The Doctor and The Devils

BURKE & HARE (1972)

In a scene to rival her orgasmic eye-crossing in LUST FOR A VAMPIRE, Yutte Stensgaard appears as brothel starlet Janet, worse for wear after a drunken threesome with Derren Nesbitt and Francoise Pascal.

KNOWN as THE BODYSNATCHERS and HORRORS OF BURKE AND HARE in the United States, this was the last film made by Vernon Sewell, and a particularly dull take on the West Port serial killers (despite its sexploitative (and CARRY ON musical cue) angle). In 19th century Scotland, slum landlord Thomas Hare (Glynn Edwards) and cobbler William Burke (Derren Nesbitt) learn of a very profitable side-line: to provide dead bodies to anatomical lecturer Dr Knox (Harry Andrews). Initially relying on Hare's lodgers, the pair soon start killing the destitute and vulnerable by smothering them. At the local brothel one of Knox’s students Arbuthnot (Alan Tucker) becomes involved with Marie (Francoise Pascal); when Marie becomes a victim, this links the two disparate threads of the picture together, before ending abruptly to its loutish theme by The Scaffold.

Any cinematic attempt at the Burke and Hare murders will be in the shadow of John Gilling's 1960 masterpiece THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS, and Sewell instead seeks to tap into the same bawdy milieu of early 1970s breast-fixated Hammer. Within the erstwhile taverns all the players repeatedly have time for a "wee dram," and overall make solid efforts at their Irish and Scottish accents. But the historical facts behind the case are more interesting than anything offered here; in 1828 Edinburgh, Irish immigrant Williams Burke and Hare met as labourers on the Union Canal, before embarking on sixteen murders. Existing at a time of great medical science advancement but with corpses on state quotas, even esteemed surgeons would overlook their suspect sources. Eventually Hare turned King’s Evidence to convict Burke, was was publicly hanged and dissected. To this day, his preserved skeleton is on display in the Anatomical Museum at Edinburgh University, and his death mask - together with a book bound in Burke's tanned skin - is on show at Surgeon's Hall.

Francoise Pascal is the pick of the prostitutes in BURKE & HARE's brothel house. The Mauritius-born sexpot flirted numerously with British pop culture, from Norman J. Warren and Pete Walker to CORONATION STREET and MIND YOUR LANGUAGE.

Sewell was a veteran of British cinema, starting as a camera assistant in 1929 (his early Hammer outing THE DARK LIGHT starred Joan Carol, whom he married and who appears as the brothel madame here). A nautical cove, this lifelong fascination often bled into his filmography - collaborating with Michael Powell for THE SILVER FLEET for instance - but his output also often had supernatural themes with multiple flashbacks and complex timelines. Together with the macabre crime thriller THE MAN IN THE BACK SEAT, he is best known for adapting the French grand guignol play L'Angoisse into four releases across the decades: THE MEDIUM in 1934, LATIN QUARTER in 1945, GHOST SHIP in 1952 and 1961's HOUSE OF MYSTERY. In fact this last attempt is Sewell's most beguiling, and may well include the earliest example of the 'ghost in the television' motif.

Composite Beings and Zombie Bikers

SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (1970)
PSYCHOMANIA (1972)

In SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, two hikers out on the moors are being shot at by Nazi-like soldiers. The female ambler is  played by a pre-LUST FOR A VAMPIRE Yutte Stensgaard, who is subsequently taken to a castle for torture.

BOTH these pictures come from a period in British horror where more outlandish themes were being explored rather than the increasingly dated Hammer Gothics. Gordon Hessler's SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN is a conspiracy thriller like no other, an AIP/Amicus co-production that features a delirious mix of body parts, gallows humour and police pursuits. With the major draw of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, the film basically is another take on the Frankenstein legend. Opening with a runner collapsing in a London park and finding himself waking in a strange hospital where he's missing a leg, the story weaves its way through three main plot threads: rogue general Konratz (Marshall Jones) murdering his way into power of an unnamed Eastern bloc country; serial vampire rapist Keith (Michael Gothard) preying on young women he picks up in 'happening' nightclubs; and Dr Browning (Vincent Price)'s Composite programme, a plan to infest the world with controllable beings of organic and synthetic tissue.

Based on the 1966 SF novel The Disorientated Man by "Peter Saxon" - in reality a pen name used by W.Howard Baker and Stephen Frances - the film rights were picked up by Milton Subotsky, who turned in his usual old-fashioned treatment which was re-written by Christopher Wicking. The resulting screenplay is remarkably faithful to the book, apart from dropping an alien explanation for a paranoid political message. Price fares best of the top-billed stars, with Lee and Cushing given disposable roles: the former as a government official and the latter as a very disposable military superior. However it is Gothard and Alfred Marks - who apparently ad-libbed much of his dialogue as Inspector Bellaver - who give the most memorable performances. Marks shines in the grand pantheon of disgruntled police inspectors that populate British horror, and in a part described by Jonathan Rigby in English Gothic: a Century of Horror Cinema as resembling "a bionic Mick Jagger", Gothard carries out a very unpleasant alley attack and later there is a celebrated car chase sequence. Its all infectiously ridiculous, capped by a maniacal climactic battle between Browning and Konratz, filled with a vulcan-like shoulder squeeze and hearty swings of a gas cylinder.

John Cameron's score is the highlight of PSYCHOMANIA, essentially a rock soundtrack that achieves the gravitas of a sweeping orchestra.

Don Sharp's PSYCHOMANIA tells of Tom Latham (Nicky Henson), the leader of The Living Dead motorcycle gang, who terrorise the Home Counties and hang around standing stones called The Seven Witches. Tom's mother (Beryl Reid) is a medium aided by butler Shadwell (George Sanders), and there is a mystery surrounding the death of Mr Latham ("why did my father die in that locked room? Why do you never get any older? And what is the secret of the living dead?") When Tom achieves "the ton," he crashes off a bridge and dies; the gang bury him upright on his bike, and he comes back to life a couple of days later, terrorising the local populace and convincing his gang members that in order to come back from the dead you only have to believe you will. Only Tom’s girlfriend Abby (Mary Larkin) refuses.

PSYCHOMANIA's incoherent and kitsch charm mixes the trademark tranquil eccentricity of British horror with Frog cults and zombie bikers, becoming a metaphor for teen rebellion and anger at the establishment (all the members of The Living Dead want to do is cause trouble and "blow some squares’ minds"). The film was almost universally blasted by critics on release - The Times wrote that PSYCHOMANIA was only fit to be shown at an "SS reunion party" - but today this Benmar production is a guilty pleasure. Like Tom's early exchange with Shadwell, there are more questions than answers: what actually occurred at Tom's birth?; what is the history of the magic room?; who is Shadwell servant to?; and did Mrs Latham's powers turn seven witches into the standing stones? Henson is the lifeblood, but Sanders' bizarre presence has the distinction of seemingly being the film that drove the actor to suicide. Leaving behind an aptly Wildesque note, Sanders wrote "Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck."

Two from Tigon

ZETA ONE (1970)
THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR (1970)

ZETA ONE even manages to make strip poker with Yutte Stensgaard boring. The Danish au pair/model had a versatile association with British pop culture: she auditioned for the part of DOCTOR WHO companion Jo Grant, appeared as the hostess on THE GOLDEN SHOT, and is most famous for her role in Hammer's LUST FOR A VAMPIRE.

FOUNDED by Tony Tenser in 1966, Tigon released a range of films - from sexploitation to an acclaimed adaptation of MISS JULIE starring Helen Mirren - but were most famous for making WITCHFINDER GENERAL and BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW. These two films, however, represent Tigon at its worst. ZETA ONE sees secretary Ann Olsen (Yutte Stensgaard) learning that Special Agent James Word (Robin Hawdon) is investigating Public Enemy Number 1, Major Bourdon (James Robertson Justice). Attractive young women are being abducted from Earth and brainwashed into serving space queen Zeta (Dawn Addams) from Angvia (an anagram of vagina). Word is given the task of protecting Edwina (Wendy Lingham), a stripper who is to be the next kidnap victim, though she is working for Bourdon. With the assistance of the inept Swyne (Charles Hawtrey, in a role intended for Frankie Howerd), Bourdon is planning to be the new ruler of this race of scantily clad super women. However, Olsen is another Angvian trying to stop Word from thwarting their unexplained plans.

Described by Films & Filming as "a piece of science fiction pornography," ZETA ONE is a kitsch, one-dimensional romp through the fifth dimension. Based on the swinging sixties London-published Zeta - a magazine which contained captioned photo-stories of naked girls in the name of sci-fi - ZETA ONE opens with a numbingly long strip poker sequence, where after Word and Olson jump into bed and the not so Special Agent narrates the story of his investigation. By the time director Michael Cort had run out of his meagre £60,000 budget, he barely had sixty minutes of footage, and this scene was one of many tweaks to a film that Tenser tried to salvage. The production was an unhappy one, filming in an uncompleted Camden complex where dressing rooms and offices would remain only partially operational. Robertson Justice and Hawtrey seem tired and embarrassed as they await their pay cheques, and the climax - where the aliens, lead by Atropos (Valerie Leon), annihilate a group of hunters by a zap sound effect from their fingertips - brings new meaning to artistic license.

A delightfully misrepresentative German DVD cover for the drab THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR. The appearance of the military at the top of the design - who are key to the plot - seems like an afterthought.

James Kelly's THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR at once reveals its punchline rather than use its more intriguing original title ARE YOU DYING, YOUNG MAN?. Joyce (Flora Robson) and Ellie (Beryl Reid) are two elderly sisters living in an isolated, rural family house. Murders of soldiers at a nearby base are initially blamed on an animal ("a leopard in Lancashire?"), but the culprit turns out to be the spinsters' brother Stephen (Dafydd Havard), who was walled-up in the cellar before WWII to prevent his enlisting and ending up shell-shocked and disfigured like their WWI father. After continually escaping from his confinement, Stephen appears in his taloned-Neanderthal form to haunt his siblings in a thunderstorm-set climax.

THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR was the first Tigon to be shot at Pinewood, yet there is no scope in this static, talkative production; even a 'sex in the barn' scene delivers nothing of interest. The anti-war allegory still resonates, but is lost amidst the endless regurgitation of dialogue - celery is a particular talking point - which are interrupted by jarring, quickly edited murder scenes with minor flashes of blood. Publicity was milked to try to gather some interest (UK trade ads even tried to associate the film to the Edgar Allan Poe quote "and much of madness, and more of sin, and of horror the soul of the plot"), but to no avail. Robson and Reid give stoic performances more associated to the stage, and Robson apparently only took the part after a chance train meeting with Laurence Olivier, who persuaded her to take the offer of work.

Lust of Evil

THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970)
LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (1971)
TWINS OF EVIL (1972)

Hammer starlet Madeline Smith in THE VAMPIRE LOVERS.

WITH an absence of fresh avenues for their monsters to explore, and a relaxation of censorship, Hammer turned to J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla. A curious mix of traditional vampirism and Irish folklore, the novella overtly uses lesbianism to heighten tension and to symbolise abnormality, and was a major influence on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. By adding this explicit frisson to their already luridly realised baronial halls, village taverns and moonlit woods, the studio’s Karnstein Trilogy - all scripted by Tudor Gates - suggests a more obvious deviance and desire, and a recognised stage in which the drama could be played out.

Roy Ward Baker's THE VAMPIRE LOVERS is historically remarkable for being the first (and only) co-production of Hammer Films and American International Pictures. While this combination looks promising on paper, the result is an uneven attempt to bring the studio into the late 1960s marketplace by revelling in lesbian couplings and graphic decapitations. In early 19th Century Styria, Carmilla Karnstein (Ingrid Pitt) is insinuated into the household of General Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing), and the death of his niece soon follows. When Emma Morton (Madeline Smith) begins to suffer from fatigue and anaemia, her fate rests in the hands of her young suitor (Jon Finch) and the vengeful fathers of Carmilla’s previous victims. While too mature and earthy to make an ideal Carmilla – Le Fanu wrote her as a young creature unaware of her destructive effects – Pitt nevertheless displays some memorable vampiric anger, including the panting seduction of a governess played by Kate O'Mara. The central theme of the film is the battle between Carmilla’s brood and the repressed, brutal vampire hunters – Cushing’s General and Douglas Wilmer’s Baron Hartog make suitably grim-faced avengers - reinforcing the question of who represents the greater threat; the uninhibited vampires, or the sadistic authority figures.

LUST FOR A VAMPIRE’s lesbian focus is blurred by its heterosexual romance between Mircalla and the writer turned schoolmaster LeStrange (Michael Johnson, the part a fictional representation of Le Fanu himself). This piece of narrative is appropriately centrepiece in this attractive promotional poster.

The hastily conceived LUST FOR A VAMPIRE never raises above a schoolboy level of eroticism, but this mongrel entry has earned a reputation as a Hammer fan’s guilty pleasure. Here, Carmilla Karnstein is reincarnated as Mircalla (Yutte Stensgaard), a luscious seductress who is enrolled at an exclusive girl’s school. The Danish actress is everything a traditional vampire is not: blonde, blue-eyed and with a cleft chin, but she is also enigmatic, mannequin-like and ethereal, with a forbiddingly cold core. The shot of Mircalla sitting upright in her coffin, her bare breasts drenched in the blood of a sacrificial victim, was the company’s most shocking image since Christopher Lee’s entrance in DRACULA. Stensgaard does not possess Pitt’s burning intensity, but her serene, blank-faced detachment is strangely effective.

The final film of the trilogy – TWINS OF EVIL – is, in fact, set 150 years before its predecessors, and is one of the most brutal and brilliant of Hammer’s latter-day oeuvre. Heavily influenced by WITCHFINDER GENERAL, the film substitutes the exploitation of flesh for an intensity and chilling sense of purpose rare in British horror. Madeleine and Mary Collinson, duly cast as titular Frieda and Maria Gelhorn, stay with their puritanical uncle Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing) in conservative middle Europe, where Count Karnstein (Damien Thomas) is pitted against Weil’s witch-hunting sect. Cushing gives one of his finest screen characterisations – unwilling guardian to his wayward nieces by day, and ritually seeking out and burning young girls by night. Weil is blind in his devotion to duty, with his interpretation of good nothing more than an alternate evil to that being woven by Karnstein. His death scene – plunging from the Count’s balcony to the stone staircase below, surrounded by his black-clad brethren - provides one of the most memorable of all climactic tableaux.

Peter Cushing in TWINS OF EVIL. The film went into production nine weeks after the death of the actor’s wife, and his performance bears the unmistakable signs of this bereavement. Consequently, a character that easily could have been no more than a religious zealot is transformed into something much more resonant.

Horror is not an obvious genre for locating positive representatives of women, based as they are in the misogynist mythology of the female as either virgin or whore; in spite of the presence of numerous female vampires, the cinematic representation of predatory women is invariably a negative one. Victorian vampire literature reveals a belief in the vulnerability of young girls to the temptation of the flesh, and vampire cinema merely gives this notion a contemporary spin. A young woman, one bitten, will become shamelessly promiscuous and a threat to decent society. Patriarchal control in the form of fathers, husbands, vampire hunters or witchfinders, can reign in transgressional impulses but when all else fails, death is the only solution. Within the society of the undead, the usual rules apply.