Please make a donation for our |
| If you enjoyed this page, please check out the sponsors' sites below so that the Webzine will always be free. |
         |
Top Science Fiction Novels |
Top Best-sellers and Movie Tie-In Books |
Fantasy/History |
DVDs |
Non-Fiction |
 |
 |
© Logan Bruce 1997-2025 |
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 1]
Mark of the Devil
Shown 05 Sep 84
This starts with a voodoo ritual conducted by Lee (Burt Kwouk - Return of the Pink Panther ). It turns out that Kwouk's character is half-Jamaican, so the magic is Afro-Carribean rather than Chinese.
Frankie (Dirk Benedict - Battlestar Galactica (1978) ) is about to marry Jenny Seagrove , the daughter of a very rich man. He looks great with his short off, which means he does a lot of shirtless scenes, necessitated by a plot which depends on the audience seeing the devil's mark on his chest above his heart.
Frankie is a degenerate gambler who is in debt to a local loan shark. To get cash he decides to rob Lee the voodoo priest, who also has sidelines as a tattooist and a pawnbroker. This is not exactly the Killing of a Chinese Bookie, because Frankie is a sloppy amateur. Lee stabs him with a tattoo needle ...
Frankie finds himself with a self-growing tattoo on his chest. This skin-art depicts the fight between him and Lee. Everything he does to remove it is futile. Worse, his rich fiance constantly wants him to take his shirt off. Can he stall her until they are lawfully married?
This was written by Brian Clemens and directed by Val Guest , famous veterans of the UK film and TV industry. They deliver the right amount of creeping dread.
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 2]
Last Video and Testament
Shown 12 Sep 84
This starts with a man dancing on someone's grave, setting a tone of grim suspense. The audience know at least one major character will die, but they do not know who or how or why.
A business executive (Oliver Tobias - ) gets chewed out by his elderly boss for living the carefree lifestyle of a single man. In contrast, the boss has married a much younger wife ( href=novbabe.htm>Deborah Raffin ).
The old man has a network of 1980s-era analogue CCTV cameras, like in The Corvini Inheritance. He discovers that someone is plotting to kill him. But who will die first?
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 3]
Czech Mate
Shown 17 Jan 86
Vicky Duncan ( Susan George ) is seduced by her ex-husband John Duncan (Patrick Mower) and invited for a romantic trip to Czechslovakia. Remember, this was during the Cold War - a couple of decades before the Czechs westernised and became part of the European Union.
Once in Prague, Vicky's husband disappears. Worse, she is being followed by Bullneck (Peter Vaughn - The Tenth Kingdom ), a massive thug who is no doubt an agent of the communist Secret police.
Vicky eventually works out that she has been dragged into a case of international espionage. This discovery is only made because someone leaks info to her. Presumably this was inserted by the scriptwriter, because the leaker is not revealed and nobody has a motive.
The ending is particularly downbeat.
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 4]
A Distant Scream
Shown 24 Jan 86
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 5]
The Late Nancy Irving
Shown 07 Feb 86
Nancy Irving ( Christina Raines ) is a female American golfing champion, who flies to England to spend time with her English husband. She needs a medical checkup because of her jet-lag, and it is revealed that she has a very rare blood group. Later, she discovers someone is following her.
Nancy gets in a car crash, and wakes up in hospital being looked after by Nurse Lee ( Zienia Merton ) and Dr Marquis (Tony Anholt - Space 1999 ). However, she begins to get suspicious about their true intentions.
This has a slightly updated twist on the classic Roald Dahl short story Beware of the dog.
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 6]
In Possession
Shown 07 Mar 86
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 7]
Black Carrion
Shown 14 Mar 86
Music publisher Lou Delmart (William Hootkins - Star Wars: ANH ) hires journalists Paul Chater (Leigh Lawson) and Cora Berlaine ( Season Hubley ) to locate a long-lost singing group named the Verne Brothers, a pair of singer-songwriters who have not been seen in a decade.
A couple of elderly motorists are driven off the road by a truck, like in Jeepers Creepers , and end up beside a creepy scarecrow. They go to get help at the nearest village, Prior's Frome, which no longer exists on modern maps.
This movie reflects on the rural changes brought about by the motorways built in the 1960s. These bypassed smaller towns and villages, which became isolated and closed down. On the other hand, they had less intercity cargo traffic to worry about blocking their small rural roads.
Police detective Drury (Christopher Ellison - The Bill) gets called in to clean up the massive number of local missing persons cases. And just in time, he makes a lot of progress even though the police could have followed up the leads at any point in previous months.
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 8]
The Sweet Scent of Death
Shown 04 Apr 86
The US Ambassador, Gregr Denver (Dean Stockwell - Quantum Leap ), and his wife Ann ( Shirley Knight ) rent a disused mansion in the English countryside. Ann thinks that the neighbour, Marvin (Michael Gothard - ), is stalking her because of a criminal case she worked on when she was a defence attorney.
This was made a couple of years before the Lockerbie bombing, but it is hard to believe that a VIP like the US Ambassador would have no security for his home or family. Neither the US Marines on duty at the embassy nor the local English civilian police do anything to help, until the stakes are raised high enough.
The twist is quite obvious, and has been used before. Part of the problem is the small cast, since this is limited by a TV budget, which means the list of suspects is kept very low.
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 9]
Paint Me A Murder
Shown 11 Apr 86
Michelle Phillips is the supposedly grieving widow of an oil painter. She hob-nobs with the likes of Richard LeParmentier ( Star Wars: ANH ), because now that her husband is dead his paintings have gone up in value. However, she somehow has the ability to access a continuous supply of new ones, and even get them painted to order.
W. Morgan Sheppard ( SeaQuest DSV ) plays a drunken artist who gets apprehended by a police constable played by a very young-looking Neil Morrissey.
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 10]
The Corvini Inheritance
Shown 18 Apr 86
This starts with a young woman ( Jan Francis ) being stalked by a man in a balaclava mask.
The woman's neighbour (David McCallum - Sapphire and Steel ) is head of security at a local auction house. His boss (Terence Alexander - Bergerac) gets a new client - a French millionaire who puts a set of jewelry up for auction. The jewelry, the Corvini Inheritance of the title, is worth three million pounds so it is under constant CCTV surveillance. It is for sale because the owner believes the story that it is actually cursed. The only other person who believes this is McCallum, who starts to see the necklace change ...
McCallum gives his protective services to his neighbour for free, putting her under a level of surveillance that eventually makes her uncomfortable. This all boils up to a horrifying climax. But the question remains - how much of this was the Corvini curse responsible for? After all, the stalking started before the Frenchman delivered the jewelry to the auction house.
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 11]
And the Wall Came Tumbling Down
Shown 25 Apr 86
In the 1600s, a warlock (Peter Wyngarde - Flash Gordon ) controls a band of witches who meet in a deconsecrated church in the middle of a forest.
Three hundred years later, the city has expanded and the church is now in the middle of a slum. A journalist ( Barbi Benton ) meets with the construction manager (Gareth Hunt - The New Avengers ) who is in charge of the demolition. They uncover clues to the warlock's plan, which involves reincarnation and nuclear armageddon - like in Damien: The Omen 3 .
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 12]
Child's Play
Shown 02 May 86
Mary Crosby and her husband (Nicholas Clay) discover that their house has been surrounded by some strange unbreakable material. Rather than let this develop over the first act, allowing the audience to get to know the characters, this is all dumped on them in the pre-title sequence.
The husband briefly wonders who would have the resources to encase an entire house overnight. He suggests it could be either the government, a bit like in the movie Cube , or alien invaders. However, as the story progresses the wife starts to question the very nature of their reality. Of course, since we do not see their normal lives in the first act of the story we have no knowledge of what their actual reality is.
Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense (1984) [Season 1, Episode 13]
Tennis Court
Shown 09 May 86
