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

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)

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)

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

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)

SCARS OF DRACULA (Roy Ward Baker, 1970)

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)

THESE ARE THE DAMNED (Joseph Losey, 1963)

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)

THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (Terence Fisher, 1968)

“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 counter spell sentences his nemesis to a poetic justice.

Final Grade: (A)

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (Roy Thomas Baker, 1967)

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+)