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.

Time Warp Terror

BLOODY NEW YEAR (1987)

Welcome to the Grand Island Hotel, where FIEND WITHOUT A FACE plays at the theatre, a magazine proclaims Michael Landis was in I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF, and the music is by Cry No More.

THE horror film output of Norman J. Warren was cheaply derivative and mundanely surreal. Starting when both Hammer and Amicus were already past their death throes, Warren's take on SUSPIRIA created the surprise hit TERROR, a catalogue of genre cliches and Dario Argento-inspired sequences which basically views as a highlights package. Yet this is nothing compared to BLOODY NEW YEAR, a dire patchwork in which the filmmaker fully subscribes to Argentoesque nonsensical plotlines and riffs on a number of other hits (A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET and the demonic cacklings of THE EVIL DEAD in particular).

High in concept but very low in budget, an aircraft carrying a Government-funded experiment crashes on an island, causing a time displacement permanently fixed between 1959 and 1960. American Carol (Catherine Roman) is visiting England and killing time by being harassed by some hoodlums at a funfair. Rescued by five strangers, the group go sailing in a boat owned by Rick (Mark Powley), but run into trouble when tiresome lothario Spud (Colin Heywood) steers them onto rocks. The gang wade ashore and discover the Grand Island Hotel (actually Butlins Barry Island), which appears deserted and festively decorated even though it is July. With a disappearing chambermaid and only fifties-style party clothes found in the rooms, the visitors are soon entangled in more bizarre events.

June Whitfield's daughter Suzy Aitchison 

becomes an imitation EVIL DEAD "Deadite." 

It is not clear why a rip in time causes such relentless, unconnected mayhem. Amongst other attacks, the cast are subjected to a killer vacuum cleaner, flying kitchen utensils, a haunted snooker table, deadly fishing nets, a seaweed monster and an indoor snowstorm (Janet (Nikki Brooks) also grapples with a reptile-shaped bannister end cap). To add to their problems, Lesley (Suzy Aitchison) transforms into a pasty-faced ghoul with a New Wave hairdo. The haphazardness is made worse by the acting, and only Roman gives anything you could call a performance. But as the whole film takes place in the light of day, BLOODY NEW YEAR fails to generate any atmosphere; the bustling funfair and disparate island too abstract for an involving experience.

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. 

A New Hope

THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS (2016)

Sennia Nanua begins the film strapped into a wheelchair wearing a Guantanamo Bay-style jumpsuit, before progressing to a Hannibal Lecter face mask and eventual freedom. Ultimately, THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS addresses its dystopian zombie world with issues of race, gender, and generational responsibilities.

ADAPTED from his own best selling novel by M.R. Carey, this absorbing dystopian/infection horror sees humanity ravaged by a fungal disease, were the afflicted become mindless, cannibalistic "Hungries." A small band of hybrid children - including the exceptional Melanie (Sennia Nanua) - hold the key to a vaccine, and go to "school" at an army base where they are simultaneously educated by Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton) and experimented upon by Dr Caldwell (Glenn Close). When the camp and lab is overrun, a muzzled Melanie, Helen and Caldwell escape. Together with Sgt Parks (Paddy Considine) and soldier Gallagher (Fisayo Akinade), the group attempt to communicate with survival cell "The Beacon," while scavenging for food and monitoring the behaviour of their prized asset. 

Utilising authentic locations such as RAF Upper Heyford in Oxfordshire, and with urban London landscapes doubled by drone footage of Prypjat near Chernobyl, the production is firmly helmed by esteemed television director Colm McCarthy. THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS mixes 28 DAYS LATER with that always effective mechanism for terror, children, but also follows Danny Boyle's release for referencing themes from cult entertainment. INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS is wonderfully alluded to in the mutating mass of decomposing bodies encircling BT Tower, threatening to spread its spores for the "second phase." Pod-like behaviour is also evident in the genuinely creepy notion of standing sleep, where the Hungries react to the slightest movement. It is also consistently grisly and black humoured: for example, Caldwell reveals to Melanie that second generation Hungries were discovered after newborns killed their infected mothers by burrowing out of the womb.

Despite a meagre budget of £4m, the casting of the production is exemplary, especially Gemma Arterton and Paddy Considine. 

With the zombie genre now bloated to the extreme, there is a now a confused blurring between inspiration and mimicry. Interestingly, Carey's prose shares similar themes and plot points to the PlayStation game 'The Last of Us', which was released the same year as his source short story Iphigenia In Aulis. Both feature a fungal plague, have a last stage of infection where people sprout spores, and the infected overwhelming rely on a senses (smell and sound). Most tellingly, they each feature a young girl who potentially has the cure. THE GIRL WITH ALL THE GIFTS also taps into our ever-expanding psyche of mortality, evolution of diseases and destruction by environment. Underneath a pounding soundtrack and photography filled with sickly greens and yellows, its heavy handed Greek subtexts are more than compensated for by rounded performances which make you believe in the slow transformation of command. It could be argued that the theatrical appearance of feral infants late on goes against the grain, and that the movie lasts just one scene too long to accommodate its misjudged coda.

"Tops in Total Horror!"

THE CORPSE (1971)

The daughter of UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS actress Rachel Gurney, Sharon Gurney's brief screen career began on television, before graduating to memorable roles in WOMEN IN LOVE and DEATH LINE.

RELEASED in the United States under the nonsensical banner CRUCIBLE OF HORROR, this ambiguous, dreamlike melodrama takes its cue from Henri-Georges Clouzot's celebrated psychological thriller LES DIABOLIQUES. Walter Eastwood (Michael Gough) runs his upper middle class family with suffocating repression: wife Edith (Yvonne Mitchell) has retreated into painting from years of neglect, son Rupert (Simon Gough) is a facsimile of the patriarch working for the same insurance firm, and it is only rebellious daughter Jane (Sharon Gurney) who strives for a life beyond these watertight walls. When Walter discovers sixteen-year-old Jane has been sleeping with a friend from his golf club - and that she has also stolen money from the premises - he horse-whips her to sleep, while in an adjacent room Rupert turns up the volume in his headphones. Listening to her daughter's cries of pain, Edith is awakened from her trance-like state, and the following morning openly whispers to Jane "lets kill him."

Creepy and compelling, Michael Gough is perfect as the overbearing head, illustrating his unwholesome air early on when Jane returns home on her bicycle, only for him to instantly clasp the still-warm seat. One reading is that Edith imagines everything after the beating of her daughter, yet spliced frames of jagged close-ups, a possible rape and a bag full of masks adds to the disorientation. When Edith corners Walter at his grouse shooting weekend - explaining that "I recently bought a copy of the Marquis de Sade, it's full of the most unutterable filth, but it opened up a few windows for me, I thought it might help to understand you" - it begins a middle third which sets up much but delivers little. Walter may well have been poisoned by the females of the clan, but his body won't stay still, moving from its bed to a crate marked "Mrs E Eastwood, Velvet House, Richmond" and creating a floating mental state for the mother who fades altogether as Water retains his place at the breakfast table.

Similar to the filmography of Peter Cushing, Michael Gough never disappoints, even in a wooden crate. His underappreciated performances as a parade of slimy villains should rank higher with the icons of the genre.

Described by producer Gabrielle Beaumont as a political work, THE CORPSE was actually filmed in the Spring of 1969, a period when the feminist movement were questioning the persistence of gender stereotypes; here, the emotionally and physically-abusing male is always in control, with his understated British venom. Consequently, the project can be viewed as an allegory for the ineffectiveness of rebellion within the traditional family unit, to the point where the mother even longs for a fresh outlook she knows will never come ("I'd like to go back to school, start again") and that the father will always return even if he is dead. To add to the frisson, Gough stars with his real-life son and daughter-in-law.

Neither Blood Nor Legacy

NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND (1972)

BLUE BLOOD (1973)
THE LEGACY (1978)

Mills and Boon meets George A. Romero as Michael Petrovitch shifts from misty-eyed romance to the annals of the undead.

IN July 2017, Screenbound collected these three pictures in a handily disposable budget DVD. Adapted from his own novel by ITN newsreader Gordon Honeycombe, NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND sees Anna Robinson (Susan Hampshire) taking a winter break in Jersey from a lifeless marriage, where she falls in love with introverted Hugh Dabernon (Michael Petrovitch). Hugh has a strange affinity with the rugged coastline, and his antiques dealer brother George (Frank Finlay) takes a disliking to Anna, who threatens the insular Dabernon lifestyle. While the inseparable couple are in the North of Scotland, Hugh suddenly has a fatal heart attack, and is issued a death certificate. Through the strength of love he is reanimated; now without conventional speech (conversations are limited to what may well be Anna's imagination), Hugh physically deteriorates, leading the lovers to a watery grave.

Originally optioned by Hammer, director Fred Burnley attempted to ensure that the film would not be known as "another Tigon horror movie" (Tigon would be rebranded LMG by the time of release), but regardless of genre expectations, it was labelled by Time Out as "one of the worst films of the decade." NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND - nor entertainment - is a ponderous love story without charisma, and a supernatural tale with little Fortean interest (reincarnation within Dabernon history is briefly hinted, as is Robinson being a witch). With no connection on screen, Hampshire and Petrovitch are doomed from the onset, Hampshire's theatrics grating with Petrovitch's distant portrayal; when Hugh's rigor mortis starts to set in, there is no difference to our male lead's performance. What remains is ninety minutes of meaningful stares and glances.

The Peasants are revolting: Oliver Reed not so much chews the scenery than spits it out in BLUE BLOOD.

Directed by Andrew Sinclair, BLUE BLOOD is a delirious story of Devil worship set and filmed at Wiltshire's Longleat House. Gregory (Derek Jacobi) is a young aristocrat who complains of modern England while maintaining a servant lifestyle, which includes new German Nanny Beate (Meg Wynne Owen). Entrusting control of the house to butler Tom (Oliver Reed), and in a complicated relationship with his estranged singer wife Lily (an icy Fiona Lewis), the Lord succumbs to the unholy practises of the under classes, governed by his leading manservant. Adapted from Alexander Thynn's novel The Carry-Cot by Sinclair, Thynn is the 7th Marquess of Bath and grew up in his family's seat at Longleat (and to further the in-house connections, BLUE BLOOD features Thynn's wife Anna Grael as Gregory's mistress Carlotta). UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS on acid, Reed's ham performance is either extraordinary inept or one that plays to the general foolishness; moving like an automaton, Tom's Satanic control is built up by a series of almost freeze-framed red-hued images of black masses and sacrifice, usually depicting Owen, Grael and Lewis draped around him while holding a bloodied knife.

THE LEGACY is another tale of Mansion-based Satanic shenanigans. Designers Maggie Walsh (Katharine Ross) and Pete Danner (Sam Elliott) leave California to work for an anonymous British client. On reaching their destination they are involved in an accident with a limousine, which is actually owned by their benefactor, Jason Mountolive (John Standing). Inviting them to his estate, Mountolive introduces Walsh and Danner to five guests, who die in a variety of ways: Maria (Marianne Broome) drowns; Clive (Roger Daltrey) chokes to death; Karl (Charles Gray) is burned alive; Barbara (Hildegard Neill) is pierced by a splintered mirror; and Jacques (Lee Montague) falls from a roof. All had chequered pasts, and were spared punishment due to Jason's unorthodox interventions: his mother being Lady Margaret Walsingham, a practitioner of witchcraft. It transpires that Walsh is actually Mountolive's great-granddaughter, and Jason's last acts were to kill the other heirs so Katharine can continue Satan's work.

British character actor John Standing is under the emaciated

makeup of a dying Occultist in THE LEGACY.

Although graced with exquisite cinematography both externally (the lush country setting) and internally (white cats on marble staircases), this tepid Anglo-American production suffers from an inappropriate upbeat soundtrack and lengthy dull patches between the body count. Directed by Richard Marquand, THE LEGACY is all too twee to adhere effectively to the twin 70s fixations of black magic and haunted houses (to further amplify the Seventies feel, we have an opening credits "love-in" with a song from Kiki Dee). The original treatment was written by Jimmy Sangster and "polished" by British SF author Patrick Tilley and Paul Wheeler; Sangster unsurprisingly disowned the film as the "tinkering" involved moving the setting wholesale from a rundown Detroit hospital to the grounds of Mountolive's Ravenhurst.

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. 

"Yes, I can hear you Clem Fandango"

TOAST OF LONDON (2012 - )

TOAST OF LONDON is the latest in a long-line of comedic triumphs for Matt Berry, following star turns in GARTH MARENGHI'S DARKPLACE, SNUFF BOX, THE IT CROWD and HOUSE OF FOOLS.

THIS deliciously bonkers Channel 4 sitcom, written by Arthur Mathews and Matt Berry, charts the misadventures of middle-aged actor Steven Toast (Berry). The London-based thespian with a streak of white hair spends most of his time dealing with personal issues away from stage and screen, a situation not helped by his self-absorbent agent Jane Plough (Doon Mackichan), who relentlessly provides him with disastrous roles. Plough also gives Toast voice-over assignments with Scramble Studios in Soho - mimicking Berry's own lucrative side career - where he locks horns with sound engineers Danny Bear (Tim Downie) and Clem Fandango (Shazad Latif). Other recurring characters are Ed Howzer-Black (Robert Bathurst), Toast's flat-mate and one true friend; Colonel Blair Toast (Adrian Lukis), Steven's eccentric army veteran older brother who lost his hand in the Falklands; Ray "Bloody" Purchase (Harry Peacock), a rival actor; and Mrs Purchase (Tracy Ann Oberman), Ray's prostitute wife who even he has paid to have sex with, a woman who has an off and on affair with Toast himself.

Utilising Berry's outstanding musical talent - 'Take My Hand' from his third album Witchazel acts both as a theme tune and a comment on Blair's predicament - TOAST OF LONDON is a masterful absurdist comedy that is branching out from its tough time-slots. Bedfordshire-born Berry is a true original, his rich baritone voice and stoic demeanour making him perfect for a character in fine tune with colonial Olde England. Grumpy and woman-obsessed, Toast is always to the point, disliking extra-safe condoms because their thickness doesn't necessitate the additional effort, and struggling to attract Hollywood roles because he once said that Minnie Driver had a big face. The second and third series (screened in 2014 and 2015 respectively) build on this surreal foundation, adding famous faces such as Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme and Jon Hamm to the mix. The third stint is particularly entertaining, where Toast is reacquainted with Purchase's albino twin brother Bill, we encounter Bob Monkhouse's zombie wife, and a production of Twelfth Night cast entirely of dogs.

"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.

Worlds of the Dead

THE ZOMBIE DIARIES 2: WORLD OF THE DEAD (2011)
OUTPOST II: BLACK SUN (2012)
COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES (2012)

ZOMBIE DIARIES 2's decontamination suites recall images from George A. Romero's original CRAZIES. The cut-away scenes of the white figures rounding up civilians like cattle to shoot then burn them is detrimental to the "race against time" narrative.

RETURNING to the world created in their 2007 hit THE ZOMBIE DIARIES, Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates use the same lead character Leeann (Alix Wilton Regan, replacing Victoria Nalder) and predatory villains Goke (Russell Jones) and Manny (Hiram Bleetman) for the pro-military sequel THE ZOMBIE DIARIES 2: WORLD OF THE DEAD. Found by a squad of T.A. reservists - with their own documenting cameraman - traumatised Leeann journeys with them across zombie-infested Hertfordshire towards Hope’s Point, where rescue ships are due in two days. As the group head towards this destination, civilians are as much a threat as the ghouls. Starting effectively with an intimate family birthday gone to hell, ZOMBIE DIARIES 2 is more polished than the original, but doesn't bring anything new to the table. Its relentlessly grim facade rejoices in three rape scenes, the most self-defeating filmed in gloating close-up; and it is ironic that the most memorable aspect was produced by a fortuitous cold-snap during production, with snow adding to the struggle and providing an edge to the midnight dash through a graveyard.

Released four years after their claustrophobic and testosterone-fuelled OUTPOST, director Steve Barker and writer Rae Brunton widen the scope - and shift the tone - for OUTPOST II: BLACK SUN. In the present day, a NATO force is sent to Eastern Europe, where a sinister enemy appears to be killing everything in its path. Following in the footsteps of her late father, Lena (Catherine Steadman) - an investigator on the trail of the notorious German scientist Klausener (David Grant) - learns that the war crimes of the man she is looking for goes far beyond the blasphemy of extermination camps. Together with former colleague Wallace (Richard Coyle) - a physicist who has been chasing Nazi secrets for years - they team up with the NATO force to prevent the rise of a zombie 4th Reich.

The depiction of the Nazi undead is the highlight of OUTPOST II: BLACK SUN; relentlessly brutal, the zombies either club their prey or stab them repeatedly, with the visuals presented in an effectively dirty brown-and-grey colour palette.

Despite a promising opening salvo with an aged SS officer, Steadman becomes yet another ineffectual female lead and largely unable to look after herself, despite being a seasoned Nazi hunter. As usual, it is up to the military grunts to protect her, who are portrayed as the usual stereotypes: the ruthless one, the compassionate one, the belligerent one, and the wise-cracking one. In fact, the history of the Black Sun and its adaptations into popular culture are more interesting than anything in Barker's film. This motif may have originated from the Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky's Central Sun, an invisible or burnt out star which symbolises an opposing force or pole, and it was former SS member Wilhelm Landig who coined the idea of a mystical source capable of regenerating the Aryan race. Pop culture references include Grant Morrison's comic strip Zenith, which makes its Black Sun cult a combination of Nazi and Lovecraftian ideas; in the novel Satan's Seed by Mark Ellis, the Brotherhood of the Black Sun and Aleister Crowley use geomancy to travel through time; and in the computer game Wolfenstein, the Black Sun was actually another dimension altogether.

The feature directing debut of German Matthias Hoene - who rebooted Hammer for the 2008 online serial BEYOND THE RAVE - and co-written by James Moran, who penned SEVERANCE - the zombie-gangster-comedy COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES does everything it says on the tin, but isn't as wily as it thinks it is. A proposed building development threatens the Bow Bells Care Home with closure, and to secure the wellbeing of their war-hero grandfather Ray (Alan Ford), chancer brothers Terry (Rasmus Hardiker) and Andy (Harry Treadaway) ineptly rob a bank with the aid of spunky cousin Katy (Michelle Ryan), friend Davey (Jack Doolan) and psychopathic weapons-specialist "Mental" Mickey (Ashley Thomas). But the East End of London has more pressing matters; workers at the development site have excavated into a plague pit sealed by Charles II in 1666, unleashing a mutated infection that transforms humans into shambling zombies.

"The Undead are Brown Bread." Former EASTENDER Michelle Ryan is effortlessly strong and sexy in the otherwise irksome COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES.

Overtly formulaic and a SHAUN OF THE DEAD facsimile, COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES suffers from muted action scenes, no real tension, and cockney rhyming slang jokes that wear thin pretty fast. Consequently, it's not funny enough to be a memorable comedy, and not scary enough for hardcore zombie enthusiasts. The film works best when it depicts the potential abandonment of the elderly. In the stand-out sequence, deaf Hamish (Richard Briers) hobbles along on his zimmer at the same pace as a ghoul eager for his flesh, and it is this old guard of performers - Ford, Briers, Honor Blackman, Dudley Sutton, Tony Selby, Georgina Hale - that provide the production with ballast.

"God is Dead"

THE BUNKER (2001)
DEATHWATCH (2002)

THE BUNKER is rich in flashbacks but low on chills.

ONE of the most popular sub-genres of horror is the supernatural war scenario, particularly German zombies. A precursor to Nazisploitation, THE FROZEN DEAD resurrected members of the Third Reich by attaching their severed heads to new bodies; spirits of an SS torture ship haunted DEATH SHIP; goggle-wearing undead rose from the depths in SHOCK WAVES; German soldiers killed by the French Resistance were dumped in a ZOMBIE LAKE; and in DEAD SNOW, a group of Norwegian students battle Nazi zombies in search for hidden gold. One of the strongest entries in this category is the previously reviewed OUTPOST, where mercenaries explore a bunker once used by Nazis to conduct experiments on reality manipulation and reanimation. The two horror-war hybrids under consideration here are less sensationalist that these previous films, made by first-time directors and both hampered by flat scripts.

Rob Green's THE BUNKER is set on the German-Belgian border during the death throes of WWII, where German soldiers on the run from swiftly advancing Americans seek refuge in a munitions complex. The Nazi troops - who include intensely devoted Schenke (Andrew Tiernan) and reluctant Captain Baumann (Jason Flemyng) - discover that the bunker is attached to an incomplete series of tunnels. The original tenants warn against venturing into the maze, which is supposedly haunted by Jewish workers killed for refusing to finish their work. Living up to its opening Nietzsche quote "If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you," THE BUNKER is a tediously dull affair. The endless, edgy anguish of the infantrymen - who share a guilty secret that in itself is driving them mad - builds to a payoff which never arrives. Fans of war or horror will feel let down by the distinct lack of violence, though the opening sprint for safety is accompanied by a chilling sound design of bullets travelling through air and flesh. Ultimately it is difficult to view any film where seven German soldiers are all played by actors with a range of British accents.

The trench of DEATHWATCH act as a metaphor of 
reanimated evil, regurgitating its warring factions.

The British/German co-production DEATHWATCH - shot almost entirely on location in a field in Prague - is by far the stronger of the two. After the chaos of a battle on the Western Front, 1917, the British soldiers of Y Company find themselves enveloped by a mysterious mist; lost and without communication, they emerge to discover a deserted German trench. Convinced they have broken through enemy lines, they decide to secure the rat-infested network and begin to explore it – only to find mutilated bodies amongst the warren of muddy tunnels. After the rest of the men lose their minds under the influence of supernatural forces and bleeding mud, the underage volunteer of the group enters a hole which suggests that the preceding events are hallucinations of a dying brain.

Director Michael J. Bassett conjures unsettling images such as undead mud-men and corpses covered in barbed wire, and with its constant, rain-soaked pestilence - one character has his gangrenous legs eaten by rats - DEATHWATCH is a sobering reminder of real-life horrors that action-heavy combat movies blind us to. Although the performances are stoic, the narrative is negated by too many character cliches: the underage conscript Private Charlie Shakespeare (Jamie Bell, the BILLY ELLIOT star who was almost blown up during production), the class war evoked by Captain Jennings (Laurence Fox), the thoughtful but sympathetic Sargeant Tate (Hugo Speer), religious fanatic Bradford (Hugh O'Conor) and psychotic Quinn (Andy Serkis in typically scene-devouring mode). As grim as the First World War was, the most horrific moment comes when Starinski (Kris Marshal - light years from his role in MY FAMILY and the BT ads) - masturbates in an isolated part of the trench over some picture cards.

Aliens, Mutants and Terence Fisher

THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING (1964)
ISLAND OF TERROR (1966)

Invading alien robots - impervious to bullets, but not to Land Rovers - shamble around in THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING. Resembling a visage put together from whatever the film maker's could find lying around Shepperton studios, the creation reminds of Cybermen to come. 

ONLY a few weeks after completing his directing assignment on Hammer's THE GORGON, Terence Fisher was at the helm of THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING, a hardly feature-length offering from Lippert Films. An alien gas attack has wiped out the entire population of England - possibly the world - and caused some to be reanimated as white-eyed zombie slaves. Amongst this carnage, American test pilot Jeff Nolan (Willard Parker) is soon joined by Quinn Taggart (Dennis Price), Peggy (Virginia Field), Vi (Vanda Godsell) and husband Eddie (Thorley Walters). All share the same unifying factor, that during the previous evening they were all in purified air conditions, thus avoiding the threat. When two space-suited humanoids are seen walking in the street, Vi runs out to greet them in the mistaken belief they are military assistance; in fact, they are alien robots who kill her by lethal touch. After another pair of survivors arrive - Mel (David Spenser) and his pregnant wife Lorna (Anna Palk) - the group venture to a local Royal Engineers TA drill hall in the hunt for weapons.

THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING is somnolent sci-fi on a shoestring budget - the opening montage even utilises stock footage from VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED - which attempts to host an apocalyptic invasion with two robots and a conservative scattering of dead bodies filmed in the Surrey village of Shere. No-one dies screaming; even the zombies - when shot - regress to the dramatics of a school playground, and the invasion is finally foiled by the destruction of a rickety old radio mast. Fisher was no fan of science fiction, but he does inject some atmosphere into the village-under-siege dynamic, especially the reanimated Vi staircase walk, and the eerie framing of an alien watching Lorna through a netted window. The performances are purely functionary, with the exception of Price and Walters; Walters is entertaining as ever in his trademark role of frightened alcoholic, but Price is the standout as Taggart. There is a wonderful scene where he attempts to rescue wads of useless money from a fire - hinting at a seedy past which is never fleshed out - and the slippery character fittingly leads the robots to his colleagues when in zombie-state.

Menacing bone-sucking tendrils erupt in this German poster for ISLAND OF TERROR.

Two years later Fisher directed the guilty pleasure ISLAND OF TERROR for Planet Films. On Petrie's Island off the coast of Ireland, researchers are working on a cure for cancer, but accidentally create a race of bone-sucking creatures dubbed silicates. After the discovery of a body which has been reduced to jelly, local Dr Landers (Eddie Byrne) seeks help from scientists Dr Brian Stanley (Peter Cushing) and Dr David West (Edward Judd), who travel to the island with West’s socialite girlfriend Toni (Carole Gray). The two scientists discover that bullets, fire and dynamite won’t stop the silicates from advancing on the island’s humans and cattle.

Co-produced by science-horror specialist Richard Gordon, ISLAND OF TERROR can be seen as a inferior re-imagining of his earlier FIEND WITHOUT A FACE. Everything is in place for an effective monster movie: a laboratory destroyed by a new life form, creatures who emit an eerie slurping sound, unexplainable corpses ("like mush with the two eyes a-sittin' in it"), no telephones or form of escape, and Peter Cushing. Although the veteran actor's screen time is shared by Judd's younger, more bullish scientist, it is testament to all of the players who attempt to create tension away from the appearance of the silicates. They may have a fast-moving tentacle, but their plastic-looking bases move so slowly that you wonder how they have effectively snared so many victims (they can even climb trees). Despite all the impending doom, as Kim Newman states in his Video Watchdog review, "as often in British SF, we learn that crises should be left to the experts, even if boffins have started the trouble."

Hammer Has Risen From The Grave

WAKE WOOD (2011)

A reworking of W.W. Jacobs’ The Monkey’s Paw and Stephen King's Pet Sematary, WAKE WOOD also owes debts to DON'T LOOK NOW and THE WICKER MAN. But despite these reference points, the film successfully attempts a genuine Hammer resurrection.

HAMMER has been in a state of frustration since the 1980s. New beginnings always fizzled into oblivion, including a Warner Bros deal in 1993 which proposed a $100m programme of remakes, a deal with Firstsight Ltd announced at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, and 2003 had a schedule issued by Queensland-based Pictures in Paradise. Then in 2007 it was announced that Dutch media tycoon John De Mol - whose production house invented the BIG BROTHER reality show - had purchased the Hammer rights to over 300 films in the studio's back catalogue, and the company was restarted under the guidance of Simon Oakes. The first output under the new regime was BEYOND THE RAVE - made in conjunction with Channel 4  - which premiered free on myspace in twenty, four-minute segments during 2008. This contemporary vampire serial with blasting techno (selected by dance-music maestro, Pete Tong, innit) and hip street lingo couldn't have been further from expectations.

David Keating's WAKE WOOD was the first of the new Hammer films to be shot, but the last to be released, after Matt Reeves' needless English language version of LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, LET ME IN, and Antti Jokinen's voyeuristic misfire THE RESIDENT. WAKE WOOD tells the story of Patrick (Aidan Gillen) and Louise (Eva Birthistle), who move to the Irish village of Wake Wood after their daughter Alice (Ella Connolly) is killed in a savage dog attack. One night, they stumble upon a ritual led by Arthur (Timothy Spall), and soon learn that the community has the power to bring the recently deceased back to life for three days. The couple desperately want to see Alice again, and so begins the latest ceremony where their daughter is "reborn" via the utilisation of another corpse - a farmer who died in an accident involving a bull - which is systematically pressed, cut, covered in mud and burnt to recreate a suitable husk. 

Arriving in Wake Wood for a fresh start, a young couple become trapped in a tortured existence with their undead daughter. 

Gillen and Birthistle are fine as the grieving parents - Birthistle should be used to menacing minors after THE CHILDREN and Spall evidently enjoys his turn as the village elder with nocturnal habits, but it is the wide-eyed Connolly was is the most effective as the dead soul, switching from wholesome child to murderous spawn with relative ease. Made in conjunction with the Irish Film Board and the Swedish Film Institute, WAKE WOOD is a slow-burning and emotionally draining film which draws heavily from past cult favourites. Refreshingly old school with its English eccentricities and grue, this may, however, restrict its modern appeal, and acceptance may be limited to those enveloped in Hammer nostalgia.

During their years of inactivity, many intriguing Hammer projects were mentioned, ranging from Jamaican voodoo film THE WHITE WITCH OF ROSE HALL, epic television anthology THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HAMMER, and a mini-series based on Peter Norden's Salon Kitty. Yet WAKE WOOD feels like the kind of film "new" Hammer should be making. With any reinvention of such a historic brand, production natures need to be tweaked, but a respect to their heritage is also important. Case in point is the new DOCTOR WHO, which is currently losing its prime time viewers in a whirlwind of riddles and bombastic CGI; it will be interesting to see over the coming years if Oakes will keep the ship away from revenue friendly crowd-pleasers, or commit to earthy releases with one eye on the past.