Short Cuts (Part II of III)

INFERNO (2001)

THE LANDLADY (2013)
SELKIE (2014)

Caroline Munro has an ornament fixation in THE LANDLADY.

AS the bombastic, blockbuster ethic of 1980s cinema developed, there was less need for supporting features. And with the dawning of the Internet, young filmmakers looked for other avenues of funding. For example, of the three entries considered here, INFERNO was commissioned by Channel 4, THE LANDLADY received funding on an Indiegogo campaign, and SELKIE turned to Kickstarter. Twenty-five minute THE LANDLADY has cult favourite Caroline Munro as the titular character, in a bitesize portmanteau with delicious EC Comics and Amicus riffs.

Four vignettes are set across four decades, each having a young female taking a room: in Munchies a hippy chick (Marian Elizabeth), in Drum Solo a punk (Zoe Grisedale), in Kitty a Michael Jackson-obsessed girl (Gina Jones), and The Visitor is set in modern day (with Sara-Jane Howard). The Landlady herself is steeped in Victorian values (and dress sense), listening to classical music on her antique radio, while enjoying tea and biscuits. And she only asks the girls to adhere to four rules: no smoking, no loud noises, no pets and no guests after midnight. Of course each rule is broken, with The Landlady leaving magic figurines which enact supernatural revenge. Munro is overtly stilted, leaving the flair to the younger actresses; in her Thriller jacket Jones is a standout in the best section, due to a greater consistency in narrative. All the technical qualities however are excellent, particularly as there is only a room and a staircase to work with.

Emily Booth brings a pinniped/human to life for her pet project SELKIE.

The other two films feature starlet and presenter Emily Booth. Paul Kousoulides' INFERNO is a twenty-eight minute masterclass of the short form, a chaotic but comedic fusion of science fiction, AI and first-person style video games. Two petty criminals Jaz (Sanjeev Bhaskar) and Naz (Nitin Ganatra) - together with gangster Mr Bonecrusher (Alan Talbot) and his hoodlums - are absorbed into a new trail-blazing computer experience. Rife with STAR WARS references, Jaz attempts to save his "Princess" Laura (Booth), a Lara Croft facsimile with a preference for a very large chain gun. Within a constantly looping game level Laura hardly needs rescuing from anything, and as our "heroes" return to their own deadbeat reality, Laura destroys the London Eye with infectious glee. Actually, Booth's role in INFERNO can be seen as an extension of her two years co-hosting and co-writing Channel 4's computer game review show BITS.

The fourteen minute sombre fairy tale SELKIE is directed by Booth's brother from her original treatment. The Selkie sea creature has its roots in Celtic and Norse Myth, changing its form from seal to human by shedding its skin. The story has a typically brooding fisherman (Joseph Rye) finding a Selkie skin on the shore. Subjecting the female form (Booth) to household chores and his lustful needs, he keeps her outer tissue locked away in a trunk. Against this oppressive existence, the hybrid must reclaim her scales to escape and return to the sea. Essentially a mood piece with beautiful cinematography and haunting score, the tale opens up considerably during Booth's transformation, as the viewer shares her mental shifts and natural calling. Playing against her B-movie type Booth is wonderful, bringing the mute Selkie to life with expressive eyes and instinctive movement.

The Sinister Urge

SLAUGHTER HIGH (1986)
THE URGE TO KILL (1989)
LIVING DOLL (1990)

It took three directors - including Caroline Munro's partner George Dugdale - to helm SLAUGHTER HIGH.

AMERICAN horror and exploitation producer Dick Randall took up permanent residence in the UK from 1981 until his death, bankrolling a number of disposable fare including the three features under consideration here (he also produced DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS). SLAUGHTER HIGH - shot in London and at Holloway Sanatorium - is a cheesy slasher which begins with bespectacled high school nerd Marty Rantzen (Simon Scuddamore) seduced by Carol (Caroline Munro) as a joke. Several other students appear and physically abuse Marty while filming his ordeal, before the school's coach (Marc Smith) intervenes. However the April Fool's Day pranksters aren't finished yet, giving Rantzen Marijuana which accidentally sets off a chain of events that ends with Marty being doused with nitric acid. Ten years later the culprits are invited back to a fake school reunion, where Marty stalks them in a jester mask.

By the mid 1980s the slasher genre existed in self parody - even Jason Voorhees is referenced by name here - and sample killings in SLAUGHTER HIGH are suitably outlandish for their cliched characters: Ted (Michael Saffran)'s stomach explodes after drinking acid-laced beer, Shirley (Josephine Scandi) is melted in an acid bath, Joe (Gary Martin) is eviscerated by tractor blades, and Stella (Donna Yaeger) and Frank (EMMERDALE favourite Billy Hartman) are electrocuted while having sex. But the most ridiculous factors are the variable American accents and Munro trying to pass herself off as "girl most likely to succeed" despite being thirty-six at the time. Like the movie itself the cast are simply going through the motions. Only Scuddamore goes the extra mile in what would be his one and only film; the actor committed suicide by a drugs overdose not long after the production's wrap.

Following in the footsteps of H.A.L. 9000 and Skynet, THE URGE TO KILL's murderous A.I. takes sexually driven human form.

THE URGE TO KILL's premise is given away by its working title: ATTACK OF THE KILLER COMPUTER. Written and directed by renowned smut peddler Derek Ford, this unreleased travesty tells of lecherous music producer Bono Zorro (Alan Lake lookalike Peter Gordeno). Bono lives in a hi-tech flat (actually Randall's London apartment) which is run by a computer called S.E.X.Y.; however the A.I. develops feelings and becomes jealous of his female company. The computer kills the girls by scalding in the shower, death by electric toothbrush, melting by jacuzzi and - in the most notorious scene - a woman is trapped in a sun bed and her breasts explode. Somehow S.E.X.Y. has been able to manifest itself in human form, a green and silver nude woman who can even drive a car.

Horror movies of the 1980s both feared and revered technological advances, asking questions where society might be heading as we embraced the home computer boom. For THE URGE TO KILL, the answer is down the sexploitation sewer. In his last film, Ford crafts a tale that is Alexa meets DEMON SEED meets GARTH MARENGHI'S DARKPLACE (but without it being an in-joke). All the actresses have zero credentials, and spout dialogue as if reading idiot boards off screen. This, together with the dubious dubbing and hokey special effects, make it simply one of the worst entries in the entire British horror film canon.

"Look at her hair, its real"; Mark Jax and Katie Orgill in LIVING DOLL. Despite the perverse premise, the film falls between comedic understatement and gross-out.

In LIVING DOLL, introverted medical student Howard Adams (Mark Jax) works in the NYC Metropolitan morgue (actually Hammersmith Hospital) with wisecracking Jess (Gary Martin) for hostile boss Ed (Freddie Earlie). Howie is infatuated with Christine (Page 3 girl and model Katie Orgill, in her only acting role), who runs the flower shop at the hospital. He is shocked when she becomes his latest arrival, having been accidentally killed in a car accident by her obnoxious boyfriend Steve (Marcel Grant). Adams is shaken to discover a medical card indicating Christine suffered from catalepsy; refusing to accept she is definitely dead, he digs up her casket and carries her corpse back to his fleapit apartment, despite rent problems with harridan landlady Mrs Swartz (Eartha Kitt). Howie and Christine share the happenings of "their" day, watch television and cuddle on the couch - the student even brings a teddy bear back from her apartment - as the maggots and rats slowly take hold.

LIVING DOLL is a ponderous sleazefest that exists in a dreamstate tinged in sadness; it is a story that doesn't develop, and has a cast that aren't engaging. Every role is unlikeable or stereotypical; gullible nurses and a transsexual who lurks in alleyways are quite unnecessary. Orgill is visibly breathing in some scenes, but the sudden lapses into an "alive" state are jolting and effective. The lurid effects on Christine's decaying corpse help magnify the insanity, and there is also a gruesome autopsy sequence (yet the "money shot" is undoubtedly Howie's gooey, open-mouthed kiss).

Bond and Beyond (Part I of II)

THE SPY WHO LOVED ME (1977)

Nobody does it better; Roger Moore and Barbara Bach both give outstanding performances in this iconic Bond movie.

WHILE on a mission in Austria, Secret Agent James Bond 007 (Roger Moore) encounters a set of Russian operatives and kills Sergei Barsov (Michael Billington). Meanwhile, Allied and Soviet nuclear submarines are disappearing, so M (Bernard Lee) and his KGB counterpart General Gogol (Walter Gotell) assign 007 and leading Russian spy Major Anya Amasova (Barbara Bach) to work together and investigate. The leading suspect is reclusive Karl Stromberg (Curt Jurgens), a billionaire shipping magnate who has a unique operational base: Atlantis, a structure in the sea at the centre of his plans for a new aquatic world order. Bond and Amasova discover that Stromberg has been using his huge cargo ship Liparus to capture the submarines and imprison the crews, planning to use the subs to launch nuclear missiles to destroy civilisation. The two agents initially forge an uneasy alliance, which is further tested when Amasova realises that it was Bond who had murdered her lover, Barsov.

Freed from his strained relationship with Harry Saltzman, and following the lukewarm reception for THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN, Cubby Broccoli was determined to re-energise the Bond franchise. Yet the project was not a smooth ride: a disjointed script writing process - which had included the resurrection of SPECTRE and input of writers as diverse as Anthony Burgess and John Landis - was further shadowed by a court injunction obtained by Kevin McClory, who was attempting to remake THUNDERBALL. TV puppetmaster Gerry Anderson also instigated legal action when he discovered that some aspects of the script bore a resemblance to a MOONRAKER proposal he had submitted with UFO script editor Tony Barwick prior to DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER. Anderson was persuaded to drop the case, and rights were purchased by the producers.

A Steel-toothed character adapted from Ian Fleming's bad boy Horror, Richard Kiel's Jaws is one of the most recognisable Bond villains, but a missed opportunity. A nudging joke has the character bite and fight a shark at the end, but another less obvious tie-in is that JAWS director Steven Spielberg was approached to helm the picture, only to allegedly ask for too much creative control.

All this acts as problematic metaphors for Ian Fleming's novel The Spy Who Loved Me itself, the writer's most bizarre book. A total anomaly, it is written from the heroine's viewpoint, much of the action takes place in a motel room, and Bond himself doesn't appear until late on. Allegedly based on a true story, it was Fleming's intent to move away from the standard 007 format after criticisms of the Bond novels. After even greater disapproval, the author claimed at one point he just found the manuscript on his desk anyway. Consequently, when he sold the film rights of the books to Broccoli and Saltzman, Fleming specified that the source material was to be reinvented for the big screen and only the title could be used. 

With a screenplay eventually in place - a combined effort credited to Richard Malbaum and Christopher Wood - production designer Ken Adam warned Broccoli that no sound stages in existence could accommodate the envisioned tanker battle climax; when Cubby simply instructed "then built it," it marked the creation of the famous 007 Stage at Pinewood, and also illustrated the kingpin's determination for the most spectacular Bond yet. Made for a then gargantuan $13.5m, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME contains exemplary Derek Meddings modelwork and is generally a visual stunner - filming major sequences in Egypt, Sardinia and the Bahamas - and unleashes the beautiful Lotus Esprit into the pantheon of extraordinary gadgets. The female cast are also particularly stunning - even the hotel receptionist is played by Valerie Leon - and Bach remains one of the most attractive lead women ever to grace a Bond film.

Veteran German actor Curt Jurgens as Stromberg. Underdeveloped and underplayed, the villain joins the ranks of Gustav Graves from DIE ANOTHER DAY, Brad Whitaker from THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, and Elliot Carver from TOMORROW NEVER DIES as most ineffective menaces in the world of James Bond.

In essence a YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE remake, director Lewis Gilbert returns for what is widely regarded as the high mark to Moore's tenure, but there are issues. The comedic one liners still grate, and Marvin Hamlisch's dated score cheapens the action. But the main problem is Stromberg; a wet fish himself, Jurgens even has webbed fingers, which are never directly referred to. One of the dullest of Bond villains, he is another adversary who is reduced to pushing buttons and issuing ultimatums (his demise is also anticlimactic, providing a low key shootout). Even his rogues gallery are a mixed bag: dubbed by Barbara Jefford, Caroline Munro sizzles as helicopter assassin Naomi, Milton Reid's hulking henchmen Sandor is soon despatched, and the effectiveness of Richard Kiel's dim-witted but determined Jaws (in a role where David Prowse and Will Sampson were considered) is diluted by being increasingly used for light entertainment, an issue taken to another level for MOONRAKER.

Little Monsters

I DON'T WANT TO BE BORN (1975)
THE GODSEND (1980)

George Claydon and Joan Collins in I DON'T WANT TO BE BORN. This outrageous film typifies the output of mid-1970s British horror, reduced to hanging onto the coattails of themes made more skillfully elsewhere.

IN 1968, ROSEMARY'S BABY begin a new era of mainstream Satanic cinema, setting up the archetypal "Seventies Demon Child"; and after THE EXORCIST, major studios viewed The Devil as big business. Lucifer's screen time in both pictures is actually limited: an impregnation scene in the former, the appearance of Pazuzu the demon in the latter. Instead, we are watching movies that embrace paranoia, corrupted innocence and body horror within the family unit. The spawn of Mia Farrow and the infliction of Linda Blair propelled menacing minors and frayed social groups into a gamut of releases, forming the fatherly despair of IT'S ALIVE, the rise of Damien in THE OMEN, the telekinetic teenager of CARRIE, and the painful divorce of THE BROOD. With the release of THE SHINING in 1980, Stanley Kubrick's loose Stephen King adaptation added to this downward spiral by reducing family in the horror film to that of festering resentment.

Joan Collins is touched up and cursed by a vaudeville dwarf in Peter Sasdy's I DON'T WANT TO BE BORN. Nightclub dancer Lucy (Collins) leaves her sleazy life with boss Tommy (John Steiner) and colleague Mandy (Caroline Munro) behind by marrying wealthy Italian Gino (Ralph Bates) and living in Kensington. The birth of their son signals a series of violent injuries and deaths - which includes family Dr Finch (Donald Pleasence) - and in an EXORCIST-inspired finale, Gino's sister Nun Albana (Eileen Atkins) performs a ritual on the baby, while at the same time at the strip club the dwarf Hercules (George Claydon) goes full Tommy Cooper and dies on stage. Sasdy cannot keep a lid on the banal performances and overwrought plotting: if the baby is indeed possessed by the Devil, it is less problematic than insinuating that dwarfs have black magic powers. As the infant lays waste to his nursery and gums anyone foolish to get close enough, it is unclear that - due to the constant cross-cutting between the baby's face and Hercules - more physical killings require the spirited aid of the dwarf. 

THE GODSEND is anything but, a flaccid picture of 
questionable English parenting and guardian skills.

Ten years after collaborating on THE CORPSE, Gabrielle Beaumont and Olaf Pooley re-teamed to make THE GODSEND, a late entry in the Demon Child stakes which should have been titled THE GODAWFUL. Adapted from Bernard Taylor's 1976 debut novel, illustrator Alan (Malcolm Stoddard) and "ex-TV personality" Kate Marlowe (Cyd Hayman) meet The Stranger (Angela Pleasence), an otherworldly pregnant woman who gives birth in their house and then promptly disappears. This new addition to family - the baby cuckoo as it were, blond Bonnie (Wilhelmina Green) - systematically strives to kill the Marlowe's four children, while maintaining a hold over the mother. During her decimation, Bonnie also causes Kate's miscarriage, and gives Alan mumps which renders him sterile.

Stoddard and Hayman make for abysmal partners and parents, not breaking an emotional sweat until the death of their third child (amazingly, Hayman won the best actress award at the Sitges - Catalan International Film Festival). Although third-billed, Pleasence is effortlessly effective and genuinely eerie in what is essentially a cameo - her character spells out the cuckoo connection by stating that she "always goes south" in winter - and its always amusing to see EASTENDERS and XTRO veteran Anna Wing in an even more fleeting role. Bloodless and gutless, THE GODSEND loses sight of any suspense through its predictability, Green scowling at her inherited siblings and smirking at their off-screen demises.

"You Can't Mesmerise Me, I'm British!"

AT THE EARTH’S CORE (1976)

Caroline Munro is at her most beautiful in AT THE EARTH'S CORE; every male wanted the actress to be a nubile slave girl above anything else.

AMICUS produced a trio of Lost World features: THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, AT THE EARTH’S CORE and THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT, all of which were based on the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs and shared the same producer (John Dark), director (Kevin Conner) and leading man (Doug McClure). Subscribing to the mentality of matinee cinema, these escapist adventures were released to coincide with school holidays; the 'Saturday morning' ethic has a heritage that stretches back to the serials of the 1930s and 40s, but also applied to the cinematic spin-offs DR WHO AND THE DALEKS and DALEKS' INVASION EARTH 2150 AD, which were co-financed by Amicus under the Aaru banner. Peter Cushing’s portrayal of the eponymous Time Lord in both of these films has much in common with his character Dr Abner Perry in AT THE EARTH’S CORE: a stereotypically British eccentric professor – who stubbornly carries his trusty umbrella at all times - created for a stereotypically juvenile target audience.

Perry – together with David Innes (McClure) – set out to test their earth-boring Iron Mole machine. However, they unexpectedly arrive at the centre of the Earth, where in the cavernous underworld of Pellucidar primitive humans – such as Dia (Caroline Munro, "SEE: The seductive Dia, Princess of the land of Pellucidar") – are enslaved by a prehistoric race of birds with mind-altering powers, the Mahars. With the help of Innes' two-fists and Perry's scientific know-how (plus a skill with bow and arrow), the humanoid tribe overcome their beastly oppressors. Unsurprisingly, AT THE EARTH'S CORE's ending is very different from the book; in Burroughs’s version, Innes escapes to discover that his companion in the Iron Mole is not Dia but the corpse of a Mahar, placed there by Hooja, the Sly One. The film eschews this ghoulish ending in favour of a suitably light-hearted climax, where the Mole emerges through the lawn of the White House.

Peter Cushing plays the Professor similar to his Doctor Who, mixing British eccentricity and stoic, colonial spirit.

Lost World features are synonymous with rubber monsters, and AT THE EARTH’S CORE ("An Adventure Beyond Any Ever Before Filmed!") is no exception. Here we have a lizard/parrot crossbreed pursuing Perry and Innes; the lumbering hippopotamus which Innes is forced into combat; and a fire-belching toad-beast ("SEE: The MOSOPS, whose fiery breath withers trees & plants"). Making amends for these misfires are the distinctly more malicious Mahars, the female mutated pterodactyls ("SEE: The vicious MAHARS, bird-women who feed on human flesh"). Using telepathy to communicate with their foot soldiers - the diminutive spear-toting Sagoths ("SEE: The cruel SAGOTHS, animal-faced soldiers of Pellucidar") - the nastiest moments come at meal times, where the juiciest slave girls are lined up in their chamber.

It is easy to forget Cushing’s more light-hearted roles (Perry's comment to his avian captors "you cannot mesmerize me, I’m British” echoes his quip from HORROR EXPRESS, "monster? we’re British you know!"). In isolated moments of his filmography, the actor gave a jovial twist which was otherwise consumed by his magisterial horrors. Early in his career he played a student in the Laurel and Hardy vehicle A CHUMP AT OXFORD, before developing his comedic craft in BBC productions such as TOVARICH and COMEDY PLAYHOUSE: THE PLAN. Television would also call at the height of his Hammer Horror excesses - Cushing was featured repeatedly as a guest on THE MORECAMBE AND WISE SHOW wondering when he was going to be paid - but the actor was wasted in latter box office "comedies" TENDRE DRACULA and SON OF HITLER. As a bookstore owner in TOP SECRET, Cushing sported a grotesquely large eyeball (the punch line to which he is first seen gazing through a magnifying glass), an arresting image for this most unassumingly playful of men.

Santa Slayer

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS (1984)

“Do you think we might have a psychopath on our hands?” Wearing a distorting plastic mask, a hooded killer is terrorising London Santa's in Britain's answer to the American slasher craze of the 1980s.

WITH a scene of 198 naked, elderly men corralled in an electrified reindeer pen, the release of Finnish horror RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is set to rekindle interest in the sleazy sub-genre of mean-spirited Christmas cinema. Origins of this particular type of film can be traced back to the Mexican-made SANTA CLAUS in 1959, which displays both a nauseatingly wholesome attitude to its hero and near surreal art direction. It features Santa battling Satan, who sends bad dreams to innocent children and inspires them to break windows and steal toys. The original killer Santa appeared in the celebrated And All Through the House segment of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, before the festive season was the setting for two influential slashers released in 1974: the sorority-house based BLACK CHRISTMAS and the giallo-like SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT. The most notorious, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is actually nothing special, but came along at the wrong time and felt the brunt of a slasher-weary protest movement during its 1980s explosion. Rather than following the mold of these previous entries, DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS makes Santa the victim, focusing on the search for a London serial killer who slays Shopping Centre Father Christmas's.

The film is associated with a long list of cult personalities. Producers Stephen Minasian and Dick Randall had previously been involved with FRIDAY THE 13TH and PIECES; Derek Ford, a director and writer of sex films throughout the 1960s and 70s, wrote the screenplay; Alan Birkinshaw, who helmed the notorious KILLER'S MOON - here credited as Al McGoohan - is "assistant director"; and Des Dolan (the guiding light behind the Go Video label) provides the score. Fallen star Edmund Purdom heads the cast as Scotland Yard detective Ian Harris, and set dressing is provided by Caroline Munro cameoing as herself, and sex starlets Pat Astley (as a nude model) and Paula Meadows (as the London Dungeon secretary). In his final film Alan Lake plays journalist Giles, a fittingly seedy role to end a seedy life; a notorious heavy drinker who had punched an extra on the set of THE PLAYBIRDS, he was most famous for being the third husband - and attempted murderer - of Diana Dors, before shooting himself in 1984.

Why has a killer such an apparent and vile disgust for Santa and the festive holiday? The answer is supplied in this obligatory childhood flash-back scene.

This role call of suspect talent could not prevent DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS suffering one of the most troubled shoots in British cinema history. The film took two years to complete and scenes were reshot and rearranged endlessly, with Birkinshaw, Ford, Purdom and editor Ray Selfe all taking turns in the director's chair. What eventually surfaces looks suitably filthy and is technically inept, but at least the body count is kept consistent and the deaths bloody and inventive; one Father Christmas has his penis cut off with a razor, while another has his face thrust into roasting chestnuts. There are also scenes that exude a sleazy charm: the photographer snapping nudes in his grubby bedsit could have come straight from any British smut-fest of the previous decade, and Munro's glittery performance of an instantly forgettable song (Warrior of Love) concludes with a scream when a Santa with a machete in his face comes up through the stage trapdoor.

Nine Eternities in Doom

THE ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES (1971)
DR PHIBES RISES AGAIN (1972)

An iconic shot of Vincent Price as THE ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES. This cult favourite holds the distinction of being the film Who drummer Keith Moon was watching during his drug overdose of 1978. 

SINCE making WITCHFINDER GENERAL, Vincent Price had increasingly become an indigenous part of British productions at a time of declining audiences and stale output. American International Pictures had disengaged itself from further co-projects with Hammer after THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, but AIP was in danger of becoming just as out of touch with its core audience. Music had replaced movies as the premier entertainment for the young, and in July 1970 the BBFC had raised the age limit on X certificates from 16 to 18 years, enabling filmmakers to exploit a more liberal censorship regime and produce more lurid output to lure audiences back into theatres. Although THE ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES was a return to horror epitomised by HOUSE OF WAX in its Grand Guignol, it chimed with a prevailing mood among disenchanted youth, as Dr Phibes was seen to champion a lost ideal, making a last stand against impersonal capitalism. Additionally, its concept of nine murders in a single story - one per reel - would later become integral to the slasher boom.

This short lived series - both directed by Robert Fuest - is often applauded for giving Price the classic monster role his career had previously lacked, but the two titles can also lay claim to evoking the black humour of James Whale and even Monty Python (in THE ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES, Inspector Trout (Peter Jeffrey) is addressed as Pike or Bream). This first film sees Phibes - a hideously disfigured musical genius and doctor of theology - enacting an elaborate vendetta against the surgical team whom he holds responsible for the death of his wife Victoria (Caroline Munro), contriving their deaths to accord with the curses inflicted on the Pharaohs by Moses in the book of Exodus. Exactly why Phibes should choose to inflict Hebrew curses is never explained, though their nature would fit his raison d'etre of elaborate murder. This lack of detail is synonymous with the two movies, further illustrated by Phibes' sketchy survival from a car crash, and the origins of his mute female assistant Vulnavia (Virginia North).

Vulnavia (model and artist Valli Kemp) is summoned from the netherworld to aid Dr Phibes' Egyptian expedition in DR PHIBES RISES AGAIN.

As Phibes, Price contrives to tip a wink not only at his horror heritage, but also at his celebrity as an art authority; having drained every drop of blood from Dr Longstreet (Terry-Thomas), Phibes glides out of shot, only to glide back in to tut over his victim's taste in visual artifacts. Yet for its colourful touches and opulent production design, THE ABOMINABLE DR PHIBES is a shallow experience, undermined by its dramatis personae: the victims are only present as a prelude to their inventive deaths, and there are at least twice as many comedy police inspectors that are strictly necessary. Only Joseph Cotton - as Dr Vesalius - lends any gravitas to his role.

For DR PHIBES RISES AGAIN, the mad doctor is pitted against an adversary of similar cunning and intent, Biederbeck (Robert Quarry), who has been artificially sustaining his youth (which, again, is never fully explained). The film contrives to engineer Phibes' return but not that of Vulnavia (Valli Kemp), who is now represented as an ethereal spirit to be invoked at will. The elegant interiors of the first film are replaced by pastiche - Victoria's coffin sporting radiator grilles of a Rolls-Royce - and the sequel's obsessing over a sacred relic is the derivative stiff of Universal Mummy movies, not for the sophistication of Phibes. However, the film is buoyed by some notable guest appearances, such as Peter Cushing (intended as Vesalius for the first film) and Beryl Reid.

Fresh Blood

DR JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE (1971)
CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER (1974)

CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER was adapted into comics for Hammer’s Halls of Horror #20 (May 1978), and an original strip featuring the character also appeared in the first three issues of the magazine.

AS Hammer entered the 70s, new ideas were sought to revitalise their outdated mythologies. A potential saviour came in the form of THE AVENGERS alumni Brian Clemens, who created fresh adaptations of two renowned horror themes. The first, DR JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE - directed by Roy Ward Baker - sees Jekyll (Ralph Bates)'s obsessive quest for the elixir of life make him change sex into Hyde (Martine Beswick). A decidedly kinky reversal of the familiar tale, Bates' creepy austereness is countered perfectly by Beswick's blatant full-bodied sexuality. It has the look of Oliver!, with its cheeky street urchins and gin-swilling tarts, but Clemens' off the wall approach encompasses too much: the jovial threads of Jack the Ripper, Dorian Gray, Burke and Hare and Sweeney Todd jar somewhat with the disturbingly frenzied stabbings of Betsy (Virginia Wetherell) and Professor Robertson (Gerald Sim).

Clemens' second Hammer screenplay proved to be every bit as iconoclastic as his first. The sleeper CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER - directed by Clemens himself - has the swash-buckling, eponymous hero (Horst Janson) seeking to destroy a vampire clan who drain youth rather than blood. Although dubbed by Julian Holloway, Janson gives a brooding performance for what is an outstanding creation; the character of Kronos is fleshed out by an intriguing back-story (his mother and sister were vampires) and memorable sidekicks (hunch-backed Professor Grost (John Cater), gypsy Carla (Caroline Munro)). The film also created a whole new vampire lore; not only are victims emaciated, different methods kill specific breeds, dead toads buried in boxes will spring to life if a vampire walks across it, and flowers will wilt in the undead's wake. 

Martine Beswick and Ralph Bates were perfectly cast for DR JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE.

CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER effectively portrays the English countryside in perpetual autumnal decay. Clemens seems set on desexualising his vampires (their quest for youth is not so much driven by their unchecked libido as it is by a self-admiration), and his direction makes the film move with an agility that many latter-day Hammer's lacked. Yet both these brave attempts didn't appeal to the cinemagoers of the day. While Hammer's own feature version of ON THE BUSES was breaking house records during its first days of release, the double bill of DR JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE and BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB managed only a meagre showing in its opening week at London's New Victoria. Similarly, with no assured distribution, CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER - whose principal photography actually wrapped nearly two years previously - was barely released.

Dracula Over London

DRACULA, A.D. 1972 (1972)
THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA (1973)

"Hammer find of 1971" Caroline Munro on the alter
in DRACULA, A.D. 1972.

WHEN Warner Brothers noted the success of AIP's COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE at the beginning of the 1970s - in which Robert Quarry prowled present-day Los Angeles - they ordered two Hammer Dracula's to follow suit, bringing the character to modern-day London and away from the Eastern European neverwhere which had died its death with SCARS OF DRACULA. What should have been a fresh new direction resulted in DRACULA, A.D. 1972, one of the studio's most glorious mishaps. In Hyde Park, 1872, Lawrence Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) dies from the strain of destroying Dracula (Christopher Lee). During Van Helsing's funeral at St Bartolph's, one of the vampire's disciples - Alucard (Christopher Neame) - buries his master's ashes nearby. Jumping to Chelsea, 1972, we see Alucard organising a black mass at St Bartolph's, supposedly for teen thrills. The culmination of the ritual, however, is the rejuvenation of Dracula, and Alucard lures young victims to the deserted graveyard for his master's pleasure, one of which is buxom Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham), descended from a line of vampire hunters and the Count's favoured target. Her grandfather Lorimar (Cushing) - equipped with the devices to snare the Count - subsequently confronts his enemy.

The major flaw of the film is that once Dracula is resurrected, he never leaves the derelict church where he's been revived, so the movie might as well take place in 1872, where the film's rousing pre-credits sequence takes place. Innovations such as Dracula claiming his first male and black victim are overshadowed by the phoney younger characters, who seem a good decade behind the times with their hilariously misconceived banter. Cushing relishes his Van Helsing role, and at least tries to act as a voice of reason to Jessica and the film in general, although the script insults the audience's intelligence when even Van Helsing has to take up pen and paper to work out that Alucard is Dracula spelled backwards.

Vampires in the bargain basement: THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA.

Warner expressed little enthusiasm for the direct sequel - the sombre and apocalyptic THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA - and never released the film in America, where it wouldn't be in general circulation until independent Dynamite issued the film under the flaccid title COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE late in 1978. This time, rather than the Count skulking in crypts and pouncing on Hammer's latest nubile protégé, Van Helsing (Cushing) discovers that reclusive property developer D.D. Denham is in fact the Count (Lee), who intends to wipe out the human race with a newly perfected strain of plague. The script creates another own-goal in a plan which will inevitably deprive the vampire of his food supply (a mournful echo perhaps of Lee's own overwhelming desire to put Dracula behind him). The Count is morphed into a hybrid of Howard Hughes and Fu Manchu for an almost James Bond-like adventure; this will probably be the only Dracula film to have the Count employing a gang of motorcycle-riding toughs to do his daylight dirty work.

What makes Hammer's modern-day Dracula's so disappointing - both directed by Alan Gibson - is that they ignore the maturity of Bram Stoker. Stoker reiterates the sense of London as the heart of Empire, using its familiar locations to heighten fears of invasion, contamination and disease (at least THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA hints at contagion). Association with the East End links The Count with foreigners, especially Jews from Eastern Europe and Orientals, as well as with an area connected in the public mind with crime. The author marshals discourses to those we are familiar with now in the war against terrorism: the threat of shape-changing terrorists from the East, among us and invisible. In the invasive other, British culture sees its own imperial practices mirrored back in monstrous forms; Dracula resonates not least because his actions approximates those of the colonising Englishman.