Night Of The Big Heat

All You Can Heat Buffet

Night Of The Big Heat
aka Night Of The Burning Damned (US)
aka Night Of The Burning Doomed (US TV)
Directed by Terence Fisher
UK 1967 
Planet Films Distribution/88 Films
Blu Ray Zone B

 Warning: Minor spoilers.

Okay then. I’d not seen Night Of The Big Heat before 88 Films issued this new Blu Ray transfer, although I’ve got it in the back of my mind that it probably played on British TV a fair amount during the 1970s and 80s. This one is set on a small island called Fara where, in the middle of winter... and at odds with the rest of the country... the inhabitants are suffering a huge heat wave. Patrick Allen plays novelist Jeff Callum, who is on the island writing his new book and who runs the local pub alongside his wife, Frankie (played by Allen’s real life wife Sarah Lawson). Then Jane Merrow turns up as his new secretary, Angela, who had a fling with him in her past and wants to reconnect... plus take no prisoners as far as his wife is concerned. 

This all goes on against a backdrop of strange goings on at the island, with the big tropical heat just a symptom of something else that’s happening. There are instances of strange, high pitched whirrings in the air sometimes and this is usually a prelude to somebody being confronted by something off screen and then being burned to death, as is the case when a character played by Kenneth Cope runs away after attempting to rape Angela... only to be confronted with ‘something unusual’. 

Trying to get to the bottom of it all is Godfrey Hanson and his amazing scientific instruments, played deliberately unemotionally by the great Christopher Lee. And, billed as a guest star  (he is only in a few scenes dotted about the movie at various points) is the equally great Peter Cushing, as the local Dr. Vernon Stone. Shenanigans ensue when Jeff and Godfrey form an uneasy alliance after the latter shares his theory that the heat is a by-product of beings from another planet coming to the island as the vanguard of an invading species, who need the heat in order to survive. 

And, it’s a film on which I’m now very torn. On the one hand, it has all the makings of a good ‘comfort horror film’ and I suspect it’s one I shall come back to every now and again. On the other hand, there are a lot of problems with it, tempered by the heat being a good excuse for Jane Merrow to run an ice cube over her half exposed torso and neck. I mean, some of the dialogue and story ideas are awful, which is strange considering it’s supposed to be an adaptation of a novel by John Lymington. Apparently it was rewritten from scratch a day or two before filming. It kinda shows.

And the film also suffers from some very low budget and not terribly effective monsters. Most of the time the monsters are unseen and thus create a certain amount of suspense and jeopardy until the big reveal. Unfortunately, the big reveal is just light pulsing rocks looking like they’ve been constructed from canvass. So, yeah, not good. 

The other problem is... the body count in the film wouldn’t be nearly as bad if some of the characters just acted on common sense rather than whatever the heck they do here. For example, people are practically going off to their deaths in ways that can be easily foreseen and, I suspect, easily escaped from...

In one scene,  for instance, Godfrey uses his walkie talkie to contact everyone in the inn to tell them to turn off the lights as it’s what is drawing the creatures to people. And so a token is made of showing some of the characters doing just that but... do they heck!?! When we return to the scene of the people in the inn, they have clearly left a few lights on... obviously to light the shot, I get it but, yeah, it makes no sense by this point in the film and it’s almost like the various main protagonists are trying to get themselves killed by doing the lamest things ever. So, yeah, I have no sympathy for their actions throughout the film, for sure. 

But, the pace is nicely fitting for the film and it has a kind of interesting score by Malcolm Lockyer. Now, I don’t know Lockyer at all apart from his music for the first Doctor Who movie (reviewed here) but, I have to say, I recognised the style immediately as sharing the same DNA of that score and was waiting for his name to come up in the opening credits. Which is another thing that pushes it into comfort movie territory for me, for sure. 

The denouement of Night Of The Big Heat is abrupt and totally unsatisfying, it has to be said. If you thought the ending of the movie version of The Day Of The Triffids was bad then, yeah, you ain’t seen nothing yet. So, all in all I would have to say that, in many ways the film is really terrible but, I found myself thoroughly entertained by it so, I was very happy to have 88 Films’ wonderful transfer hitting shops. It’s not one I’d recommend to everybody but fans of studios like Hammer and Amicus should maybe try and catch this one, for sure. 

Death Line

Obstructing The Doors 
Causes Delay And 
Can Be Dangerous

Death Line
aka Raw Meat
UK/USA 1972 
Directed by Gary Sherman 
Network Blu Ray Zone B
 
Death Line is a film I’ve been meaning to catch up to for years. It used to get shown a lot on TV when I was a kid in the 1970s and it was one of those films which got talked about in the playground the next day at school... although I was never allowed to stay up late and watch it back in those days. 

If you like looking at London locations from the 1970s then you’re in for a treat... the whole film takes place around the Russell Square, Holborn and Aldwych areas, primarily in Russell Square underground where the main protagonists, college couple Alex (David Ladd) and Pat (Sharon Gurney) stumble on a man who they think might be dying, on the stairs leading off the platform, after the last train has gone through. When they fetch a policeman, the man is gone but, because the man’s identity is known to be a big shot at Whitehall, the local police in the form of Inspector Calhoun (played by Donald Pleasence) and his assistant, Sergeant Rogers (played by Norman Rossington) investigate. The police get nowhere but, eventually, catch up to the college kids when Pat is kidnapped by... what lies beneath... and Alex goes down into the warren of old tube construction tunnels to look for her. 

What actually lies beneath is the last surviving descendant of a group of people abandoned and left unrescued when the tunnels for a station that was never completed, in the 1800s, collapsed. A lone surviving cannibal feeding off stray tube passengers, who gets along in grunts and gestures with his woman (who is short lived in the film and dies before the next in line can born, prompting him to capture another female to mate with). He also has the plague (as did all the descendants of the survivors trapped in the air pockets below) and looks as grotesque as his mutilated victims. Later, in scenes where he is terrorising Pat (in such a way that you also have to feel sorry for the savage too), he uses the only piece of language he has picked up over the years, repetitively, in the hopes he can be understood... “Miiind the doors!”.

And it’s actually a little gem of a horror film, it has to be said (although technically more of a thriller, I reckon). Although there are a couple of scenes of brutal violence (such as when a station cleaner gets his broom pushed through his torso) its the grim looking sets filled with half mutilated and disease ridden bodies, beautifully captured with slow moving camera (often lasting for many minutes), that are quite striking and seem as strong, probably stronger, than even the Italian zombie movies which were to come out half a decade later. Which is why, I’m sure, it was such a big hit with the kiddies in the school playground the next day, after it had various TV screenings. It’s actually quite hard stuff... in fact, the US version which screened for AIP under the title Raw Meat, had some of the gorier scenes trimmed before it got into their cinemas at the time. 

The acting is pretty great in this too. Donald Pleasence is like I’ve never seen him before and certainly demonstrates his range. Playing a very unsympathetic Inspector who is pretty nasty to everyone he comes in contact with but, not so much that he can’t take his long suffering sergeant to the local for a binge drinking session (a scene where both he and Rossington were ad libbing the whole lot, they really got drunk for the occasion). There’s also a cameo scene starring Christopher Lee as an MI5 man. He and Pleasence are never in the same shot until Lee sits down on a sofa, due to the contrast in heights between the shorter Pleasence and Lee’s much taller frame. 

All in all, Death Line is a pretty entertaining slice of UK terror (not sure how much input the US contingent had) and the, now sadly defunct, Network Blu Ray release also includes on its print, the original X Certification card from the time... which was nice to see again after so many decades. But, yeah, if you like interesting and somewhat slow burn thrillers then it’s worth your time if you can see it and can get an uncut UK version. I’m glad to have finally seen this thing after all these years. 

The Devil Rides Out

Separating The Wheatley 
From The Chaff

The Devil Rides Out
UK 1967
Directed by Terence Fisher
Hammer/Shout Factory Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Retire comfortably to a chalk circle if you don’t want to be attacked by spoilers.

It’s been a while since I last revisited the jewel in Terence Fisher’s directorial crown, The Devil Rides Out and, probably even longer since I read Dennis Wheatley’s best selling 1934 novel of the same name. And when I say best selling... I mean best selling. I remember as a kid, growing up in the 1970s, long before Stephen King became a name on bookshop shelves. If you were looking for fiction (of pretty much any kind, horror or not) you would find the shelves of book sellers and newsagents stacked high with large quantities of Wheatley’s tomes (and this one and The Haunting Of Toby Jugg were in pretty much every shop in the country that dealt with popular reading material, if memory serves). Bizarrely, they seem all but extinct these days but certainly, back in the 1930s through to, maybe the very early 1980s, these were wherever you looked. 

The Devil Rides Out was actually the second of 11 books that Wheatley wrote about the central character The Duke de Richleau (yes, fictional ancestor of that other famous Richleau). It was also the second film adaptation to feature him although, in the first one back in the 1930s, his character and name were changed somewhat. Only three of that series, this one included, had a basis in the occult as Wheatley was more known, at one time, for his pulpy adventure stories rather than his ‘few and far between’ occult adventures.

In this movie adaptation, which was pushed for by Christopher Lee (a friend of Wheatley’s) who plays The Duke de Richleau, he is joined by his three companions from those novels (making up the four modern musketeers in spirit, as I think they were originally pitched)... Rex (played by Leon Greene but dubbed by Patrick Allen), Simon (played by Patrick Mower) and Richard (played by Paul Eddington... best known, perhaps, for his stints on The Good Life and Yes, Minister). Other characters of interest are Nike Arrighi as Tanith, Sarah Lawson as Richard’s wife Marie and Charles Gray as devil worshipping satanist Mocata (obviously based on Aleister Crowley although, I very much suspect from an anecdote I read once by Wheatley about his meeting the man in question, that it’s based more on the sensationalist idea of Crowley than, perhaps, the personality of the man himself). 

And it’s a pretty good film. There are lots of elements missing such as the part of the plot dealing with the mummified penis talisman being sought to start a Second World War and using the Swastika, referring back to the days before it became a Nazi symbol, to deflect evil (it’s replaced by a common or garden variety Christian cross in the movie) but it’s actually a pretty good adaptation by another writing legend, Richard Matheson, who manages to extract and translate into film terms what was useful and yet still remain true to the spirit of the novel. 

Director Fisher does some nice things with vertical uprights and interior features, not to mention lighting to make very clean shot compositions to carry the action across. I especially like what he does with Patrick Mower’s shadow in one sequence, where it’s lit in such a way that it towers above him but, when his sense of power is taken from him by Mocata and he joins him once more as a complicit victim, he is suddenly lit from above and his shadow diminishes in size to something much smaller than him. 

Also, there’s a nice prominent colour palette of rich blues and pastel mauves in much of the picture, especially when something dark and devil worshippy comes up, later added to with some deep reds to warm everything up even more. 

Now, about those colours... I deliberately bought the US Shout Factory restoration of the film (the title of the film on the print is The Devil’s Bride, the original US title chosen for fear of people thinking this might be a Western) because I wanted one where the original special effects hadn’t been that tampered with (there was some revisionist style upgrading with CGI in various modern/recent versions of the film) and I was right to do so. However, the ‘other’ restoration by Studio Canal (a company name I’ve come to hate over the years for various reasons) is also included in the extras on this disc and, when I put it on to compare some scenes, I was horrified with the difference in the restoration. Some of the night scenes did not look very dark at all and, in terms of those beautiful rich colours I’d noticed... well... all I’m saying is the Studio Canal version (which I think is the only one available on Blu Ray over here in the UK, where the film was actually made) looks pretty washed out and mediocre in comparison to the main one featured here on the Shout Factory disc. I’m so glad I trusted my gut on this. 

Rounding out the extras on the Shout Factory edition are a ‘making of’ section, a talk about the movie by the always watchable Kim Newman and another one by the similarly worthwhile Jonathan Rigby (plus a couple of trailers where, on one of them, Leon Green’s voice isn’t completely dubbed out). 

And, yeah, The Devil Rides Out is, much like the novel on which it’s based, a fine romp of an entertainment and it even features a less than subtle but quite wonderful score by Hammer alumnus James Bernard... one of the few Hammer film scores which actually got a CD release for a short while (I put it on for a spin every now and again). If you are into films which take traditional (rather than strictly true life) devil rituals and weave them into fantastic tales of supernatural dread as a metaphor for good verus evil, with an absolutely top notch performance by Christopher Lee (playing the hero rather than the villain role he was often landed with) then this one should go right to the top of your list. It’s one of those films I come back to every 15 years or so and, yeah, I’m hoping this won’t be the last time I give it some play. 

Monsieur Hulot's Holiday

Hulot Goes There

Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
aka Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot
France 1953
Directed by Jacques Tati
Studio Canal UK Blu Ray

For over five decades now, my dad has been moaning at me to watch both Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday and Mon Oncle, the first direct sequel (or so I’m told). They absolutely cracked him up when he was a kid and for many years to come. Well, this year I finally bit the bullet by getting him, for his birthday, a Blu Ray box set of, apparently, all of Jacques Tati’s films and this one, Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, aka Les vacances de Monsieur Hulot, is the first one we were watching together. 

And I have to say, I’m almost grudgingly impressed by it. 

Not at first... although it starts off humorously enough, with a bunch of holiday goers waiting at the platform of a station. Then the tannoy spouting typically incomprehensible caterwaulings gets the fifty or so people to dash under the platform via stairs and arrive on the opposite platform, only for the tannoy to wail once again and for them to all dash back... and so on. 

We have all the holiday people arriving at the ‘typical’ coastal town of Saint-Marc-sur-Mer and checking into a hotel... and then director Tati, playing Mr. Hulot, turns up and things start going wrong for all and sundry. And although the film is packed full of humourous and, I have to say, extremely clever visual and audio gags (and I mean packed, there’s a heck of a lot going on in this movie) it took me a while to fall into step with it.

That is until the patient and persistent magic of the film slowly started to grow on me and I did find myself laughing at many points. And although Tati is absolutely brilliant with all his mannerisms and mishaps in this, my real window into this world was one of the other of the many... I guess in some ways eccentric... characters that populate the film. For instance, there’s the man who follows his wife around all movie but who never fails to see the full picture as he observes everything happening around him and seeing just what trouble Hulot is causing (and in some cases, not causing and is not really responsible for). 

But the character who did it for me the most is Martine, played by Nathalie Pascaud. She was a friend of Tati’s and had no other acting roles after other than a brief (I’m assuming a small part) turn in a movie ten years later. She didn’t actually pursue a career as an actress but, she should have, she’s absolutely fabulous in this. And, like the wandering guy mentioned in the paragraph above, she observes quite a lot of the shenanigans going on and takes a lot of joy from the chaos happening in Hulot’s wake, even befriending him towards the end of the film and dancing with him in the barely attended costume ball. I really wanted her to have a more romantic entanglement with the character but she’s delightful putting a kind of epilogue on the film, as she tries to suppress a laugh about her times at the sea side when somebody shows her a snapshot of Hulot. She was my window into the main character... to the point where I already want to watch the movie again, as I will now see it in a different light. Maybe I’ll watch the 1978 amended version (recut by and with new inserts by, Tati himself), which is also included on the disc.

And, of course, the film is all about random acts of comedy, nicely observed and captured by the director. A film full of collected moments, rather than a story, for sure. So I might mention the kid’s head popping up through the steering wheel of the bus, the time Tati dries himself off with a towel (not realising he’s standing against a post and the towel is going nowhere near him), the card game where a guy on a revolving chair gets turned around and back without realising, wrecking two games at once and leading to much verbal castigation... and a wonderful and surreally nonsensical sequence on a tennis court which has had me going over the dynamics of the ‘Hulot serve’ whenever I think on it... which seems to be a lot in the last couple of days. 

There are also little touches of visual poetry here and there too... such as, after the regular assembling of all the guests at the hotel for meals, shots of the deserted beach and the debris left by the holiday makers.

Looking at it now, I can see how there might be a through line in both French and international cinema from the popular figurehead of French comedy Tati, to his influence on directors like, I’m sure, Jean-Pierre Jeunet. And I would be not surprised in the least to find the strong influence of Tati’s Hulot in the genetic DNA of Peter Sellar’s version of Inspector Jacques Clouseau, who even shares a first name with the director, possibly in homage to him.

And that’s me done on Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, I think. Certain fan bases might want to note that, as far as I can tell, the English dub where the great Christopher Lee did all the voices, is not included in this Studio Canal presentation. But hey, the proper French version is great and if you want to see an inventive slice of classic comedy, this one is a good one to go with. 

The Crimson Pirate

Acrobatic Plunder

The Crimson Pirate
USA/UK1952 
Directed by Robert Siodmak
Warner Brothers 
Spanish Blu Ray Zone B

Burt Lancaster as buccaneer Captain Vallo swings from one mast of his ship to the other, yells instructions to his crew and then immediately breaks the fourth wall to talk to the audience, telling them that in the following piratical adventure, they should believe only what they see. Then, he turns and the film is run backwards as he reverse swings back to the original mast... turning to the audience once again he corrects that to... “No. Believe only half of what you see!” Roll credits and some thunderously good music as the greatest pirate film ever made gets underway. 

Yeah, it’s been a long time since I last revisited The Crimson Pirate (which I’ve seen multiple times over the years) and, every time I watch it, I like it even more. I wanted to watch an upgraded Blu Ray print and, like a few films I’ve had to source recently, I had to get a Spanish copy of the film, since they seem to be the only ones to give it a Blu Ray transfer... and what a transfer it is. Even my dad remarked that the colour and clarity of the film was the best he’s ever seen it (and he’s seen it even more times than me). 

The film tells of Burt Lancaster, teamed up with Ojo (pronounced Oho... as in Yo Ho Ho), played by Nick Cravat, his lifelong friend and fellow circus acrobat turned actor. Lancaster kept him on the payroll for life and they starred in nine films together, with him as his personal trainer. And what that means is, all the acrobatic stunts you see the two doing here in the fight and chase scenes... and they do quite a bit... are done by them (and you can certainly see it to... even in the long shots). 

Joining the cast is the female love interest of Eva Bartok as the daughter of a rebel leader that Captain Vallo and his crew aid in the adventure. You may remember her as... SPOILER ALERT... one of the two killers revealed towards the end of Mario Bava’s classic giallo Blood And Black Lace (reviewed here). We also have Thorin Thatcher in the cast as troublesome crew mate Humble Bellows... you may remember him as the evil wizard in The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad (reviewed here). And there’s even another early role for Christopher Lee as a minor villain... although he gets a line or two in this one. He has gone on record that the film was supposed to be a serious affair but when director Siodmak jumped on board, he immediately turned it into the action comedy romp it’s now known as.

Last but, by no means least, is the great James Hayter as Prof. Elihu Prudence, who helps the story no end by inventing and reinventing various devices which help the brave crew in their endeavours. Now, I’ve said to many people that the film The Scorpion King always reminded me a little of The Crimson Pirate and that’s because, along with the sense of fun, you have various gadgets invented by the characters to add a new dimension to the action and... it’s a plot element even more so in this film. 

So the first sign of unusual scientific intervention is when, after Lancaster, Cravat and Hayter are chained to a boat and cast adrift at sea to await certain death by starvation, Hayter’s character capsizes the boat which sinks to the bottom of the sea, catching a pocket of air in the hull, enabling them to breathe while they walk along the bottom of the sea to land. This foreshadows a moment right near the when Hayter, in drag (it’s a plot point, don’t ask), pops out of a submarine he’s invented. 

In addition to this we have the invention of explosives, a hot air balloon, a hand revolving gatling gun made out of a circle full of muskets*, cannons on armoured carts and a mounted flame thrower. All to overthrow the government and strike a blow for freedom (oh, yeah, not much actual pirating goes on in this movie, due to the plot in which the buccaneers become embroiled). 

The acting and personalities are all brilliant, performing the lines of a very sharp and witty screenplay with lots of action and stunts. Not to mention William Alwyn’s absolutely wonderful action score... the stuff where Vallo and Ojo cause trouble with the ‘King’s men’ is especially good. 

And I’ve not much more to say about this one, I think. The Crimson Pirate is said to have inspired the original Pirates Of The Caribbean ride at Disney in the 1950s and, asides from that, this is easily the swashbucklingest pirate movie ever made. I’ve always loved this one and always shall. If you’ve never seen it... what are you waiting for?

*For the grand-daddy of anachronisms in the film though, especially since it was obviously unintentional, check out the luxury cruiser the Queen Elizabeth in the background of one of the shots from on board a galleon. I think they moved in closer to take a look at filming.

Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.

Pecking Order

Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N.
aka Captain Horatio Hornblower
Directed by Raoul Walsh 
UK/USA/France 1951 
Warner Brothers
Spanish Blu Ray Zone B 

This will be, not much more than a short series of notes on Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. rather than a full blown review because, well, I felt the film was hugely entertaining but don’t have much to say about the cinematography, shot composition or music, to tell the truth. The acting is all excellent but, it’s what you’d expect from a top notch cast like this, working with some very well written dialogue.

Ever since I was a barely conscious child, I remember being impressed by my dad’s bookshelves but three specific sets of books remain in my memory to this day. One was his collection of hardbacks of the main works of Alexandre Dumas, another was a small Mervyn Peak boxed edition and, last but by no means least, his impressive box of C. S Forester’s Hornblower novels. Now, the film and TV shows have been on numerous times over the years on British TV but, I’ve somehow never got around to seeing any of them. For Father’s Day this year I wanted to get him a good Blu Ray transfer of the film starring Gregory Peck as the titular character but, nobody in the UK or the US seem to have put it out in a restored format. But I got one put out in Spain and, I have to say, it’s a fine transfer and has the full English language track on it. 

Forester himself helped somewhat to adapt his stories to the big screen for this one, which is based on three Hornblower tales (two novels and one short story I am told). I don’t know how this one is handled as an adaptation but, in one section where an officer has his leg injured but recovers sufficiently in order to have more adventures later in the movie, well... all my dad said was about this matter was that, in the book, he loses that leg. 

The film starts us with a scene of Hornblower having one of his crew flogged and it shows everything about his character as he takes an officer aside and impresses on him that it’s because that officer threatened the crew member with flogging that he has ordered it so. He personally disagrees with it and thinks it a harsh punishment but needs to uphold the officer’s judgement in the eyes of the men... but that said officer should think twice before lightly referring to this kind of judicial penalty in future. Which says everything, I think, about the kind of man Hornblower is.

And from hereon in it becomes a series of naval adventures where political decisions are enforced with broadside cannon runs and swordfighting. There’s even a love interest in the form of Lady Barbara Wellesley, played by Virginia Mayo, who was something of an afterthought in the casting, it would appear but who handles the role magnificently. Alas, both Hornblower and Wellesley are married to other people but, the film makes that right in the end so they can continue their shipboard romance on the mainland by the end of the movie. 

There are a few other actors of interest such as an early role for Stanley Baker and a character played by Mr. Pastry himself, Richard Hearne. Not to mention uncredited roles for Sam Kydd and Richard Johnson. Perhaps the most striking of the uncredited roles was the captain of a Spanish vessel who swordfights with Hornblower in one scene, played by Christopher Lee, still a few years away from his big break out role in the Hammer films. 

But my biggest surprise in the movie was the presence of James Roberston Justice as seaman Quist. Now I’m used to seeing the hulking, portly presence of Justice in comedy roles as pompous authority figures in films in the Doctor or Carry On series (for instance). In this one he’s a little slimmer than I remember him, doing a different accent but still as lovable a character as he is in his more comedic roles, for sure. I really loved him in this and I think I need to try and track down some more films where he’s playing against type. 

And that’s me done with Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N., I think, other than to note that another great Forrester novel which caused a big splash in Hollywood was Humphrey Bogart’s Oscar winning vehicle The African Queen. Another entertaining movie but, I think this is pretty good too. I remember reading back in the day that Gene Roddenberry’s concept for Star Trek was Hornblower in Space and this movie certainly bears that out, I think. Even the three note motif that the sailors use to pipe the Captain on and off board, sounded vaguely familiar to my ears... and then I realised it’s the same three notes that Roddenberry used on his communicators in the original Star Trek series so, yeah, Hornblower in space indeed. Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. is a splendid adventure yarn, though and, I’d certainly recommend it to lovers of old Hollywood movies. Very entertaining. 

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula

Rites Said Dead

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula
UK 1973
Directed by Alan Gibson
Hammer/Warner Archive Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Spoilers for the inevitable outcome here.

The Satanic Rites Of Dracula is one of the more closely related of the Dracula follow ups. Although it’s set a few years after the events of the previous film, Dracula AD 1972 (which I reviewed here), it was actually released only one year after. It does have four running characters from that previous excursion in the contemporary adventures of Hammer’s flagship vampire, although only three actors returned to those roles.

The two obvious returners are Christopher Lee playing Dracula and Peter Cushing once again playing the modern descendent of the Van Helsing clan, Lorrimer. We also have Michael Coles returning as police Inspector Murray from the previous Dracula adventure, this time working in conjunction with a special government agency represented mostly by characters played by William Franklin and Richard Vernon. It should be noted that Coles is, apparently, the only person in Hammer film history other than Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to play the same character in more than one Dracula movie.

Rounding out the more important cast members are Freddie Jones as a Nobel prize winning chemist and, to fill the boots of Stephanie Beacham, who was not available to reprise the role of Van Helsing’s granddaughter Jessica, we have Joanna Lumley who, it has to be said, doesn’t have an awful lot to do in this and plays the role, it seems to me, completely differently from her predecessor... but then again, that’s because the character seems differently written as, although it takes place in more or less the same times, there’s no sense of a swinging London vibe to this movie at all (even though it’s set there). I should probably also mention Pauline Peart’s brief role as a wordless vampire girl, one of a few chained in a basement, since she does cut a striking figure and she still goes to Film Fairs to sign photos from this film.

The film opens strongly with lots of location footage of London with a really annoying and distracting silhouette of Dracula superimposed over the whole credits sequence, slightly off centre at the bottom of the screen. However, John Cavacas’ excellent, funky 1970s score more than makes up for this annoying blemish on an otherwise interesting credits sequence.

This movie always seems to be better in my memories but, every time I sit down to watch it over the years, it always seems a little bland too. Dracula doesn’t even enter the picture until about half an hour into the thing. And when he does, there’s no real discussion as to how he was revived after his death at the end of the previous movie, this time around. However, there’s some distracting nudity, some occult practices and also cults like the Hellfire Club referenced to ensure the audience know that they’re in black mass kind of territory... and also mention that vampires also have a weakness in the grip of a Hawthorn bush, which they use here to help usher in Dracula’s latest death at the end of the tale.

The plot of this one involves Dracula’s attempt to kill off humanity with a new instant and more deadly version of a black plague. When it’s pointed out to him that the destruction of mankind would mean he’d leave himself without an adequate food supply he changes the subject but, the film very gently touches on the idea that Dracula may also be wanting to bring about his own downfall by this point.

So, yeah, it’s another contemporary adventure romp with a biker gang of hoodlums controlled by Dracula’s new corporation, to lend action scenes to the picture, all of them wearing sheepskin waistcoats just like the one I used to wear myself when I was two or three years old. There’s lots of shooting, chasing and punching... not to mention some quite nice frame designs where various uprights and horizontals are used to highlight different parts of the action. But for all this, somehow, the film seems curiously bland in places and, I think I’ve finally put my finger on why some of the film feels like this, finally...

I noticed, this time around, that in all the various shots of characters going about their business in London, there are never any people on the streets. Like everything had been locked off for filming but the production was too cheap to have extras. It’s a little off putting, to tell the truth. Like London has suddenly been emptied out in the aftermath of some great catastrophe. Oh... although there’s a shot inside Freddie Jones’ house where, you might notice a person extra, as one of the crew seems to be ducking behind a half open doorway at the rear of one shot, although there’s clearly meant to be nobody there apart from Freddie at this point.

In addition to the Hawthorn bush oddity and a number of in-the-moment, do it yourself crosses and stakes used throughout the movie, we have a nice scene where Peter Cushing’s character melts down a silver cross and casts it as a silver bullet (which he manages to miss Dracula with later) and a nice moment of running water demise, when Inspector Murray turns some sprinklers on the chained vampire gals in the basement, having learnt that this can be deadly to a vampire from the previous movie, invoking death by running water. That being said, it’s one of a few scenes where the action seems ever so slightly slowed down and a bit strange... this particular scene even more so because the director has chosen to switch to a posterised colour version of the shot to show the undead ladies writhing around on the floor. I’m not sure why this colour technique was used in just this one scene in the movie but, the cynic inside me suspects that something went wrong with the action of the shot which was only discovered later and they posterised the footage to disguise it. That’s my best guess on that one, anyway.

So that’s me finished with The Satanic Rites Of Dracula for a bit. The film is a little insipid in places and it’s certainly not as strong as the previous outing, Dracula AD 1972 but, it’s still quite entertaining and I appreciate the attempt to give the film a stronger link to the previous story through the characters and their learned knowledge from that film. And the John Cavacas score rocks and is worth picking up on CD if you don’t have it as it’s one of the few Hammer scores which has been released on CD still at this point. This was the last time that Christopher Lee played Dracula for Hammer but, not the last time Peter Cushing would play one of the Van Helsing clan... which would create continuity problems galore, as I’ll point out when I go on to watch that Hammer/Shaw Brothers collaboration as my next, final Hammer Dracula film review.

Scars Of Dracula

 

Bloody Mess

Scars Of Dracula
UK 1970
Directed by Roy Ward Baker  
Hammer/Studio Canal
Blu Ray Zone B

Wow. I wish I could say this Dracula film was as bad as I remember but, truth be told, while I remember thinking how bad it was last time I watched it, I didn’t remember any of the plot details at all. I think it’s so bad I just blanked them out of my mind somehow. Many people believe this is where the decline of the Hammer Dracula films started, with each one being steadily worse as they were released onto an unsuspecting public. Frankly, I think those people are crazy, considering the next film in the series was easily the jewel in Hammer’s Dracula crown and was, itself, followed by two very interesting Dracula movies too.

Now, you could be forgiven for looking at various elements of Scars Of Dracula on paper and thinking, wow, this one looks really interesting and, yeah, it does look interesting and I will go on to call out those points of interest in a minute. Also, it has a very strong cast with Christopher Lee reprising his signature role and with Jenny Hanley as the ‘final girl’ he has to bite. Playing her boyfriend and main minder is a young Dennis Waterman, a role many have said was miscast but, honestly, I think he does just as good a job with his lines and actions as any of the other actors in the cast and he’s certainly not why the film fails to engage. We also have the great Patrick Troughton playing Dracula’s human slave in this one... a part which I still think is beneath him but he does a good turn here. And, of course, Hammer regular Michael Ripper turns up in his third consecutive Dracula movie, with a much more expanded role than he usually gets, I would say.

So it’s still a great surprise, considering all the things it’s got going for it, that it’s a dull as ditchwater, almost plotless affair which even the impeccable acting and James Bernard’s score cannot rescue. The storyline just involves Hanley and Waterman ending up in Castle Dracula looking for his lost brother and bringing on various vampire troubles for themselves. Everything leading up to their confrontations with Dracula and his helper seem to be just so much terrible story padding and, none of it really works. There are though, as I said, a few points of interest but lets get the elephant in the room out of the way first...

The film starts off with Dracula reviving, from powdered blood on his cloak, by a very fake looking (and much used throughout the course of the movie) vampire bat flying over it and dropping fresh blood onto the ‘Dracula residue’. Yes, Dracula is brought back to life by a complete lack of imagination leading into his demise in the previous film, Taste The Blood Of Dracula (reviewed by me here) being played in reverse and, well, the location of his death, which took place in a cathedral of sorts if memory serves, has somehow been relocated to Castle Dracula... don’t ask me how. Since this film was released the same year as the previous entry, they must have thought audiences have a really short memory.

There’s an interesting scene, probably not the first movie to deal with this and the goriness is mostly kept below shot, where Patrick Troughton is seen clearing up after his master’s latest blood feast by sawing up a young lady’s body for easy burial. This was a nice touch and certainly showed something the producers may not have gotten away with in an earlier entry in the franchise (although I'm sure their Frankenstein films must contain something similar).

Another point of interest is the scene where Dracula, who is mostly played more like an English gentleman in this by Lee (probably his most interesting stab at the role, in which he brings a certain parallel humanity to the character), scales the sheer wall of his castle in much the same way that Spider-Man might do it. Although the scene shows his progress up the wall at high speed, it’s a moment which is taken directly from Bram Stoker’s original Dracula novel, albeit with Lee’s incarnation of the un-dead Count looking a lot different from the one that Stoker wrote about.

Finally, Dracula’s death in this is also quite novel... although somehow still quite dull looking in execution. Dennis Waterman pulls a bar of iron off of the top of the castle and throws it into Dracula’s torso like a spear, staking him. However, maybe in this version the stake has to be wooden to be effective because, Dracula just pulls it out again. He then raises the makeshift spear in order to do unto Waterman what has been done to him, when a stray lightning bolt from the raging storm is attracted to the stake in Dracula’s hand as it would be to a lightning rod and, before you know it, Dracula is up in flames and his burning corpse falls from the walls of the castle. So, yeah, an interesting death at least, if poorly realised when away from the page.

And that’s me really done with Scars Of Dracula now. It’s a real mess but, of course, the series would soon redeem itself, at least in my eyes, with the truly wonderful Dracula AD 1972, which I’ve already reviewed on this blog and which you can read just here.

Running Scared - Insider Tales From The House Of Hammer

Running ‘til
They’re Hammered

Running Scared -
Insider Tales From
The House Of Hammer
by Phil Campbell with Brian Reynolds
Peveril Publishing
No visible ISBN

Subtitled Insider Tales From The House Of Hammer, Philip Campbell and Brian Reynolds’ tome Running Scared is a lovely, short but refreshing read about a time period roughly between 1969 and 1972, where these two both worked as runners for the illustrious British film company Hammer.... both in their Wardour Street office in London (I always look for the preserved Hammer House fronting when I am up there to this day) and in the various studios and on location, where they were sometimes assisting in production to one degree or another. Before I dig in though, an apology is in order, on the odd chance either of the writers ever stumble on this review...

I bought this 2015 book from the two writers in that same year, from a stall run by them at the Camden Film Fair. I remember chatting with them for a bit and telling them about this blog, dropping them a card and telling them to wait a few months and then, after that, they should find a review of this book on here. Well, what can I say? There’s always a shinier, newer book around the corner and, although this book didn’t stray too far from the top of the pile, a seven year wait for me to read and review was not my intention (nor a two year blog publication date after that, for that matter). So my apologies to Phil and Brian for not getting my act together quicker. It’s only me working this blog and I’m doing my best, honest.

Okay, that out of the way... I bought this book knowing nothing about it other than when I discovered the writers on a stall at the fair. But I had a hunch that, if anyone was going to turn up the stories you don’t officially get on various accounts of the Hammer films in various authorised editions, then it’s going to be the non-star ‘little people’ who were hovering in the background. It’s always the same in any company... it always seems to be the average man in the office who is fully aware of what’s really going on and what to do about things, while management go about creating their own problems for themselves and it seems it’s true of film companies too. In fact, I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that this is also true of the people running the country... the people in power demonstrate a lack of common sense and an unbelievable lack of awareness of things going on and, yeah, the people in the street are the ones having to deal with their folly. So it is, in some ways, although certainly only very politely touched upon here, in various film studios too.

The book is breezily written by Phil, who is the main focus although several of Brian’s accounts of his experiences with various personnel and iconic stars also find thier way into the tome. Phil writes with a lot of humour and, as I’d suspected, it’s packed with information that you won’t necessarily find in other, more high profile accounts of the days of Hammer. Basically, as runners, the guys would do a variety of jobs which could be considered a bit ‘run of the mill’ (while also being quite essential to the smooth running of a production, actually) including things like buying biscuits, transporting film cans, photocopying various documents and call sheets and distributing them, running errands for cast and crew... stuff like that. So, as you can probably guess, people like these two can certainly have some stories to tell.

And what stories! If you want to find out about many things such as giving Ingrid Pitt a piggy back ride to keep her costume out of the mud and being asked to deposit her weekly pay down her ample cleavage because her hands were full, then you’ve got the right book. Or that time Jenny Hanley got a fly in her eye and nearly killed herself and Phil because she was giving him a lift in her car and they nearly ran a red light. Or some interesting times with my favourite Lady Of Hammer, the lovely Caroline Munro, who Phil saw in action on both her Hammer movies, Dracula AD 1972 (reviewed here) and Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter.

There are also his observations about the times when tragedy struck... for example, during the making of one of my favourite Hammer Horrors, Blood From The Mummy’s Tomb (reviewed by me here), he tells of how Peter Cushing had to leave on his first and last day of filming one of the main roles when his wife died, how his replacement Andrew Keir managed to damage his leg and had to go to hospital on his first day and how the director died half way through filming.

And, yeah, it’s all in here. Encounters with the likes of Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Caroline Munro, Ingrid Pitt, Kate O’ Mara and a whole host of others too numerous to mention here, not to mention actors from neighbouring sets such as Vincent Price when he was filming his second Dr. Phibes movie.

I won’t go on as this is only a quickie but I would like to conclude by heartily recommending Running Scared - Insider Tales From The House Of Hammer, not because it by any means replaces any of the more exhaustive or academic works on the studio but, more because it’s got stories and photos (many of them) which are quite unique to this book and the memories of Phil Campbell and Brian Reynolds... you won’t see too many of these anywhere else folks. Also, of course, because it’s entertainingly written and I had an absolute blast with it. A quirky, fun and very informative book, for sure.

The Life And Deaths Of Christopher Lee

Final Curtains

The Life And Deaths
Of Christopher Lee
Directed by Jon Spira
UK 2024
Canal Cat Films
UK Premiere FrightFest 2024 screening

I’ve been following Jon Spira on Twitter for well over a decade... I even made a small contribution to some of his crowd funded books (which I promise I will get around to reading) but I never watched any of his films until now. I figured, if I didn’t like them and posted a review, he’d probably hate me.

That being said, it’s almost a time honoured tradition for me and my friend to attend a FrightFest screening which is a documentary about something which may be considered to be connected to Hammer horror films and so, The Life And Deaths Of Christopher Lee seemed to fit the bill. I somewhat reluctantly bought tickets and... well... I have to say I was quite pleasantly surprised in that this is easily one of the best documentary films I’ve seen in many a year (possibly the best and certainly the best I’ve seen at FrightFest).

Why? Well because it’s so well written and moves along at a fair lick. And my one small criticism, which I’ll get to in a while, is absolutely no fault of the film makers at all. That’s my personal baggage. Let me set the scene for why this documentary is so well put together by describing the opening minutes...

The animated opening credits show a wonderful cartoon, as they roll, of Sir Christopher Lee walking on from each side of the screen and being killed in some manner... arrow shot, cannon, bomb etc. All the while, just off to the left of shot, nicely lit and silhouetted so you can’t yet see it properly, is a figurine which I at first thought was one of those horrible bobble heads, of Christopher Lee. And then, on the right we see actor Peter Serafinowicz practicing his impression of the voice of Lee. And then the light comes up and we see it’s a pretty great looking marionette puppet of Christopher Lee, who then proceeds to narrate the whole story of his life. It’s ingenious and works really well.

One of the talking head interviewees of the film is, of course, the great horror scholar and sometimes actor Jonathan Rigby (who I’ve mentioned on this blog numerous times) and he knew Lee quite well. So he was, according to the director in his Q & A session at the end of the movie, on hand to help vet Spira's script and ensure that things Lee wouldn’t say or which were tonally off for the actor were not included in the running narrative and, yeah, there’s nobody I could think of who would be better suited to know about such things.

The film takes us quickly through Lee’s long family lineage and speeds us to his school days, his life in the airforce... with brief mention of his stint as a nazi hunter, I’ll get to that... and onto his choice and easyish access into the world of acting. It, of course, tells of his later distaste of being associated with such things as Dracula and talks also about many of his films, including obvious ones like The Wicker Man (Lee’s favourite performance, I believe) and The Man With The Golden Gun, playing one of his cousin Ian Fleming’s characters on the big screen. It even mentions the colossal flop that was Spielberg’s 1941.

The film also takes you through his triumph of singing heavy metal concept albums and, in some very nice clips, his friendship with Peter Cushing. And it’s all assisted with some wonderful interviewees, such as the aforementioned Rigby and people such as Caroline Munro, Joe Dante, Peter Jackson and, in a very funny turn, John Landis. Not to mention a few revealing clips of the man himself and various animated segments in different styles by different artists (including Dave McKean).

And I can’t say enough good things about this. I can only hope this gets a Blu Ray release at some point soon... this is a must have purchase for me but I’m not doing that horrible streaming stuff. And my one, very small, problem with it (other than the fact that I could easily have watched another hour) is that it doesn’t reveal any details about Lee’s days as a nazi hunter during (and I think also after) the Second World War. But, it turns out that this is because, since it was confidential information, Lee would never talk about what went on to anybody. In fact, John Landis tells a very funny story (among many) about his attempts to get the information out of Lee whenever he saw him.

So, yeah, a shame it’s not there but the information is not up for grabs and the way Spira and crew handle the lack of data here is, at least, brilliantly done and shot through with humour (like the rest of the documentary). So, yeah, I had an absolutely marvellous time with his new film The Life And Deaths Of Christopher Lee and would urge all fans of the great man to see this one as soon as possible. A fitting tribute and one, I hope, he would have approved of.

Taste The Blood Of Dracula

Offspring Breakers

Taste The Blood Of Dracula
UK 1970
Directed by Peter Sasdy
Hammer/Warner Archive Blu Ray Zone A

Okay, so the time has come for me to revisit the very first of the Hammer Dracula films I saw as a kid. I think I was about six years old when Taste The Blood Of Dracula got it’s first TV screening in the UK but it was a big deal as I think I’d only seen the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula before this. I remember it was one of two films (the other being Dr. No) where we actually walked up one night to the next street from where we lived back in those days, to my uncle’s house... as he was one of the few family members who actually possessed a colour television set as opposed to our black and white model. I really liked this film then and, as a consequence, despite being somewhat less thrilled by it this time around, it’s always going to be the Hammer Dracula movie that holds a special place in my heart for this reason. Not my favourite (that would get a release in 1972, I review it here) but certainly the one that most brings with it a strong sense of nostalgia.

And though it is actually quite a ploddy film in a way, I have to say that the way the story evolves over the course of the picture is yet a slightly different angle into the various ‘Dracula killing sprees’ which are the prime ingredient of the movie.

The film actually opens just before the end of the last movie, Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (reviewed here), with a travelling salesman, played by British comedian Roy Kinnear, being knocked unconscious and abandoned on the road following a somewhat traditional Hammer opening of a stage coach filmed in the local forest. When he awakens, he stumbles into Christopher Lee’s Dracula’s death scene from the last movie and, it transpires later, collects the amulet, the cloak and some of the powdered remains of his blood for their ‘resale value’.

We then switch to the plot proper, as three disloyal fathers, played by Geoffrey Keen, Peter (It’s cheese, Gromit!) Sallis and John Carson meet on the last Sunday of every month in their little three man secret circle, to while away the rest of the evening in the company of the charming ladies of a bordello (including the young Madeline Smith in her first role for Hammer), run by Russell Hunter (who played ‘Lonely’ in TV’s hit show Callan, opposite Edward Woodward). As importantly, we meet their respective children played by Linda Hayden (from Blood On Satan’s Claw, reviewed here), Isla Blair and Lucy Paxton. And also Anthony Higgins as Ms Hayden’s worried and disapproved of boyfriend.

We then get into some business where the three brothel boys fall in with the son of a lord played by Ralph Bates, in the first of his films for Hammer. He dabbles in black magic and gains the aid of the three, in the guise of providing them with thrills beyond what their now jaded minds can think of. In this case, he urges them to purchase Dracula’s cloak, amulet and powdered blood at great expense so they can sell their soul to the devil but, when things take a dark turn and only he drinks Draculas blood mingled with his own, before being beaten to death by the others, he is abandoned at the site of the ritual.

However, because of his loyalty to Dracula, his body is suddenly covered with some special spooky dust, which forms a kind of shroud around him, before he rips free of the shroud and is revealed to be a reborn Christopher Lee as Dracula. Now, I suspect Bates must have felt a little hard done by at this point because he was originally supposed to be playing the lead role after Lee’s reluctance to return to the character but, the distribution deal with Warners Seven Arts would go up in smoke without Lee in the part so he was, eventually, lured back to the role and the story rewritten for the return of the original Dracula.

After that, the film becomes a simple cat and mouse game as Dracula takes revenge on the three who beat his ‘servant’ to death by mind controlling their offspring to kill their relevant fathers, before Ms. Hayden’s boyfriend finally rescues her from his clutches and somehow kills Dracula in a bizarre moment which I had to look to Wikipedia to explain to me and, well I’m still not really sure why he dies here but it is spectacular, despite not really being reliant on the forces of logic. It’s a bit of an unsatisfying ending, to be honest but, I liked it well enough when I was six years old so I’m not going to start knocking it now.

The film is, as I said, a little bit ploddy... for instance, it’s over a third of the way in before the characters and supernatural elements are set up enough to be able to credibly bring Dracula back from the dead for the audience. However, there’s some nice photography in this to keep the visual interest up throughout. Sasdy manages to deal with crowded frames quite well... for instance, when the three fathers are all crammed into a shot with Bates and Kinnear, Sasdy positions them so the three fathers are vertically aligned in terms of height in the frame on the left of shot with the other two more to the right of the shot... which gives it a nice sense of balance.

This is also the first Hammer Dracula film in my memory (I might be wrong in this so please hit me up in the comments if I am) to feature a solitary, bare female breast for a few seconds in the bordello scene... so that’s kind of interesting. I was a little disappointed that the fathers are more or less marked as ‘bad people’ for two timing their wives to visit their monthly fix of scrumptious harlots... thus making their later murders morally acceptable to an audience... but I guess they weren’t quite there yet when it came to completely innocent bystanders being killed (although, certainly, one of the daughters meets an untimely demise at the hands... well, at the teeth... of Dracula himself).

The film is significantly bolstered by a score from James Bernard, who wrote the original Dracula (aka Horror Of Dracula) score for Hammer, so he uses his three note motif for Lee’s vampire all over the show, to great effect.

And there’s not much more for me to say about this Proustian rush of a movie that is Taste The Blood Of Dracula. A bit dull in places but ultimately an entertaining entry in the series and, while not one of the best it’s certainly not the least of them either. The film has a great title too, ushering in a tag line parodying the British milk adverts of the time... Drink A Pint Of Blood A Day... so, yeah, it’s a nice little slice of Hammer Dracula, make no mistake. I’m not looking forward to the next one in the series so much though, from what I remember of it.

Dracula Has Risen From The Grave

Stake Out

Dracula Has Risen
From The Grave
UK 1968
Directed by Freddie Francis
Hammer/Warner Archive
Blu Ray Zone A

Warning: Some spoilers rising from the grave.

Dracula Has Risen From The Grave is the fourth of the Hammer Dracula cycle of films and the first to be directed by someone other than Terence Fisher, after his initial salvo of Dracula (aka Horror Of Dracula, reviewed here), Brides Of Dracula (reviewed here) and Dracula Prince Of Darkness (reviewed here). I relatively recently read a book which stated that director Freddie Francis didn’t like directing the gothic variations of the films and that it certainly showed in his direction. Well, I dunno, maybe I’m a bit of a Philistine but I found this one to be a really good entry in the series and it kept me enthralled all the way through... which is perhaps more than I could say for Brides Of Dracula, to be honest.

From the start we have a credits sequence backed by a strong James Bernard score, cementing the musical language of his previous Dracula entries and also using a phrase which is almost, not quite, the Dies Irae... pretty much a parody of it but I’m sure that’s what the composer must have had in mind here. This is followed by a strong opening where a young, mute cleaner of a church rings the bell, only for no sound to come out and his hands to be stained with blood. An investigation finds a woman with a vampire bite stuffed into the bell, dropping down (following a shoe) at just the right moment to hang dramatically for the camera. Though exactly how Dracula was supposed to have killed her in a church full of crosses is anybody’s guess.

And then we have Rupert Davies playing Monsignor Muller, visiting the village near Castle Dracula a year after his supposed demise under the ice in the previous film, signifying that the opening took place sometime before those events. Now, mark that time scale because he says more than once that it’s been 12 months since Dracula’s death. He goes to find out why the local priest has an empty church with no congregation and it’s because the shadow of Castle Dracula touches the building at certain parts of day so, he and the less than enthusiastic priest take a day’s trek up the mountain (a time considerably longer than it takes both Dracula and the hero of the piece to get there towards the end of the movie) so the Monsignor can ‘exorcise’ the castle. The wimpier priest doesn’t go the whole way and while the Monsignor seals the church with a big cross... the other priest falls on the ice and cracks it open where Dracula is buried (that running water in the moat has magically moved his body somewhat ‘down mountain’ it has to be said) and his blood revives the Count, played once more with considerably more enthusiasm, in this outing, by Christopher Lee. The second priest becomes Dracula’s slave. They steal a coffin and follow the Monsignor cross country to his hometown where Dracula spends the rest of the movie trying to exact his revenge by biting up the Monsignor’s daughter Maria, played by Veronica Carlson and, generally getting in the way of her atheist boyfriend Paul, played by Barry Andrews (who was in Blood On Satan’s Claw, which I reviewed here and who looks somewhat like a long, thin version of Roger Daltrey).

The actors are all very good but it has to be said that all their scenes are stolen from them by the actor and actress playing two supporting characters. We have Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper playing Paul’s dad and he’s just a joy to watch. We also have the amazing Barbara Ewing as the saucy barmaid working for Michael Ripper, where Paul works part-time as a cook while studying to become a doctor. He has a row with the Monsignor because he admits he is an atheist but, of course, by the end of the movie, when he’s battled the forces of darkness, he makes a sign of the cross over Dracula’s body (which has fallen and become impaled on a crucifix), showing that he now believes in God and can marry Maria with the Monsignor’s approval.

It’s nicely shot and there seems to be a lot of very colourful lightning in some of Dracula’s scenes. There also seems to be a lot more cleavage on display in the picture at this point in Hammer’s history, as typified by Barbara Ewing’s costume. Although, why the audience is asked to believe that a very thin leather collar around her neck would actually hide the appalling vampire bite scars she has is beyond me.

Points of interest are... once you think Dracula is finished, after Paul has half heartedly staked him, you learn just how ‘half heartedly’ because he gets up, writhes around a bit and just pulls the stake from himself... which I think is the first time this was done in a Hammer Dracula film. Later on, when he is finally restaked by falling on the upright cross, we get the famous shot of his bleeding from the sides of both eyes, which of course has been parodied and homaged a lot over the years (perhaps the most famous steal from this that springs to mind is with the death of Go Go Yubari in Tarantino’s Kill Bill Part One).

One big criticism I have of this is the continuity. As I revisit these Hammer Dracula films I realise they pay the same care and attention that Universal must have taken with their early Mummy franchise. That is to say, absolutely none at all. The previous film was set in 1895 and, we know from the words of the Monsignor that it’s been a year since Dracula’s demise in the ice. And yet, when Dracula and his new slave priest steal a coffin, the date on it reads 1885 - 1905 so, yeah, a complete contradiction, it has to be said. Also, the close ups of Christopher Lee’s eyes in this aren’t consistent from scene to scene. Sometimes the whites are stained blood red, for the earlier scenes but, by the end the whites of his eyes are very clean and clearly visible... so that’s another problem, I feel.

However, these quibbles aside... and I’ll leave it up to the reader to evaluate whether they are just minor quibbles or franchise shaking errors... I have to say I had a really good time with Dracula Has Risen From The Grave and would say it’s one of the better films in a franchise which, I think it’s fair to say, has its ups and downs. Definitely recommended to fans of the genre and company and certainly one of my favourite performances by Sir Chris Lee in the role. Looking forward to seeing the next one in the series again soon.

Dracula Prince Of Darkness

Fresh Prince
Of Hell, Keir

Dracula Prince Of Darkness
UK 1966
Directed by Terence Fisher
Hammer/Studio Canal Blu Ray Zone B

I’ve never known why there’s no comma in the title of this movie but I’ve left it as it is for this review. Perhaps, if you are some kind of royalty in the world of vampires, there’s no need to bother with trifling grammar... but it’s a bit of a bizarre ommission, it has to be said.

Anyway... Dracula Prince Of Darkness is the third of Hammer’s classic Dracula film series... although only the second to have Dracula in it as an actual character. As such, the film starts with a nicely framed flashback to the climactic showdown between Christopher Lee’s Dracula and Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing in the first movie... framed as a kind of diamond shape and with streaming mist behind the diamond... an interesting choice which looks like something that would have been done on the old flashback in a theatrical serial of the 1930s. So it’s a bit of a mistake to say that Peter Cushing is not in this movie... he certainly is as one of his key scenes from Dracula (aka Horror Of Dracula, reviewed here) is played at the start.

In a scene made to set up the Van Helsing substitute of the movie... a wonderful, jolly priest called Father Shandor, played by future Professor Quatermass Andrew Keir... Shandor stops a superstitious bunch from committing the blasphemy of staking a local, recently deceased young lady, reminding them (and us) that there’s been no vampirism since the death of Dracula, ten years prior (more dates to totally sink the idea of timeline continuity within this series of films).

We then cut to two English couples, related by brothers, travelling around the area, consisting of the younger brother and his wife, played by Francis Matthews and Suzan Farmer... and the slightly older couple played by Charles 'Bud' Tingwell (from the Margaret Rutherford Miss Marple movies) and Barbara Shelley (who would also star opposite Keir in Quatermass And The Pit... reviewed by me here). Pretty soon though, the English travellers find themselves in trouble and staying as guests of Dracula’s former butler Klove (played by Philip Latham... who looks a little in this like a sinister version of Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Show and its subsequent movie adaptation... I wonder if Richard O’ Brien had this character in mind in terms of the look?).

There’s a much less throwaway version of a Dracula resurrection scene in this, as Klove hangs Tingwell’s character upside down over a big coffin where he scatters Dracula’s ashes (he was melted by sunlight in the first film... although why Van Helsing never did something with the ashes is beyond me). He then slits the guys throat and, in this uncut restoration, there really is quite a lot of blood (bordering on Japanese arterial spray proportions) which mixes with the ashes and, in a long drawn out sequence of resulting mist and overlapping dissolves, revives Christopher Lee’s iconic take on the Count. Vampiric shenanigans ensue with the surviving younger couple fleeing to Father Shandor’s monastery where they are pursued by Dracula and his new vampire lady, Barbara Shelley.

And it’s a pretty good movie with some beautiful photography and direction from Terence Fisher, who uses some roaming camera for some sequences, such as an extended night time tour around the corridors of Castle Dracula which is almost like the ‘killer POV’ shots you would find happening later on, in a lot of US slasher films of the 1980s. Although the camerawork is in no way jerky, it’s very fluid and very controlled as it roves around the sets and actors. He does some nice things with colour too. A lot of the sets of the castle at night are lit up with blues but every now and again he will highlight something with a patch of bright red... such as a strip of curtains or a picture which is somehow bathed in red for no logical reason but looks great. Also, there’s a wonderful scene in Dracula’s coffin room where the light from a stained glass window is replicated and lit large as the lighting on a wall behind the actors in the reverse shot... with big blocks of different coloured shapes splashed against the background. It’s a bit like a slightly more pastel palette version of what Mario Bava might have done and it works really well.

The actors are all pretty good and we even have Thorley Walters turning up as this film’s equivalent of Stoker’s Renfield character, called Ludwig. Renfield was curiously absent from Hammer’s earlier Dracula movies but Ludwig pretty much does all the same things, including eating a pot of freshly caught flies at one point. Christopher Lee, famously, has no lines of dialogue in this movie... just goes about hissing at things and pointing. He allegedly announced he’d refused to speak the lines because the script was so bad but there have been several conflicting stories over the years as to why Lee has no lines in this... I suspect Lee’s version certainly has some elements of truth in it but how it played out exactly seems lost to time. I will say that, although Dracula is spread out into various sections of the movie, I would be surprised if Christopher Lee’s actual footage in the movie plays out for much more than five minutes. Probably his death scene under the ice of a moat in the castle, which somehow has running water under it and which looks truly awful in terms of the fake ice, has the most sustained footage of him (and this scene almost drowned Lee’s stuntman for real, from what I’ve read). He’s a definite presence in it though and the way he portrays him in this allows his facial expressions and physical skills to come more to the fore.

Dracula Prince Of Darkness ends, like many of the Hammer movies of this period of the 1960s, with a distinct lack of epilogue in terms of the wellbeing of the characters. Dracula is dead... again... and the credits run over his frozen features without fanfare or a real sense of resolution. It’s a mood which Hammer similarly employed for their third Quatermass adaptation, although the TV serial of Quatermass And The Pit (which I reviewed here) had a very long epilogue, from what I recall. Either way, this one is definitely an improvement over The Brides Of Dracula (reviewed here) and one of the better Hammer films of this, quite rich period in the company’s history, as far as I’m concerned. Definitely worth a look.

The Hound Of The Baskervilles

Boneward Hound

The Hound Of
The Baskervilles
UK 1959 Directed by Terence Fisher
Hammer/Arrow Blu Ray Zone B

An overly comic book like ‘horror font’ is writ largely against James Bernard’s typical Hammer Horror sounding score, announcing the start of the famous studio’s production of what is probably Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous Sherlock Holmes story, The Hound Of The Baskervilles.

The film stars three stalwarts of Hammer films for this version of the classic... Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes, André Morell as Dr. Watson and Christopher Lee as Henry Baskerville, the young heir to the Baskerville fortune who is now living under the shadow of the family curse of the hound, after the recent death of the previous owner of Baskerville Manor. Cushing would, of course, play Holmes a few more times after this production in unrelated films and a TV show (as would Christopher Lee at least once) and Lee and Cushing are a great Hammer double act after they’d faced off as adversaries (of a sort) in the studio's first Frankenstein and Dracula movies (they would do it again four months later in the Hammer production of The Mummy). Morrell, however (one of the great TV incarnations of Professor Quatermass) did not apparently get on well with Lee and tended to avoid him on set.

The film starts with a ludicrous and almost unwatchably bad retelling of the Baskerville legend before finally bringing us up to present day... well, present day Victorian period... for the rest of the story, which is much better and far more entertaining than the first ten minutes or so of the movie. Now, it’s been a very long time since I read The Hound Of The Baskervilles (at least two decades) and, even with all the many movie adaptations of this particular story in the Holmes canon (this is the first to be shot in colour), I really couldn’t remember that much about the original tale. Even so, although it tends to hint the main plot points pretty well, as far as I can dimly recall a smattering of the events of the original, it seems to add its own deviations and explorations, presumably to pad the running time to feature length.

For instance, there’s a wonderful moment early on in the film where Baskerville survives an assassination attempt, thanks to Holmes, after someone has put a tarantula in one of his boots. I honestly don’t recall this scene being in the original... but it’s an entertaining moment, nonetheless.

The film rambles along agreeably at its own pace with top notch performances by all and sundry including a very naturalistic and relaxed performance by Lee, which sees him more subdued to the plot rather than his presence dominating the scenes he’s in... which is interesting. There are also fine turns by Marla Landi as the, possible, love interest for Lee’s character and Miles Malleson... well, just doing what he usually does and having his doddery old, likeably confused, Miles Malleson moments.

Regrettably, although Cushing does a fine Holmes and plays him in a most energetic, almost manic manner, he doesn’t don a fiendishly clever disguise with which to fool both the other characters and the audience as, say, Basil Rathbone might have done in his Holmes adventures. I’m convinced Cushing could have pulled off one of those master disguises in this though, if given half a chance. Also, it’s nice to see André Morell not, like many of his predecessors in the role, portraying Watson as some kind of a buffoon but as someone who Holmes has chosen to have as his companion in crime solving because he actually brings something to the party. Much as I love old Nigel Bruce’s decidedly foolish, comic relief version of Watson opposite Rathbone (and I still champion Bruce as the best), it’s nice to see the character being treated with a little more respect here.

The direction is nice and there are some nice frame designs, with Fisher favouring some unusual angles from high above the action in several scenes. Also, he makes great use of emphasising the depth of the shots through the use of different planes enhanced by foreground objects. For example, the one riveting moment in the ‘legend prelude’ is where a lady is hiding behind an arch in some ruins. The actor looking for her is in the main parts of the left of shot with the arch and her up close in the foreground right of the frame. Similarly, when the director pushes the depth again in a forest scene, the branches and leaves of a tree in the foreground of a shot mingle in with all the trees in the background to make a foreground centre space which you didn’t realise was farther away than the leaves on the tree on the right until a character walks behind them.

One very odd choice in two parts of the movie on the same set, out on the moors by a ruin, is to have the light coming from behind some structures shining a bright, almost fluorescent green like suddenly Mario Bava had somehow turned up on the set that day to perform the same task. It looks fantastic, of course, but there seems to be no natural way that lightning scheme could have come into play in the natural setting and it looks a bit ‘at odds’ with the rest of the shots in the movie.

I don’t have much more to say by way of this review other than to add that some of Bernard’s score to Dracula (aka Horror Of Dracula, reviewed here) is also apparently tracked into the movie too. If you’re a fan of any of the actors in this one, especially those in their capacity as Hammer veterans (although they weren’t quite that yet at this stage of their career), then this version of The Hound Of The Baskervilles is definitely one to add to your watch list. Three years later, Fisher would re-team with Lee for his own portrayal of Holmes in the West German/French/Italian krimi movie Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace (aka Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes) which I will be reviewing soon for this blog very soon.