Andy Milligan in London (Part II of II)

BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS (1970)

THE MAN WITH 2 HEADS (1972)

THE RATS ARE COMING - THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE (1972)

"Their prime cuts were curiously erotic ... but thoroughly brutal!" Apparently "sadism was just an appetiser" for Andy Milligan's BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS. 

THE three Andy Milligan pictures under consideration here all typify the filmmaker's "horror and hate" ethos, showing disdain for family, heritage and both sexual and working relationships. His take on Sweeney Todd, BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS, can be described as his most entertaining London-based release, and in true Tod Slaughter style, is filled with grisly details and unnecessary melodrama. Todd (John Miranda) brutally murders customers in his barbershop, with the corpses passed on to neighbour Maggie Lovett (Jane Hilary). With the help of "head" butcher Tobias (Milligan's English mainstay Berwick Kaler), Lovett fills her prize pies with body parts. Lovetts’ innocent employee Johanna (Annabella Wood) and her fiancé, sailor Jarvis (Michael Cox), are just two who get caught up in the convoluted shenanigans.

BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHERS starts as it means to go on, where Todd slits the throat of an Irishman, then uses a meat cleaver to hack off a hand to take the victim’s ruby ring. Later, a couple discover a female breast (complete with nipple) in a pie, and Mr Busker (William Barrel) whispers to Mrs Lovett the items he and his sister would like to find inside their next purchase. The picture benefits from strong performances - particularly a haunting Kaler, and Wood excels with a Madeline Smith-like purity - but basically it is one unhinged argument after another.

Filmed as DR JEKYLL AND MR BLOOD, THE MAN WITH 2 HEADS was chosen as the title to ride the coattails of AIP hits such as THE INCREDIBLE TWO-HEADED TRANSPLANT and THE THING WITH TWO HEADS.

Milligan's strangely static version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, THE MAN WITH 2 HEADS, credits the source novelist as Robert Louis Stephenson and opens with a totally unrelated scene of what one assumes to be a Jack the Ripper murder. Dr William Jekyll (Dennis DeMarne) believes that evil has a specific location within the brain and can therefore be isolated and removed. Working alone in the lab, Jekyll's assistant Smithers (Kaler) accidentally knocks over a glass of water, obliterating Jekyll’s antidote notes. Smithers attempts to write over the impressions, recreating the formula. Jekyll, frustrated by the non-delivery of lab rats and unaware his antidote is now ineffectual, tests the formula on himself, transforming into Danny Blood, a brutal sadist who torments and abuses prostitutes – taking particular interest in Soho resident April (Julia Stratton).

The movie sees Milligan particularly barbaric towards women. "There’s nothing a man likes more than to come home to a cigar, his beautiful wife, and dog," Blood tells April, "only you’re not so beautiful, and I don’t have a dog" (this precedes his command to April to bark, then puts out his cigar on the nape of her neck). As the madness begins to bleed into Jekyll’s day-to-day life, he cruelly and misogynistic-ally addresses a quiet female student, Victoria (Jennifer Summerfield), in front of her peers: "what makes you think you should be a doctor, standing up there as if you know what you’re talking about? All women should be in bed… to be used." 

A more apt title for Milligan's English swansong would be THE RATS ARE COMING TO PAD OUT THE PICTURE - THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE EVENTUALLY. 

THE RATS ARE COMING - THE WEREWOLVES ARE HERE attempts to do for werewolves what THE BODY BENEATH did for vampires. But due to the success of the rodent-themed WILLARD, sequences were added to increase the running time (one of which has the real killing of a rat). Set in 1899, a lycanthropic clan is headed by Papa Mooney (Douglas Pfair), who lives in a country manor with children Phoebe (Joan Ogden), Mortimer (Noel Collins), sadistic Monica (Hope Stansbury) and subhuman son Malcolm (Kaler). When his "normal" daughter from a different mother returns home from medical school, Diana (Jackie Skarvellis) - together with new husband Gerald (the godawful Ian Innes) - the family starts to unravel for good, including the revelation that the curse was not due to an animal bite, rather Phoebe's incestuous union with Papa.

Festering in their estate, the Mooney's are your quintessential Milligan doomed family. Jimmy McDonough, in his Milligan biography The Ghastly One, describes the picture as "by far the weakest effort from Milligan’s English sojourn," and only Stansbury's bitchy psychopath is of note. Started under the title THE CURSE OF THE FULL MOON, the film is ineptly bland and talkative, and like all of the filmmaker's output characters seem genuinely beyond hope, a reflection of Milligan's wider wounded soul.

Strange World of Terror

THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X (1958)
THE TROLLENBERG TERROR (1958)

THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X is a scientific cautionary tale adapted from the 1957 Rene Ray novel of the same name; a made-for-TV serial, adapted by Ray, had aired previously in the UK and was the basis for the feature.

WITH the arrival of commercial television in September 1955, ITV was determined to follow in the successful science fiction footsteps of the BBC's Professor Quatermass. Two examples - THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X and THE TROLLENBERG TERROR - were masterminded by former atomic scientist Quentin Lawrence. When they also jumped Quatermass-like to the big screen, Lawrence would direct the latter, and both would star grizzled American character actor Forrest Tucker. THE STRANGE WORLD OF PLANET X (released in the United States as THE COSMIC MONSTER) is a painfully dull affair, as the magnetic field experiments of single-minded Dr Laird (Alec Mango) cause freak storms and cosmic radiation that mutates insects and spiders. Laird is assisted by American Gilbert Graham (Tucker) and Michele Dupont (Gaby Andre), who is accepted into the fold once the physicists and the Ministry of Defence except that not only is she a woman but also French. 

Even when a space invader arrives, he is modeled on Klaatu from THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL. Well-spoken and spelling out the situation to the leads, "Mr. Smith" (Martin Benson) reveals himself to be an extraterrestrial emissary, warning that our orbit will be destabilised if Laird's work continues. Complete with obligatory pub scenes and verbal diarrhea, the effectiveness of the mutated creatures is also hindered by the use of micro-graphic stock footage. If any footnote is needed, the production holds the distinction that it was the only time British films ventured into the giant insect sub-genre. 

"The nightmare terror of the slithering eye that unleashed agonising horror on a screaming world!;" THE TROLLENBERG TERROR vacates its freezing mist. 

THE TROLLENBERG TERROR (released in the United States as THE CRAWLING EYE) sees UN troubleshooter Alan Brooks (Tucker) investigating unusual accidents in a (fictional) Swiss mountain range. Traveling to the Trollenberg Observatory to aid Professor Crevett (Warren Mitchell), Brooks meets London-based mind-reading sister act Anne and Sarah Pilgrim (Janet Munro and Jennifer Jayne). A Radioactive cloud sits heavily over the mountains, and when the suspended particles start to duplicate and move towards the hotel, large, one-eyed tentacled monsters attack. Retreating to the heavily fortified observatory, the beasts are subjected to Molotov cocktails and aerial firebombing.

The special effects are not so special; one cloud was achieved by filming a piece of cotton wool on a photograph, and the monsters are too goofy to be taken seriously (their tentacles are also too thin to be threatening). Jimmy Sangster's script is surprisingly unfocused, as several details are left dangling: in a plot thread lifted from Bram Stoker's Dracula, the creatures view psychics as a prime threat, but why do they have a fascination with beheading victims, yet spare others to transform into homicidal zombies? In such a perilous situation you would always follow the likes of Brooks over journalist Philip Truscott (Laurence Payne, retained from the serial) though Truscott gets the girl. In fact Munro is the highlight in her ultimately pointless ESP role, but fairs better than Jayne, who could easily be credited as "Sister Standing Looking Worried."

John Gilling Double Bill

MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE (1952)

THE GAMMA PEOPLE (1956)

"Its enough to make a bat laugh!" Arthur Lucan and Bela Lugosi at the end of their careers in MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE. A release in America was held over until 1964, by which time it had been retitled to MY SON THE VAMPIRE due to a novelty song by Allan Sherman.

AFTER serving in the Royal Navy during World War II, John Gilling became a prolific director and screenwriter in British cinema. The filmmaker is best known for his masterful take on Burke and Hare, THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS, and the two anti-colonial Hammer "Cornish Classics" PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES and THE REPTILE. As David Pirie states in A Heritage of Horror, Gilling expressed his stories using abstract imagery and, unlike Terence Fisher, his works could end with prevailing gloom. Gilling's earlier directing assignments under consideration here are more of historical note rather than artistic merit; the first Britain's initial vampire picture, the second one of the biggest oddities in 1950s science fiction.

MOTHER RILEY MEETS THE VAMPIRE was the final film in the Old Mother Riley comedies, featuring Arthur Lucan in drag as the eponymous off-kilter Irish washerwoman. Bela Lugosi stars as Van Housen/The Vampire, but his arrival in England is not because of blood, rather to obtain uranium to fuel an army of 50,000 super robots. The two characters meet thanks to a mix-up: Riley's inheritance goods of a banjo and a bedwarmer are mistakenly delivered to Van Housen, while the villain's Mark I prototype automaton ends up at Riley's shop. Designed by Bernard Robinson - soon to become Hammer's renowned art director - Lugosi gives his last great performance before suffering from morphine addiction and Ed Wood appearances. On the suggestion of Richard Gordon, Bela had traveled to the UK to appear in a stage tour of Dracula, which was such a disaster Lugosi and his wife were unable to pay their way home. Luckily, Gordon persuaded fellow producer George Minter to use the actor here to solve the issue. 

"Is this your future?" Filmed mostly in Austria, science meets anticommunist propaganda in THE GAMMA PEOPLE. 

Six years before Bruce Banner became The Hulk due to gamma rays, Albert Broccoli and Irving Allen masterminded the long-gestating THE GAMMA PEOPLE under their Warwick Films banner. American journalist Mike Wilson (Paul Douglas) and English photographer Howard Meade (Leslie Phillips) end up in Gudavia, an out-of-time European hamlet, when their train carriage mysteriously detaches. Greeted by bumbling General Koerner (Phillip Leaver), the two men are suspected of being spies, but released from jail on orders of Professor Boronski (Walter Rilla). It is discovered that Boronski - reluctantly aided by Paula (Eva Bartok) - is using gamma rays to transform the brains of the young to create a race of geniuses (including Hugo (Michael Caridia), who leads a Hitler Youth style gang, and piano prodigy Hedda (Pauline Drewett)). Unfortunately the radiation doesn’t always work, turning subjects into zombie "goons".

THE GAMMA PEOPLE is an uneasy mix of sci-fi, melodrama and comedy, further hindered by cardboard characters and irrelevant detail. Burly Douglas was a latecomer to acting, previously having a successful announcer and hosting radio career, and is a strange choice for a leading man (his sly advances to the stunning Bartok are quite queasy). In contrast Phillips is a joy, effortlessly perfecting his suave ladies man persona. At least the future for Broccoli is shadowed in the James Bond-like climax, with its castle lair, raygun, a laboratory with large signage, mechanised sliding doors and grand explosions.

Tree of the Living Dead

WOMANEATER (1958)

"SEE the Woman Eater ensnare the beauties of two continents! SEE its hideous arms devour them in a death-embrace!" Released in the United States as THE WOMAN EATER, a tentacled tree that can revive the dead unfortunately can't put any life into this plodding production. 

BETWEEN 1960 and 1967, there were a slew of murderous plant movies: Roger Corman's LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS had a florist assistant cultivating flora that feeds on human blood; Howard Keel's version of DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS was released; the homicidal creeping vine segment was part of DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS; specimens of frozen tundra turn into acid-secreting carnivores for NAVY VS THE NIGHT MONSTERS; and MANEATER OF HYDRA sees Cameron Mitchell play a reclusive scientist crossbreeding dangerous varieties. But the dawn of this subgenre occurred in 1957 and 1958 with stories of more exotic origin: Dan Milner's FROM HELL IT CAME has a vengeful walking tree from the South Seas; and in this Charles Saunders picture, an Amazonian tribe possess a trunk-idol that can resurrect the departed, as long as it is regularly fed with nubile young woman to keep its secretions flowing.

Scientist and explorer James Moran (George Coulouris) transports the aforementioned "miracle-working Ju Ju" back to his English estate with loin-clothed Tanga (Jimmy Vaughn), who drums potential victims into a hypnotic state in a basement laboratory. Housekeeper and former lover to Moran, Margaret (Joyce Gregg), becomes resentful to new recruit Sally Norton (Very Day), an attractive ex-funfair worker who has started a relationship with mechanic Jack Venner (Peter Wayn). The scientist inadvertently strangles Margaret, who fleetingly returns as a brainless zombie; it is revealed that Tanga has kept the full secret of the tree to himself and his people ("only the body, not the mind!")

Blonde bombshell Vera Day makes for an appealing kidnap victim. Other credits for this London-born model/actress include QUATERMASS 2, GRIP OF THE STRANGLER and TOO MANY CROOKS.

WOMANEATER has the feel of a ponderous Bela Lugosi/Monogram film from the 1940s, and is a tired attempt to hang on to voodoo as an undead trope. The laboured script is played out by a disinterested and underdeveloped cast: the police force is unbelievably wooden and Coulouris - whose acting career spanned everything from CITIZEN KANE to BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB - stares blankly under a weight of research and family insanity ("several of them have been sent away.") Moran's plan is clearly at an early stage - he is having to kill people to revive them - but the most ludicrous notion is why Tanga has spun the situation to waste so much time, particularly as his prized idol burns over the closing credits.

Mad Monsters

THE VULTURE (1966)
PROTEUS (1995)

"Half man, half beastbird ... swooping on his human prey ... drinking blood ... mutilating flesh!" Diane Clare carried off by THE VULTURE.

THE VULTURE manages to pull in so many disparate elements, it is amazing it still fails to generate any interest: genres such as rural murder mystery, cutting-edge science fiction and family curses from beyond the grave are all mashed into banality. The titular character in this Anglo-Canadian travesty rivals the moth creature from THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR as the most ridiculous monster in British horror; glimpsed only as a pair of legs and talons, this is only fleetingly fleshed out in the climax with wings and the balding head of delusional Professor Koniglich (Akim Tamiroff). This man/bird beast appeared on screen three years after the publication of Stan Lee and Steve Dirko's The Amazing Spider-Man #2 (May 1963), which featured the first appearance of Spidey super villain Adrian Toomes aka a very similar-looking Vulture.

Set in Tolferro, Cornwall, the film begins with school teacher Ellen West (Annette Carell) taking a shortcut through a cemetery, who witnesses a bird creature fly out of the coffin of 17th century sorcerer Francis Real. Local legends state that Real cursed the Stroud family line for burying him alive and murdering his vulture, which was also contained in the casket together with a number of gold coins. While modern heir Brian Stroud (Broderick Crawford) dismisses the supernatural punishment, his niece Trudy (Diane Clare) and her American scientist husband Eric (Robert Hutton) are more open-minded. And with good reason: advanced transmutative technology has been used to teleport into the grave, molecules becoming mixed with the remains of the sorcerer's beloved pet.

Years before Mega Shark or Sharktopus, PROTEUS provided 

video rental stores with its own fish-based mutation.

In this war between science and superstition Koniglich is obviously the villain from the start, with his Germanic accent and black cape. Furthermore, the stilted drawing-room chatter, static performances and fixed camera would be more at home on stage. THE VULTURE is also strangely out of time, having more in common with 1940s Poverty Row terrors, and creature features of the 1950s. The final film of veteran writer/director Lawrence Huntington - though his THE OBLONG BOX treatment would surface in 1969 - Huntingdon's only other genre venture was in 1941 with TOWER OF TERROR, about a mad lighthouse keeper.

Basically THE THING on an oil rig, PROTEUS is a dreary monster movie helmed by special effects technician Bob Keen. The screenplay was written by film critic and author John Brosnan, who adapts his 1983 novel Slimer. We open in Hong Kong harbour, where Triads expel six Heroin smugglers. Alex (Craig Fairbrass) is actually working undercover, but when the group's yacht explodes, they seek refuge in what is seemingly an abandoned offshore drilling facility. The rig is actually a research complex which has combined human and shark DNA, resulting in a creature that can imitate and absorb its victims. The practical monster effects are laughably rubbery (when Proteus attacks in the finale, it is a kind of Jaws on legs), with the cast more akin to daytime TV than a horror movie (and certainly not looking like drug smugglers). Following on from THE VULTURE's cliches, Dr Shelley (Nigel Pegram) is a German-accented mad scientist, and Pinhead himself Doug Bradley appears late on as company boss Brinkstone, suffering a particularly ignominious end with a tentacle down the throat.

Burlesque Melodrama

THE FACE AT THE WINDOW (1939)

Harry Terry - The Showman from Hitchcock's THE RING - is the titular face at the window, brought to life by cinematographer Hone Glendinning.

THIS Tod Slaughter "quota quickie" is actually great fun. Steeped in the Grand Guignol tradition, it is fittingly set in 1880 Paris, but all the characters speak with crisp British accents. The drooling face of crazed killer Le Loup ("The Wolf," Harry Terry) appears to his victims in windows, with a lycanthropic howl and a knife plunged into their backs. Against this backdrop leering Chevalier Lucio del Gardo (Slaughter) has set his sights on Cecile de Brisson (Marjorie Taylor), whose heart belongs to bank clerk Lucien Courtier (John Warwick). Del Gardo frames Courtier, but thankfully Lucien also has worked with Professor LeBlanc (Wallace Evennett). LeBlanc's experiments with electricity can reanimate corpse muscles to reenact their final tasks; ultimately this leads to the uncovering of Lucio as The Wolf, who has been aided by his deformed stepbrother.

Directed and produced by Slaughter's faithful helmsman George King, this is one of many screen adaptations of the detective play written by F. Brook Warren in 1897. Before his blossoming as a Dick Dastardly style cad, Slaughter was often cast as the hero on stage in the 1920s, and he even portrayed Lucien treading the boards. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW however sees him at his scenery-chewing best, grabbing and forcibly kissing Taylor in scenes that are uneasily effective. All the truly great horror film actors - Karloff, Cushing, Lee et al - had a particular finesse to their craft, yet Slaughter wallows in slimy delirium and manic cackles. In his own way, he evidently enjoys his work.

The cinematic paradigm of a face at the window is an artistic extension of monster versus victim. Flipping an inside threat to the outside, Alfred Hitchcock makes expert use of Norma Bates' silhouette in PSYCHO.

A visage or figure appearing at windows is one of the oldest and most repeated horror film tropes. Not only is it unsettling for the potential victim, it also radiates doom to a situation and impending threat to property. Often this is a sexual urge from the outside to the passive female inside, in everything from KING KONG to PEEPING TOM. Alternatively it can be the building itself, radiating blue light upon Max von Sydow in THE EXORCIST, or a piece of architecture such as the Amityville house. In the 1970s pop culture was full of demonic children, and the eerie window motif encompassed two particularly unnerving examples on television: the undead orphans of A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - LOST HEARTS, and Ralphie and Danny Glick in 'SALEM'S LOT. Yet it is a theme that has shifted like the genre itself, further amplified by productions that have home invasion at their core. 

Web of Fear

VENOM (1971)
DOCTOR WHO - PLANET OF THE SPIDERS (1974)

Serbian actress (and later politician) Neda Arneric is the siren of VENOM, beguilingly erotic and self destructive. Elected as a member of the Democratic Party in 2000, she withdrew from public politics after the "remote voting" scandal, when her vote was registered in Serbian Parliament while on holiday in Turkey.

SPIDERS have a tradition in horror, large or small. On the silver screen, Jack Arnold directed two of the most loved during the 1950s: science goes awry and creates a giant TARANTULA!, and a household spider strikes fear into THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN. Towards the end of the decade Bert I. Gordon made EARTH VS THE SPIDER, and the 1970s saw the release of two classics: Wisconsin suffered THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION, and even William Shatner had to try and prevent a small Arizona town from becoming a KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS (to no avail). More recently we have endured ARACHNID, BIG ASS SPIDER!, ARACHNOPHOBIA and Arizona again was the battle zone of EIGHT LEGGED FREAKS, where a spider farm suffered a toxic waste spillage.

VENOM is an appealing curio and the directorial debut of Peter Sykes. While holidaying in a Tyrolean village, artist/photographer Paul Grenville (Simon Brent) discovers hypnotic redhead Anna (Neda Arneric) in the woods, who has a mysterious spider mark on her shoulder. Making the acquaintance of Huber (Gerard Heinz) and his seductive daughter Ellen (Sheila Allen), Grenville is introduced to tales of the "spider goddess," a legend of the area, where a female phantom kills any men who becomes sexually involved ("they say if anyone touches me, the spiders come"). Yet her visage has been purposely created to scare off locals from a Nazi plot producing nerve agents from spider venom, funded by priceless stolen paintings and led by Anna's renegade scientist father (Terence Soall).

VENOM was released on Region 2 DVD by Fabulous Films in 2015, whose product blurb is as off kilter as the production itself.

Feeling more like a Euro-thriller than British horror, VENOM stands out with its stunning Bavarian location, odd camera angles and dreamlike ambiguity (it opens with a flashback nude bathing romp tinted green, and why not?). Anyone who is already confused should definitely avoid the American edit, which was picked up by New Line and retitled LEGEND OF SPIDER FOREST. Cut by over ten minutes, this includes dialogue referencing situations not included, and a general trimming of violent and erotic scenes. The full ninety minute movie includes an array of weirdness: softcore flogging, cows with flower garlands on their heads, and a climactic nod to Norman Bates. This must have caused an impression with Hammer, who assigned Sykes to direct DEMONS OF THE MIND the following year. 

On the small screen, the DOCTOR WHO serial PLANET OF THE SPIDERS explored Barry Letts' personal obsession with Zen Buddhism; it is the only occasion where a WHO producer and co-writer also directed the episodes. Since his discharge from UNIT, Mike Yates (Richard Franklin) is part of a Tibetan meditation group in rural England. While visiting, Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) and Yates stumble across resident Lupton (John Dearth) performing an incantation, which conjures up a giant spider. The Buddhist centre is actually a front to contact a powerful alien force that manifest as a large Arthropod; the spider is an emissary from the Metebelis 3 ruling council, sent to recover a blue crystal that The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) previously found there and that has now been returned to him by Jo Grant (Katy Manning) from her trip to the Amazon. The Doctor recognises Abbot K'anpo (George Cormack) as his former Time Lord guru and, at his prompting, returns to Metebelis 3, where a human colony revolt has failed. The Great One spider uses the crystal to complete a lattice which she believes will increase her mental powers to infinity.

A giant Arthropod attempts to exert telepathic control in DOCTOR WHO - PLANET OF THE SPIDERS. 

A weak six-partner to finish Pertwee's tenure, PLANET OF THE SPIDERS suffers from its grating use of the colour-separation overlay technique and an indulgent, nonsensical chase sequence. The original season climax was to be THE FINAL GAME, where The Master would sacrifice his life to save The Doctor in an act of redemption. This was abandoned due to the death of Delgado while filming in Turkey for the French/German TV mini-series LA CLOCHE TIBETAINE (however, Delgado's legacy exists on an obtuse level, as his widow Kismet provides the voice for the Queen Spider). Despite its flaws, the programme taps into the widespread fear of Arthropods, which research has suggested that may be innate to humans, and an exaggerated form of instinctive responses that helped early bipedal primates to survive.

"New Thrills! New Faces! New Horror!"

HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN (1970)

In the same year that David Prowse became The Green Cross Code Man, the Bristol native appeared in the second of his three roles as Mary Shelley's most famous creation.

JIMMY Sangster's HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN is detested by Hammer purists for its comedic tone, and plays out as a parody of the previous respected entries. The film opens with Victor Frankenstein (Ralph Bates) at school, accompanied by friends Elizabeth (Veronica Carlson), Stefan (Stephen Turner) and Henry (Jon Finch). Victor arranges for the death of his father and travels to university in Vienna, where he acquires sidekick Wilhelm (Graham James) and impregnates the daughter of the Dean. Returning to Ingstad, Victor starts a series of experiments, using corpses delivered by a local body snatcher (Dennis Price) - who lets his wife do the digging. After electrocuting Wilhelm for complaining about his work - which includes reanimating a tortoise - Victor poisons Elizabeth's professor father (Bernard Archard) for his brain, but the organ is damaged and the resulting patchwork man is a mute thug (David Prowse).

Initiated as a start-over remake of CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN, the picture dispenses with Peter Cushing's services and tries to introduce a younger generation (a failed attempt, as Cushing returned four years later in FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL). Despite the traditional 19th Century setting, HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN is very much of its time - as illustrated by Bates' hair and puffy shirts - and quite anarchic, mixing additional plot threads (Elizabeth's finances, Stefan's crush on Victor) with comic relief (a severed arm making a V-sign) and grue (Victor's hands smearing his face with blood). Duelling femmes fatale O'Mara and Carlson are always watchable, but only Price can deliver a performance at the correct pitch. Bates, at this point being groomed to become the studio's next big star, is not so much a mad scientist but a psycho scientist, enjoying the thrill of the kill and rejoicing in the fact that he has this powerful monster ready to do his bidding. And when the creature eventually appears - an hour in, and sporting white cycling shorts - Prowse goes through the motions with a checklist of victims and a perfect physique which bestows its fragmented origins.

"You’ve put on weight in a couple of places"; Kate O’Mara is the bed-warming housekeeper of Hammer's relaunch of its Frankenstein franchise.

Reusing the Karnstein Castle set from THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, and even shooting most of its forest scenes on Elstree stages, there is a distinctly cheap and recycled feel. Furthermore, HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN was not helped by a misleading marketing campaign, where it went out on a double bill with the sombre and gristly SCARS OF DRACULA (as Sangster states in Wayne Kinsey's Hammer Films: The Elstree Studio Years, "if people had gone to see it knowing it was shot light hearted they would have enjoyed it more [instead of] thinking it was a Gothic horror.") However, this twin feature did hold the distinction of the first Hammer movies to be totally financed by British companies, thanks to a deal between Sir James Carreras and ABPC/EMI. But Hammer's new partner would only distribute to England and the Commonwealth, leaving Carreras able to acquire just a small American distributor - Continental - to impossibly cover the whole of the United States market. 

The notion of deriving humour from such pseudo-scientific source material is an interesting one. Since Frankenstein was published in 1818, and Boris Karloff's seminal interpretation hit screens in 1931, Mary Shelley's serious text - and similar works - generate mythical themes and uncomfortable laughter. As the initial power of the book recedes in a collected consciousness, the tome gathers extraordinarily wide responses, snowballing a range of spoofs and humorous asides now over 200 years on. The level of comedic takes is mind-boggling, even to the point of delicious meta-levels: Mel Brooks' celebrated YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, for example, used many pieces from James Whale's original laboratory set, and even in The Beatles film YELLOW SUBMARINE we had the Monster drinking a potion and becoming John Lennon.

Brains and Brawn

FIEND WITHOUT A FACE (1958)
THE FROZEN DEAD (1966)
IT! (1967)

"We're facing a new form of life that nobody understands;" Austrian Herta Padawer - billed as Kim Parker - grapples with a FIEND WITHOUT A FACE.

EVEN though Arthur Crabtree's FIEND WITHOUT A FACE was shot in England by Amalgamated Productions, its Canadian setting, use of US Air Force stock footage, and casting of expatriate American and Canadian actors - even the British players are dubbed - make it seem like your typical Stateside fifties monster movie. At an American experimental station in Winthrop, Manitoba, Operation Dewdrop is being developed to increase awareness of nuclear attacks from Siberia. Major Jeff Cummings (Marshall Thompson) is brought in to investigate a number of unexplained civilian deaths, where victims have punctures at the base of the head and that the brain and spinal cord have been "sucked out like an egg through those two holes." Professor Walgate (Kynaston Reeves) has been draining the base's reactor to create living mental beings, but when the power is boosted, they change from their invisible form to disembodied brains with spinal cord tails and "feelers."

To add to the non-British flavour, the celebrated stop-motion monsters were created (and filmed) by K. L. Ruppel and Florenz von Nordhoff in Munich. The "battle with the brains" climax has since been replicated in everything from ISLAND OF TERROR to NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD; the celebrated finale is also an early example of movie gore where - in black-and-white photography - Ruppel's liberal spreading of raspberry jam from a saucepan made an excellent substitute for blood. This siege is repulsively reinforced by Peter Davies and Terence Poulton's sound effects, as the bullet-ridden organs splutter puddles of the red stuff ("at least they're mortal"). Because of this sequence, FIEND WITHOUT A FACE was heavily censored in England, banned completely in the Republic of Ireland, but only slightly cut by the MPAA when MGM released the picture in America.

"To revive a body ... I've done that. But to revive a brain ..." Bathed in eerie blue, the head of Kathleen Breck is the star of THE FROZEN DEAD.

Based on Amelia Reynolds Long's The Thought Monster - a short story published in Weird Tales brokered to the producers by her agent, Forrest J. Ackerman - FIEND WITHOUT A FACE is typical in its Cold War paranoia of science going haywire in an isolated region, but was one of the first science fiction films to address the issue of nuclear energy rather than nuclear weapons. Dubbed "tepidly macabre" by Monthly Film Bulletin and "primitive" by Daily Variety, it is indeed conventionally structured, but despite its naïve final solution, modest budget and obligatory tight-fitting female sweater, when the creatures eventually materialise they seem to enjoy invading in numbers, providing more zest than the human cast.

THE FROZEN DEAD and IT! are two horrors from Gold Star, high on insanity but low on flair. Shot back-to-back at Merton Park Studios, both pictures were written, produced and directed by Herbert J. Leder, a film professor at Jersey City State College whose major claim to fame was providing the screenplay for FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. THE FROZEN DEAD sees renegade Nazi scientist Dr Norberg (Dana Andrews) struggle to resurrect cryogenically suspended SS officers, much to the chagrin of his superiors. When his niece Jean (Anna Palk) and friend Elsa (Kathleen Breck) arrive and Elsa is decapitated, her sentient severed head pleads to be put out of its misery ("bury me, bury me"). Taking its cue from cult classic THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE, Elsa develops telepathy to warn of the sinister plans - as well as control a row of severed arms - and the ramshackle zombies are led by Norberg's brother (a role which provides an early credit for Edward Fox). Playing more like a sixties slab of American exploitation, its one-note sombre atmosphere is only occasionally lightened by outrageous German accents.

Roddy McDowall contemplates the "Mid-European primitive" Golem of IT!, played by Alan Seller. In his 2009 book Trashfiend, Scott Stine describes the monster as "a sculpture of Zippy the Pinhead moulded from half melted candle wax."

Much more playful but also suffering from an unnecessary bloated running time, IT! is the only British horror film to portray the legend of the Golem of Prague. Arthur Pimm (Roddy McDowall), a deranged young museum assistant revives the stone monster and looks after the mummified corpse of his mother by bringing her prized jewels. Annoyed at being passed upon becoming the museum curator, and his one-sided infatuation with Ellen Grove (Jill Haworth) - daughter of the first deceased custodian - Pimm orders the statue to wreak vengeance on his enemies, and makes the Golem "destroy" Hammersmith Bridge in an attempt to impress his love. This destruction, and the nuclear warhead finale, strips IT! back to its meagre budget; McDowall also hams up his supposed tortured role as the monster ultimately shirks into the ocean. 

Mad Science

THE MUTATIONS (1974)

"He'll soon be neither human being nor plant, but with the characteristics and advantages of both: a plant that can move and think, a man who can set down roots." Donald Pleasence and Tom Baker plot and fester.

DIRECTED by Oscar-winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff, THE MUTATIONS uses the template of Tod Browning's FREAKS and poverty row mad scientist pictures to mix with unsubtle 70's British sleaze and an avant-garde score. University Professor Nolter (Donald Pleasence, in a role originally intended for Vincent Price) is experimenting to merge human and plant life. Any unsuccessful subjects are offloaded to Nolter's kidnapping accomplice Lynch (Tom Baker) for a nearby circus "Royal Family of Strange People," which Lynch runs with dwarf Burns (Michael Dunn). The human protagonists - all students from Nolter's class (Tony (Scott Anthony), Lauren (Jill Haworth) and Hedi (Julie Ege)) - and the circus freaks are exploited by the tyrannical Lynch, who hopes that Nolter will cure his own Elephant Man-type deformity. The plan starts to unravel when Tony, after being turned into a human Venus Fly Trap, escapes and ingests a homeless man. With Hedi strapped naked to the operating table, she is saved from Nolter's burning mansion by Dr Brian Redford (Brad Harris), and the freaks take their revenge on Lynch.

Like Browning, real deformed humans are cast for the roles (including Alligator Girl Esther Blackmon and the show-stopping Willie "Popeye" Ingram). Another Browning cue sees THE MUTATIONS lift its party scene directly from FREAKS, and Cardiff must also have been influenced by Universal's 1973 SSSSSSS, which sees herpetologist Dr Carl Stoner (Strother Martin) change young men into King Cobras, whereby botched attempts are exhibited at a circus. Both Nolter and Stoner theorise that humans now need to be in some transformative state, for Nolter to create a "world without hunger," and for Stoner to survive ecological disaster. A deadpan Pleasence mostly recites dialogue from his textbooks and provides an amusing lecture aside referencing genetically recreated dinosaurs, while at home he feeds rabbits to his creations. But Baker is the star: shortly before his Time Lord appointment - and sporting a coat hat and scarf ensemble - Lynch is the Igor to Pleasance's Frankenstein/Dr Moreau. Lynch himself is a freak, but his overpowering self loathing cannot make himself accept his plight; in the film's only touching scene, he visits a prostitute and begs her to say "I love you" for an extra pound.

Scott Anthony - mutated into a Venus Fly Trap - devours his  

monster maker Pleasence in the fiery climax.

The exhibition of real biological oddities can be traced back to the 1630's, when Lazarus Colloredo and his conjoined twin Joannes Baptista toured Europe. "Freaks of nature" as a source of entertainment on film adds another voyeuristic quality, freezing their façade awkwardly in time to watch over and over. FREAKS' original cut of January 1932 was met with disgust - one woman at a test screening threatened to sue stating it caused her miscarriage - and remains the only MGM release to have been pulled from circulation before completing its engagements. The picture was also banned in Britain for thirty years, and effectively brought Browning's career to a premature end. However, FREAKS has enjoyed a positive re-evaluation over the years, unlike Michael Winner's 1977 Universal opus THE SENTINEL, which controversially featured deformed humans as denizens from hell. Amid THE MUTATIONS relentless dour atmosphere, when Lynch is killed by flying switchblades then devoured by Nolter's hounds, the "Strange People" at least have a form of closure.

"Wet with Terror"

SECRETS OF SEX (1969)
HORROR HOSPITAL (1973)

"Imagine you are making love to this girl. Imagine you are making love to this boy ..." Also known as BIZARRE and TALES OF THE BIZARRE, SECRETS OF SEX is an omnibus oddity that has it all.

EXPLOITATION film distributor and director Antony Balch started with the moving image by writing subtitles for European movies and making adverts for Camay soap and Kit-E-Kat ("Your cat will stay younger, live longer.") While briefly living in France he befriended William Burroughs, before returning to run two movie theatres in London: The Jacey Piccadilly Circus, and The Times Baker Street. Balch made surrealist shorts in collaboration with the American beat poet, and Burroughs also provided narration for the distributor's 1966 re-packaging of HAXAN as WITCHCRAFT THROUGH THE AGES. With a proposed adaptation of Naked Lunch starring Dennis Hopper falling through, Balch found a more solid partner in producer Richard Gordon, which created cult favourites SECRETS OF SEX and HORROR HOSPITAL. Unfortunately future projects such as THE SEX LIFE OF ADOLF HITLER never materialised, and Balch succumbed to stomach cancer in 1980 at the age of just 42.

SECRETS OF SEX was Balch's feature debut, a dotty collection of tales fusing comedy, horror, spies and softcore using a framing device of a Mummy voiced by Valentine Dyall. There are six segments in total, each illustrating the age-old battle between the sexes: a female photographer asks her male model to straddle a 'Spanish Horse' torture device; an old man yearns for a son after a previous bereavement, only for his young scientist lover to keep a birth defect from him and deliver a monster; a man catches a burglar only to discover "Christ! It's a bird!"; Lindy Leigh is Mayfair's Special Agent 28, whose main talent is to shed her clothes at every convenience; a man beckons an escort in an attempt to have sex with his reptile; and an old women confesses to kidnapping the souls of past lovers and trapping them in her greenhouse. Amazingly, this inoffensive and often banal picture was censored by John Trevelyan to the tune of nine minutes, but the film was still a hit and shown up to seven times a day at the Jacey, often with an accompanying Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Graham Humphrey's DVD/Blu-ray cover for HORROR HOSPITAL, discs released in August 2015.

HORROR HOSPITAL sees songwriter Jason Jones (a pre-CONFESSIONS Robin Askwith) taking a break from London's cutthroat music business by going to "Hairy Holidays", a country spa provided by gay travel agent Pollock (Dennis Price). On the train journey there Jason meets Judy (Vanessa (actually Phoebe) Shaw), who is also travelling to the alleged health farm Brittlehurst Manor to meet her long lost aunt. Actually, the Manor is run by Dr Christian Storm (Lugosiesque Michael Gough), who uses lobotomy to turn wayward youth into zombie slaves ("fresh air, birds, flowers - and storm your way back to health.") The wheelchair-bound scientist is aided by Judy's Aunt Harris (Ellen Pollock), a former Hamburg brothel madam, comic-relief dwarf Frederick (Skip Martin), and two biker thugs; and if anyone escapes, Storm has a Rolls Royce fitted with a scythe to stop any such insubordination ("make a clean job of it Frederick, the car was washed this morning.")

Utilising Knebworth House exteriors and Battersea Town Hall interiors, HORROR HOSPITAL - released as THE COMPUTER KILLERS in America - is a washed-out but endearing pastiche of the mad doctor genre, complete with requisite fiery climax. Guest star Price shines as the lecherous Pollock, ogling Jones' package and as camp as Christmas on his visit to the Manor ("Mirror, mirror on the wall, don't say a word, I know it all") before his bloody demise. Askwith and Gough turn in solid performances in roles specifically written for them - Gough is overtly stern and almost a Bond villain  - and it is only a somnambulant Shaw that lets down the troupe. The influence of this piece of 70's schlock even extends to hip-hop, when in 2003 Norwich-based Stonasaurus recorded a concept album about the release; internally, actual 1960's psychedelic group Tangerine Peel appear at the beginning as 'Mystic', fronted by a cross-dresser who is actually co-writer Alan Watson.

Cushing Centenary (Part I of II)

THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS (1960)
THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR (1968)

100 years young today; Peter Cushing's Dr Knox commands the screen in THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS.

"THIS is the story of lost men and lost souls. It is a story of vice and murder. We make no apologies to the dead. It is all true." So begins THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS, John Gilling's take on Burke and Hare. The film is not only one of the finest British horror films, but a production that may well have provided Peter Cushing with his best ever performance. Capturing the squalid atmosphere of 1828 Edinburgh, the film sees "brilliant, aggressive, provocative" Dr Knox (Cushing) use "resurrection men" Burke (George Rose) and Hare (Donald Pleasence) to supply fresh cadavers for his medical students. When one of these students Chris (John Cairney) becomes involved with feisty prostitute Mary (Billie Whitelaw), the communion begins a chain of events that brings the murders too close to home: Burke is hanged, Hare avoids prosecution only to be blinded by the angry mob, and Knox sees the error of his ways.

Knox is the only person that ultimately changes. Beginning with a flow of intelligence, authority and conviction, this rationality for his beloved medical cause ("men of medicine are the modern miracle workers ... you are entering the most honorable profession in the world") is eventually melted by the fears of a young girl. After instructing Chris that "emotion is a drug that dulls the intellect," Knox quietly tells niece Martha (June Laverick) "as a child, I believed in God and the devil; it took a child to show me what I am now." Cushing's posture and delivery is pitch-perfect across his character arc, and his disagreements with the medical council are laced with a wondrous snideness ("now, if you would be so good as to incline your heads slightly to the right, you will observe the door; please use it.") Cushing is complimented by sly performances from Rose and Pleasence, who further inject the film with sardonic black humour. 

The Vampire-Beast Craves Blood. Together with Japan's Mothra, the creature of THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR is part of a pretty exclusive club of moth-related monsters.

On the other end of the scale, Vernon Sewell's THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR was described by Cushing as perhaps the worst film he ever made. Two murders have left the police perplexed, with the only witness insane and several petal-like scales left at the crime scenes. Inspector Quennell (Cushing) is drawn to the house of entomologist Doctor Mallinger (Robert Flemyng, replacing Basil Rathbone after his fatal heart attack two weeks before principal photography). When a further slaying implicates Mallinger and his daughter Clare (Wanda Ventham) the couple flee, but Quennell traces them and - together with daughter Meg (a stilted Vanessa Howard) - travels to a remote fishing village. It is discovered that Mallinger has created a Death's Head moth/female human hybrid, which drinks blood and kills when sexually aroused.

An erratically-edited programmer, Tigon's THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR suffers from a formulaic script by Peter Bryan (though there is a bizarre departure with an amateur theatrics sequence), threadbare special effects (that makes the moth on a par with Roger Corman's THE WASP WOMAN) and alleged comic relief (from Roy Hudd as the cliched mugging mortuary attendant who enjoys eating lunch among the corpses). Flemyng's mad scientist is blatantly suspicious from the opening lecture scene, and Cushing's customarily stoicism allegedly included extensive re-writing by the actor himself. In America, distributor Pacemaker re-christened the film THE VAMPIRE-BEAST CRAVES BLOOD, followed by some even more deranged hyperbole by the publicity department: "A ravishing Psycho-Field with diabolical power to turn into a Giant Death Head Vampire, to feast on the blood of her lovers before clawing them to death."

Science Shock and Shadow Lock

THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE (1961)

THE PROJECTED MAN (1966)
SATURN 3 (1980)

Janet Munro sizzles in THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE. Daughter of Scottish stage and variety hall comedian Alex Munro, the actress outgrew her Walt Disney beginnings by moving onto spicier roles. An acute alcoholic, Janet died in 1972 - aged 38 - under mysterious circumstances. Reports circulated that she choked to death at a London hotel while drinking tea.

PRODUCED, directed and co-written by Val Guest, THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE is successful both as a thought-provoking science fiction film and a prescient piece of entertainment. Daily Express reporter Peter Stenning (Edward Judd) is assigned by science editor Bill Maguire (Leo McKern) to investigate inexplicable weather conditions occurring around the globe. Stenning learns that the United States and Russia have simultaneously detonated atomic bombs at opposite poles, altering the tilt of the Earth's axis. However, authorities have withheld the fact that the explosions have caused the Earth to be knocked out of its orbit and on a collision course with the Sun. As world nations descend into chaos and hysteria, only one desperate course of action can save mankind: further nuclear explosions to restore the planet's equilibrium.

THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE is a compelling example of the morbid brand of science fiction typified by British studios. Our insular, island mentality, together with loss of empire and decreasing national identity, ultimately creates strands that are inherently sceptical of progress. Released less than a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, the film still resonates not only because the dystopian scenes of a fog-bound then sweltering London are so haunting (with water rationing and public showers), it also plays out within an authentic environment: dialogue is polished and snappy, the love between Stenning and Jeannie Craig (Janet Munro) is sincere, and most of the scenes are set within the actual Daily Express offices in Fleet Street. Adding to this authenticity is that the newspaper's general editor Arthur Christiansen plays the same role on screen as well as being technical advisor on the production.

"No human being could survive a time transition of that kind. Not without fearful consequences!" Science predictably goes astray in THE PROJECTED MAN.

Ian Curteis' THE PROJECTED MAN is a lesser slice of British sci-fi because it follows American-style sensationalism and chauvinism. Professor Steiner (Bryant Haliday) and his research team of Chris Mitchell (Ronald Allen) and Dr Patricia Hill (Mary Peach) are working to invent a teleporting "Projecting Machine." Against a backdrop of corporate obstinacy and sabotage, Steiner experiments on himself to save his research, but is repaid for his actions by disfigurement and a touch that can kill with 500,000 volts. THE PROJECTED MAN originated from a Hollywood script by Frank Quattrocchi in the late 1950s, before finally surfacing as this joint Protelco/Compton production. Consequently it has the heart of an old-fashioned mad scientist movie, but Haliday makes Steiner an appealing driven character. The supporting cast fare less well, especially nominal hero Allen, who sleepwalks through his role in preparation for his similarity comatose seventeen year stint as David Hunter in CROSSROADS.

Made by ITC and Transcontinental, Stanley Donen's SATURN 3 is an uneasy fusion of Frankenstein and DEMON SEED, and again questions the validity of a world that can become increasingly manipulated by science. A triumph of production design over content, the movie begins with psychotic Captain Benson (Harvey Keitel, dubbed by Roy Dotrice) travelling to an experimental food research station during a twenty-two day eclipse and communications black-out called 'Shadow Lock'. Benson provides "assistance" to two scientists working to alleviate a famine on our overpopulated and polluted Earth; Major Adam (Kirk Douglas) and his younger romantic partner Alex (Farrah Fawcett) are wary of their visitor, especially when he reveals the form of help he has bought to speed up their research: a colossal, Demi-God class humanoid robot named Hector, who can pattern his personality on the direct input he receives from human beings. Repeatedly denied sexual contact by Alex, the Captain becomes more demanding, with this tendency cascading into Hector.

Farrah Fawcett in a promotional pose for the much-maligned sci-fi thriller SATURN 3. This black leather ensemble appeared in the 'blue dreamers' fantasy sequence deleted from most versions of the film.

SATURN 3 can never elevate itself above its randy robot plot - "Trapped between unnatural love and inhuman desire" - even though it re-purposes the story of Adam and Eve. The Captain is the serpent in this technological upgrade, as he attempts to infiltrate Adam and Alex's blissful relationship ("you have a great body, may I use it?"), and tells the pair that when Hector is finished one of them will be "obsolete". Douglas delivers a gutsy portrayal of a man past his prime, particularly evident when his naked arse is on display in a tussle with the Captain; Keitel looks surprised that he has somehow found himself in a B-grade science fiction opus; and message boards have queried if Fawcett's vacant facade means that she is actually a robot sex slave. Alex's "plaything" scenes with Adam make for an uncomfortable watch, and even though her character has an admittedly sketchy background, such BLADE RUNNEResque gravitas is unlikely.

Weird Science

I, MONSTER (1971)
THE ASPHYX (1973)

The performance of Christopher Lee is the highlight of Milton Subotsky's take on the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, I, MONSTER.

AMICUS'S I, MONSTER and Glendale's THE ASPHYX are two stylistically-shot early 70s releases which not only centre around warped experiments, but also attempt to adhere to the ever-distinguishing genre of the horror period drama. Set in 1906, I, MONSTER tells of Dr Charles Marlowe (Christopher Lee), a psychologist who rejects the findings of Freud and develops a more immediate treatment which uses character-modifying drugs. Marlowe confides in his solicitor Utterson (Peter Cushing) and friend Dr Lanyon (Richard Hurndall) that his experiments are causing changes in his patients, and rather than continue to subject them to unpredictability, decides to use himself as the test. In the early stages Marlowe/Blake commits theft and vandalism, but as addiction increases, his actions escalate to a street knife fight and to the brutal murder of a prostitute.

I, MONSTER was directed by Stephen Weeks on the recommendation of Lee, after the actor had seen the filmmaker's WWI trench warfare featurette for Tigon, 1917. Weeks only directed four films between 1971 and 1984, yet he demonstrated a visual flair in projects with a fantastic and historical backbone that made him comparable to Michael Reeves (the Utterton's dream sequence is memorable here). In his feature-length article on Amicus in Little Shoppe of Horrors #20 (published in 2008), Philip Nutman is dismissive of Week's filmography, calling GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT "disappointing and muddled," cult favourite GHOST STORY "painful and dull," and SWORD OF THE VALIANT "truly wretched." Closer to the truth is that the filmmaker suffered distribution problems and behind-the-scenes tinkering on his films. Week's trails with I, MONSTER included a particularly cumbersome Milton Subotsky script ("I was coming home from - oh, some place at the end of the world") and the folly of abandoning an experimental 3D process during shooting (which Subotsky championed after reading an article in New Scientist). 

In THE ASPHYX, Robert Stephens and Robert Powell are enthralled then repelled by imp-like banshees and cursed immortality.

THE ASPHYX is set in 1875, where Sir Hugo Cunningham (Robert Stephens) returns from a trip with his fiancee Anna (Fiona Webster), and informs his children Christina (Jane Lapotaire), Clive (Ralph Arliss) and adopted son Giles (Robert Powell) that he will soon remarry. A photographic specialist, Sir Hugo shows a series of slides to a psychic investigation committee, which show smudges that he believes illustrates the spirit leaving the body at the point of death. One afternoon, Sir Hugo captures on film the deaths of Clive and Anna in a boating accident; footage shows a black presence which he terms The Asphyx - a Greek mythological term for the spirit of the dead. Stricken with grief, Sir Hugo becomes obsessed in capturing his own Asphyx so he can become immortal, and when Giles asks for his blessing to wed Christina, Sir Hugo withholds his approval until they too agree to become imperishable. Things spiral out of control when Christina is accidentally decapitated, and Giles commits suicide in a gas chamber during their Asphyx-inducing stagings.

THE ASPHYX is a truly sumptuous-looking, a rich canvas brought to live by LAWRENCE OF ARABIA veterans Freddie Young (photography), John Stoll (art direction) and director Peter Newbrook (who acted as second unit cameraman on David Lean's film). The production design envelops a wonderful premise, yet this ashen-faced tale - very loosely based on the exploits of Parisian gynecologist-cum-neurologist Hippolyte Baraduc - falls short by presenting a series of absurdities. Mainly, we have the implausibility of Sir Hugo not only being a photography and psychic expert, he also invented the motion picture camera (with zoom lens no less) and seems to master electricity for his Asphyx-turn on a home-made electric chair. After uttering the wonderful line "bring me a guinea pig," the critter remains Sir Hugo's only friend in the aftermath, despite inadvertently setting in motion Christina's demise by chewing through a crucial rubber pipe. The Asphyx itself is portrayed as a risible, shrieking, rod-puppet, and Sir Hugo's rubber mask in the contemporary climax - which tidies an opening car crash sequence - is horrendous for the wrong reasons.