Byleth

My Kettle Byleth Over

Byleth - The Demon Of Incest
aka Il demone dell'incesto
Italy 1972 Directed by Leopoldo Savona
Severin Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Warning: Yeah... there will have to be spoilers here as there’s not much else to talk about.

I picked up Byleth - The Demon Of Incest at the London Film & Comic Con five years ago because I liked the cover and I like the company putting it out. Leopoldo Savona is probably best remembered for a fistful of Italian Westerns he made rather than this, relatively obscure movie from late in his very short directing career. I hesitate to call it a horror film because... well let’s look at that provocative title... 

It’s true the main protagonist, Lionello (played by Mark Damon) has, in his past, been cavorting regularly with his sister Barbara (played by Claudia Gravy) in a way which takes things far beyond the realm of brotherly love. However, the plot is just about a string of women who are murdered with a three pronged dagger, which looks more like a garden implement that anything else and the film is more concerned with both these murders and Lionello’s failing mental health than any acts of incest. It’s all just talked about and by the time Lionello is reunited with Barbara in his big estate, she has gotten married and is no longer available so... yeah, no incest on show here other than the odd token kiss and declaration of passion. Which is fine... I didn’t really want to see any anyway... but it’s a bit of a misleading title in that respect. And, also in the respect, that it mentions a demon called Byleth... and this is where we get the big spoilers folks so stay away if you really don’t want to know.

There are no real twists on the plot other than my brief outline above. However I’m pretty sure most people will twig this right after the opening sequence where a local prostitute is murdered by the three pronged instrument thing (let’s just make a name up and call it ‘the mark of Byleth’ shall we?)... an atmospheric moment which is totally shattered by the intrusion of the rather nice opening titles showing old, torture filled and demonic etchings while an upbeat score plays at odds with the subject of the movie... but it’s actually Lionello committing the murders himself. He thinks it’s Byleth the demon, who he even conjures up at one point with a spell, after he can’t perform adequately in his sexual duties with a nice red headed servant girl, to kill her. But, yeah, he’s the only one who ever hears the demon and even in the scene where Barbara’s new husband see the demon himself, he realises it’s just Lionello riding around in different make-up. 

So, yeah... no actual demon in it either... bit of a rubbish title if you ask me.

Okay... so there are a few nice moments in this such as a sequence near the end where Mark can see himself projected as Byleth in the mirrors of the house racing towards him but, honestly, even with a few gratuitous sex scenes thrown in for good measure in its very short running time, the film comes off as a little lame and about as impotent as Lionello’s ability to maintain his enthusiasm for any ladies who are not his sibling. 

I’d like to say the cinematography was at least as striking as the Roger Corman or Mario Bava films this movie seems to be desperately trying to imitate but, yeah, there was nothing that made me sit up and take note at any time and it just seemed a bit pedestrian, to be honest. I mention those two people because Damon starred in one of each director’s important ones... namely The Fall Of The House Of Usher and Black Sabbath... and the film seems to be as dated in its time as it does now. It seems to be trying to harken back to those very early 1960s exercises in sustained gothic atmosphere with a little sex thrown in to attempt to make it more modern but... failing at it, it seems to me. 

The lack of any interesting twist outside the obvious conclusions that... Lionello is not a well person... gives the movie a real anticlimactic feel and even the end moments, when Lionello is stabbed by his alter ego, don’t throw up any supernaturally charged questions because it’s probably just taking place in his head and he’s just dying from the gunshot wounds inflicted on him by his sister’s husband. 

Saying all this, I kinda enjoyed it as an example of someone trying to do a Corman or Bava gothic way past its sell by date and there was an attractive entourage of naked young ladies to catch the eye. Saying that, though, my only real take home on that count was that, in olde worlde gothic era times, it looks like young ladies didn’t bother shaving thier armpits. So, yeah, I guess I learned something there... or at least had it reenforced that this was probably not something which happened in days gone byleth. 

Byleth - The Demon Of Incest is an okay film but I wouldn’t recommend it to most people. Asides from what looks like some water damage in certain scenes, the quality is pretty good for its age. Unusually for Severin, there are absolutely no extras on this thing at all... you just have a choice between the original Italian audio or a German audio track plus English subtitles. Oh... and a wonderful cover of a naked, red headed lady in peril which is easy on the eye. But, yeah, I’m not sure this would appeal to too many people out there. 

Nosferatu (2024)

Nos Quite Feratu

Nosferatu (2024)
Directed by Robert Eggers
UK/USA/Hungary 2024
Focus Features
UK Cinema Release Print.

Wow, okay then. Robert Eggers’ new remake of Nosferatu is actually a pretty good movie. Alas, it’s doesn’t quite fall far into the great category for me due to one specific creative decision but, yeah, it’s a wonderful study in ‘gothic horror’ in all senses and people who are drawn to that certain kind of atmosphere should find much to enjoy in it. Alas, it falls just a little short of the first of the many versions of Nosferatu, specifically the 1922 W. F. Murnau film Nosferatu - A Symphony Of Horror but, as a powerful and somewhat feral piece of modern cinema, I think it’s nothing short of spectacular.

Now I’ll mention this in my reviews of both the original and other remakes/influenced works later on at this blog (hopefully this year... I’ve been post-Christmas sales shopping so I can revisit some of the key works) but, a quick and dirty history of the story behind the original goes something like this. Murnau wanted to make an adaptation of Dracula and Bram Stoker’s widow was against it. So he went and adapted the story anyway, changing all of the names and locations and still, I suspect, basing a lot of it on Stoker’s stage adaptation of his own work. When the film was finished and released, Stoker’s widow sued and a court ordered that all prints of the film be destroyed. However, at least one print must have escaped this fate otherwise we wouldn’t still know of this celebrated film now and the various works influenced by it wouldn’t obviously exist either.

This new version stars Nicholas Hoult as Thomas, the Jonathan Harker substitute for the story. Now, I’m not the biggest fan of Hoult, to be sure but, the kind of timidity in which he infuses most of the roles I’ve seen him in is certainly a good bit of casting because in the silent version he was a bit of a pasty, overacting milquetoast and so Hoult is able to do an incredible job here. Lily-Rose Depp (daughter of Johnny) plays his wife Ellen (the equivalent of Mina Harker in the book) and she is a very powerful force in the movie... although, is it me or is there a trend in actresses this last year or so to try and outdo Isabelle Adjani's performance in Zuawski's Possession (reviewed by me here)? However, she's almost, I would say, more powerful than Bill Skarsgård, who gives an absolutely amazing performance as Count Orlock, the Nosferatu of the title... I’ll come back to him though because, as good as he is, he’s also the problem here to some small degree.

Backing up these actors are Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Emma Corrin, Ralph Ineson, Simon McBurney and the always brilliant Willem Dafoe (playing a wonderfully enthusiastic version of the Van Helsing equivalent character). The film has a somewhat haunting atmosphere with some beautiful framing (check out the last shot of the film with Dafoe’s head highlighted in the mirror by the side of him) and some very pacey editing which, combined with the excellent sound design and a wonderful score by Robin Carolan, really gives a kind of adrenalin rush to the precedings, for sure.

I find Egger’s cinema a bit hit and miss but this is certainly my second favourite of his films (trailing slightly behind The VVitch, reviewed by me here). This is almost, as I said, a truly great movie but it doesn’t quite make it. Or rather, it is a great movie but it’s not the best adaptation in terms of visual interpretation and, okay, no holding it off any longer, this is where I get to what is, for me, the bloody, risen from the grave, elephant in the room...

The problem with doing a movie based on Nosferatu is... you really should keep the iconic look of the central monster. I mean, that original creature make-up has had a heavy influence on countless visual works based on vampire lore, just think of things like the TV mini-series of ‘Salem’s Lot (reviewed by me here) or the fairly recent film The Last Voyage Of The Demeter (reviewed by me here). The bald head and the double pronged, exaggerated incisors coming down from the top of the mouth but much closer together than in a traditional vampire story make the Nosferatu vampire instantly recognisable. However, although Skarsgård absolutely nails the ferocity and power of the creature here, the filmmakers have chosen to give him a big moustache, a bit more hair on his bonce and completely taken away the double prongs protuding from below his upper lip.

In short, they’ve completely changed the look. Now, I know the look they’ve gone for here is way closer to the original Dracula as described by Bram Stoker in his original novel (so that’s possibly a mitigating factor here because it’s rare anyone even comes close) but it’s a huge loss to this particular film, I reckon.

Now, the film-makers have done their best to hide their creature behind shadow for about three quarters of the movie and kept him, more or less, in silhouette throughout and, to be fair to them, that obscured vision of the creature does at least invoke the original creature design in memory. Alas, it only helps to increase the disappointment when you get a clear look at the creature later and realise that they’ve reimagined him... what a shame.

So, yeah, that’s heavily influenced my verdict of the new Nosferatu movie, truth be told. It’s fantastically well acted, brings the Sturm und Drang of the cinematic and literary sources and is a genuinely entertaining piece of cinema... shame about that creature design though. It doesn’t quite make it.

Victor Frankenstein

De Igor’n Ally

Victor Frankenstein
2015 USA
Directed by Paulc McGuigan
UK cinema release print.

You know, I really wouldn’t blame any originally interested parties in seeing this movie if they passed it by after hearing the director’s promotional comments on this. I know I nearly didn’t. He seemed to somehow think he was doing himself a favour with his target audience by proclaiming Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s original novel Frankenstein, and I quote from many news articles reporting this... “dull as dishwater”.

This jangles the nerves and makes my blood boil for two different reasons.

Firstly, let us tackle the director’s apparent lack of being able to speak the King’s English. The phrase is not ‘dishwater’ it’s “dull as ditchwater”. I work in an Educational establishment at present and I am sick to death of people who can’t use English blaming their own lack of grammar, spelling and punctuation on the commonly held belief that language is a fluid concept and it changes over time. Well, yeah, it changes over time because dullards and half-wits can’t speak or write it properly and then other people who don’t know better also copy them. Think about it. Water found in a ditch is dull as a naturally occurring phenomena due to a series of geographical and scientific factors. It is endemic to the situation... whereas dishwater is something with which you’ve filled a dish. There could be anything in there and it certainly doesn’t have to taste dull or have a dull colour or texture. Honestly, people should stop using their ignorance as an excuse for what comes out of their mouths and own up to it when someone calls them on it... or when someone most likely doesn’t understand them because they’re not speaking the language correctly.

Secondly, I remember ordering a complete and unabridged copy of Shelley’s Frankenstein from the school book club when i was about seven years old (I still have it to this day). When I got around to reading it I certainly didn’t find it dull and I’m pretty sure a lot of people who revere this classic colossus of gothic fiction don’t find it so either. So putting down the wonderful source material in the hopes that it will make your product sound like a film which will appeal to the younger market (let’s face it, Hollywood wants youngsters to watch their films and raise the box office) is just insane and it will just alienate you from your potential audience, as it seems it has done on twitter (if my timeline of followers is anything to judge by).

So, okay, having said all that, it almost comes as a disappointment, in some ways, that Victor Frankenstein is a way more entertaining movie than it probably has any right to be. The thing is, yeah, it really doesn’t follow anything at all, almost, from the original novel... but if you’re going to let that kind of thing put you off seeing this movie then you’re probably not a fan of Frankenstein in movie history. Ever since Edison’s first Frankenstein movie in 1910 and onwards throughout the versions (and their sequels) put out by likes of Universal, Hammer and many more studios over the years, people have been doing their own thing with the Shelley source material, latching onto any number of elements and fusing it with their own take on the questions raised by the concept of going against nature and creating life from death.

So I’ve really got no problem with a story which takes the premise that Frankenstein (played by James McAvoy) allies himself with the aid of a circus freak, Igor (played by Daniel Radcliffe) who has as much, if not more medical knowledge than him. Actually, it is a stretch that Igor would be able to educate himself in the circumstances he finds himself in before the start of the movie but it seems credible within the context of the film which is all told through the eyes of Igor. Of course, Igor wasn’t even in the original novel but I’m guessing the director probably didn’t get that far into the story to find that out, being as it’s apparently as dull as something you might find in a dish, according to him.

When you’ve got performers such as McAvoy and Radcliffe, who have become masters of their craft (Radcliffe is surprisingly brilliant in this, even overshadowing McAvoy to an extent) then you shouldn’t have too much to worry about. Both sell this completely unrelated take on the story pretty well although, it has to be said, McAvoy does storm through the role like he’s high on speed for a lot of the time. Frankenstein is portrayed as deranged and McAvoy plays to that, sailing through the wordage at a rate of knotts, with Radcliffe not too far behind him. The Frankenstein character does seem a little over-adrenalised a lot of the time, though. It’s presumably a creative choice for the actor and it seems to have worked out for him here.

We also have Sherlock’s Moriarty, Andrew Scott (last seen by me in SPECTRE, reviewed here), as the Inspector who is hunting down both Frankenstein and Igor for reasons which make more sense once his religious agenda is brought into play after a while into the movie. He’s another, like McAvoy and Radcliffe who is very easy to watch and we also have the lovely Jessica Brown Findlay playing the romantic interest to Radcliffe’s Igor and, also, as the catalyst that brings Igor and Frankenstein together, in an impressive scene where Igor initiates a quick ‘dry surgery’, as the two work together to save her character’s life. It’s probably the cleverness behind the writing and execution of this scene, above any other, that won me over fairly early on in the movie.

I say that McAvoy plays the character in an ‘over-adrenalised’ way and I don’t think he could have got away with this kind of performance in some other films but, as it is, this film is so fast paced that the actors really almost have to run at speed with their performances here just to try and match the tempo throughout the piece. I may be wrong here but, because the movie staggers along at such a fast rate, I’m guessing that a heck of a lot of unnecessary dialogue may have been cut out of the movie as dead weight and we’re left with an edit that, while avoiding certain excesses that a lack of master shot use might bring, very much encapsulates a kind of pop video attitude and because of this, the film certainly doesn’t get boring. I'm guessing that this is very much a film which found its shape in the editing more than most.

Fans of Frankenstein's rich cinematic history may be delighted to discover that there are a fair few ‘fan references’ in the film (apparently the films can’t have been dull as either ditch or dishwater, then) and even the creature at the end owes a debt to the classic Boris Karloff portrayal of the monster in Universal’s 1931 Frankenstein and its first two direct sequels The Bride Of Frankenstein and Son Of Frankenstein (this also includes many mentions of 'Henry' Frankenstein, who was the main character name in the first two Universal pictures). There’s even a sense that it’s slightly filtered through Dave Prowse’s ‘look’ in Hammer’s Horror Of Frankenstein so that will probably please a lot of Hammer fans I would think, especially someone like Mark Gatiss who, I noticed, was playing an extra in the creation scenes towards the end of the picture.

So not much else to say really... Victor Frankenstein is a thoroughly, if surprisingly, entertaining movie. Fast paced with plenty of action... including a great ‘half chimpanzee homunculus’ rampage scene to get the blood pumping. There’s not too much in the way of anything other than standard camerawork throughout the movie, it seemed to me, but there were a few very expressive moments, like the first mesmerising scene right at the start of the film where we first see Daniel Radcliffe’s character almost forming out of the ether as some kind of German Expressionist legacy. All in all, though , there’s not too much to get upset about in this one... if you are a Frankenstein purist to the point where it puts you off seeing any deviation from the original work then, to be fair, not many of the movies made over the years would be for you. If you’re up for a punchy, ‘weird science’ adventure supported by a not too terrible Craig Armstrong score and some interesting performances, however, you might want to give this one a try before it leaves the cinemas. One thing I’ll say for it... it’s a lot less duller than ditchwater.

Crimson Peak

Redded Bliss

Crimson Peak
2015 USA
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Slight spoilers in this one 
in terms of the first half of the movie.

Well... this one surprised me by completely living up to my expectations of it... which were unrealistically high, it has to be said.

I first saw the trailer for Crimson Peak online, either at the end of 2014 or early 2015, if my memory is not playing tricks on me. I admire Guillermo del Toro as a director but find him a bit hit and miss when it comes to making movies which are able to entertain me. Films like Pan’s Labyrinth which, with its surrealistic fairytale leanings, should have been right up my street... left me a little cold, to be honest. Whereas stuff like the Hellboy movies (especially the second one) and Pacific Rim, to a certain extent  (reviewed by me here), are films I could happily repeat watch. However, even the films I find less than entertaining by him are always worth a look because they are usually so arresting at a visual level. Crimson Peak is no exception but, I’m happy to say, it’s also wildly entertaining and, frankly, a bit of a masterpiece of modern Gothic romance.

Now, I’m pretty sure I read a tweet by del Toro saying that the film is not a horror movie. Well, I guess it depends on your definition of horror. For me, anything with non-human monsters - be they off-planet, other-wordly or supernatural phenomena, falls firmly into the horror movie camp for me... and the presence of a handful of ghosts in this film certainly does the trick here. However, the horror details are really the icing on the cake of this delicious crimson confection... the movie is both more than that, and less than that, in equal parts... depending on your point of view.

More than that because they support what is basically a contemporary take on an old school gothic romance, a film firmly following a direct lineage of movie versions of such works as Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre or Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca. Less, because the movie is more about the characters and their relation to their situation rather than a full on ghost movie... although this really isn’t to suggest the movie is anything less than scary in certain sections. What we have here is the style of those kinds of earlier literary works infused with a quite chilling rendition, due to del Toro’s very good taste at getting things to look and feel right, of the kind of modern incarnations of ghost horror movies such as Mama (reviewed here) and Dark Water.

The film follows a young lady called Edith Cushing, played by Mia Wasikowska, as she finds herself in an unlikely romantic entanglement with her former Only Lovers Left Alive (reviewed here) co-star Tom Hiddleston as Thomas Sharpe and his sinister sister Lucille Sharpe, played by Jessica Chastain. After the violent murder of her rich father by an unseen assailant, she and her money return with the Sharpes to live with them in England, to his ancestral home which... as Edith finds out far too late (certainly much later than anyone in the audience would expect, given that Tom starts talking to her father and his colleagues about red clay)... is known by the locals under the nickname Crimson Peak. This is a place she has been warned of, by her dead mother, and told to stay away from... so obviously there wouldn’t be a story here unless she ended up at this place at some point in the film’s running time. Her biggest concern... and the audiences... is to try and figure out just who or what is there that may mean her harm. Is it the ghosts of the violently deceased that plague her in the night or are either Tom or Jessica less transparent in their intentions than they are letting on?

Well, I’ll tell you now you probably won’t take too much time seeing through the various clues, highlighted in the cinematic equivalent of a giant marker pen on paper... but the mystery element in the story should keep some people happy and it’s not the story, anyway, which makes this film such compelling viewing. It’s del Toro’s deft touch and signature on the frames themselves which will have you riveted to see what beautiful set piece is coming next. There is high romance (a lit candle for a waltz scene), lurking terror (the entire environment Edith ends up in) and there’s also the terrifyingly rendered ghosts in the movie... I promise you, you would not want to meet one of these creations on a dark night. Above all though, there’s also a deep and lacerating sense of violence which boils up when, admittedly, you most suspect it but... honestly... with a certain visceral force that leaves you with a schism in your head as you try to marry up the contrast between rich, romantic gothic atmosphere and the viciousness and goriness of an expression of violence in which del Toro certainly doesn’t pull any punches.

It’s a terrible cliché for me to write in a review but the film truly is a rich, visual and, also, aural feast - the sound design is beautiful with whispers of dread and terror lurking in your ears as you follow the characters through the old house on Crimson Peak. This is, of course, exactly what I would expect of the director and his artistic sensibilities. He has apparently gone on record as saying that the design of the film was his attempt to recreate the look of Mario Bava. Now, as regular readers will know, I cite Bava’s influence in films a lot but I wouldn’t have necessarily highlighted that here unless prompted by the director’s own words. What I will say is that I was much more struck by the film’s resemblance, on some visual level, to the mid 1950s to late 1960s horror movies put out by England’s Hammer studios. The dense colours don’t quite seem to be as luminous as one might expect to encounter in the works of Bava, to my mind, and more like what you would see in a Christopher Lee Dracula movie, for instance (my review of the first Hammer Dracula can be found here). Indeed, the fact that Mia Wasikowska’s main protagonist is presumably named after one of Hammer’s best loved actors, Peter Cushing, presumably demonstrates that these films were also in the director’s mind when he was working on this film.

Either way, Hammer and Bava are not the only references for horror or, indeed, giallo fans to sink their teeth into. For example, the murder of Edith’s father is straight out of a Dario Argento giallo... in fact, I suspect it’s inspired by a murder scene in Profondo Rosso (aka Deep Red, reviewed by me here) but the director really manages to up the stakes and make the violence in this particular scene, among others, something you almost want to look away from. Which, frankly, is what violence should be... something you really want to look away from. The director uses the brutality of the violence to punctuate certain scenes, especially in the last reel, and really hits home that the characters populating the story, no matter how beautiful they all look in his perfect shot compositions and framed within his leisurely moving camera, are very much real people with a lot at risk. It helps add to the gravitas already conjured up by the three main leads and Charlie Hunnam’s character, who becomes more important toward the end. I’m happy to say that the ‘deus ex machina’ arc of Hunnam's character doesn’t necessarily follow the exact path the audience thinks it’s going to... and he's not very smart in some scenes, it has to be said.

Del Toro’s Crimson Peak is an absolutely beautiful film and it’s steeped in the gothic tradition of the literature of over a hundred years ago, filtered in a deliberately post-modern fashion through some of the best directors of colourful horror films of the past but, at no times, does it ever stop from being the unique and personal vision that you would expect from this Mexican master of cinema. Guillermo del Toro is one of the absolute key modern players of what is still the most popular art form of our time... the motion picture. Crimson Peak is, I will say again, a masterpiece and, from my view at this stage of his career, one of his key films.... certainly my favourite so far of all his works. Great beauty for fans of gothic romance and tales of ghostly spirits bearing warnings from the dead. Definitely one you should catch up with and see on a big screen. Such a beautiful film.

Dracula (Horror Of Dracula)

Fangs Of Fury

Dracula (Horror Of Dracula)
1958 UK
Directed by Terence Fisher
20th Century Fox Blu Ray B

Warning: Spoilers may bite you in the neck...

Right. Before I get into this review, I want to state up front that this is not one of my all time favourite Dracula adaptations... although it would certainly be in my top ten (and possibly even make my top twenty vampire movies). My all time favourites would be the unauthorised 1922 version of Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (aka Nosferatu), the 1931 Todd Browning version of Dracula and the simultaneously shot 1931 Spanish version of Dracula which utilised the same sets but different actors and with some more interesting artistic flourishes than the Browning version (although you can’t beat putting Dwight Fry in a movie, no matter how good your direction is).

I do, however, have a soft spot for some of the Hammer films. The first Hammer movie I saw was when I was about 6 years old in 1974. I remember going around to my uncle’s house to see a television screening of Taste The Blood Of Dracula. This was a very important moment in my infant life because a) it was another Dracula movie I hadn’t already seen and b) my uncle had a colour television set. Colour! This was still a novelty for many people in the UK in the early seventies.

I remember liking Taste The Blood Of Dracula so much that, one year later, I started collecting the Shock Theatre bubble gum cards, along with all the other infant school kids, with their depictions of, often quite nasty and blood curdling, photographs from various Hammer Frankenstein and Dracula movies. I remember I never got to finish putting more than just over half of the set together because all the kids parents got wind of them and they were soon banned at my school. Trying to complete my set now, with an exorbitant amount of money being asked for just single cards, would probably be out of my price range, to be honest.

In the ensuing years, I watched the various Hammer Dracula movies as they came on television but I can’t quite remember when I saw this first one. I certainly remember going to a 2007 screening of Dracula at the National Film Theatre with my friend @cultofthecinema and being somewhat disappointed and, frankly, infuriatingly alarmed at the liberties that were taken with the story in this version... although I seem to have calmed down a bit about that now. Most movie adaptations are versions of the stage story of Dracula and, even when they’re not, most movie companies make absolutely horrendous changes to the tale (see my review of Dario Argento’s new version here for another take).

I was expecting to be a little disappointed on this subsequent viewing again, to be honest, but I wanted to see it because the new 2012 restoration includes shots taken from the Japanese release print. Long story, but there were usually a few different release prints of the Hammer films for different global regions (so I’ve always been told and this film seems to prove that) and the Japanese version would usually be slightly longer with more gore, to cater for the tastes of that market. So I was interested in seeing those few seconds of footage and, to be honest, to also see the new documentaries on this edition (of which, at time of writing, I’ve only been able to see the first featurette).

The added unexpected outcome of this viewing, however, turns out to be that it seems to have grown on me and the Hammer version of Dracula is a much better movie than I’ve previously given it credit for. I even like one of the things which critics have faulted it for but i’ll get to that a little later.

So... okay, as a straight adaptation of Bram Stoker’s original novel, the Hammer version, if you’ll pardon the pun... sucks. But, as a tight script which distills the essence of Stokers novel, cutting away huge chunks but also making some bold and sometimes quite canny changes to the story line in deference to both budget and timescales, it really isn’t a bad piece of economic writing and Terence Fisher shoots the whole thing with a certain panache, it has to be said.

One of the main things it’s got going for it is that the rhythm changes often take you by surprise and are quite emotionally manipulative. Now if I was being less kind or seeing it for the first time in a long time (and this may have been my problem with when I saw the BFI print back in 2007) then I might be overly critical for the film having what could be described as an uneven tone. But on this viewing I realised that those tonal shifts from sedate, long, tranquil stretches to sudden, intense moments of fury... notably in the scenes where Dracula catches his “bride” with Johnathan Harker and, again, with his final fight with Van Helsing... were actually quite deftly handled. Of course, you’ve got a wealth of good actors selling you the moments through their performance and able to keep up with those sudden emotional switches without having to pause for breath, but the way the shots are edited together, the whole tempo of those sudden rises to match Christopher Lee’s sudden bouts of animal fury or Peter Cushing’s sudden bursts into action is all marvellously well done.

Naturally, the music really helps and James Bernard’s score, which possibly sounds a little like his scores to the first two Quatermass movies in certain places (although that might just be me responding to his personal style of composition) supports this movie quite assuredly, matching the sudden bursts of ferocity with great cries of what I can only describe as musical chaos whenever the film suddenly shifts gears. I’m amazed the first of Bernard’s Dracula scores has never, at time of writing, been released on CD.

There are, as I said, a lot of big changes to the story. The swapping of Mina and Lucy and their relationship to Jonathan Harker, for example, will probably catch many people off guard. The cutting of Dr. Seward to an extremely minor role and the absence of his sanitarium and, indeed, of the Renfield character, might equally throw some people (I know it did me, back in 2007). Not to mention the location shift (due to budgetary constraints).

One of the more interesting changes is the fact that, rather than appearing at Dracula’s castle as an estate agent, Jonathan Harker is, in fact, Van Helsing’s fellow vampire hunter, and he is there to end Dracula’s life right from the start of the movie... under the guise of a librarian to help catalogue Dracula’s books. This also, of course, means you can call the Van Helsing character into the storyline fairly easily and rationally without having to jump through narrative hoops... you can cut a few corners in the story is what I’m saying here.

All of this makes a pretty good Hammer film, marred perhaps by the fact that the same set seems to keep being re-used and dressed to double for multiple locations. Something I picked up on back in 2007 and which further added to my disappointment at that particular screening. Reworking the sets is a skill still practiced to this day, of course (just go ask Ridley Scott), but I wish it hadn’t had to have been so obvious in this movie.

Still, I did enjoy this rescreening for myself and I even found Michael Gough’s performance, which is often attacked, to be quite enjoyable too. He has a certain chemistry in the role with Cushing, I feel, and I would like to see if they ever worked together again. It certainly doesn’t mar the experience for me... certainly not as much as the poor, overworked sets... colourful and brilliant as they are, shot from curious angles and lovingly plastered across the screen in some, nevertheless, beautiful compositions.

Colour me surprised but I certainly appreciated this screening of one of Hammer Studios’ most important films a lot more than the last time I saw it. It’s not as good as their excellent Dracula AD 1972, of course, but as Dracula movies go it’s really not a bad one. Bit of a classic. Miss it at your peril.

Interview with Amanda Norman

The Norman In Black

You know, ever since I first got involved with Twitter, initially to promote this blog, I’ve followed and met some pretty wild and wonderful people there. Gothic and Horror Photographer Amanda Norman is one of the more interesting people I’ve come across in my travels, mixing a larger than life personality, an eye for beauty and the juxtaposition of a certain dark attitude which permeates her photographs and grabs hold of the innocent, soon to be haunted onlooker right from the outset. She also augments and often combines her love of visually exploring the dark ambience she brings out in her subject matter with a thriving trade in tenebrous, but no less ostentatious, home crafted jewellery. I asked her a few questions about her inspirations and working methods because I thought my readers might be as taken with her work as I am and would lke to know a little more about her. Here’s what she came up with... 


Hi Mandy. You obviously have a dark half living inside you which you utilise to take some pretty stunning shots. Is the photography something you can pick up and put down anytime or is it an outlet which you feel compelled to take? By which I mean, do you start getting twitchy if you haven’t taken some of your dark shots for a while?

Hello. I certainly believe that I have a dark half inside of me and I do get twitchy if I don’t do any photography for a while. There is no set time limit, I just get the urge every now and again and this is when I do my best work. I do feel compelled to state that when I refer to the ‘dark side’ or a ‘dark half’, I’m in no way evil. I just love to explore the hidden philosophies and explore the possibilities of things that most people immediately close their mind to, usually because of fear, and this is what inspires my work. When I’m out with my camera, I ask myself "is there something or someone watching me from the hidden depths of the shadows and why?"

Ha! Yeah, I’ve always found a certain amount of healthy obsession can fuel greater work. Fear, sex or the neccessity to explore something with fresh eyes. This voyeuristic “there’s something watching me” kinda attitude presumably only covers your landscape work. Do you let your “camera eye” become the “something that’s watching” or do you just channel the unease/paranoia of that kind of situation without becoming a literal translator? Or both?

It doesn’t just cover my landscape work, it’s all photography work that I do, even with the horror portraits. I’m always searching for the hidden, so in answer to your question, I’m never the watcher. I do channel the unease/paranoia and try to encapsulate that element in my work. A picture is just a picture unless you can capture the atmosphere and the emotion of the subject. With the horror portraits, the true monstrous soul remains hidden unless I bring it out. I’ll leave you to ponder on that thought.

You’ve gone on record that you don’t plan your shots in advance but, you’ve been doing this a while now. Has your working method changed at all? Do you ever sketch out something which is in your head and then seek it out or manufacture a specific vision for your lens?

I very rarely plan my shots in advance. I might see a poster or something on the TV that inspires me, for example the poster for the film The Exorcist is so iconic with the silhouette of the priest under the lamp. This inspired a photograph I took of my ex on a dark path. I never want to copy anything I’ve seen out right, but I do love to experiment.

Ok. So it would be true that you prefer to find your way to a shot spontaneously when you are confronted with your raw materials. I know a lot of the old Hollywood directors liked to “think on their feet” like that. Would it be true to say that you get a buzz out of that kind of challenge when you’re on location then? And that too much planning, for you, would be to dull down the experience and perhaps dumb down the shot?

I always think on my feet and very rarely plan a shot and yes, I do get a buzz out of it, especially when I put the images onto the computer. Sometimes I surprise myself with what I’ve taken.

The majority of your photography is in black and white and you’ve noted your inspiration can come from the old 30s and 40s Universal Horror movies (and I suspect Val Lewton’s stuff for RKO might also be an influence on your work?) but I know you also find a muse in the Hammer Horror films of the 50s, 60s and 70s. Now Hammer’s big thing when they got into the horror game was the bright colours...are you planning to explore more of your work in colour as time goes on?

This is such a difficult area for me to explore. I prefer black and white as most times more detail is kept, but sometimes my images look great if they have striking colours. I take all of my shots in colour and then convert to black and white, but sometimes I will keep colour ones if I can’t decide. I now have a gallery titled ‘The Darkside’ (http://www.amandanorman.com/shop/index.html?folder=folder/) that has quite a bit of colour photography in it. I sent you an image of one of Antony Gormley’s iron men on Crosby beach that I took recently. I prefer the colour one.  Also, you’re correct in your assumption of RKO influencing my work. I just love the old black and white movies and I can watch them time and time again.

When you work on portraiture, I’m guessing you make a lot of adjustments to the setting via lighting etc. Is this so and do you ever artificially alter the environment on your gothic, atmospheric landscape work to fit a shot? For instance, do you ever use reflectors, or a makeshift version of such, to change the lighting of a shot to any extent?

I’ve never studied photography and I’ve never had the opportunity to perform studio work. I’m quite lucky in the fact that all I require for a portrait shot is a plain dark background and enough light to get the desired result. I’ve never used any photography props such as reflectors. Most of my work is tweaked afterwards and I emphasise the word ‘tweaked’ as the pose and the lighting is the most important part of the portrait. 

Ahh... yeah okay. I was going to get around to asking you this anyway. So it would be fair to say that your shots are, like pretty much everything these days just by the nature of the beast in the age of a digital venue, enhanced in a programme like Adobe Photoshop after you’ve got the original shots? I’m assuming it’s Photoshop? I’m guessing you play around with the levels to some extent and also, possibly on your colour shots, enhance the saturation of some of the image content? I say this because I know I have to fix a lot of photos in my day job and try to get them decent enough for print reproduction and I do all of that same kind of tweaking myself. Take us through one of your shots. Pick one and tell my readers how you might get it sorted... unless that’s demistifying the process too far? Don’t want to spoil the magic.

As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it’s interpreting what one sees into digital format and how well they do it. Take for example the image of my shadow and a friends. The original is to many, a boring image, but for me there was something there, but I had to bring it out, without altering the original image. Therefore the finished result is a play on levels and colours, just like you mentioned in your question. The original image is exactly the same and yet the finished result is a brand new image, but with a splash of dark passion. Both versions pictured above.

Do you find the people who are drawn to your work to be similarly dark in nature? Also, do you find the percentage of your portraiture subjects who request that you “do them” (for want of a better term) to be of a similar dark type of personality or are they quite a diverse bunch?

Another tough question, as most of my contacts are people from Twitter who obviously have the same or similar interests as myself.  Some of the horror portraits that you see in my gallery (http://www.amandanorman.com/shop/index.html?folder=portraits) are of friends and family who don’t generally like horror so really, you don’t have to have a dark personality to have your portrait taken. 

Ha! Fair enough... so you add the darkness yourself a lot of the time. Yes, I understand that your contacts would be drawn from a similar world view. What do your friends and family who sit for some of these portraits, and who don't share that view, think of the end results?

Good question as friends have a laugh and love the finished output, but some of my family have a strange reaction. 

I’ve sent you the dark portrait of my mother aptly titled ‘Dark Mother’ and I’ve also sent the original. Both versions pictured above. I had this image on my home page just before last Christmas and I also had it as my desktop background. To cut a long story short, my mother came to visit and I was showing her something on my computer when she suddenly asked "Who the Hell is that?" 


I looked at her shocked as I couldn’t believe she was asking me that question and I thought for a moment that she was joking until I realised she wasn’t. I told her that it was her and she was so shocked that she demanded that I take it off, but then I had to tell her that I use it on my website and business cards. She’s OK about it now, but it was just the shock for her seeing it first time. She really couldn’t believe that it was her. 

Well I’d say that was a pretty interesting result and says everything about the way your personal touch brings something entirely new to your subjects.

Mandy Norman, thanks very much for your time.

You can see Amanda Norman’s dark corner of the internet here... http://www.amandanorman.com and you can follow her on twitter here http://twitter.com/AmandaNorman