The Reptile

Jacqueline's Pearcings

The Reptile
UK 1966
Directed by John Gilling
Hammer Studios/Studio Canal 
Blu Ray Zone 2

Warning: I guess this one has venomous spoilers in it.

I thought it was time to revisit a good old Hammer horror in the form of their 1966 entry The Reptile. It’s funny, I didn’t know it when I started it but, as soon as I saw the locations and sets, not to mention that it’s shouted out at the start that the film takes place in Cornwall, I was pretty sure this one was using the same locations to shoot as Hammer’s The Plague Of The Zombies (reviewed here). Sure enough, I checked it out and it was, indeed, filmed back to back with that movie... not to mention having some of the same cast members. It’s also got some very similar plot elements... more like a simplified version of that film. 

In this one, Harry Spalding (played by Ray Barrett), accompanied by his new wife Valerie (played by Jennifer Daniel) inherits a cottage in Cornwall from his recently ‘deceased in dodgy, pre-credits circumstances’ brother. The locals don’t all like strangers and are superstitious about a series of ‘deaths’ which they attribute to a ‘black plague’ but Harry and Valerie are befriended by the local pub landlord Tom, played by Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper, in a much more heroic and featured role than he got in many of his movies for the studio. They also have the local ‘character’ Mad Peter (played by John Laurie of Dad’s Army) helping them, a little, before he succumbs to what’s been ailing the other fatalities. 

But what’s this? Can the epidemic of bizarre, unexplained deaths have something to do with Spalding’s neighbours... Dr. Franklin (played by Noel Willman) and his lovely young daughter Anna (played by a young Jacqueline Pearce in her first feature film role, although Hammer’s The Plague Of The Zombies and another movie with her in it both made it to cinemas before this one, in the same year)? Maybe it’s the curious chap from India who lives with them and sings Anna into a frenzy so she can turn into a big snake woman and inject her venom into innocent victims that could be the trouble, perhaps?

Yep. This is how I like my horror movies... strangers coming into a small, bigoted community, refusing to move and then helping, with a small team of likeminded individuals, to rid the village of the local horror preying on them from within. It’s not got any flashy camera work on this one but it’s definitely a good ‘comfort horror’ movie and certainly a nice watch for Halloween (I watched this one the day after the 2022 Halloween Fright Fest, although I’m not sure how soon this review will make it onto this blog). Definitely a relaxing slice of genre and it’s a lot of fun too.

Jacqueline Pearce is expecially good in both her human form and when she’s pearcing... sorry, piercing... the necks of the locals with her double toothed, vampiric looking teeth. Apparently though, the creature suit and make up was too much for her to handle in her claustrophobic state so it was the last time she worked in that kind of role for anyone, by the sounds of it. 

The principal actors are all good and make a well oiled machine of a team but Michael Ripper is especially great in the role of Tom. It’s sometimes very easy to take for granted just how good some of these well known character actors were but, of course, they became known as such because they were regularly re-used by studios because they could be counted on to give a reliable, dependable and believable performance in whatever roles they were thrown into. Ripper has the bad fortune to be lumbered with a fairly fake looking, somewhat freaky and almost ‘hipster’ beard which, honestly, really works against the character but, it doesn’t stop him from being absolutely awesome in the role and he does, it has to be said, kinda steal the scenes away from everyone else in the picture, whenever he’s on. 

It was good, too, to see John Laurie in such good form as Mad Peter. He’s given some quite nice and eccentric dialogue in this one and he really chews up the scenery in this but, honestly, it totally fits the character he’s been given and it was obviously written for his comic strengths, even if he does meet a ghastly death at the hands of the title beast halfway through the movie. 

And, okay, a short review but The Reptile gets a strong recommendation from me. Sometimes the Hammer films of this time underperformed and, well, I’m not sure how well this one did (I suspect it was made for one of their double bills) but their output here was all quality stuff as far as I’m concerned and, even the ones that maybe didn’t quite make the right pace, were usually still very entertaining. This one’s definitely worth a watch or three. 

The Plague Of The Zombies

When Push 
Comes To Shovel

The Plague Of The Zombies
UK 1966
Directed by John Gilling  
Hammer/Studio Canal 
Blu Ray Zone B

Well it’s been a while since I last watched this one and, yeah, it’s still a real cracker of a film, for sure.

I first saw The Plague Of The Zombies in my very early teens, projected at my school film club for all the kiddies to see (somehow, the janitor never got into any kind of trouble for showing 10 year olds films like Death Race 2000... a screening I sadly missed out on at the time). My earliest memories of this are that it was in black and white but, it’s obviously been shot in colour so my memories must have been more muddied than the print Studio Canal had to work with (to varying degrees of success... yeah, I’ll get into that in a minute).

The film, set in the 1860s, tells the story of distinguished medical professor Sir James Forbes, played with relish by the great André Morrell (who was, perhaps, my favourite of the TV incarnations of Professor Quatermass in the original, serialised version of Quatermass And The Pit, reviewed here) and his daughter Sylvia (played by Diane Clare). They are summoned from London to a small community in Cornwall to help out Forbes’ former medical student, Dr. Peter Thompson (played by Brook Williams), who has set up a practice there with his wife, a friend of Sylvia’s, named Alice (played by the great Jacqueline Pearce, who would of course grow up to be the scourge of the galaxy as Servalan in Blake’s 7). 

There is a curious disease, of sorts, sweeping the village and killing off people unexpectedly... but the audience has already been clued in that it’s good old proper Haitian voodoo zombies and, once you meet the local squire, Hamilton, played wonderfully by John Carson with his sideburns sharpened up into razor-like points, you know he is the one responsible for bringing this practice back to Cornwall, by the tell tale symbol on the ring on his finger. He lives in his old country home which also served as the grounds and headquarters for SPECTRE at the opening of the movie version of From Russia With Love (reviewed by me here). And if you were in any doubt as to his status as lead villain, he surrounds himself with some local thugs who assert their collective British villainy by going fox hunting and, at one point, trying to gang rape Sylvia. 

But Forbes is on the case and, once he knows that the squire has allowed no autopsies on the bodies of any of the strange victims, he finds that the bodies are no longer in their coffins and so he also enlists the aid of the local Police Sergeant Swift, played by Hammer favourite Michael Ripper (is it really a Hammer film if Michael Ripper isn’t in it?). After a few walking corpses have been sighted in the vicinity and Alice is killed (and flung at Sylvia by a cackling zombie), Forbes consults the local priest who seems to have a library full of books about witchcraft and voodoo (because, of course). His theories  are confirmed when Alice rises from her exhumed coffin and tries to kill him, prompting him to decapitate her with a shovel in one stroke (trimmed by the English censors at the time in, presumably, lost footage... when he originally took about four shovel strikes). It turns out, of course, that Squire Hamilton has been killing and reanimating people as zombies to use as cheap labour for his old, abandoned tin mines. Justice arrives in the form of Forbes and Thompson and we are left with a typical Hammer film ending from this period, no epilogue... just a sudden ending with the heroes glumly watching the tin mines burn and wallowing in their sudden, Pyrrhic victory. 

And it’s a great movie. The zombies themselves predate the modern zombies kickstarted by George A Romero two years later in Night Of The Living Dead and are almost a cross breed of the brainwashed victims of Haitian zombies in earlier films and the ones to come... being that these specimens, with their white contact lenses and greyed skin, do bear more than a passing resemblance to some of those in Romero’s later ground breaking movie. And, of course, it also destroys the notion that Romero invented the kind of zombie that would tear itself from the under the soil and up into the open. For my money, the first movie to actually do that may have been one of the 1940s Universal Mummy sequels (I forget which one) but, in a strangely placed dream sequence, we see the pasty faced, dark rimmed with blank eyes undead rising out from the earth in the local graveyard... so, yeah, I suspect Romero might well have seen and been influenced by this movie in particular. 

Perhaps my one slight criticism of the film is that it seems like it’s been trimmed a little, possibly at the script stage, in that Morrell’s character seems to be jumping to just the right deductions before he has the necessary knowledge to make a judgement call. I suspect a few minor scenes of expository dialogue, such as more knowledge about the circumstances in which his daughter cut her hand (thus allowing the squire to make off with some of her blood to use on a voodoo doll), would have helped curtail those kinds of leaps. But it doesn’t really spoil my appreciation of the movie, which is that it’s pretty well made and a darn good yarn at that. 

What did spoil my appreciation of it a little, is the restoration on this relatively recent Studio Canal Blu Ray, which seems to be more than a trifle enthusiastic in its treatment of the many ‘day for night’ scenes, which appear to be presented way too bright than they ever have before... but I won’t get in to that argument here because, I believe there have been a fair few feuds about this and a few of their other releases in regards to this aspect online before... I just wish that someone like the Indicator label (aka Powerhouse Films) had been allowed to do a proper restoration instead. I’ve come to think of Studio Canal more and more like they’re the bad guys in recent years, blocking UK releases of some nice restorations and then leaving certain films either unreleased or in less prestigious versions over here in the UK. Which is a sad state of affairs for lovers of film but, there you have it. 

All in all, though, if you’ve never seen The Plague Of The Zombies before and you are a lover of Hammer horror, this is definitely one of their better movies and it certainly won’t be the last time I revisit this one. Much to be recommended here.

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. 

The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires

Ege Of Darkness

The Legend Of The
Seven Golden Vampires
UK/Hong Kong 1974
Directed by Roy Ward Baker and
Chang Cheh (uncredited action sequences)
Hammer/Shaw Brothers/Warner Brothers
Blu Ray Zone A

The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires was the very last of Hammer’s Dracula cycle, made in collaboration with the famous Shaw Brothers and, despite attempts made to regain Christopher Lee as Dracula one last time, he declined after reading the script. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with this one for reasons I’ll get into in a minute but, I have to say on this rewatch, polished up for a lovely stateside Blu Ray release from Shout Factory, the film looks better than any previous versions I’ve owned and, I also had a lot more fun with it. I’m wondering now if the last version I saw was maybe the cut down US release version, The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula, because some of the sequences are in a much different order than I remember them from my last viewing and it all makes a bit more sense this time around.

One person who does return, in a lovely portrayal of the original Van Helsing, is Peter Cushing in one of the roles that made him a household name, looking very dapper throughout most of the shoot in a reddish brown jacket which looks very much like the ones he wore the decade before in the two Dr. Who movies (reviewed here and here). Alas, he’s my main problem with the movie also... or rather, the inclusion of his character is... I’ll get to the elephant in the room in a little while, I promise.

He’s joined in this by Robin Stewart as his son (who seems to spend the entire movie looking like a clone of Ralph Bates for this one) and the lovely Julie Ege as his female benefactor (for the cost of coming along on a specific mission with Van Helsing). Plus a whole bunch of Shaw Brothers actors including the legends (in my opinion) that are David Chiang and Szu Shih and, I have to say, they’re all pretty good. The film starts off with Dracula (played by John Forbes-Robertson, in absolutely no way similarly to Lee) who quickly steals the body of a Chinese guy, goes to China and lives there for 100 years with his fierce Seven Golden Vampires plus their undead, zombie slaves. Then Van Helsing and crew go to protect the village which Dracula holds in a grip of terror in a romp of a tale which is a heady mix of kung fu action with typically entertaining Hammer vampire nonsense kind of grafted onto it (or vice versa, if you like).

That being said, I think the chorography on the fight scenes on this one are nowhere near as interesting as the regular Shaw Brothers movies I’ve seen from these actors and, I think that out of all of them, it’s Szu Shih who seems the best of the bunch, showing off her dynamic fighting skills much more in keeping with what you would expect if it was purely a Shaw Brothers production.

It mostly looks nice with some beautiful frame compositions and an almost Bava sense of lighting in some places, where actors and sets are lit two tone from a range of colour palettes such as blues, greens, reds and mauve washes of colour, which really pop and bring interest to the shots. That being said, for some reason the external location shots seem to be quite muddy and dull to look at on this one, in contrast to the sequences which are studio bound. You can certainly see the difference between the clarity of the visuals on this beautiful Shout Factory transfer, for sure. There are also some brief sequences of topless women and bodice ripping galore (although, sadly, not in the case of the constantly bosomy and brilliant Julie Ege) and some nice special effects when each of the seven golden vampires reverts back to the dust from which they came. Although, a badly fake rubber bat flying behind a vertical rock while a vampire jumps out from the other side of the same rock is not the most convincing transformation sequence, it has to be said.

And, yeah, it’s a nice enough final film in the series but, it has the awful problems of continuity in terms of both the Van Helsing and Dracula characters in the film, which not only contradict the film fitting into the previous Hammer Dracula movies... it also contradicts itself in this story too. To explain...

We know from Dracula AD 1972 (reviewed here) that the original Van Helsing, who this character does seem to be, according to some dialogue referring back to his past encounters with Dracula, perished in the year 1872. The prologue to that film sees Dracula and Van Helsing killing each other but with Dracula being revived from powdered blood spilled then, 100 years later (where Peter Cushing plays the great grandson of the character he played in this prologue). However, in The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires, Dracula has already taken the form of the Chinese guy 1804 and has gone to China for 100 years, until he meets up with the original Van Helsing in this film in the year 1904. So not only does this transformation take place long before he could have remet Van Helsing, it also predates the previous Dracula films... a complete impossibility if this film is to be believed. And, hello, if Van Helsing dies in 1872, then how come he’s running around and still getting into trouble in 1904? Especially when he clearly states that he’s met Dracula and fought him before... erm... except hasn’t Dracula been hiding as a Chinese guy for 100 years? How did they meet again?

So yeah, no matter which way you look at it, the film is a total nonsense. The script could have easily been fixed to change dates and historical durations of events in this film but, well, it looks like nobody could be bothered with keeping any sense of continuity within these films. And it just doesn’t work. So, if continuity is your thing (and why wouldn’t it be?) then maybe this final entry in the Hammer Dracula saga isn’t for you.

That being said, though, I did enjoy this presentation of The Legend Of The 7 Golden Vampires far more than I expected to and, yeah, it’s a hard film not to have a good time with. Like I said, it’s a boy’s own kind of romp, a bit like the Hammer version of She but with added kung fu goodness. A nice thing is the addition of a score by James Bernard but, somehow, his famous Hammer Dracula theme seems somewhat flat when you don’t have Christopher Lee accompanying it on screen. Still, it is what it is and I got a lot more out of it this time. Definitely worth a watch if you are a lover of what Hammer were doing during this period and, certainly a very odd blend of two studios presenting a kind of subdued mixture of what they both did best.

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.

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 Brides Of Dracula

Meinster Mash

The Brides Of Dracula
UK 1960 Directed by Terence Fisher
Hammer Films Blu Ray Zone B

I remember that when I first saw The Brides Of Dracula many decades after I’d seen the other films in Hammer’s Dracula sequence, most of which I saw in my pre-teen years. I remember being hugely disappointed with this one and had a similar reaction in subsequent revisits.

My initial disappointment was that neither Dracula nor, it could be argued, the Brides of Dracula actually feature in the movie... unless you want to argue that various female vampires created by the film’s vampire villain Baron Meinster, could be given this title as a kind of extended metaphor for the brief narrative introduction to the movie, where the audience are told that, after Dracula’s death, his cult of vampirism lives on. Christopher Lee did not want to reprise his successful role two years after his initial appearance in Dracula (aka Horror Of Dracula, reviewed here), for fear of being typecast in the role. Which he kind of was, of course... and he made a fair few Dracula movies after this one (at least one of them wasn’t even for Hammer).

Of course we have Peter Cushing returning here in the role of Van Helsing and, in one of a few factors which completely shoots the continuity of the series where he’s concerned, we are told that we are in the last years of the 19th Century. Cushing, of course, is always watchable and I’d maintain he’s one of the few reasons why The Brides Of Dracula is worth a watch. It has to be said, I’m not the biggest fan of this entry into the series but I do like the director and I can appreciate some of the things he, along with his set designer, brings to the production. I do find myself quite at odds with Fisher’s biographer Tony Dalton, it has to be said, in that he says in his recent book about the director, reviewed here, that he thinks The Brides Of Dracula is one of the best films in the series. Then again, he also doesn’t have much of a good word to say about my favourite movie in the sequence, Dracula Ad 1972 (reviewed by me here), so there you go.

After the opening narration we are treated to a bumpy coach ride (Michael Ripper is a rough coach driver, I can tell you) and we are introduced to the main female protagonist  Marianne (played by Yvonne Monlaur), who is on her way to teach at a private school in Transylvania. Unable to get to the school due to an incident (which half involves a man who lurks around in various scenes looking threatening and mysterious before dropping out of the narrative completely, still leaving me with no idea who or why the character was) she stays the night with Baroness Meinster in Meinster Castle, releasing her son from his imprisonment, not knowing that he’s a vampire...

Chaos ensues but she is found and helped the next morning by Cushing’s Van Helsing character, after a lengthy series of set pieces which means he doesn’t enter the film until the 30 minute mark. Which is similar to what was done in the previous Dracula movie, where a fair piece of narrative action leading into the story was dealt with before the entrance of the title character’s arch nemesis. Lots of shenanigans ensue as Van Helsing tries to help with the local vampire problem and save Marianne from being made... well... a Bride Of Meinster... yeah, that stupid title really makes no sense for this film.

The story is not great, it has to be said but it’s the magnetic presence of Cushing and the interesting direction of Fisher which just about keeps it vaguely watchable. He moves the camera a fair amount to good effect and quite often uses the height of the actors to create vivid triangular patterns in the compositions, something which I’ve noticed him doing a lot before. Another trick to make the staging interesting is to use areas of the set which are lit just slightly darker than others and to shoot the actors in these patches before having them move forward into the light, to increase the impact of their lines as their faces are suddenly lit up. Indeed, there’s one scene in this film where he does it in rapid succession with the only two actors in the scene, a real double whammy as one steps ito the light and then the other does the same in the reverse shot.

Indeed, he uses a lot of good little tricks to create interest in the dialogue heavy scenes. For instance, a shot where Peter Cushing is standing about two thirds of the way to the right of screen, talking to a local priest who is seated on the left. We can see the priest talking to him from both the left of the screen and also in reflection in a mirror behind Cushing on the direct right of the screen, as he's nicely sandwiched  between two of the same talking head, so to speak.

Another nice thing Fisher does is bring a lot of value to his sets, partially by using the old Roger Corman trick of ‘leaving the doors open’. One fantastic instance of this is in the first scene shot in a very narrow tavern. The set goes back a long way with various protuberances coming in from the sides and then with another room seen through the back alcove which is lit in a completely different colour to the first... bathed red in stark contrast to the rest of the set, highlighting the sense of depth. Very nice stuff.

There are some real problems with the ideas about vampires though. For instance, after being bitten by one, Cushing cauterises his neck with a red hot iron and this, combined with some Holy Water, stops what is presumably a viral, chemical reaction from taking place and turning him into a vampire... somehow. It’s a nice idea but makes no sense as far as I’m concerned. Furthermore, using the shadows of the blades of a windmill to project a cross and thus stop Meinster escaping is a wonderfully creative idea... except it only works if the body of the windmill would bizarrely project no shadow, which it doesn’t in this, somehow. There is no earthly set of circumstances in the world where the shadow of the crossing blades would be seen in isolation as they are here.

And another big problem is the continuity between this picture and the previous one in the sequence. In Dracula, Van Helsing clearly states that the idea that a vampire can change one’s shape into a bat is a fallacy. In this one, however, he clearly states that a vampire can change into a bat.... which the vampires in this movie do quite frequently... at least into a dodgy looking rubber bat at any rat.

I’m curious as to why Fisher wasn’t able to tap James Bernard for repeat scoring duties on this one. Instead, the score is provided by Malcolm Williamson. Good musical continuity, at least, is kept between the two films in that, although Williamson’ doesn’t use Bernard’s famous Dracula theme, the orchestration on this is very similar to the score from the first one and provides a modicum of auditory glue between the two films. So that’s okay at least but, despite some nicely creative shots, I wouldn’t recommend The Brides Of Dracula to many people, it has to be said. I’m not saying it’s the worst Dracula picture that the studio put out but, it’s very far from the best, it seems to me. Still, I look forward to revisiting the next film in the series fairly soon.

Terence Fisher - Master Of Gothic Cinema

Raising The Dead

Terence Fisher -
Master Of Gothic Cinema
The Authorised Biography
by Tony Dalton
Fab Press
ISBN: 9781913051082

Just a very short review now to highlight to you a fairly recent book, Terence Fisher - Master Of Gothic Cinema, written by film historian Tony Dalton. I managed to acquire a signed copy recently from Fab Press and of the few studies of the man out there in the wilderness (if you can find any others still in print), this is the one I trust the most.

Mainly because Dalton was a good friend to Fisher and his wife Morag over the last 8 years of the director’s life and is still, from what I can make out, good friends with their daughter Mickey. So, if anybody is going to know what Terry thought of his own films and his colleagues, then this guy is the one who has heard it all direct from the horses mouth, so to speak. Not that I personally agree with everything he says about some of Fisher’s films, it has to be said. Here are three quick things we disagree on, for the record.

One is I love Four Sided Triangle (which I reviewed here). Two is that I really do find Brides Of Dracula a hard thing to sit through... I just don’t think it’s a great movie. And, yes, even though Terry and the rest of the cast hated it as much (if not more, probably, from the sound of the production history as detailed here) as Dalton himself does... I rather liked Sherlock Holmes And The Deadly Necklace (review written and coming to this blog... at some point in the future).

The book has an unusual structure with regards to the more famous of Fisher’s works but it starts off as one would expect, with Dalton detailing Fisher’s early life. He was born on 23rd February 1904 in Maida Vale, went to study for a Naval career on the HMS Conway school ship, served his time and then did various things, ending up as a prominent window display artist for the Peter Jones department store in London (which perhaps explains why I’ve noticed that a lot of his film compositions tend to gravitate towards the centre of the screen?). He then decided to change career and seriously pursued his intention to work in the film industry, ending up as a clapperboy and editor for Gaumont, then editor for Warner Brothers and doing things for various studios on and off until 1947.

After this he went on a director training programme started up by Rank and, in 1951, directed his first film for Hammer Studios. The rest, of course, is history... starting in 1957 when he directed the hugely successful The Curse Of Frankenstein, followed soon after by Dracula (aka Horror Of Dracula as it is known in the US - reviewed here) and really put Hammer on the map as the British quality name for horror film productions, directing many other movies for them including a lot of their revered terror films.

The writer takes us on a fairly linear route through Fisher’s CV until we get to this huge success and then, unlike what other biographers might do... and I’m not sure I totally appreciate this approach but, it is an interesting way of doing it... the writer starts talking about his remaining Hammer films in themed groups, disregarding the chronology and instead doing chapters on, say, his TV shows, his three Dracula films and the many Frankenstein sequels he did. As he goes along the text is peppered with quotes from Terry pulled from various interviews (including, of course, Dalton’s own) and each film is given a short precis and then a critical evaluation by the writer, including standout moments or scenes he thinks worth highlighting. Then the critics of the time are also given their voice in quotes from reviews, mostly contemporary to the release of each movie... these are often quite negative, it has to be said but, also oddly out of touch, I think, with the fact that many of these films were obviously well liked by the paying public and their popularity at the time meant there were many more made.

The book is certainly an entertaining and, dare I say it, insightful read into both the man behind some of the most famous Hammer Horrors and also, hand in hand, an insight into the general working process and how things were conducted at Hammer at the time. This includes little nuggets of information such as The Gorgon film he directed having the Gorgon named after one of the Furies and not one of the Gorgon sisters at all, for some unknown reason.

It concludes with a brief look at some unrealised projects which Fisher was either considered for or which he turned down at some point (Terence Fisher’s Dune anyone?) including two unrealised Dracula productions... and finishes off with a very touching epilogue dealing with the man’s final days and the various messages of sympathy sent to honour the man and say good bye to him (particularly touching are words by both Peter Cushing and Thorley Walters).

All in all, Terence Fisher - Master Of Gothic Cinema is a very entertaining and informative book which certainly captures a mood or sketch of the man and which I think admirers of both his work and the milieu in which he did it will find extremely interesting. I’m especially glad I read this one because, although I’ve been watching Fisher’s films all my life, he’s not a director I’ve really been aware of as an ‘auteur’ as such... and Dalton makes a very convincing case that he certainly was. Give this one a whirl if you are at all interested in this stuff, would be my advice.

Twins Of Evil

The Last Vam-pair

Twins Of Evil
UK 1971
Directed by John Hough
Hammer/Network  Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoiler on the death of
one of the villains at the end of the movie.

Twins Of Evil is the last of the Karnstein trilogy of films produced by Hammer in the space of about a year and a half, based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s short story Carmilla. Well... no... the first one in the sequence, The Vampire Lovers (reviewed by me here) was certainly using that story as a template, the second one... well, there wasn’t much more you could do with it but at least the main antagonist Carmilla, aka Mircalla Karnstein, was continued over into the next film (played by a different actress).

Here, the character’s appearance is very brief, maybe lasting five minutes in total, as she is resurrected from her tomb by accident... the blood pooled from a victim of this films main villain, Count Karnstein played by Damien Thomas, during a devil worshipping ritual... drips into Mircalla’s tomb below and brings her back to her undead state. This is yet a third actress, Katya Wyeth, in the role after, once again, the part had been offered to Indgrid Pitt (who played her in The Vampire Lovers), who turned it down. She exists in the narrative purely to vamp up Damien Thomas’ character before, bizarrely, just dropping out of the movie. So that’s about as close as being ‘inspired’ by Le Fanu that this third film gets.

I said in previous reviews of the other parts of the trilogy that, by this time, Hammer were trying to spice up their films to keep them popular by putting nudity and lesbian sex scenes in them. At first glance of the casting in this one, you might assume they were making an extra special effort here, as the twins from the title, Maria and Frieda, are played by the Collinson twins, Mary and Madeleine. The Collinson twins had been the October 1970 Playboy playmates of the month but, surprisingly, this third film in the trilogy, which seems to be a prequel to the previous films, doesn’t really capitalise on the notoriety of the two ladies in question. When they do strip off... or one of them does... it’s only for a second or two and, frankly, there’s very little nudity in this film and almost no sapphic shenanigans at all which, given the original story’s implied subtext of vampiric lesbianism, seems rather strange. If anything, the film is rather tasteful in this kind of stuff... which in a way makes it an odd fit with the previous two movies. Also, it turns out that only Frieda is the evil one here and Maria is actually ‘the good sister’... so I’ve no idea why the title of this movie is Twins Of Evil, to be honest.

The film is fairly bloody in places, though and it’s also interesting for a number of reasons. I was fascinated by Peter Cushing’s role in this film and the way the story is pitched. Right from the start, we see Cushing playing Gustav Weil, the head of a clan of witch-finders and they go around to find unsuspecting, single women who they think should be married by now (otherwise they must be an evil temptress of a witch, right?) and burn them at the stake. The horrible Witchfinder General film from a few years before must have been a vein Hammer were trying to tap with this and Cushing is not someone who I would normally associate with this kind of role. After all, when it comes to bible thumping Witchfinders, I can only seem them as dim-witted psychopaths or, you know, nutters and that’s not what this actor represents to me. However, Cushing plays it really straight, almost chilling, allowing absolutely no humour into his character whatsoever, spending most of the film as a villain, only to redeem himself at the end of the movie after the other leading man here, David ‘The Horror Man’ Warbeck, shows him that the supernatural force he is dealing with cannot be effectively vanquished by his preferred method of burning but, instead, needs to be either decapitated or staked. Both Warbeck and Cushing are great in this so, there’s another reason to watch this movie.

Another interesting thing this movie does, comes after Count Karnstein and Mircalla indulge in an outrageously chaste but camp sex scene. The sex scene itself is hilarious because, rather than focus on the action, we track up to Mircalla’s arm just above her head as she grabs hold of a candle and starts stroking it up and down... I wonder how the actors kept straight faces during these scenes. However, the cool thing is, just after she fangs up Karnstein, he looks in the mirror and we can see him as his reflection fades out, thus signifying he has joined the ranks of the undead. So that’s quite cool... I wonder if this was the first time this had been done in a movie before. I’m sure it probably wasn’t but I can’t think of an earlier example off the top of my head. Answers in the comments box below or on Twitter please.

There’s also a section at the end which had me scratching my head. Karnstein can only be in his twenties and the film takes place over, maybe, just a week. He’s only been a vampire that long so how is it possible, in the world of supernatural vampire physics that, at the end of the movie after he’s been staked and in a nicely done special effect, he ages before our eyes into a wizened old man and crumbles. I mean, seriously? He’s only in his twenties... he’s not an old vampire at all. This makes absolutely no sense!

One other thing of note is the score by Harry Robinson, one of only a handful of the Hammer film scores that got issued on CD. It’s pretty good but there’s a kind of riding/action theme which, in structure (not orchestration) is very much the kind of music you might get in a spaghetti western of the time. Lovely score and I need to go and listen to the disc again now that I’ve finally seen the movie it comes from.

And that’s me done with the Hammer Karnstein trilogy finally... but not yet done with all the films based on Le Fanu’s original story (I’ll hopefully get to those eventually). Twins Of Evil is less exploitational but much more interesting than the previous film in the series, Lust For A Vampire (which I reviewed here) and it’s definitely a film that fans of the original incarnation of Hammer should check out if they haven’t done so already. Peter Cushing playing against type, at least in terms of what I’ve seen him do... even in the Frankenstein films... is definitely worth a look.

Lust For A Vampire

Bosom Vladdies

Lust For A Vampire
UK 1971 Directed by Jimmy Sangster
Hammer  Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: Slight spoiler at the end.

Lust For A Vampire is the second installment in a trilogy of films put out by the Hammer Studios based loosely on Sheridan Le Fanu’s 19th Century gothic, lesbian vampire tale Carmilla. The first in the series, The Vampire Lovers (which I reviewed some time ago here and which can now be found in a much better Blu Ray version), was the first of a short series of attempts by Hammer to spice up their films with partial nudity and sex in an attempt to reclaim some box office after the company, if memory serves, had started its decline... at least in terms of generating revenue.

The results of their new approach to a more ‘sexified’ horror genre can be seen straight away in the amount of nudity and syrupy sapphic seductions in The Vampire Lovers which was, I have to say, still fairly faithful to the original story. For this direct sequel... well, things are much less connected to the source material other than the central character of Mircalla, who is of course an anagram of her real name Carmilla Karnstein, the vampire at the heart of Le Fanu’s story. However, there’s definitely a continuity problem in terms of the female lead here...

After her death in the last film... almost a century ago, some of her surviving vampire family who were somehow not mentioned in the last movie resurrect her from the skeleton she has become in a black magic ceremony. When she sits up in her coffin in one of two fairly iconic Hammer Glamour shots in the company’s history to be found in this movie, she looks nothing like Ingrid Pitt, who played her in the last film. That’s because in this one, she’s played by the equally beautiful Yutte Stensgaard who looks spectacular and does an okay job with the script she’s given to work with. However, the role was originally offered to Ingrid Pitt to reprise her turn from The Vampire Lovers but after, she’d read the script to Lust For A Vampire, she turned it down and went on to make Countess Dracula for Hammer instead (reviewed here).

After a few scenes in a church and a public house which serve to introduce us to young male hero of the film, Michael Johnson as novelist Richard Lestrange, the majority of the rest of the movie is set in a finishing school for young ladies in the locale of Carmilla’s old castle... as Mircalla starts to seduce and eat her way through the school in a fairly sedate fashion. Until things finally catch up with her and she and her family are cornered in the church by a proper, traditional ‘angry mob’ armed with lighted torches and so on.

And it’s certainly an entertaining ‘romp’ for sure. Not actually a good film in any shape or form but I certainly had a good time watching this one. Why is it not a good film? Well, let me list some of the things here... I know director Sangster was an eleventh hour replacement, as were some of the cast and I know some people were less than enthusiastic about being in it... especially after they’d seen the final product.

Let’s start with the acting. The one really good actor who looks like she actually wants to be here is Suzanna Leigh, playing the ludicrously named fitness teacher Janet Playfair. Yes, that’s right, fitness teacher as the girls in their flimsy clothing slowly move around seductively to the sound of a harp in front of the school. If ever there was a film which gives the ‘male gaze’ a bad name, it’s surely this one.

By contrast, Johnson seems to be less enthused by his place in things and the other male lead, local history teacher Giles Barton, is played by Ralph Bates in a way that would certainly cause anyone to think that this was definitely not his best work. Mr. Bates thought it was the worst performance he’d done in the worst movie he’d been in, by all accounts. It’s interesting because he seems to be playing him in the same way that George Lazenby played a certain aspect of James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (reviewed here). In that film, Bond assumed the identity of an English scholar played by Stanley Baker and he uses a well spoken accent and a timidity which looks and sounds vaguely ridiculous (despite it being the greatest James Bond movie ever made). I believe Baker even overdubbed George Lazenby’s impersonation in the finished film. So we have Ralph Bates coming across as a fop, regardless, in his personal obsession about the fate of the Karnstein family. Actually, I believe the role was originally written for Peter Cushing, which makes much more sense but Cushing had to be ‘let off’ the role when he had to go and care for his very sick wife. Which is unfortunate.

And then there’s Mircalla herself. Stensgaard looks great in the role, despite looking nothing like the version of the character from the previous film, when Ingrid Pitt played the role as a very confident young vampire, manipulating her victims to her own ends. Here, she’s the absolute opposite and comes across as an innocent victim being made to live up to her family name. Not Stensgaard’s fault of course, if that’s the way the script portrays her in this then she just has to say her lines and take her clothes off at suitable intervals and her job is done. It would have been nice if it had gelled better with the previous film, however.

And then there’s all of the sex and nudity, which was pretty much the mission brief for Hammer at this point. The Vampire Lovers was never exactly subtle about the unclothed state many of the cast found themselves in at regular intervals but Lust For A Vampire really outdoes itself for inserting inappropriate material and comes across, a lot of the time, as a vampire movie mixed together with a Mary Millington flick. Honestly, any excuse here and they’re all at it...

For example, when a young girl is placed on a church altar to be sacrificed early in the film, she is placed face up in front of the camera with her head hanging upside down and taking up the bottom half of the shot while her prominent bosoms are thrust up towards the top of the frame. Like I said, there’s not a lot of subtlety within this one.

Another historically iconic shot of Yutte Stensgaard sitting up topless in bed comes about when she’s simply massaging her neck and the student with whom she shares a bedroom offers to take over. The next thing you know, the movements about her neck causes her diaphanous night wear to inexplicably fall towards the floor, leaving her hanging, so to speak. It really is just like those old Kenny Everett sketches from the 1970s and early 1980s when he played a Hollywood starlet who used to constantly proclaim, “when suddenly, all my clothes fell off.” Yeah, this movie certainly is fun, for sure.

It’s not just the ‘schoolboy erotica’ content of the film which make it such a pleasure to watch either.

For instance, there’s a member of the Karnstein family who mostly just looks sinister and can be found lurking in the background to a lot of scenes. There’s one shot of two women kissing in a pool and we suddenly cut to a real non-sequitur of a shot depicting him standing with his hand on his hips at a funny angle while the music suddenly gives us this real, over the top howler of a stinger to tell us that what we’re looking at is really bad... although, I have to be honest, without that musical cue I would never had realised anything bad was happening in the scene at all.

And talking of musical stingers... the sequence where Mircalla tries to seduce our buxom Miss Playfair is accompanied by what I can only imagine was supposed to be the ethereal sound of her hypnotic gaze. However, it kinda just comes across as a bit of an over-the-top, speeded up, higher pitched version of the sound the ants make in the movie THEM! so, yeah, again it’s quite hilarious, I have to say.

There’s some nice stuff too.. with a dream sequence using shots from the movie washed out into single colours, a little like the posterised, opening sequence to The Monkees movie Head... and there’s a nice moment in a sequence where the footage of vampire bites revealed on a woman’s neck from earlier in the film is tinted out into a pale green with the bites shown up as a vivid blood red against everything else... which was nice. Unfortunately, the whole dream is accompanied by a truly, hilariously inappropriate song singing of the character’s ‘Strange Love’ and, yeah, I’ll just stop there. And it’s nothing compared to the bizarre faces Miss Stensgaard makes when the camera is focused on just her eyes... which sometimes become cross-eyed when she is emoting her ecstasy at the carnal things Mr. Lestrange is doing to Mircalla ‘out of shot’. How she kept a straight face doing that I’ll never know.

And goodness knows why they have the same actor who played the butler in the previous film as a police inspector in this one. He’s actually quite a good little character actor by the name of Harvey Hall. He wasn't in much but he even turns up, playing yet another character, in the next film in the sequence, by the looks of it.

Anyway, not much more to say about this one apart from one of the vampire characters, I’m not saying which, having a somewhat unusual but nevertheless stupid death whereby the pointy rafter from the burning roof of a church splinters off and drops to stake said vampire through the heart. The film keeps running through the end credits to remind us that these particular vampires can’t be hurt by fire and thus it’s a thread that can be yanked on for a sequel, although this is not actually used in the next one, from what I understand. I’ll let you know for sure very soon.

As was set up in the earlier Karnstein film, these particular vampires are quite happy to walk around in sunlight but the unfortunate thing Hammer have done with the Carmilla character is they’ve not based any of this on Le Fanu’s source (which is fair enough, they already did that in the last movie) and without that, this becomes just another vampire movie which could easily be told with any old vampire in the lead. Which is a shame but, despite the films shortcomings... or rather, because of them, Lust For A Vampire is a very entertaining affair and I have to say this is definitely something I’d watch again a number of times in the future. Perhaps best recommended only to fans of a certain period of British produced horror films but yeah, I kind enjoyed this one. Looking forward to seeing the third movie in the series, Twins Of Evil, very soon.