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