scene when a drunken Paul is helped into bed by Zena, who begins to kiss and unzip his pants when Maria appears unannounced. The look of sexual frustration upon Zena’s face is priceless, and she makes no apologies about her libidinous intentions. The film is ripe with sexuality as Dracula sucks the life from Zena and seduces Maria, taking her virginity and tainting her body. Paul still doesn’t believe in the Almighty so when he drives a wooden stake through Dracula’s heart, it has no effect. Together, he and the Priest must make amends (and amens!) with their god to destroy him once and for all. That is, until the next movie.

Final Grade: (B)

THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN (Freddie Francis, 1963)

2010-10-10T00:20:00.000-04:00

A mute outcast’s silent scream thaws the Baron’s heart and his frozen mass of patchwork flesh. Freddie Francis neglects the original chapter in the Frankenstein oeuvre and reinvents the creature’s origin and its creator’s apparent demise, even reconfiguring the monster’s visage to resemble the iconic Universal avatar.

Baron Frankenstein and his assistant rebuild the fractured laboratory in the now forsaken castle, spurned by locals and cursed by their immoral oaths. They are chased into the mountains and find solace with another outcast Rena, a beautiful young lady who is bullied because of her physical handicap: she is deaf and mute. By chance (or just poor writing) her cave is next to the spot were the creature was frozen in time, held in stasis in a timeless glacier. Once thawed, the damaged brain cannot function and the baron seeks out the help of Zoltan, to hypnotize and ignite the spark of life in the fractured convolutions of its brain. But Zoltan retains control of the hulking harbinger and utilizes its strength and stealth to get rich quickly. The film’s title becomes a misnomer because it’s Zoltan’s intentions that are corrupt, while the Baron only wishes to heal his monstrous child. I suppose THE EVIL INTENTIONS OF ZOLTAN just doesn’t quite fit the Frankenstein cannon.

The Baron’s ethical dilemma is to put science above faith, to mold and create instead of kowtowing to an imaginary and facetious god: therefore, the Baron himself (and Homo Sapiens) is a malignant conglomeration of disparate biology assembled by a deranged mind of an omnipotent child. Zoltan remains the one culpable for the deaths though it is the protagonist who is held responsible, whereas the creature is only a construct seemingly without original sin.

Freddie Francis’ directs the film but his influence upon the cinematography is dramatic, utilizing deep focus that juggles multiple characters and actions in Scope compositions. Francis propels the story along with few establishing shots and expunges exposition for the sake of pacing. The laboratory design is prototypical, with large Tesla coils vomiting electricity and giant globes full of blue energy, becoming a place where another kind of Arc brings life to a lifeless void.

Final Grade: (B)

THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE (Don Sharp, 1963)

2010-10-03T00:07:00.000-04:00

A honeymoon falls victim to the full moon and a murder of vampires, their passion consummated upon an altar of blood. Hammer resuscitates their bloodthirsty genre by omitting the clichéd Count, going for the jugular with a tale of decadent Victorian morality and tainted sexuality repressed by virgin urgency.

Director Don Sharp begins the film with funerary precision as a dark shape looms above the procession like a gargoyle. As the ceremony nears its last rights, a man appears before the grave and with a menacing look, demands a shovel. He then thrusts it like steel spike through the coffin and an inhuman scream tears through the chill air, as blood boils from the casket’s open wound. The family runs in fear as he hovers over the open grave, a close-up revealing the weary years of alcohol and anxiety, as if some deep trauma has taken root upon his blackened heart. This is one my favorite opening scenes in the Hammer oeuvre!

The plot involves newlyweds Gerald and Marianne trapped in a rural village who become guests of the local lord Dr. Ravena and his incised siblings. The “good” doctor indoctrinates Marianne into the libidinous virtues of undeath while condemning Gerald to eternal bachelorhood. But the local drunk Professor Zimmer is a vampire hunter who knows the spell that can summon evil to fight evil, and together he and Gerald must save Marianne while destroying the cult of hemoglobin as its red blood cells gather together for an evening of dancing with the stars. Zimmer casts the spell and summons a colony of rubbery vampire bats which devour the cultists, magically hovering over squirming victims or confined by silly strings. Though the SPFX are laughable, the fluttering and gruesome climax is still an apologetic poetic justice.

A few interesting flourishes include the details of Zimmer’s shack: look closely on the wall for the cross that Peter Cushing presents in BRIDES OF DRACULA, then loses in the windmill finale. Or Gerald’s escape from the two-fanged Doctor as he makes a cross in his own blood to drive away the sultry vamps. I also like the ominous piano concerto that mesmerizes Marianne, like the girl with the faraway eyes. Even the introduction of the motorcar reveals a metaphor concerning the unchanging past and uncertain future, as evil transcends human time and temporal understanding.

Final Grade: (B)

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (Terence Fisher, 1960)

2010-09-25T22:06:00.001-04:00

A mother feeds voluptuous vixens to her insatiable progeny; a son kept in bondage, forever young, and unable to fly the coup…so to speak. Terence Fisher’s sequel to Hammer’s DRACULA is an adventurous tale of vampirism masquerading as sexual addiction, ripe with a homoerotic and incestuous riptide, where feminism suffers a crushing defeat at the hands of a seductive man.

Marianne is a teacher sidetracked on her journey to a private school, her fiery tresses and alluring accent arousing the libidos of nearly every man…and the jealousies of women. She accepts an offer to spend the night in a foreboding castle and out of pity, releases a venereal disease upon the local community. But Dr. Van Helsing arrives secure in his science and faith to cure this rampant infection. The bloodthirsty Baron turns on his own mother, and in one touching scene Helsing releases her from damnation so she can finally rest in peace, her sins forgiven by a higher authority.

The Baron surrounds himself with ashen faced vixens and his human servant Greta, who doesn’t suffer the aversion to the cross. One creepy scene involves padlocks falling off the coffin of the newly deceased Gina, who rises and apologizes to Marianne for having kissed her fiancé the Baron, then advances upon her for her own delightful foreplay. Helsing’s momentary victory leads them all to a windmill, where he is tainted by the vampire and cauterizes the wound, washing away the curse with holy water. Why doesn’t he die (and rise) immediately like the others?

The confrontation in the ghostly windmill is a tour-de-force ending, as Van Helsing’s faith overpowers any shadow of a doubt.

Final Grade: (B+)

DIE! DIE! MY DARLING! (Silvio Narizzano, 1965)

2010-09-19T23:42:00.000-04:00

A cat and mouse game played in the confines of an Victorian mansion, as a young femme feline is hounded by religious dogma. Richard Matheson adapts Anne Blaisdell’s novel NIGHTMARE but embellishes the story with his palsied humor ripe with pre-marital strife, a union falling to pieces before it even joins in holy matrimony.

Patricia decides to visit to her ex-fiancé’s mother-in-law, to pay her final respects to the memory of the man she once loved, to ease the suffering of a woman who has lost both a son and potential daughter. Pat is a fiery American Girl, raised on promises and the spirit of independence, whose vexing relationship with her new lover is apparent from the outset: Patricia takes accelerates towards her fateful destination. She soon learns that Mrs. Trefoile (a wonderfully zany and overwrought performance from Tallulah Bankhead) is a religious nut who has finally cracked, surrounding herself with servants who exploit her madness in hopes of an inheritance, with a minor appearance of Donald Sutherland as Joseph, a mentally challenged handyman.

The film can be read as a treatise on religion when scripture supersedes law and human rights, whether screeched by the extremist or preached by the conservative. Mrs. Trefoile condemns the wicked Patricia because she isn’t pure and has tainted her son’s everlasting soul, and locks her up until she can be spiritually cleansed. The story also becomes a conflict between beauty and the beast: in other words, youth and old age. Patricia is forbidden from wearing makeup and wearing red (the Devil’s color) so she can be a sexless form of clay and mud. But Mrs. Trefoile was once a refined beauty, revealed in her secret room dominated by a painting of her deceased son, painted shortly before his death. Patricia attempts escape after escape and is never willing to compromise her life, and spends most of the film in bondage, slapped around, and verbally abused. Mrs. Trefoile does god’s work and punishes her perverted servant, and suffers the consequences of trusting a backstabbing maid.

Final Grade: (B)

PARANOIAC (Freddie Francis, 1963)

2010-09-16T22:04:00.001-04:00

A dysfunctional family feud becomes a funeral procession as an ancient organ bleats a tormented tune. Freddie Francis imprints this delightfully paranoid celluloid with his signature touch, juxtaposing suspense and melodrama into a sordid mixture of horror where a family’s fortune is an inheritance of nihilism.

Oliver Reed as Simon the drunken antagonist steals nearly every scene, chewing up the scenery with devilish delight, his sharp eyes and Cheshire grin reflecting a playful yet pugnacious nature, like a bully with a grim sense of humor. Simon says and the deranged Aunt follows, her masquerade a chilling falsetto echoing through an empty cathedral, abandoned by both god and sanity. As Simon plans to drive his sister to her grave, his journey ends in his own final resting place of brimstone and hellfire.

The beautiful black and white Scope cinematography is often utilized for triptych compositions, as deep focus allows mise-en-scene to impart information through background events. Francis’ skewed angles are scored with eerie etude, and the pacing induces just the right amount of suspense without overzealous exposition. The opening scene is wonderful, as Francis introduces the family members one at a time (even the grave of the dead ones) with an unbroken crane shot, focusing upon each character and alluding to their unique personality traits. It is the perfect setup for the mystery to come.

The convoluted plot points an accusing finger at each character except Eleanor, who remains the femme whose fate seems written in blood, her sanity cursed and stripped away without last rights. Traumatized by the death of her parents and the suicide, years before, of her little brother Tony, she is now haunted by the grown up image of her sibling who proves more flesh than bloodline. Invested by an incestuous affair, Eleanor nearly completes Simon’s murderous recipe for inheritance. But the truth sets her free and condemns Simon, self-medicating his malignant guilt with an excess of alcohol, to a burning embrace with his desiccated brother, evermore.

Final Grade: (B+)

X THE UNKNOWN (Leslie Norman, 1956)

2010-09-12T18:18:00.000-04:00

The Earth belches forth a parasite that feeds upon the fission of the Atomic Age, its amorphous symmetry laying radioactive waste to the surface world in its endless quest for sustenance. Hammer Films mimics the American zeitgeist of Cold War fiction, adventuring into this hybrid genre of science and horror that actually spawns it’s own grotesque cinematic bastard child: THE BLOB.

The film begins with restless soldiers during a training exercise, their Geiger counter clicking away in search of a harmlessly radioactive ingot. Suddenly, the ground erupts with fire and brimstone as a crack in the world opens into a grinning chasm, and a soldier’s flesh blisters with radiation burns. The bottomless hole vomit’s a sentient protoplasm that searches for nourishment, plentiful in the modern world of nuclear armament, this food of the gods. The roiling weapon of mass destruction consumes everything in its path, and one lone scientist has a theory that can render the charged creature neutral, as the army is impotent to stop its day of wrath.

Director Leslie Norman evokes a chilling suspense with bleak black and white photography, as landscapes of shadow and fog become the hunting grounds for this unknown evil. The story progresses logically and thrums with tension, as Dr. Royston’s erector set laboratory becomes the nexus of the investigation. Stunned into silence when a dead boy’s parents hold him morally culpable for the child’s gruesome demise, Dr. Royston must perfect his experiment quickly in order to save the world. American science fiction of the Cold War era is ripe with conflict between science and the military, but here the two work together to solve this violent equation.

The final act seems too rushed, as belief is suspended between two trucks that must have been built in a few hours (at most), utilizing Dr. Royston’s esoteric experiment. But they race to capture the malignant mass between two sonic disruptors and blast it to oblivion. As the film fades to black, we wonder if other denizens of this underground labyrinth will someday surface to feed again.

Final grade: (B)

THE MUMMY (Terence Fisher, 1959)

2010-09-06T22:16:00.000-04:00

Karnak is a nearly forgotten Egyptian deity, his murderous worshipper fueling the vengeful god’s wrath: a shambling and forlorn Priest relegated to undeath for a forbidden love. Hammer brings another Universal icon back from the dead, as Terence Fisher’s practical direction propels this adventurous tale into a suspenseful second act and explodes with a frightening denouement that is surprisingly compassionate.

The film begins in the scorching desert heat of Egypt amid the burning passion of obsession, as Stephen Banning and son John, sidelined with a broken leg, uncover that obscure object of archeological desire: the tomb of Princess Ananka. But a local mystic Mehemet Bey who still carries the torch for this anachronistic god warns them of their folly. Soon, science must accept and combat the paranormal, as a four thousand year old creature lurks from its secret doom to destroy those responsible for disturbing the sacred burial tomb of its lover.

The set designs and costumes are wonderful: the Princess’ tomb is aglow with green mood lighting, walls etched with meaningless but artful hieroglyphics, her sarcophagus a prop that is a work of art itself, and the colorful garments that may not be historically accurate but pop off the screen in urgent primary colors. Even John Banning’s folder is laden with beautiful sketches that capture the sculptured visage of leading lady Yvonne Ferneaux, whose physical duplicity transcends the centuries. Peter Cushing’s stoically intellectual persona imbues his character with scientific heroism, and George Pastell is gleefully evil as the Egyptian magician. But the real star is Christopher Lee, who is revisited through flashbacks but is able to impart a tortured compassion through those big brown eyes, swathed in mangled bandages, a human being now cursed by the god he once worshipped…a victim of love.

As the mummy sinks to its watery grave grasping the well preserved Scroll of Life, it’s the power of Lee’s mostly obscured performance that allows the audience to feel pity for its cruel fate.

Final grade: (B+)

STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING (Peter Collinson, 1972)

2010-09-03T22:03:00.000-04:00

A shy young woman leaves home seeking the joys of motherhood only to discover the hysteria of pregnancy, her life aborted and preserved forever on magnetic tape: a real voice relegated to the reel. Peter Collinson’s psychedelic thriller projects a Nicolas Roeg LSD unreality, utilizing flash-quick cross-cutting and juxtaposing disparate imagery and overlapping dialogue, creating a disorienting sense of a timid young girl lost in a grave new world.

The first half-hour is a montage of dreamlike imagery as Brenda takes flight, leaving her lonely mother to wander restlessly like a ghost in an abandoned cemetery. Brenda lands in swinging London and is taken under the wing of the beautifully promiscuous Caroline, who truly seems to care for our lost and rather physically mundane protagonist. Brenda is pregnant with the idea of being pregnant, and searches for a man to bed her: unfortunately, her attempts lead to rejection and emotional abortion. That is, until Tinker leads her to a man relegated to eternal youth, a blonde haired Peter Pan whose physicality reflects a fractured and ageless androgyny. Peter christens Brenda with a new identity, and she becomes Wendy, lost in a fabled imagination of children’s stories scratched into her notebook.

The bleak story shows very little blood or gore, and eschews the Hammer formula with its modern setting and filming, taking to the chaotic streets where the flats become organized like prison blocks. The final act becomes a static set: Peter’s apartment where “Wendy” discovers the true nature of her nurtured donor. The film doesn’t explain Peter’s motivations and therein is birthed the real horror, a killer who stalks London that isn’t the typical cinematic hebephrenic maniac. It’s compelling though not completely successful in sustaining suspense, as the characters become less sympathetic as the story progresses. Collinson’s cinematography is exciting and the quicksilver editing lends an artistic flair, otherwise the film would sink into a morass of structural cliché.

Wendy’s journey begins straight on till morning and ends with the dark night of the soulless. This may be the most nihilistic denouement in the Hammer filmography.

Final Grade: (B)

THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (Terence Fisher, 1957)

2010-08-29T22:48:00.000-04:00

The thirst for knowledge is slaked with blood, as science unleashes the power of creation without morality, the deadly chemistry of human nature set ablaze by the fire from the gods. Hammer Films resurrects Mary Shelley’s creation in vivid color, a story whose half-life is as modern as the fallout from the Atomic Age, a prescient parable that spans time: though set in Victorian England, its message looms as large as the disfigured victims of Oppenheimer’s folly.

Terence Fisher directs this exciting and Technicolor nightmare, pitting a young Baron Victor Frankenstein against his mentor Paul Krempe, their conflict not only an ethical dilemma but an undercurrent of unrequited obsession. Once Victor crosses the line by murdering to achieve his goals, Paul distances himself from his cohort but remains attached in emotional bondage to the lovely Elizabeth, whom he wishes to spare from her husband’s moral cruelty. Paul is ever the gentleman, never crossing social boundaries himself, the scientist who reveres the selflessness of his work, opposed to the selfishness of Victor, whose Promethean egoism is his eventual downfall.

The film begins in a dungeon cell where the walls weep viscous tears, a raving Victor averring his innocence of the crime for which he was convicted. The story then becomes a flashback, and like every criminal tale it becomes exculpatory, unbelievable, and desperate. His punishment carries a conspiratorial sense of Justice: he pleads his innocence for Justine’s murder and it’s true that the creature (which has conveniently dissolved) strangler her to death, but he sent her to this gruesome end. But Victor is too blinded by science to believe his own guilt, blaming instead his damaged creation, intellectually crippled by Paul’s interference.

The story becomes a pretext for mankind’s toying in the clockwork of heavenly conception, unwinding the springs of electric impulse and restarting our tick-tock hearts. But it can also be seen as a Cold War parable of unleashing the atom, a power now beyond control, feared knowledge now spread like a virus among political psychopaths.

Christopher Lee projects a deep sadness and self-loathing as the nameless creature, his madness beyond control and deserving of compassion. When the creature is first revealed, Fisher trucks the camera in quickly for a startling close-up, recreating a demented version of John Ford’s dramatic introduction of John Wayne in the classic STAGECOACH! In another unnerving scene, Victor excitedly shares his success with Paul (who believed the experiment destroyed) and the creature, collapsed like an abused animal, suddenly hides its face in shame revealing intelligence and self-enlightenment. Then Victor begins his dehumanization by barking orders, treating it worse than the dog he revived earlier in the story. Finally, Victor’s ultimate search for a head results in the loss of his own. Or does it?

Final Grade: (B+)

NIGHTMARE (Freddie Francis, 1964)

2010-08-26T17:06:00.000-04:00

Janet wanders the chiaroscuro corridors of a disordered mind, her sanity never far removed from the madding crowd. Freddie Francis directs this fearful tale of a young woman consumed with the fear of inheriting her mother’s mental illness, and still suffering the vertiginous trauma of domestic violence.

Francis directs the film but must have greatly influenced every Scope composition as it bears his intense and intriguing visual signature. The imbalanced and schizophrenic structure that leads to an EC Comics style payoff is less seducing than the cinematography, the wonderful mise-en-scene and deep focus photography, which allows characters to stay in focus as they disappear from the screen like ghosts. Bold lighting effects transform a mansion into a gothic sepulcher, with ghastly shadows haunting the walls and disembodied voices whispering hushed secrets from beyond. It also sports one of the creepiest dolls ever, its plastic face a malignant chorus of silent accusation.

The first half of the story focuses upon Janet, a teenager whose visceral nightmares carry the viscous weight of reality, and soon she fails to differentiate the two. Her past trauma is revealed and soon we learn the secret: she has been manipulated into madness and murder. The second half concerns those responsible and it immediately becomes evident that someone is intent upon poetic justice. The story remains intriguing and intense while Janet treads the dark waters of sanity, but becomes mundane when the crime is revealed. The usual suspects are so unlikable and shrill that the only pleasure is in discovering who is taunting them, playing them against one another: unfortunately, it’s not very difficult to guess. NIGHTMARE is a minor thriller that shines with elegant black and white cinematography.

Final Grade: (B-)

DRACULA (Terence Fisher, 1958)

2010-08-23T23:35:00.001-04:00

Two men embark upon the destruction of the King of Undeath, the venomous creature spreading its infection throughout Europe: the cost is paid in blood, their eternal souls at stake. Terence Fisher directs this Hammer masterpiece of climactic fury, resurrecting Dracula with a narrative economy that cuts directly to the chase.

Jonathan Harker travels to the foreboding castle to end the unlife of the vile Count, thinly disguised as the new librarian. He encounters a desperate woman whose indelible bite tattoos his intent upon his throat. After discovering the rather easily identifiable antechamber, he first stakes the lascivious vampire through the heart, revealing a shriveled corpse in the wake of bloodletting. Dracula awakens and slakes his thirst turning Harker into a minion, whose sleep of restless death is eventually ended by a hammer blow of violent compassion. Jonathan, here’s a hint: always kill the Big Baddy first and worry about the servants later, especially if they become powerless after losing their bloodthirsty benefactor!

Fisher transmutes the story into an action film, allowing just he right amount of suspense, melodrama, and violence to span our attention. Van Helsing’s journey to the castle and discovery of his cohorts demise is shown through a few establishing shots tainted with a ghostly atmosphere: a nice shot of Van Helsing with a shattered picture frame, a torn corner of a photograph we know to be Lucy’s stuck in the corner. This mise-en-scene conveys much information: Dracula ripped the photo from the frame, knows who and where Lucy is, and will turn this beautiful portrait into an icon of horror. The film then races against time as Van Helsing must convince Lucy’s brother Arthur that she can be protected, Arthur’s wife can be cured, and they must find the new hiding place of the nocturnal nightmare.

Dracula becomes a surreal spectacle of sexual addiction, as Lucy awakens each night excitedly expecting to share her viscous elixir, and Mina seems rosy and nearly orgasmic with life after being pierced by the Count. Arthur’s decision nearly costs him the eternal soul of his wife, but the sun’s rays of hope and crossed candlesticks save Mina from her near-undeath experience.

Final Grade: (A)

SCREAM OF FEAR (Seth Holt, 1961)

2010-08-20T22:43:00.001-04:00

Penny is seemingly a young girl whose thoughts are worth a great deal more than a copper cent, her dexterous mind imprisoned in a crippled tomb of flesh and bone. Seth Holt directs a deft little thriller whose labyrinthine twists lead through a gothic mansion of murderous intent and end upon the crashing surf.

Holt begins the first act with a dark haired young girl being pulled from a lake, the Alps rising above the scenario like some Olympian requiem. Her dead face remains hidden, a claw like hand groping towards the heavens, her identity revealed as only a shock of black hair sticking out from under a tarp. Holt then jump cuts to a jet plain landing in France and we witness out protagonist, a raven haired beauty confined to a wheelchair. This ambiguity propels the story: are we seeing a flashback that will lead to her demise, the plot now concerned with the facts of the possible crime?

Douglas Slocombe’s striking cinematography creates an eerie disjointed atmosphere and help the mystery enter deep waters, utilizing deep focus to highlight foreground elements while revealing subtle information in the background. Strange candles whose light flickers like demon tongues, triptych compositions that in retrospect contain key objective evidence, and underwater photography whose ghastly elements shock and awe. The soundtrack is embedded with the annoying habit of chirruping crickets and singsong birds, helping the audience to delineate night and day in this colorless film. In one indoor scene, Penny and her Stepmother are having dinner and their contentious conversation ebbs to reveal crickets…inside the house. The acting is first rate with Christopher Lee subverting expectations, and Susan Strasberg perfectly capturing the dichotomy of emotional reactionary and masterful proactivity.

The narrative is awash with red herrings but remember: in water, no one can hear you scream!

Final Grade: (B+)

THE LOST CONTINENT (Michael Carreras, 1968)

2010-08-14T20:51:00.000-04:00

A tramp steamer transports a cargo of explosives, a chemical admixture secreted in the watertight hold and a group of conflicting personalities, all about to detonate. Michael Carreras directs this conglomeration of fantasy and melodrama which is barely kept afloat by the hot air of imbecilic imaginations.

Carreras’ film wastes the first half by focusing upon a group of fugitive characters, each revealing their sordid past and the reason they chose to escape from Africa on this rusting hulk: a Doctor and his nymphomaniacal daughter, an aging and once famous actress, a mysterious dark haired man, and the ubiquitous alcoholic. The Captain orders his crew full steam ahead, outrunning customs and making for the open sea even as he ignores a Hurricane warning. Carreras often films the characters in close up sheathed in sweat, creating a grimy atmosphere that distances the audience from any compassion, as if their inner guilt is painted upon faces. The fault here is that the characters remain unlikable, and we remain more concerned with getting to the fantasy elements.

Eventually the ship is plot-bound in the Sargasso Sea, the killer kelp and sentient seaweed clutching dangerously at their flesh, the seascape haunted by the ghosts of aging ships that loom like dinosaur skeletons in the ominous mist. The crew become victims of a religious war between buxom land dwellers and descendants of the Inquisition, who hold dominion over the tangled morass. They walk on inflatable boots, their shoulders tethered with balloons to keep from sinking into the living mass, but it’s all very silly: why didn’t someone just make a big balloon and float away? Though the rubber monsters are built to scale (this would have benefited from Harryhausen’s magic!) and the costumes are cheesy, there remains a certain charm to the drama, partly because the actors play their part perfectly straight, full of vigor and vinegar.

The confusing part to the entire plot is that there is no continent: Sara the busty stranger alludes to her people living on land but it is never revealed, so the film’s title becomes amusing. Well, maybe the lost continent is so lost that even the story can’t find it! THE LOST CONTINENT is narratively incontinent.

Final Grade: (C-)

THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (Terence Fisher, 1961)

2010-08-11T22:30:00.000-04:00

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-)

THE WITCHES (Cyril Frankel, 1966)

2010-08-08T12:57:00.000-04:00

Gwen revives from a spiritual breakdown and is offered a second chance to teach in an idyllic rural village, her wealthy benefactor a man with a collar, not a leash. Director Cyril Frankel teams with the legendary actress Joan Fontaine to produce a suspenseful drama whose titular advertisements reveal the mystic spectacle, but nonetheless remains an enjoyable ballet of black magic.

The story begins with thunderous rhythms as Gwen prepare to depart her school in Africa, when suddenly she is assaulted by a Witch Doctor armed with a fetishistic mask, sacrificial blade and some Lovecraftian sorcery. She blacks out and the story jumps forward a few months as she is being interviewed for another teaching job, questions of her mental breakdown a contentious moment of brevity. Gwen soon finds herself in an ideal setting, with friendly folk who readily accept her into the fold.

The plot quickly jettisons exposition and allows the story to build slowly towards its expected resolution. A nice visual flares involve the local Butcher skinning a rabbit while holding a genial conversation with Gwen, but his wife’s look seems to hold back some dark foreboding knowledge: not only is this scene bloody and raw, it serves as a metaphor for Gwen’s status in the community and also foreshadows the wife’s actions.

Two young lovers are scorned and driven from one another, leaving the virginal young lady as a spell component for the mysterious High Priestess. The climactic ritual juxtaposes Satanism in the Western World with the primitive magic revealed in the opening scenes, and the sight of cavorting and orgiastic cultists eating feces and striking poses is both hilarious and slightly disarming: like a cross between Pasolini’s SALO and Adrian Lyne’s FLASHDANCE.

Immortality is written in Latin but empowered by the goblin of hemoglobin, and Gwen saves two souls with her own blood offering.

Final Grade: (B-)

FEAR IN THE NIGHT (Jimmy Sangster, 1972)

2010-08-06T08:13:00.001-04:00

A woman on the verge of another nervous breakdown seeks emotional shelter in a quicksilver marriage, where murder is just a shot away. Hammer regular Jimmy Sangster’s foray into Hitchcockian territory travels the beaten path of genre cliché, a boilerplate narrative whose plot devices become a genre vice. The story, like all Hammer Productions, uses a formulaic narrative economy that propels one scene to the next without exposition or transition: usually a positive, here it stalls the suspense while committing film’s greatest sin…it becomes boring.

Without regurgitating the entire plot, a few diabolical moments help the film become barely risible, conveying inspiration and lost potential. Peggy’s first attack by the one-armed person is considered delusional, a symptom as she is still recovering from her breakdown (whose explanation is never revealed), by people uninvolved in the complicated plot. This seems unreasonable, and Sangster could have structured the film as police procedural, building razor-wire tension until the shotgun climax. Instead, everyone is condescending towards Peggy and she becomes a caricature, a walking and talking narrative element as opposed to a three dimensional fiction. This is the basic flaw of the movie. Sangster also cross-cuts Peggy’s ordeals with her mysterious counseling sessions, her doctor’s face never revealed. Again, this is a wonderful setup for an ironic twist but this participle remains dangling.

The story travels to a deserted Boy’s School where disembodied voices echo throughout the hollow rooms, a place where hunched and ghostly forms haunt each room, and a lonely Headmaster wanders the convolutions of this deserted manor. The story fails again to generate much suspense and becomes too talky, relying on exposition instead of superstition. Peter Cushing as the Headmaster and Joan Collins as his predatory wife are woefully underwritten: though each is excellent in their allotted roles, they never appear in scene together. Joan Collins becomes a minor figment in this disillusioned story that descends from the briefly profound to the prosaic.

FEAR IN THE NIGHT has little of either, and the whole is a confection that is unfulfilling and full of empty calories…without sweet rapture.

Final Grade: (C-)

THE REPTILE (John Gilling, 1966)

2010-08-02T23:34:00.000-04:00

The Black Death poisons a rural village with metaphysical fear, as the locals turn a blind eye occluded by superstitious dread. But a stranger brings a neurotoxin to suppress the investigative paralysis and discover the cause of his brother’s demise, leading him and his wife into direct confrontation with the Queen Cobra.

John Gilling directs a murder mystery whose riddle is given away by the film’s title, but exposes interesting details bite by bite, building limited suspense and frisson. The gruesome Reptile isn’t revealed until the final act, so Gilling bides time by creating narrative tension between Harry, the new kid in town, and the wealthy recluse Dr. Franklyn. Harry Spalding inherits his brother’s home and moves in with Valerie his new bride, and together they must face a series of strange characters and attitudes. From the local drunk Mad Peter, hilariously possessed by actor John Laurie whose supper invitation is the film’s highlight, to a shy but repressed brunette who wanders into their abode unannounced with a bouquet of orchids, the Spaldings begin to realize that death here is communicable but the Bubonic plague isn’t responsible.

The story leads to false presumptions, a somewhat clever bait and switch that reveals the true villain as a minor character kept mostly in shadow, and the Franklyn’s raven haired daughter as a victim of a venomous cult. Transformed permanently into Ophiophagus hannah, Anna sheds her skin and brumates near a sulpher spring (because what Victorian mansion isn’t complete with dungeon and bubbling sulpher spring?) and awaits the coming of Spring. But Valerie is imbued with a feminist bravado and seeks answers of her own, and trapped in the burning mansion is saved by nature’s cold breath.

Final Grade: (C)

ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966)

2010-07-31T10:59:00.000-04:00

The violent Rock tribe is subsumed by their blonde haired and blue eyed superiors, anthropogenic intercessors who shall inherit the Earth. Once scientific fact is rejected and disbelief suspended, the film can be enjoyed as more than a guilty pleasure because director Don Chaffey utilizes visually interesting camera angles, articulated rubber monstrosities and bleak locations to hold audience attention for the duration of this mute melodrama.

The absurd plot involves two tribes of Homo antecessor who display a seemingly inbred violent disposition, practicing social Darwinism to its extreme. The hirsute Rock tribe is a foul collection of brutes and brunettes, while the well manicured Shell gang comb their golden locks and judiciously use teeth whitener. Tumak is the Rock outcast who develops a crush on Loana (and who wouldn‘t, Raquel Welch is a freakin‘ knockout!), the bikini clad delegate of the disparate tribe. Chaffey has the difficult task of creating drama without dialogue, employing omniscient voice over narration to introduce the epochal epic. Communication is relegated to a few grunts and howls, but emotion is conveyed with rough physicality. Ray Harryhausen’s stop-motion creatures become the real stars of the story, their fluid life-like movement and reactions more realistic than the stoic acting. The Allosaurus attack is expertly choreographed and dramatically realized, and note the tortured gasping and stuttering heartbeat of the Dinosaur as it exhales its final breath. Or the giant Archelon shambling towards the ocean; it actually flinches when hit in the beak with a rock! These subtle details bring dimensionality and personality to the models, as if they were more than molded rubber…if only the same praise could be said of the acting.

The Earth finally exclaims its tremulous judgment, and the human species must work together in order to survive a savage world despite their differences. A prescient metaphor that we have yet to realize.

Final Grade: (C)

DEMONS OF THE MIND (Peter Sykes, 1972)

2010-07-28T22:26:00.000-04:00

A father’s contaminated genes spawn an incestuous affair, his cursed family driven towards death by the very cure meant to save them. Count Zorn attempts to repress his malignant bloodline by marrying a simple peasant woman, but the madness not only passes to their two children, it overtakes her mind as well.

Director Peter Sykes crafts a fractured horror film that is more interesting in theory than elocution, a Victorian era parable that blurs class distinction as faith in religious superstition and savage science lead to self-destruction, where the meek shall inherit a scorched Earth. Sykes begins the film with a visually interesting match cut, as pale hands reach for the warmth of the sun, an ethereal connection between siblings. He utilizes a series of flashbacks that cross-cut with the action, creating a mentally imbalanced narrative disjunction like a mind tortured by mental illness, where time folds and overlaps into oblivion and eternity. Another interesting scene is Zorn’s recollection of his wife’s suicide shown with surreal dramaturgy, as his children witness the gruesome spectacle. But soon the story devolves into a slackly paced melodrama which becomes too talky delivering exposition without compassion.

The story doesn’t quite come together and remains incoherent, averring a genetic disorder but alluding to a supernatural mental projection, and the villagers with their burning torches and sharpened cross hunt down the real demon; this of flesh and blood, evil convolutions in a forbidden forest. The bleak ending is militantly nihilistic, a piercing dogma without redemption or charity and ultimately meaningless.

Final Grade: (D)

PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES (John Gilling, 1966)

2010-07-26T17:43:00.000-04:00

A gang of ruffians and a rash of mysterious deaths frighten villagers into a malignant malaise, fearing bubonic consequences and bombastic recriminations. Hammer’s foray into the territory of the walking dead is a tale of majestic magic defeated by stoic science.

Sir James Forbes is a world renowned doctor who receives a disturbing postcard from his star pupil, now serving in a small village. He and his daughter Sylvia pay a surprise visit to the young doctor and discover a town infested with a deadly plague. But this plague is caused not by bacteria but witchcraft, and it doesn’t destroy human tissue but reanimate it. Though the zombies aren’t revealed en-force until the denouement, the film contains a very disturbing plot twist: when Dr. Tompson’s wife dies, he must battle his emotions and perform an autopsy upon her! With the help of his esteemed colleague, science must trump human nature in search of the cause and effect.

The nemesis is revealed early in the film, a despicable man with the charm of a dictator, so when the final conflict arises we expect him to receive his comeuppance. But his foolproof plan proves to be foolhardy, killing innocents and raising them as zombies to work in his tin mine. The undead are barely coordinated enough to walk, let alone utilize tools at a significant pace. The zombies are motivated by the savage whip but it’s difficult to understand the effect with creatures who feel no pain, who only work from electrical impulses that shock their lifeless muscles. The Baron could have hired itinerant laborers at minimum wage without healthcare and been much more successful. Then PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES would have become a presciently political tale of pernicious immigration.

Final Grade: (C+)

BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB (Seth Holt, 1971)

2010-07-24T23:19:00.000-04:00

An archeological expedition collects a buxom queen frozen in time, a nameless evil set free by a scientist’s thirst for knowledge…and power. Though Hammer promotes this as a classic Mummy flick, it eschews genre conventions and reveals the beautiful Valerie Leon in a dual role as the busty inhabitant of the Egyptian tomb and the nubile yet inquisitive daughter of Prof. Fuchs, who is repossessed by the seven deadly sins. Director Seth Holt’s formulaic production is ripe with interesting compositions, dramatic acting, rubbery special effects, and the inspiring cleavage of his leading lady: everything that makes a Hammer film rise above the typical genre dreck.

Prof. Fuchs gives his daughter an ancient ring for her birthday, taken from the severed hand of the perfectly preserved “mummy” who sleeps the sleep of undeath in his locked chambers: a mere scientific anomaly requiring his analytical skills or something more? Sexual obsession? Or is he a pawn to supernatural powers, kinetic forces beyond his understanding? Margaret discovers her father’s deadly secret and soon the other members of the expedition are being systematically murdered, each in possession of one of three familiars originally housed in Queen Tara’s tomb. Margaret is soon responsible for collecting these items, haunted by the baying of ghostly hounds, herself a fatal premonition. She gains power as the Queen comes closer to life, subsumed by the rise of the Egyptian Matriarch who seeks vengeance for those who disturbed her final rest.

Hammer’s set designs are wonderfully authentic for a genre flick, utilizing its low budget to great effect. Though the action remains indoors with few establishing shots, this helps create a claustrophobic tension that builds the story to a rather mundane climax. The use of close-ups of shredded throats and hands fulfills expectations but fortunately isn’t the focus: in other words, suspense is the main course while the gore remains a delectable dessert. It’s also nice to see homage to the great horror director Tod Browning with an evil character “borrowing” his name!

Finally, the roar of the Great Bear creates a mystical nexus that allows the Egyptian Princess to rise once again to dominate this modern world, but the love of a crippled father and the inner strength of his daughter silence this despicable overture.

Final Grade: (C)

VERSATLIE BLOGGER AWARD!

2010-07-24T11:57:00.000-04:00

The Girl Who Loves Horror has given your humble narrator the Versatile Blogger Award! Alex extends a big thank you and asks his friends to visit her fine blog where she writes on all things horror: well, at least the imaginary kind.

To accept the award there are a few prerequisites: first, I must aver 7 true statements about myself. Second, I must thank the kind blogger who nominated me (see first paragraph!). The third requirement is to nominate 15 other blogs and contact them...which is no easy task: there are so many fine writers with interesting and intelligent perspectives that I'm bound to leave many out.

About Alex:

I am a certified Victim Advocate and investigator employed by the Local District Attorney and a trained Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence Counselor.
I never watch “true crime” shows on TV.
I have a little black and white kitty named Stella Kowalski.
My fantasy is to attend film school and focus upon editing…while still paying my mortgage.
I’m an non-theist.
I have a complete collection of original "New Trend" EC Comics: Vault of Horror, Tales from the Crypt, Crime Suspenstories, Weird Science, et al.
The first film I remember seeing is Bruce Lee’s ENTER THE DRAGON at the Drive-In when I was 6 years old: I’ve been hooked ever since.

I pass along th Versatile Blogger Award to (in no particular order):

SCARS OF DRACULA (Roy Ward Baker, 1970)

2010-07-21T18:12:00.000-04:00

A young woman suffers impingement of her exterior jugular vein, ragged scars an evil testament to the awakening of the Baron of Blood. A giant rubber bat vomits forth a clotted prayer and resurrects its master, who haunts an ominous castle and preys upon the supple buffet of women who inhabit the nearby village. Roy Ward Baker’s tale is both deadly serious and darkly humorous, walking that nebulous boundary between camp and convention.

The Count rises from the ashes and soon terrorizes the local village. After the murder of a young woman, the locals set fire to the castle but Dracula survives…because stone castles don’t burn so well. Some time later (time is a mystery here, could be weeks or years) Paul, a womanizer on the run from the cops, has the unfortunate luck to escape the town elder and meet the elder undead. His brother Simon and Simon’s fiancée Sarah soon discover his fate and must destroy the evil that now lurks in the darkness.

The story seems to refute the basic vampire mythology since every person bitten by Dracula dies instead of rising as a minion. A female vampire is briefly introduced and seduced by Paul but is actually murdered by being stabbed to death…with a knife. Dracula still retains an aversion to the Christian cross but fortunately has a slow but tenacious bat that not only murders a church full of women, but is dexterous enough to chew a necklace from between bulging cleavage. The story is London in the raw set in the 19th century, with swinging singles and free love facing the consequences of impulsive behavior.

Religion falls victim to the carnivorous Chiroptera, since it leaves its doors open to all who enter. Hint: when hiding from a giant bat…close the fucking doors! Simon has the final word with shocking results proving that vampires are inflammable, after all.

Final Grade: (C)

FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (Terence Fisher, 1967)

2010-07-20T00:07:00.000-04:00

Two lovers become victims of their physical and emotional deformities, their souls united in a vengeful desire. Terence Fisher resurrects the egoistic Baron Victor Frankenstein whose search for immortality results in a crisis of morality.

Frankenstein is the subject of his own experiment, trapping the soul inside the body for an hour after his death. He is shocked back to life by his bewildered assistant Dr. Hertz and his youthful handyman Hans. The young man is in love with the tormented Christina, her physical deformity resulting in humiliation and rejection in the cloistered community. Through a series of violent events, Hans is unjustly convicted of the murder of Christina’s father and beheaded: she commits suicide in remorse. Of course, Frankenstein gets hold of both corpses and captures their souls, combining them in the physically altered body of Christina, who is now a smokin’ hot babe. Hans has now penetrated her once again, this time deep into her soul, and their combined memory seeks to balance the scales of Justice.

Fisher’s narrative economy sets the film in motion from the first scene, as the child Hans witnesses his father’s execution. He then cuts to the present tense where Dr. Hertz and the older Hans complete Baron’s grand experiment. The set designs are vintage Hammer with giant electrodes vomiting electricity and steam belching forth from pipes and growling from infernal machines. The film’s 88 minute run time cuts too many corners, never explaining how Hans/Christina discovered the identity of the murderer, and becomes mired in the perplexing accoutrement of Han’s severed head (and why it wouldn’t be decomposed months later!). Instead of an emotional journey of self-discovery amid the mystery of human identity, the film evolves into a mere revenge thriller. The premise is very interesting and it would have been interesting to ponder Hans’ predicament, forever enshrined in the body he recently seduced. But this is a Hammer film concerned with genre conventions (which it does very well). Peter Cushing’s performance is exceptional, imbuing the Baron with a condescending and impatient attitude, belittling the impudent citizens who stand in the way of science!

The dissociative protagonist finally completes their three tasks and seek the final rest denied them, plunging into troubled waters.

Final Grade: (B+)

THESE ARE THE DAMNED (Joseph Losey, 1963)

2010-07-17T16:26:00.001-04:00

Our future contained in a stone prison, the progeny not of dividing cells but splitting atoms. Director Joseph Losey’s science fiction film is anathema of a future age, where black leather is no protection from deadly radiation. Losey’s bipolar narrative begins like contemptuous proclamation against the wicked and bored youth before splicing into a cautionary tale about cold war ethics.

The title creates a false expectation that the motorcycle gang, led by the charismatic King (an exemplary performance by Oliver Reed, perhaps a future echo of Kubrick’s bratchny protagonist), are the generation cursed. Contrasted with a girl on the cusp of womanhood coupled to an older man, and her incestuous brother dressed in cruel black leather, the roaring engines become the scream of predators looking for their next victim. Losey’s art house style is a cross between Godard and Brando, allowing the camera to linger upon sculptures, twisted like bodies pulverized by radiation, while Reed ruptures with hipster rebellion.

Suddenly, the story takes a turn for the surreal as the characters inadvertently stumble into a secret government compound and discover a terrible secret: children, isolated from the world since birth, are part of some mysterious experiment. These children thirst for physical contact, never having known their parents, their only contact with adults through closed circuit TV. But their love kills the very ones who desire to save them, their touch venomous, their fate unkind.

The group attempts to escape and lead the children from their prison, but these mutants are bred to survive a nuclear holocaust, to carry on the English Way through an irradiated winter…and beyond. This secret devours all who become tainted with the knowledge, gunshots the epitaph for the unlucky. And as the film fades to black, a child begs for help from within stone, screaming for release, but their time will come when the world is dead.

Final Grade: (B)

TO THE DEVIL...A DAUGHTER (Peter Sykes, 1976)

2010-07-15T22:47:00.000-04:00

Sister Catherine is a victim of her own innocence: raised in an isolated conclave, she is deceived into worshipping the Lord of Lies, a Lovecraftian horror whose fate is attached like an umbilical vein full of brackish hemoglobin. Director Peter Sykes deftly evokes the eerie specter of Roman Polanski’s classic ROSEMARY’S BABY while inflicting the narrative with the devilishness of William Friedkan’s THE EXORCIST: unfortunately, Sykes loses focus and the tense drama devolves into hysterical theatrics.

Richard Widmark is the occult writer John Verney who attempts to save Catherine from the hellish Cult; led by a wonderfully one-dimensional Christopher Lee as the excommunicated priest Michael Rayner, whose leering close-ups and searing eyes reflect the Elder horror that awaits the naïve teenager. Nastassja Kinski is the waifish nun soon to be claimed by her fiery mentor, her womb filled with the creeping flesh of nightmare, her pallid beauty corrupted by Astaroth, a Prince of Hell. Sykes is able to sustain the suspense for most of the film as Catherine is subdued and secreted away by Verney while Rayner’s black magic seeks his god’s puerile bride.

The film opens with a splash of colors upon a church floor, like Yahweh’s rainbow promise prismed through the stained glass windows, then cutting to Rayner’s demented soliloquy as he’s diminished by the wooden cross: this beautifully forebodes a supernatural dread of lustful and selfish deeds. Sykes’s use of crosscutting, especially during the birthing scene, as a bloody fetus carves itself unseen from its mother’s womb, to Catherine thrashing about in pain (ecstasy?) in her unknown dreamworld. But two scenes in particular are riotously faulty and one occurs shortly after this episode, as Verney attempts to calm her: we are shown a demonic presence haunting a broken mirror…but it looks like a grinning Elmo. The other scene ruins the final act as the aforementioned infant is sacrificed for Astaroth, so the blood can summon the hellchild to crawl into Catherine’s womb, creating an infernal pregnancy…but it again looks like a sinister Elmo slathered in ketchup.

What could have been a despicable scenario of dark magic turns gut-wrenchingly laughable. Finally, Verney defeats the diabolical Rayner having discovered the Grimoire of Astaroth, and with blood and stone saves the nubile Catherine from certain damnation.

Final Grade: (B-)

THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (Terence Fisher, 1968)

2010-07-14T18:26:00.000-04:00

“I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death and Hades was following close behind him.” Duc de Richleau must save his friends from the accursed pawn Mocata, a man imbued with the devilish powers of The Accuser, who summons forth his master to claim them as His own.

Director Terence Fisher structures a rather linear story into an action and suspense packed thriller while legendary writer Richard Matheson trims the story of excess, allowing the narrative to smolder with tension before the final conflagration. The opening credit sequence sets the tone, with a creepy score lurking beneath the lingering icon of Satan as smoke curls about his horned visage, like souls relegated to an eternity of ethereal damnation.

The film begins with Duc de Richleau and his cohort Rex van Ryan accidentally discovering their friend Simon is dabbling in the dark arts. The “dinner party” they crash is actually a meeting to induct Simon and a young girl named Tanith into a Satanic Cult, and the scene is ripe with a vague uneasiness as the whispering guests and subtle glances reveals subversion: oblivious, Rex continues his conversation while the well-traveled Duc suspects the worst. After a hasty exit in which they explore the strange observatory, they confront Simon and kidnap him. But Mocata needs thirteen for his ritual and his willpower cannot be broken!

Christopher Lee is the well-groomed protagonist Duc de Richleau, playing against type which instills his character with a humane yet hammer-strong personality. Charles Gray is the villain Mocata; his baby blue eyes impale any whom his gaze falls upon. Both actors are wonderful in developing characterizations without becoming mere caricatures, allowing their expressions and performances as revelation, so the film needn’t waste time with exposition.

Fisher spices the story with eerie images of occult iconography: from goat-headed pentagrams to detailed ceremonies with fiendish chanting and orgasmic revelry. Fisher often uses reflections or extreme close-ups, focusing on the eyes and expressions to convey a hypnotic anxiety: the eyes are not only the mirrors of the soul…but a doorway to that gossamer territory. Mocata is able to use his mind to control his subjects, and he forces Simon to escape and kneel before Lucifer. Covered in the fresh blood of a lamb, the beautiful Tanith and the naïve Simon are about to be lost in abyssal horrors…but suddenly a heavenly light pierces the darkness and Simon is whisked away to temporary safety once again. Later, Richleau and Rex discover that Tanith’s soul has yet to be devoured and they attempt to attain her salvation also.

Then begins the dark night of the soul, as Richleau must battle evil incarnate with every ounce of his mental strength and formidable knowledge: bounded by the safety of a pentagram, he must convince his friends not to succumb to temptations that shall destroy them. A giant spider, the sacrifice of a child, and Death itself are excised…but at great cost. The action is fast and furious, from the battle within the safety of chalk dust to Tanith and Rex’s struggle against Mocata’s fiendish impulses while hiding in a manger. Finally this dread night passes and Death claims its victim, but Richleau’s counterspell sentences his nemesis to a poetic justice.

Final Grade: (B+)

THE NANNY (Seth Holt, 1963)

2010-07-14T00:34:00.001-04:00

Joey is a lost boy who haunts the periphery of his parent’s life, more adult than his own mother: a neurotic woman caught in the grip of their charming and innocuous nanny. This Stygian melodrama appertains to the disturbing quality of childhood trauma and how adults often overlook the truth when spoken from the mouths of babes, their convex reality relegated to the concave. Director Seth Holt creates mounting tension and dis-ease as the family unit dissolves, Patriarchal power absent while Maternal instincts are impotent, kept at the mercy of the family caregiver. The battle of truth between the seemingly sociopathic boy and the nanny is wonderfully ambiguous; as Joey seems to be the offspring of a malignant seed, corrupt tendrils at the root of the problem.

The film begins with Joey’s release from a psychiatric hospital where he was incarcerated for the last four years. The reason for his treatment is alluded to in the pictures on his mother’s wardrobe and a sudden flashback to a little girl, though the incident is not shown until much later…and from different perspectives. Joey is an unlikable troublemaker, a contemptuous punk, while the darling nanny offers gentle excuses for Joey’s rude behavior, but the boy lives on the razor’s edge of awareness, watching every move of the elder housekeeper.

Bette Davis imbues her nameless character with just the right amount of sincerity and wisdom, but a fierce determination lies behind her eyes. William Dix is wonderful as the spoiled brat who eventually deserves our sympathies, his intelligent and creative ruminations believable and very child like…but not childish: this is a boy aged beyond his years. These protagonists battle throughout the story and as our loyalty shifts, we see each character from a different perspective.

Soon, the nanny once again attempts to submerge and smother the truth as her sickened mind teeters on the brink of madness. The chilling climax reveals an old woman who deserted her own family to take care of another, a cancerous guilt that psychologically devours her…while a little boy is violently baptized into adulthood.

Final Grade: (B)

DRACULA: PRINCE OF DARKNESS (Terence Fisher, 1966)

2010-07-13T20:54:00.000-04:00

Four travelers spurn the advice of locals and seek refuge in the nameless castle, it’s corridors haunted by a mysterious ronin. Director Terrance Fisher relies on cliché and trite characterizations utilizing typical genre gestures without aplomb. Unfortunately, Dracula descends towards hilarity instead of horror.

The two couples are ignorant bourgeoisie on a vacation from England, their personalities abrasive and condescending creating no emotional fission to power the narrative. Andrew Keir as Father Sandoval is the only interesting character, a mad monk who derides the villagers for their crass heresy but jumps at the chance of staking his holy claim. Keir infuses the priest with a Shakespearean megalomania, teetering on the brink of camp and cantankerousness. Christopher Lee as the undead Prince remains silent in his unholy role, his bloodshot eyes and Cheshire grin full of malice. He stalks each character with a dramatic intensity, his visage often hidden behind his caped appendage. Thorley Walters as Ludwig, the Renfield-like assistant, offers a crazed performance more comedic than tragic but is colorful nonetheless.

The plot is full of more holes than the protagonist’s necks, and the editing choppy and confusing. The couples act so stupidly that they deserve their fate, and when they sit down to a strange dinner served by a gruesome servant it is funny when he plaintively states that he still serve his master Dracula. The castle sports the worst secret door ever, “hidden” behind a hanging tapestry that flaps easily in the breeze. There is a neat murder scene where a man’s blood is used to raise the demon Prince, his throat slashed and drained into a Christopher Lee-sized mold. But the awful SPFX makes the congealing vampire look like a ball of silly putty.

The final act is a morass, employing a static chase across the fields of Transylvania that is supposed to push the heroes towards exhaustion but only takes a few minutes of screen time. They arrive at the castle’s moat and corner the Count (I suppose daylight doesn’t bother him?) and here the ending really skates upon thin ice.

Final Grade: (D)

LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Tomas Alfredson, 2008, Sweden)

2010-07-12T23:14:00.000-04:00

PRE-RAMBLE: The new (and improved?) Hammer Studios is remaking this wonderful Swedish horror film for the US market because, I suppose, we Americans are too stupid to read subtitles. There is no other reason to "Americanize" Alfredson's film because its testament to eternal puberty, growing (and hunger) pains, that nebulous journey into adulthood where we learn that the meek only inherit pain, are universal themes. Though Matt Reeves directed CLOVERFIELD, a surprisingly fun jaunt into Kaiju, I approach LET ME IN with trepidation.

Now for my review of the original:

Oskar’s troubled life is like Rubik’s cube, its many permutations seemingly unsolvable until he befriends Eli who bleeds tender mercy…and violent hunger. Director Tomas Alfredson crafts a gentle coming of age story tinged with archaic bloodletting, as Oskar and Eli slowly form a mutual bond of trust and love, both outcasts who haunt the periphery of reality’s penumbra.

Their sexless relationship builds slowly while we experience a few gruesome murders: young men captured and bled like cattle, the thick rush of life force collected into a plastic container. A rip current of angst and mischievous horror lurk just below the surface tension, as we discover our dark eyed heroine stalking a darkened underpass, feeding upon unwary strangers and spreading her infection.

Eli is in the care of a mysterious father figure: an incestuous affair as he murders to quench her cursed hunger. Oskar is being bullied at school, and it’s Eli whose reserved passion gives him strength to finally take a stand, to fight back and no longer become victimized. But this tangled web of horror begins to unravel as the neighbors discover Eli’s freakish secret, and together Oskar and Eli must escape to a new life…or undeath.

This is a beautifully shot film that relies on characterization and pacing without need to resort to CGI or flash-cut editing: the few images of horror are quite shocking and the true fear is in the soft animal sound of Eli’s growling thirst and her struggle to master this supernatural instinct. The mystery deepens in the depths of a swimming pool: suspended in his watery grave and lungs slowly filling with certain death, a ripple of salvation lifts him back into life. Oskar has finally found his niche, and carries his love in a heart shaped box to an unknown destination…towards a better (a certainly bloodier) future.

Final Grade: (B+)

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (Roy Thomas Baker, 1967)

2010-07-11T15:54:00.000-04:00

The Devil stalks Hob’s Lane, its horned and gruesome visage buried for millions of years but awakened to breed its violent purge upon its progeny: homo sapiens. Bernard Quatermass and Professor Roney must fight military incompetence and militant authority and avoid a cover-up to reveal a magnificent archeological find: five million year old hominid fossils discovered within a buried alien spacecraft, a Martian splinter whose genetic infection has usurped the Earth: their locust-like race conquering the cosmos by proxy.

Director Roy Ward Baker films in mostly medium shot and close-up, with urgent dialogue and few (if any) establishing shots which create a made-for-television style narrative: most likely because this is an adaptation from a BBC series. Utilizing narrative economy, the plot itself is interesting and intelligent; detailing the possibility that homo sapiens was genetically altered millions of years ago by a dying Martian colony, passing on their telekinetic abilities and racial expungement to a blossoming human species. As science and the military clash over the facts, the spacecraft pulses with life, an actual living organism shocked into consciousness, and possess the surrounding humans to revert back to their primitive Darwinian impulses: a purge has begun once again, the murder of the weak and non-conformists echoes through the violent fiery night.

Quatermass is hypnotized, even his keen intellect is no cure for this malicious impulse, and he is pulled to safety by Professor Roney. As a giant demon whose mass has transformed into Hellish energy rises above the destruction, Roney reasons that cold iron is the weapon, harkening back to the legends and myths inspired centuries ago by this aberration: as his final sacrifice he guides a crane into the glowing demented face of Satan itself, grounding the energy and saving the world. Quatermass sifts through emotional debris, his mind tormented and burdened with guilt. As the credits roll, we wonder if more of these infernal devices will be uncovered someday: possibly in some dark corner of the Earth…or in the very center of civilization?

Final Grade: (B+)