Inseminoid

Pregnant Paws

Inseminoid
(aka Horror Planet)
UK 1981 Directed by Norman J. Warren
Indicator Blu Ray Zone B

There was a point in my life when I went absolutely mad trying to see this movie.

It must have been around 1980/81, when I was 12, that I visited Chislehurst Caves in Kent. I loved caves because they were dark, dank places and I love soaking in that atmosphere (not much has changed in my sunny disposition over the years, to be honest). I remember the tour guide mentioning that they’d shot a science fiction movie there not so long ago but he didn’t think it had been released yet. My ears pricked up, of course, because I was very much into sci-fi at the time (and who wouldn’t be with films like Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and The Black Hole playing at cinemas in those days?). So after the tour was finished, I crept up to the kindly old guide and asked him some details about the film. He couldn’t remember much about it but said Judy Geeson was in it and... after a while of scratching his head for a title, said it was called... something like Inseminoid.

So that was it... I spent the next year waiting for the new science fiction blockbuster called... something like Inseminoid, to land at my local cinema so I could take it in and marvel at a film shot in a place I’d actually visited. And then the next year went by and I waited. And another and I waited. No internet in those days you see... and no magazine coverage that I managed to catch. I’m assuming it did have a fairly wide UK release but it certainly didn’t hit my neck of the woods. It wasn’t for at least another two decades that I came across a second hand copy of the film on a DVD at the Camden Film Fair and finally got to see it. I remember I was not disappointed by it and, frankly, it was the main reason why I wanted this wonderful, five movie Blu Ray set by Indicator called Bloody Terror - The Shocking Cinema Of Norman J. Warren 1976 - 1987. And as it turns out, one good thing leads to another because, I certainly have had no regrets about getting acquainted with some of the movies in this selection.

The film starts with a very interesting set of star fields, somewhat animated like galaxies are boiling away in space, which is also somehow reminiscent of embryos and other aspects of human biology... not in terms of accuracy but it certainly has a flavour of that about it, I think and that certainly fits into the theme of the movie. Once thing to bear in mind is that I’ve always assumed that Inseminoid was conceived as a quickie production to be a ‘poor man’s A L I E N’, so to speak. According to one of the producers on one of the extras on this disc, however, this absolutely wasn’t the case and they might have well been shooting at around the same kind of time (which is weird given the film’s release date... must have had some kind of post-production delay is my guess).

The film has a fine cast of known and unknown character actors and includes Judy Geeson as the main protagonist/antagonist, Stephanie Beacham (who you may remember from such movies as Dracula AD 1972... reviewed here) and a young Victoria Tennant. Here they are part of a 12 person crew (predominantly women, which is interesting) who are part of a team of... well... space archeologists who have just discovered a strange, tomb-like structure leading on from their base camp in some caverns on a strange planet. And, despite no comparisons being made to A L I E N... two of the team are taken out by some crystal structures or an alien or... yeah, possibly both (I’m still not sure what the crystals were supposed to indicate). Then, in the process of looking for one of the two who has being taken over by some kind of controlling force (I never said the plot made any kind of sense, people), Judy Geeson’s character gets impregnated by an alien (who manages to drop out of the narrative, presumably for both budgetary and credibility reasons)... at which point, after a short while convalescing, Miss Geeson goes nuts and uses her new found superhuman strength and cunning to try and kill all the other humans before giving birth to aliens and... yeah. So no great amount of monster suit or model work needed because Geeson is now the antagonist here and, I have to say, she does a bloody good job of it. She has to scream a heck of a lot, get naked for a bit and also emote various alien/human points of view and doing it in what was, by all accounts, an already tough shoot. Very little of this film was shot in a studio, it turns out. 

 The caves in question were lit and augmented with ‘space base tunnels’ and, yeah, not great conditions to work under. That being said, as I discovered on one of the 'making of' features here, Stephanie Beacham said she had the most laughter and fun down in those caves than on any other of her film shoots and, frankly, absolutely everyone asked has nothing but good words on how brilliant a person Judy Geeson is to work with (apparently Beacham and Geeson are still good friends).

And, bearing in mind the shoestring nature of the budget and the speed of the shoot in such conditions, the film looks really good. Not everything but, honestly, most things from the bizarre space helmets which had two big headlights on either side of the head (and so give a really interesting ‘bright eyes from silhouette’ look when required) to the illusion of a small, underground rail car built on the dolly tracks from a camera... just really work and serve the movie well. It might not have much money behind it but you can certainly see that what was there was being worked very hard and it gives the film a nice, almost 'comfort horror', home grown feel.

Of course, although the trappings are sci-fi, it is kind of a slasher picture, as people are slowly whittled down by Geeson, with her alien brain working overtime so, it’s not too far away from what you’d expect from the director and, I have to say, although I already knew this was a watchable and entertaining movie, I have been acquiring more and more respect for Norman J. Warren with each movie of his I’ve seen (a shame then, that he hasn’t directed a great deal of them over the years).

The music for Inseminoid fits the film well and is once again composed by John Scott, who explains that he had to go the synthesiser route on the picture due to the budget. That being said, he does come up with an interesting, textural score and there’s another extra on this (like the one on Satan’s Slave - reviewed here) where he explains how he arrived at the musical elements for the movie... in this case, writing it as though it were an orchestral score and then trying to adapt it for electronic realisation.

And yes, being as it’s put out by Indicator, there’s a whole host of interesting extras with the film and it’s worth every penny.  Bloody Terror - The Shocking Cinema Of Norman J. Warren 1976 - 1987 is a great little Blu Ray set and Inseminoid is certainly an entertaining shocker. I mean it no disrespect when I say that it plays out like an expanded episode of the kind of thing you might see in the second season of Space 1999... but with a little extra nudity and gore. Which sounds pretty good to me. The film did not disappoint in comparison with my memories of it and, as usual, Indicator’s new transfer is superb... the film never looked so good.

Dracula AD 1972

Rising Vamp

Dracula AD 1972
UK 1972 Directed by Alan Gibson
Screening at the Regent Street Cinema
with Q&A from Caroline Munro 5th March 2020

Warning: Slight spoilers.

Okay, so when I found out that my favourite of the Hammer Dracula movies was playing in London, I couldn’t resist seeing this thing on the big screen, finally. Especially since I found out that one of my all time favourite screen personalities, the lovely Caroline Munro, would be doing a Q&A session after the main feature.

Dracula AD 1972 was Caroline’s first feature for Hammer and although she’s not in it all that much... she comes to a definitively sticky end quite early in the movie... she was the first and, as far as I know, the last actress actually put under contract by the Hammer Studios, following this film up with the equally excellent Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter. Alas, she’s not in this much but she surely makes a memorable impression as one of a young group of hippie friends crashing parties and generally having a wild time in ‘swinging London’... an incarnation of the counterculture which had moved on somewhat by the time this movie was shot but, it sure seems like a nice place to be.

Another actress in this group of ‘wild young friends’ is Stephanie Beacham as Jessica, the granddaughter of the contemporary ancestor of Van Helsing... in this film he’s the ‘all new’ Lorimer Van Helsing but he’s still portrayed by Peter Cushing (in a dual role... I’ll get to that in a minute). The group also includes Marsha Hunt, Michael Kitchen and, as Dracula’s main assistant, Christopher Neame as the wonderfully monikered Johnny Alucard (I’ll leave you to ponder the permutations of that last name... I don’t think you’ll need to draw out a hilarious chart like Peter Cushing does in this movie). Neame also plays a dual role here as his own ancestor in the film’s opening sequence.

Of course, we also have the inimitable Christopher Lee back as the charismatic Count and, as far as I can see, this film also stars the only other actor besides Cushing and Lee to play a running character in more than one Hammer Dracula movie... Michael Coles as Inspector Murray, who would also turn up in the next movie in the sequence, The Satanic Rites Of Dracula. Jessica Van Helsing would also be back in the next movie but played by Joanna Lumley the second time around.

And it’s still my favourite of the Hammer Dracula movies, that’s for sure.

The film starts off a little differently than their usual fayre, with an opening reminiscent of the James Bond movies in that it shows an ‘end of mission’ action sequence as an opener. The pre-credits are all set in 1872 as we are witness to the final confrontation between Dracula and Van Helsing, starting with a galloping stage coach, Dracula clinging to the sides as he attacks the latter. The coach crashes into splinters and Dracula finds himself ‘staked’ to one of the broken coach wheels but, not before he has put paid to Van Helsing. However, Christopher Neame’s pre-20th Century character gathers Dracula’s ring, some of his ashes and buries them in a grave next to his nemesis as the burial goes on. We then witness director Alan Gibson’s first flash of creative genius (in a film full of really nice stuff) where he pans up from the graveyard in the Victorian era, into the sky as we see a jumbo jet soaring above London, effectively segueing from one millennium to the next in the space of a few seconds in one shot... which is really cool. Then, more of Mike Vickers excellent and funky 'wah wah' score kicks in as the opening credits play out.

From then on, the film is one big romp of a fun movie set in early 1970s London... the kind of period and city I love to watch on film anyway because it reminds me of my early days as a child model in the city. It’s a bit of a chamber piece in that it’s not epic in scale but it works really well and there’s a lot of nice stuff. The director designs some wonderful frames and he’s one of those people who is not afraid to use just a quarter of the screen and leave the rest in darkness so he can focus you in... there’s a pretty cool shot of a car pulling into a garage/drive from within, for example, where the only area of the screen that isn’t black is the bottom right hand corner where we can see the car’s arrival.

Also, considering the phenomenally low budgets of these Hammer films, they used to look way better than their actual financial means should have allowed for... the production values are something else. One of the audience asked Caroline Munro after the film if the church was shot in a real church or if it was a set. Her initial reply of... “What do you think?” was followed up with the revelation that the interiors of the church were shot in a studio and... well, honestly, they had me fooled. It looks a lot like a real location to me.

Peter Cushing had recently lost his wife when he made this and there’s even a photo of her on Van Helsing’s desk in the film but, he turns out one of his usual, interesting performances for this and he comes across particularly well in his action scenes, which he doesn’t look like he is able to handle but does so admirably. Lee is his normal, solid self in a role which he had, by all accounts, had enough of.. he didn’t like the idea of Dracula being modernised, from what I understand... and Miss Munro indicated after the movie that his personal feelings about the role and the script were not even felt or realised on set by the other actors... which shows you what a professional he was.

Stephanie Beacham is pretty good as Van Helsing’s grand daughter but I don’t think she has the best or, at least, most credible lines in the movie, for sure. And, of course, Caroline Munroe, in the few scenes she has, is absolutely brilliant. I love her opening dance scenes where she looks like a floppy, bouncy miracle bundle of energy who could go all night. I wish her role could have been a little more expanded but I’m just grateful she got the part, which she explained came about because the producer used to ride the trains a lot and saw her in her famous Lamb’s Navy Rum girl campaign posters at the time (I used to love those when I was a toddler, the colours and poses on those posters were quite striking).

The film is a little problematic in terms of continuity in future films, especially with the death of the original Van Helsing set as 1872... but thats something I’m going to need to look into a little more when I get around to re-watching Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires at some point. But there’s honestly not much I could find at fault here, to be honest, except for maybe the silliness of the dapper Johnny Alucard (he has the best shirts) falling in the bath and accidentally turning the shower on when he grabs it to save himself... effectively killing himself because, in this version of the Dracula mythos, vampires can be killed by running water (never really understood that one myself).

Dracula AD 1972 is a fine, visually inventive entry in the series and is the main one I’ll always come back to. Especially interesting to historians as a time capsule of what the establishment who were making the picture perceived the ‘youth of today’ to be, rather than actually nailing that side of things.  I’m so glad I finally got to see this one on a big screen too... that’s another one crossed off my cinematic bucket list.