TITLE & REVIEW
This is set in central Europe in the 1700s,
the kind of Bohemia in the Holy Roman Empire
that provides the backdrop for most Hammer Horror films.
Captain Kronos (Horst Janson -
The Privilege
) rides into view, his equipment personalised with a monogram
that matches the title in the opening credits.
To prove he is a hero, he must do something heroic -
so he frees a gypsy girl (
Caroline Munro
) who was unjustly imprisoned in the public stocks.
She makes a great love interest for him.
Kronos and his hunchbacked sidekick have been summoned to a small village is beset with a series of mysterious deaths. Young women who wander alone in the forest are suddenly transformed into aged crones. It seems a vampire is draining them - not of blood, but of youth. To the audience, the most obvious suspect is the elderly Lady of the Manor - Lady Derwood ( Wanda Ventham ) and her creepy son Paul (Shane Briant - Straight On Til Morning ). However, nobody in the cast seems to suspect them. Typical genre-blindness, really.
Kronos' special skill is that he is a great sword-fighter. As a result, for the villains to face him in a fair fight they must all prove themselves as expert fencers. Luckily for the dramatic effect, this turns out to be the case. Also, by incredible coincidence it turns out that these particular vampires can only be killed by steel. Yes, if they had been regular vampires then he would have needed to retrain to fight with wooden stakes like Buffy the Vampire Slayer .
The film was made in 1972, but did not get released until 1974. Although it was intended to become a series, no sequel was made. As Hammer had trouble getting it distributed, small wonder that they were not able to market it properly. Also, the early 1970s was a time when the horror movie market was changing. Hammer-style period-costume movies were on the way out, and modern-day American horrors like The Exorcist were in demand.
This takes place in typical Hammer territory.
It is a period costume drama in a rural area of an unnamed central European country.
The baron (Robert Hardy -
) is up to no good, his mentally unstable son Emil (Shane Briant -
Straight On Til Morning
) is suspected of murdering the village's scream queens,
and the peasants are revolting.
Michael Hordern (
Theatre of Blood
) is a priest, trying to instigate the peasants into violence.
This is a Hammer Horror effort from the 1960s.
Predictably it is a period piece, set in the Victorian era.
A small town in Germany is beset with a series of mysterious killings.
The town pathologist (Peter Cushing -
Star Wars: A New Hope
) and Chief of Police (Patrick Troughton -
Doctor Who
) are involved in the coverup.
This is no mere slasher movie - the suspected killer is a magical, mythological, supernatural creature: a Gorgon named Magera.
Eventually Christopher Lee ( Dracula ) investigates.
This is an early Hammer Horror effort, distributed by Universal Studios.
It lacks the usual pairing of Lee and Cushing,
and instead has a cast of second-stringers.
As such it has faded into obscurity compared to the more famous Hammer films.
This is set in a historical period, although the characters have an early model of motor car so the year must be circa 1900. Rather a late period, compared to the usual pre-Victorian setting of such movies. Most Hammer films were set in a pre-scientific era, so that the supernatural aspects of the story did not have to be properly explained.
A young man and woman are in luck when their car breaks down. They get shelter at the nearby home of a mysterious aristocrat. Yes, more than a little reminiscent of the cliched start of The Rocky Horror Picture Show .
The couple also encounter a vampire-hunter, a Father Shandor type (without the religious trappings).
A couple of centuries ago, scientist Anton Diffring (
) discovers the secret of eternal life.
Of course, this comes at a cost.
A century later, in the late Victorian era, he sets his attentions on Hazel Court . Unfortunately she has another male friend (Christopher Lee - Star Wars: Attack of the Clones ), who becomes suspicious.
Despite coming from Hammer Horror's top creators, writer Jimmy Sangster and director Terence Fisher , it is not one of their better known efforts.
This is a Hammer film, written by
Jimmy Sangster
of all people. As such, we should not take seriously its view of mental illness.
A young boy is paranoid that his nanny ( Betty Davis ) is trying to murder him.
This is a pretty basic suspense thriller, with a contemporary setting.
In Eighteenth Century England,
a Customs officer goes to a remote fishing village to investigate smuggling.
The suspects include the local preacher (Peter Cushing -
Frankenstein
), the buxom barmaid (
Yvonne Romain
) and a young fop (Oliver Reed -
Curse of the Werewolf
).
This is based on the Dr Syn books. Unfortunately Disney was working on Dr Syn, Alias The Scarecrow so Hammer decided to change the main character's name.
In Victorian England,
an elderly Doctor and his attractive blonde daughter are invited to a small town in Cornwall.
The town's Doctor is the old man's protege,
and he is perplexed by a series of mysterious deaths in the area.
Worse, his wife (
Jacqueline Pearce
) has been mysteriously blinded as if by magical means.
As the film's title suggests, the locals have been turned into zombies. First they are killed by voodoo magic, then they are revived as the undead and put to work in a tin mine. These are pre-Romero zombies, they do not crave human brains. Rather they have to be forced to work by men with whips. For all the work they do, it might be more efficient to forget about using zombies and just get the men to do the mining work instead.
Although this has all the hallmarks of the Hammer brand
(including the exteriors of Bray House),
this has none of the usual familiar faces from Hammer horror films.
Thus, it is at a disadvantage compared to other films of the brand.
When a man dies in mysterious circumstances, his brother inherits a remote cottage in the English countryside. The neighbour is a sinister Doctor (of Divinity), with a beautiful daughter ( Jacqueline Pearce ) and a creepy Indian servant.
This is a black and white effort by Hammer House of Horror, before their heyday.
The writer/producer was that prolific Hammer contributor,
Jimmy Sangster
.
It starts with a German police officer recovering a woman's corpse from a lake. This is a grim scene that sets the tone for the movie. Although none of the characters in it appear again, it is vital for the actual storyline.
A young woman returns to her estranged father's mansion in England. Father is dead, but his new wife - the stepmother - is welcoming. They have dinner with a family friend, the doctor (Christopher Lee - Dracula (1958) ). Yes, to match the mood of suspense we get one of the usual suspects.
That night the young woman sees a ghost, or a dead body, in the grounds of the mansion. Either the place is haunted, or someone is trying to drive her insane - like in Gaslight .
This is basically a low-level Hitchcock pastiche. It is not the kind of thing that Sangster or Hammer are famous for, but there was a lot of this kind of story in the 1950s.
This is a Hammer Horror film, adapted by Quatermass scribe Nigel Kneale
from a novel entitled The Devil's Own.
Apparently
Joan Fontaine
liked the book so much she bought the movie rights,
and took it to Hammer so she could star in the film (at the age of 49).
The protagonist (Joan Fontaine) is a missionary who falls foul of a witch-doctor in Africa. She somehow escapes back to England, and accepts a job as a schoolteacher in a remote country village. As with most horror movies, some of the locals are a bit creepy and she begins to suspect supernatural goings-on.
Naturally, as the story progresses she needs the attentions of psychiatrist Dr Leonard Rossiter (Reginald Perrin). Is she re-living the trauma she suffered in Africa, or has she uncovered a genuine satanic conspiracy in Middle England? More importantly, how can the same Sh*t happen to the same guy twice?
Unfortunately the film loses its way in the final act. Today's audience expect a Pagan blood-sacrifice ceremony to resemble the one in The Wicker Man . Unfortunately, this film's portrayal brings an unintentionally comedic tone to the proceedings.
Dr Jekyll (Paul Massie -
) is obsessed with his research into altering human nature.
As a result he has neglected his wife,
so she cheats on him with his best friend Paul (Christopher Lee -
Dracula
).
Jekyll decides his serum is ready for human trials, and injects himself. Mr Hyde looks just like Jekyll, except he is not sweltering under a wig and false beard. Yes, Jekyll's wife and friends do not recognise him clean-shaven!
Hyde gets Paul to show him the perverse corruptions of London night-life. Unfortunately this consists of losing money at poker and watching showgirls dance the can-can. At least he gets to pick a fight with the young Oliver Reed ( Curse of the Werewolf ).
This is a typical Hammer Horror effort,
a period costume drama set in the late Victorian age.
It mixes real historical events and people with fictional crimes,
set to the backdrop of a series of murders attributed to Jack the Ripper.
Doctor Jekyll (Ralph Bates - Horror of Frankenstein ) makes a potion to give himself eternal life, but needs female hormones to continue the process. He first hires a couple of bodysnatchers - the infamous Burke and Hare. Of course, they come to a sticky end. This leaves the Doctor with a moral conundrum. Should he kill a few prostitutes, in order to create immortality for the elite few? Well, he knows that Burke and Hare were murdering people on his behalf so he has already made this decision.
Jekyll's potion turns him into Martine Beswick . To explain her presence to his neighbours, he claims she is his sister ... the widowed Mrs Hyde. She seems to embody his worst excesses ... but since he has not only hired a pair of killers, but even stooped to murder himself, Mrs Hyde is taking the blame unfairly.
This is the Hammer Horror adaptation of the
Bram Stoker
novel, and takes a few liberties with the source material.
Since this became considered a classic adaptation,
and spawned a slew of sequels,
this may have set a bad example to future adaptations.
The movie starts with Jonathan Harker's arrival at castle Dracula. He is the castle's new librarian, instead of a Real Estate Agent. Harker's secret mission is to assassinate Count Dracula (Christopher Lee - Man With The Golden Gun ), but he is a sloppy assassin. Not only does he write his intentions in his journal, where they could be easily discovered by a snooper, but he is also distracted by Dracula's female hanger-on.
A few days after Harker's inevitable failure, Van Helsing (Peter Cushing - Star Wars: ANH ) arrives in the area. Yes, the Dutchman was using Harker as a pawn all along. The bad news is that Dracula has disappeared. The good news is that Van Helsing has another minion, Arthur (Michael Gough - ), who can tag along on his adventures instead.
It turns out that Drac has gone on the offensive. His first target is Harker's fiance Lucy Holmwood ( Carol Marsh ), whose name has changed from Mina in the original, and who shares Lucy's fate in the original. The next target is called Mina, who happens to be Arthur's wife ...
The final shot of this film seems to have inspired the end of Flash Gordon (1980) , which - thanks to the benefit of hindsight - did it so much better.
This starts with a voiceover to deliver exposition.
Dracula (Christopher Lee -
Man With The Golden Gun
) is dead, but other vampires (his disciples) still infest Transylvania.
A French schoolmistress takes a stagecoach through Transylvania. She gets abandoned in a remote village, and ends up as a guest at the mysterious castle on the hill. The owner is the mysterious Baron Meisner ...
Luckily, Van Helsing (Peter Cushing - Star Wars: ANH ) is in the area. Not to give away the ending, but Van Helsing uses the best-ever version of putting two sticks together to make a cross you can possibly imagine.
Two aristocratic couples (including
Barbara Shelley
) pass through the forest, near where Castle Dracula sits.
Count Dracula (Christopher Lee -
Frankenstein
) was killed ten years earlier,
but the locals were all wise enough to stay clear of his castle.
Despite the advice of Father Shandor, Demon Stalker (Andrew Kier - Quatermass ), the aristocrats end up at the creepy old castle. Dracula has an Igor-type manservant, and before long Drac himself is up and about.
Shandor's monastery is believed impenetrable to the vampires, not because it is holy ground but because a vampire cannot cross a threshold without an invitation. It has another victim of Dracula, a bug-eating fellow named Ludwig. It never occurs to Shandor that a brainwashed victim like Ludwig is exactly the kind of person who could be compelled to invite Dracula across the threshold!
A young student and ne'er-do-well (Viktor Frankenstein meets Jonathan Harker)
spends the night in Dracula's castle.
Dracula's Igor may look like the Third Doctor (Wurzel Gummage)
but is played by the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton -
The Omen
).
The student's brother (Denis Waterman - Minder) and fiance come looking for him. Luckily, the fiance's cleavage-enhancing dress comes with a silver crucifix - which entrances Dracula (and the audience).
The story starts in Switzerland around the year 1850.
Doctor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing -
Star Wars: ANH
) is imprisoned, awaiting execution by gillotine.
He recounts to a priest the strange tale of how he got convicted of murder.
The extended flashback starts with the young Frankenstein (Melvyn Hayes - It Ain't Half Hot, Mum! ) hiring a tutor who teaches him science. By the time Frankenstein has grown enough to look like Cushing, he and the tutor have managed to reanimate dead tissue. The next step is to create the perfect man.
The experimental subject is Christopher Lee ( Lord Of The Rings (2001) ), swathed in bandages. Ironically the other Hammer Horror role he was famous for in his days before Dracula (1958) was as the title character in The Mummy . Yes, he certainly seems to have cornered the market for silent lumbering bandaged stranglers. In all fairness, Boris Karloff was an experienced theatrical actor who delivered many incredible perfomances in other movies.
The story starts in 1860, about a hundred years before the film was produced.
Dr Frankenstein (Peter Cushing -
Star Wars: ANH
) was sentenced to death at the gillotine.
After the execution, a couple of grave-robbers dig up his coffin.
However, things do not go according to the robbers' plan.
The story picks up three years later. Frankenstein has moved to a new town, the city of Carlsbruck, and carried on his work. His cover is as a doctor in the town hospital, and the pseudonym he uses is ... Doctor Stein. Presumably his first name was Frank.
Frankenstein's cover is as a general practitioner of medicine. He has a private practice where he caters to wealthy hypocondriacs, and uses the money to subsidise his work in a free clinic for peasants. Not everyone is happy with this arrangement. For example, the local Medical Council feel he has poached half their clients. It says a lot about their Oligopoly pricing system if a new competitor can dominate half the town's medical industry.
Frankenstein's work is on surgically transferring a living brain from one host body to another. Yes, he actually perfects the full-body transplant. There is, however, one unfortunate side-effect.
As always, Frankenstein's great flaw is his hubris. He refuses to flee, even when his own discovery is imminent. Will he evade justice again?
Dr Frankenstein (Peter Cushing -
Star Wars: ANH
) is sabotaged by a violent local preacher.
He moves back to his home town of Karlstaad so he can carry on his work.
His old castle has been unoccupied for ten years,
but he assumes that his valuable art collection is still there.
Once back at the castle, Frankenstein tells his sidekick about his original experiment. Instead of giving us an extended clip of the original Hammer movie, this version shows us some re-imagined scenes. Gone is the Christopher Lee monster, and in its place we see the flat head and big boots we associate with the generic Frankenstein monster. However, when this film was made that appearance was anything but genetic. It was the intellectual property of Universal Pictures, and Hammer got the rights to use it in this movie by ensuring it had international distribution through Universal.
In this re-imagined version, Frankenstein has not yet been convicted of killing anyone. The most they got him for was assaulting a policeman, for which the punishment was permanent exile. Unfortunately the corrupt burgomeister also looted - oops, confiscated - all the Baron's furniture and clothes. Everything that was not nailed down was relocated to his home.
Frankenstein, with the aid of a mute beggar-girl, finds his old monster. Luckily the machinery in the castle has not been sabotaged, stolen or just rusted in the previous decade. However, the creature's brain is unresponsive. Frankenstein recruits another ally - Professor Zoltan, a hypnotist who has also fallen foul of the local authorities.
Zoltan gets drunk and decides to use the monster to even a few scores. He fails to realise that the monster has no grasp of subtlety, and that the local police will not find it difficult to trace the source of the problem.
Dr Frankenstein (Peter Cushing -
Star Wars: ANH
) is dead, buried for an hour and then dug up and revived.
He then plans a soul transfer.
He continues his work, with an aging doctor
and a young man whose father was executed for murder.
Frankenstein realises you can resurrect the dead after flatlining for an HOUR because the soul does not leave the body on the instant of death. He then manages to create a bulletproof forcefield that will trap the soul in the body after death.
Apart from Frankenstein's exposition, we also see the soap-opera life of the small town. The young assistant is in love with a deformed barmaid who has a stereotypical aggressive father. They are harrassed by a trio of young hooray henrys. One person gets murdered, and an innocent party gets sentanced to death and guillotined the next morning. This tragedy is compounded with a suicide.
Frankenstein views the double tragedy as an amazing opportunity, and ends up putting the executed man's soul in the woman's body. Of course, no good can come of this ...
A medical student tries to emulate Frankenstein's work.
His body-snatching Igor may look like the Third Doctor (Wurzel Gummage)
but is played by the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton -
The Omen
) ... and seems remarkably similar to a character in
Scars of Dracula
.
Frankenstein's fan ends up getting sent to the same Asylum. Unfortunately, Frankenstein (Peter Cushing - Star Wars ) has supposedly died in the meantime. The medical student then sets about creating a new monster ...
The Male Appeal is Madeline Smith , although unfortunately for everyone who remembers her eye-catching cameo in Live and Let Die she displays absolutely no cleavage.
This is a Hammer reboot of the Frankenstein story.
Viktor Frankenstein (Ralph Bates - Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde ) is a young medical student who inherits a large castle complete with well-stacked housekeeper ( Kate O'Mara ).
Instead of re-animating a complete person, he decides to make a jigsaw of human parts. The resulting monster looks like Dave Prowse ( Star Wars ).
Naturally, everyone Viktor comes in contact with seems to learn to much, so he has to bump them off in order to keep his secret.
The scene is set in Bohemia, Central Europe, in the early 1800s.
General Von Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing -
Star Wars: ANH
) accepts a request to host a Countess's daughter, Marcilla (
Ingrid Pitt
), as companion to his own daughter Laura (
Pippa Steele
). There are a couple of things that the General does not realise.
Firstly, Pitt is in her early thirties while passing herself off as at least ten years younger.
Secondly, her names is an anagram of Carmilla ...
as in Carmilla Karnstein, a suspected vampiress
whose crypt is near the General's mansion.
Once Laura is no longer a source of sustenance, Marcilla finds herself a new target. She changes her name back to Carmilla, then ingratiates herself with Mr Morton (George Cole - Minder ) and his daughter Emma ( Madeline Smith ). When Mr Morton leaves on business, the two girls are left in the care of the Governess ( Kate O'Mara ). Not only does much lesbian vampirism take place, but this is probably the first Hammer Horror movie that actually passes the Bechdel test.
Carmilla's feeding pattern draws a lot of attention, especially as her body count steadily increases. Luckily the General makes it back in time for the Third Act climax.
This is a Hammer Horror period-piece, based on the work of
J Sheridan LeFanu
. It is set in 1830 in a Girls' school that is right beside the ruins
of the castle of the vampiric Carnstein family.
The protagonist joins the school staff,
which includes creepy schoolmaster Ralph Bates (
Horror of Frankenstein
).
A new girl named Mircalla ( Yutte Stensgaard ) arrives at the school. If she looks like she is too mature to play a teenage girl, this is not because she is a vampire. It is because Hammer used the typical Hollywood process of casting someone in their late twenties to play a character ten years younger. As with The Vampire Lovers, Mircalla is an anagram for Carmilla ...
Stephanie Beecham
, married two centuries ago in the 1770s,
moves into a remote countryside mansion owned by her husband, Ian Oglivy.
Shades of Rebecca, perhaps, as spooky goings-on commence.
Dr Peter Cushing (
Frankenstein
) is called in to investigate.
He discovers that something nasty happened fifty years previously,
when Herbert Lom (
Asylum
) was Lord of the Manor.
This was made by Amicus Productions in the early 1970s, playing on the success of Hammer Horror Films. It is from the same year that The Exorcist was released, and it seems to encapulate every reason that the Hammer-type horror movies died out. It is a period costume drama in an age that was embracing grittier stories set in the modern age. It is based on a book, Fengriffin - not one that has made best-seller lists recently. The Scream Queen has to contend with the then-cliches of the draughty old mansion, haunted portrait and severed hand.
Dr Shreck (Peter Cushing -
Star Wars: ANH
) gets into a train carriage with five other gentlemen,
many of whom have since gained International recognition.
He offers to predict their futures with the use of a tarot deck.
The result is a portmanteau of classic horror tales,
produced by Amicus (the arch-rivals of Hammer House of Horror).
This horror portmanteau from Amicus is adapted from a series of stories by
R. Chetwynd-Hayes
. Peter Cushing, such a nice old gent in
Tales from the Crypt
, is the creepy proprietor of an antique shop.
This is a remake of the 1970s classic.
It is a new-wave Amicus Production, set in modern-day USA.
Bijou Philips is a college student who gets pregnant. This is not a normal pregnancy - the foetus mysteriously doubled in size. And during the birth, something kills the entire medical team. The Sheriff is suspicious, as is the psychiatrist and the best buddy. Yes, a succession of visitors for the house with the murderous baby.
The kid's father has a younger brother who is crippled and has to use crutches to walk. Easy prey for the man-eating baby, right? What is the brother's life expectancy? Or will he be protected by the Hollywood law that under-18s are exempt from death?
This is a little-known Amicus production, despite the impressive cast.
Maitland (Peter Cushing -
Star Wars: A New Hope
) is a collector of gruesome curios.
His supplier (Patrick Wymark -
Blood on Satan's Claw (1973)
) sells him the skull of the Maquis De Sade.
Unfortunately the skull is haunted. Maitland seeks help from an old friend (Christopher Lee - Dracula (1958) ), but to no avail. The trail of bodies grows.
While this film has a decent storyline, it is let down by its reliance in special effects. Especially since the effects are far below modern expectations.
This is portmanteau of four horror tales by
Robert Bloch
, directed by Hammer Horror veteran
Freddie Francis
. The framing story is Dr Diabalo (Burgess Meredith -
) giving some hand-picked customers a tour
of his gruesome carnival sideshow.
The exhibit is Atropos - Goddess of Destiny,
who can reveal the horror of the customer's own hidden evil.
One customer does not believe a word of this,
so Diabalo uses the Goddess's powers and tells his future.
The witch's gold comes from their familiar, a black cat named Balthazar that was buried alive in the basement. Yes, a couple of homages to the works of Edgar Allan Poe . Balthazar will reward its human with gold coins ... but it demands human sacrifice in return. Since it has telepathic powers, it can coerce the human into following its commands.
Carla hooks up with a middle-aged superstar actor, a man who apparently has not aged a lot so might be even older than he looks. She discovers his nasty secret, about how he one of the Hollywood immortals ...
Rural England in the gaslight era, and dead bodies are piling up.
The Police Inspector (Peter Cushing -
Frankenstein
) asks the help of the master of the local Mansion - a Professor of Etemology.
The Professor's daughter (
Wanda Ventham
) may know something about it.
The Inspector goes undercover, and takes his daughter along as stage-dressing. This does make sense, from a certain point of view, but is also very convenient for the Damsel in Distress school of film-making.
It turns out that the ability to turn into a giant man-eating moth has a single glaring down-side. I mean, how many centuries has it been since man discovered fire?
The stand-out character is the morgue attendant who advises Inspector Cushing.
This 1971 effort makes its Hammer contemporaries seem tame in comparison.
It has good cinematography but lacks familiar faces or big names,
although a couple of the supporting cast later went on to major roles in
Dr Who
. The storyline seems a bit disjointed, because it is actually three stories joined together.
Somewhere in rural England (everyone has a West County accent) a group of peasants discover the devil's bones. Apparently it is a demon named Behemoth, and needs human sacrifice to reconstitute itself.
The Judge (Patrick Wymark - ) drinks a toast to James III, the Old Pretender - so he is obviously not to be trusted. The Reverend (Anthony Ainley - Dr Who ) has a weird obsession with snakes.
Wendy Padbury falls victim to Sunday School bullies, in the worst ways imaginable. The village children start to become a satanic coven.
This is a Tigon production from 1968.
Basically it is a Hammer-style effort, so you should know what to expect.
A Black Mass ceremony is conducted by satanic priestess Lavinia ( Barbara Steele ). The film's production design team must have had a field day, because the costumes are so OTT even the torturer has massive antlers on his hat.
An antiques dealer goes looking for his brother. He visits the mansion where he was last seen, and wanders into not a Roman orgy but a party from the Swinging Sixties. The lord of the manor (Christopher Lee - Dracula (1958) ) seems helpful, and orders his butler (Michael Gough - Satan's Slave ) to help the dealer.
The film has an acknowledgment of genre cliches that pre-dates Scream by almost three decades. In a self-knowing scene that removes all genre-blindness one character compares the mansion to a creepy old house in a horror movie. Boris Karloff ( The Raven ) gets a name-check, especially ironic because he gets top billing in the film. Nobody points out that the two leads both played the monster in Frankenstein - Karloff in the 1930s Universal effort, and Lee in the 1960s Hammer version.
The main story is that Lavinia was caught by witch-hunters and executed, but cursed them and their descendants. If this sounds familiar it was previously used in another Barbara Steele movie, Black Sunday (by ground-breaking Italian horror director Mario Bava ).
In the early 1970s, a pair of young women (real-life sisters Anne and
Vicki Michelle
) go to London and get work from a seedy modelling agency.
They are sent for a photo session at a remote mansion in the countryside.
The mansion, like the modelling agency, is secretly owned and run by a coven of satanists. They use it to select potential sacrificial victims. The two young women have to remain virgins, so there is an element of cock-blocking.
This is set in New England, USA,
but was filmed at Shepperton Studios in England.
It came out the same year as
Psycho (1960)
, and they have quite a lot in common.
Not only are they directed by Englishmen,
they also feature a female protagonist who stays at a creepy not-a-hotel
and goes missing so her boyfriend and next-of-kin come looking for her.
Also, the final scare is similar.
And on every level, the Hitchcock film is far superior.
The storyline starts with a witch-burning in the bad old days. Not unlike the Mario Bava classic, Black Sunday , but set in Massachusetts like the works of HP Lovecraft . Then, in the modern day (1960) a Professor (Christopher Lee - Dracula (1958) ) sends an attractive young female student to do her research in a remote village. Her topic of study is witchcraft, but despite knowing about the witches' rituals of human sacrifice she is completely genre-blind when it comes to realising she has been set up as the next potential victim. It is one thing to be ignorant of the cliched old man at the fuel station, a trope which featured in Cabin In The Woods but was relatively new at the time this film was made. However, it is an entirely different matter for her to give exposition about what witches do to potential victims and then completely ignore the same things happening to her.
The climax is quite spectacular in its own way. If you do not want to sit through the film, you can always watch best bits in the music video to Iron Maiden's Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter.
The title character, Jonathan Drake,
is an old white man who collects shrunken heads from South America.
He believes that his family is cursed,
because the men all die on or just after their sixtieth birthday.
When his brother turns sixy, he dies in suspicious circumstances.
Drake's daughter ( Valerie French ) calls in the local Police detective for help. Just as well that she does, because nobody else has investigated the curse. Because the men in his family have always died of heart attacks at age sixty, the doctors have written this off as a hereditary condition and decided that no autopsy or further investigation is necessary. In other words, the very existence of the pattern itself is what convinces them that there is no foul play at work.
The story cuts away quickly to show us the villains conspiring. Naturally, this removes a lot of the suspense because we now know who the villains are and what their evil plan is.
Despite being directed by
Terrence Fisher
and featuring Peter Cushing (
Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)
) this is not an actual Hammer horror production.
It was made by a company called Planet Film Productions,
which is quite obscure to say the least.
The story is set on Pitcher's Island, off the east coast of Ireland. The local policeman wears the uniform of the Garda Siochana, so we can deduce that it is in the Republic of Ireland's jurisdiction. However, with the exception on the Garda's light brogue there are no actual Irish accents to be heard. The local doctor is an American immigrant, and the experts he calls in to help him are English. The locals' surnames and accents are lowland Scots at most.
A local farmer disappears. When his body is discovered, his bones have been removed somehow. Dr Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing) gets called in to investigate. He and his associate launch a rogue investigation, and neglect to keep either the Garda or the mayor up to date. As a result, the monsters virtually take over the island.
This is basically a monster movie. It seems the prime inspiration for modern parody Grabbers . However, we have to be fair to it. The second-rate special effects are a product of its time, reminiscent of the worst creatures from Doctor Who , but in all fairness are no worse than the CGI monsters of today's low-budget efforts.
Does this film pass the bechdel test? The only female cast member is one of the doctors, girlfriend. Sorry, excuse the punctuation error - I meant to write one of the doctors' girlfriend. She is shoehorned into the plot by means of her having a rich father. The men complain about having to take her into a quarantine zone. In all fairness they are right to do so - not because of her gender, but because of her lack of relevant skills. These days, we hope that the writers would create gender-blind characters who would be defined by their actions and then cast according to ability.
This is one of a subgenre of 1970s UK horror portmanteaus
that are best known for the entries by Amicus Productions.
This particular film was released by an unknown studio, and sank without trace.
A government official named Nicholas (Jack Hawkins - Black Rose ) visits a scientist, Tremayne (Donald Pleasance - Halloween (1978) ), at a top security laboratory. Together they review four cases that involve supernatural phenomena.
The first story, Mr. Tiger, is about a young boy with an imaginary friend - an invisible tiger. Sort of like Calvin and Hobbs, but a lot more serious. The boy's parents are rich, but they constantly fight.
Penny Farthing is about a young man and his girlfriend ( Suzy Kendall ) who own an antiques store. One of the artefacts there is an only penny farthing bicycle, once owned by the man's uncle Albert. In fact, they put a portrait of Uncle Albert on the wall above the bike. The portrait seems to have telekinetic powers, forcing the man to ride the bicycle so fast he goes back in time.
A middle-aged Englishman becomes obsessed with a tree trunk named Mel, much to the annoyance of his neglected wife ( Joan Collins ). Is the husband insane, or is the tree an undead entity that controls his mind and has the physical ability to inflict violence on people? Perhaps a bit of both.
The final story, Luau, is about a publisher named Auriol ( Kim Novak ). Her only loves are her career and her hot tweenage daughter Virginia ( Mary Tamm ). The publisher wines and dies her big new client, a Polynesian screenwriter, who in turn takes an interest in Virginia.
Most movies in this genre are shot in England
by specialist UK Horror-movie studios.
This was filmed in Canada by the more mainstream Rank organisation,
so it has a bigger-budget cast but lacks the familiar feel.
The bookend sequence is set in Montreal, Canada, in 1977. A writer named Wilbur Gray (Peter Cushing - At The Earth's Core ) delivers his research to a prospective publisher, Frank Richards (Ray Milland - Battlestar Galactica (1978) . At the publisher's request, Wilbur tells three tales from his book. They all promote his thesis that cats are evil and want to take over the world. Cats and Dogs (1999) , anyone?
Valentine has inherited his dead wife's cat. Worse, the cat turns out to be a female and it drops a litter of kittens. Instead of selling the kittens, Valentine baptises them by total immersion. This starts kill-or-be-killed war between him and the cat.
Jess Franco
delivers this historical horror in the vein of
Witchfinder General
. It was filmed in Spain and then badly dubbed into English.
It is 1685, the reign of wicked King James II. Judge Jeffries (Christopher Lee, who previously worked with Jess Franco as Fu Manchu ) persecutes beautiful young women who are associated with anachronistic pagan rituals. Lots of soft-core sado-masochism is shoehorned in, to prevent it from being a dry historical drama.
Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee -
The Man With The Golden Gun
) is back, and he has a cunning plan.
He can manipulate the world's greatest scientists into doing his bidding
by kidnapping their gorgeous twenty-something daughters.
One scientist is ordered to invent a walkie-talkie radio transceiver device.
Surely such technology was commonplace by the year 1966.
This raises the question of what time period the film is set in.
The cars appear to be 1930s models.
Nayland Smith and everyone else still think that Fu Manchu was killed off when his evil lair was destroyed at the end of the previous film. However, the Yellow Peril has no intention of laying low. He sends out his dacoits, clad in their trademark uniforms of black pajamas and red bandana, to kidnap a woman in front of the Tower of London! Naturally, none of the oriental villains display any martial arts talents during the poorly-choreographed fight scenes. How sad to think that Christopher Lee later starred as villain in a James Bond movie that epitomised the chop-socky genre.
Burt Kwouk (Return of the Pink Panther) is Fu Manchu's sidekick. Their evil plan is to use a radio wave as a death-ray to incinerate buildings in London.
Fu Manchu (Christopher Lee -
Dracula (1958)
) has a new base of operations in Anatolia.
He is planning to blow up the Bosphorus - like the villains' plot in
The World Is Not Enough
. His test sequence consists of some stock footage from a dam disaster movie
Spanish Director Jess Franco combines aspects of his other works - the Turkish location of Venus in Furs with the villain (Christopher Lee) of The Bloody Judge ).
A cult of pagans is performing human sacrifices,
with attractive twenty-something tourists as their preferred victims.
The local police are either incompetent or involved,
so it falls to the local Irish catholic priest (Donald Pleasance -
Death Line
) to investigate the disappearances.
Does the local nobleman, Count Carfax (Peter Cushing -
Curse of Frankenstein
), have anything to do with it?
And more importantly ...
why is there a Catholic priest in an Eastern Orthodox area?
The setting is Greece, which makes this slightly reminiscent of Island of Death . However, that film is original insofar as it has the tourists killing the locals while this movie is filled with the usual cliches. Cushing's role seems to be inspired by that of Christopher Lee in Wicker Man . However, once again this movie fails in the comparison. And a couple of years later Pleasance would fight evil in Halloween ... yes, also a far better film.
It was filmed in Spain,
re-using the sets from a Spaghetti Western,
and dubbed into English.
The basic story is that of the classic pulp sci-fi story
Who Goes There?, previously filmed as
The Thing From Outer Space
. This time, however, instead of a polar research station
the action takes place on the trans-Siberian express train.
In the Edwardian era, an English gentleman explorer (Christopher Lee - Dracula (1958) ) has recovered a mumified body from the mountains of Manchuria. It has been frozen in ice for two million years. He crates it up and puts it on the train from Vladivistok to St Petersburg.
Also on the train is the explorer's friendly rival (Peter Cushing - Frankenstein ). Normally they are antagonists, but this time it is a good thing because when the monster starts to bump people off, they team up and fight it.
The passengers and crew on the train are a forgettable bunch of Spanish actors who only a hardened viewer of European genre film would recognise. However, along the route our heroes get reinforcements in the form of a band of Cossacks led by Captain Kazan (Telly Savalas - ). It turns out that Savalas worked on the spaghetti western that featured the train set, and like it he was recycled in the new project. If only British film-makers would use their initiative in such a way.
Salem (Max Von Sydow -
Jesus Of Nazareth
), a convicted axe-murderer,
escapes from a lunatic asylum and breaks into a nearby farmhouse.
By apparent coincidence this happens to be his own family's house,
now in the hands of his sisters and his brother-in-law.
It seems they are involved in a criminal conspiracy,
which means this is a revenge spree rather than a slasher film.
Before long, women start to turn up dead. Salem may be a murderous psycho, but he actually has a plan. He does not want to prove his innocence, he just wants to kill everyone.
A Police Detective (Trevor Howard - Who? ) is assigned to the case. This makes it something akin to a police procedural, but with far more attention paid to the killer's perspective.
The film was shot on location in Denmark and Sweden, and while it is not technically a UK film it was made in the English language and certainly feels more Hitchcockian than Giallo. In fact the nearest thing to compare this to is Frenzy , a far superior film with a similar storyline that Hitchcock himself made around the same time.
This film's director has a Hungarian name, but he spent his entire working life in the USA. He was not an experienced film director, but instead worked as a director-for-hire on a lot of American 1960s TV shows. This explains why the movie is so boringly filmed. There is only one original camera-shot, where a prospective victim's gaze falls upon an axe-blade. Beyond that, it is just a poor imitation of the master's work.
This starts with a bookend sequence in the Gratton Club, London, in the modern day.
Although this sequence does not add anything to the story,
it does seem to have inspired the far superior 1970s UK TV show
Supernatural (1977)
.
The main story begins when one of the characters in the bookend sequence picks up a book of stories by Edgar Allen Poe and starts to read one of them aloud to his friends. However, this is just an outline for another story within a story.
Back in the 1800s, a young man goes to stay with his friend Mr Usher. While staying at the house he witnesses the shacking culmination of a decades-old family tragedy.
A man travels to a remote, fog-bound mansion to visit his fiance.
She is Madeline Usher (
), and the mansion is her ancient family home.
U&nfortunately her brother Roderick (Vincent Price -
Theatre of Blood
) is a control freak who refuses to allow the engaged couple together.
Madeline has the curse of the Usher family, but not due to her bloodline itself. It turns out that the house itself has a past, since everyone who lived in it was a murderer or worse. Yes, according to Roderick it is the influence of the house itself that affects its inhabitants.
As the plot thickens, one of Poe's favourite tropes appears. Yes, there is a premature burial ...
In the early 1960s, B-Movie maestro Roger Corman produced a series of movies based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe . The scripts were written by Richard Matheson , and the result certainly does justice to the original stories.
Despite the title, this has more in common with
Phantom of the Opera
. The only reference to
Murders in the Rue Morgue
is that the main characters are a theatre company
that performs a grand guignol stage play loosely based on the works of
Edgar Allan Poe
.
A disfigured madman (Herbert Lom - ) is bumping off the current and former members of the theatre troupe. The company's manager and star (Jason Robards - Something Wicked This Way Comes ) may have done something to provoke this response. Police Detective Adolf Celi ( ) investigates.
In the nineteenth century, a rich man (Ray Milland -
The Man With X-Ray Eyes
) has a morbid fear of premature burial.
He must overcome this fear if he is to marry his fiance (
Hazel Court
).
The narrator, Craven (Vincent Price -
), recites Poe's poem while mourning his dead wife - the lost Lenore (
Hazel Court
). He is interrupted by an actual Raven,
which can speak in English and instructs him how to make a magic potion.
The raven transforms back into his human form -
Craven's fellow wizard, Dr Bedlo (Peter Lorre -
), who is the drunken bumbling comic relief.
Craven and Bedlo decide to unite against a common foe - Dr Scarabus (Boris Karloff - Frankenstein ). Bedlo wants revenge for being turned into a raven, while Craven wants to recover the soul of the lost Lenore. The two wizards head to Castle Scarabus, accompanied by Craven's daughter Estelle ( ) and Bedlo's son Rexford (Jack Nicholson - ).
Castle Scarabus is large and draughty, with thick stone walls full of secret passages. However, it is decorated with highly flamable drapes and tapestries ... and the roof is made of wood. Despite its sturdy appearance, the whole thing would go up like a Roman candle.
This is perhaps the greatest of the Roger Corman series of Poe adaptations. It would not be possible to make such a movie today - not because of the special effects, which are very dated, but for the incredible first-rate cast. Jack Nicholson went on to become one of the greatest actors in the world, but he never forgot his early days in Corman's movies. Hazel Court holds her own in scenes with Karloff and Price, making it seem a pity she didn't get starring roles of her own. All in all, a very impressive film under the circumstances.
This was evidently filmed in England,
since it starts with an authentic-looking 1800s fox-hunt
and a detour to the ruins of an abbey that seems to have been in ruins
since the disestablishment in the 1530s.
Verden Fell (Vincent Price - ) buries his wife. A local aristocratic woman falls for him, and convinces him to marry her. However, he is haunted by the ghost of his dead first wife, Ligeia. Her spirit seems to have been transferred into his cat, a vicious brute.
The story ends with a quote from Edgar Allen Poe , presumably intended to remind the audiuence to Price's earlier collaborations with Roger Corman . After all, Ligeia is portrayed as The Black Cat ...
Professor Lorrimer Van Helsing (Peter Cushing -
Professor Lawrence Van Helsing (Peter Cushing -
