Queen of Darkness

BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB (1971)

Valerie Leon enjoys British cult status ten times over: one Hammer horror, seven CARRY ON's, and two James Bond's. From 1969 to 1975, she was best known for her Hai Karate commercials, and later spoofed her man eater image by playing a whip-cracking dominatrix in REVENGE OF THE PINK PANTHER.

BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB is a lurid Hammer adaptation of Bram Stoker's first-person narrative The Jewel of Seven Stars published in 1903; it is a film as much about images as it is characters: snake and cat statues, the skull of a jackal, a ruby ring and a fixation with throat-cutting and Valerie Leon's breasts. In early 1970s London, Margaret (Leon) suffers a recurring nightmare about an ancient Egyptian Queen to whom she bears an uncanny resemblance. The priests who entomb the Queen first chop off her hand but, after throwing the member to the jackals, are killed by a mysterious force that lacerates their throats (as are the animals). A day before her birthday, Margaret's father, archaeologist Professor Fuchs (Andrew Keir), gives her a ruby ring. This artifact was discovered when, twenty years before, Fuchs and four others broke into the tomb of Queen Tera and found the item on a disembodied hand. At that moment, thousands of miles away, Margaret's mother died giving birth to her, signaling the start of Tera's sorcery.

With the marginal exception of THE WITCHES, this is Hammer's first Gothic to have a contemporary setting, and the production moves towards the ambiguous endings that would become standard for horror in the 70s: is it Margaret or Tera, swathed in bandages, that survives in the hospital bed? Dubbed throughout, Leon gives a suitably dream-like performance in her dual role. Shakespearean actress Amy Grant was initially cast as Margaret/Tera, but Sir James Carreras soon over-ruled in favour of Leon, despite her inexperience in leading roles. Consequently the actress felt insecure on set, and one can only yearn for the part to have been offered to Martine Beswick. Of the other players Keir's Fuchs is underwritten, even hinting at incest; James Villiers is suave as the scheming Corbeck; Aubrey Morris is bizarre as the sunglass-wearing Dr Putnam; and on a trivial note, in an early attempt at an in-joke, Australian Mark Edwards plays Margaret's boyfriend Tod Browning, who is written out well before the climax even though he receives an "and introducing" credit.

Bruce Timm's rendering of Leon for the back cover of Richard Klemensen's Hammer fanzine Little Shoppe of Horrors #24 (May 2010).

Fitting for its subject matter, BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB was one of Hammer's most cursed pictures. Peter Cushing was initially cast as Fuchs, but Keir was hurriedly drafted in because of Helen Cushing's ill health. Screenwriter Christopher Wicking was banned from the set after an altercation with producer Howard Brandy, a young art department employee died in a motorcycle accident, and director Seth Holt succumbed to a sudden, fatal heart attack with a week's filming still to complete. Michael Carreras, who had just became the studio's Managing Director, prepared for a total re-shoot, but ultimately finished the production and supervised the assembly himself. 

Despite all this behind the scenes chaos, the film is a welcome re-imagining of the often maligned Mummy sub-genre, moving away from a shambling monster. It also possesses an atmosphere unlike any other Hammer, which is refreshing particularly in context with the studio's cheapening output; the drab modern suburbia seems almost permanently overcast, the nocturnal gloom an appropriate atmosphere for the return of Tera. It is as if Holt's spirit hangs over the production, creating an eeriness and melancholy that crosses the barrier between life and death. The problems that plagued the film inadvertently contributed to its non-linear style, but BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB has a Lovecraftian feel, and also benefits from an effective severed hand, where disturbing shots of Tera's lactating stump ooze blood after each killing.

Retread of the Cybermen

DOCTOR WHO - ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN (1985)

Briefly working alongside Peter Davidson's Fifth Doctor, before developing a more spiky relationship with Colin Baker's incarnation, Nicola Bryant successfully auditioned for the role of companion Peri soon after finishing drama school. Appearing in a number of revealing outfits to bring more sex appeal to the series, there is no doubting Bryant was one of the most naturally attractive actresses to grace Classic DOCTOR WHO.

WHEN Colin Baker was announced as the Sixth Doctor, it was the beginning of the end for Classic DOCTOR WHO. Allegedly invited to play the role by producer John Nathan-Turner on the grounds of his entertainment value at a mutual wedding, Baker began his travels in THE TWIN DILEMMA, which showed the regenerated Time Lord as dangerously unstable and with outrageous mood swings. A major problem with this reign was his costume; continuing Nathan-Turner's policy of giving his Doctor's stylised facades, Baker's monstrosity encouraged - indeed, almost requires - equally gaudy production design and outlandish stories to compete.

Nathan-Turner had decided to break with precedent by making the new Doctor's debut story the last of a current season rather than the first of the next. This decision was made in the hope of engaging viewers early to the incoming actor, but together with the shift to a forty-five minute episode format, and the return to Saturday schedules, the road ahead seemed as uncertain as Baker's portrayal. Season twenty-two began with ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN, which also rekindled criticism of violence. It seemed, by this point, that DOCTOR WHO had become unnecessarily preoccupied with its back-catalogue (fans were acting as unpaid continuity advisers), rather than deliver what the majority wanted: original tales in the tested style. This serial references other Cyber stories with London sewers (THE INVASION), a Cyber Controller and cryogenic chamber on their adopted planet Telos (THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN), and Mondas' imminent destruction in 1986 (THE TENTH PLANET). Out of this comes a confused tale of Cybermen trying to prevent the destruction of their home world in the past, while their domination of Telos seems assured in the future.

Michael Kilgarriff reprises his role as the Cyber Controller from THE TOMB OF THE CYBERMEN with hilarious results. After a gap of some eighteen years the actor had "filled out" considerably, and his "Cyber-tent" suit met with delusion from fans questioning such a trivial casting ploy.

But ATTACK OF THE CYBERMEN is not without interest. The London sewers and the de-saturated feel of Telos are effective, and the female, ethereal Cryons - the native race on Telos - bring a much-needed contrast to the masculinity of the Cybermen and brutish ex-Dalek agent Lytton (Maurice Colbourne). The TARDIS' fabled Chameleon Circuit is also repaired - briefly - which changes its exterior shape to blend into its surroundings; here, a cupboard, then a pipe-organ and ornamental gateway before reverting back to a police box. In fact, Baker's line "the TARDIS, when working properly, is capable of many amazing things, not unlike myself" seems a statement of what the production had become.

Full of Secrets

THE SKULL (1965)
TORTURE GARDEN (1967)
THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD (1970)

"Welcome to the Club!"; Ingrid Pitt plays leading lady Carla in The Cloak segment of THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD.

TORTURE GARDEN and THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD are two of seven horror anthologies produced by Amicus, and both have tales adapted from his own stories by Robert Block. A low-budget operation which was the most serious rival to Hammer during the 1960s and early 1970s, Amicus were officially a British company founded in 1961 by two Americans, creative force Milton Subotsky and financier Max J. Rosenberg. Amicus may mean friend in Latin, but by the time the company was dissolved in 1975, the relationship between the two producers was far from amicable. The biggest irony is that Subotsky and Rosenberg were indirectly responsible for Hammer making their breakthrough THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN in 1957, ushering in a generation of Technicolor horrors; Subotsky had written a script for a colour Frankenstein, which was bought by James Carreras and allegedly re-written by Jimmy Sangster.

A prime reason for Amicus to be lodged as a British company can be traced to the advantages of the Eady Levy, a government incentive passed in the 1950s to stimulate film production by which producers were paid a subsidy on percentage of box office. Not only is there conjecture of how British the company actually was, there is also the notion that Amicus didn't really make horror films per se; their softer outlook seems to tie in more with Subotsky's love of fantasy. The distinct Amicus character lays in Subotsky himself, who possessed a child-like innocence at odds with the cynicism of the film industry. Although the company milked the British connection in terms of actors, directors and technicians, their reliance on American material (such as the controversial EC Comics for TALES FROM THE CRYPT and THE VAULT OF HORROR) and use of contemporary settings distanced the product from homegrown Gothique.

Directed by Peter Duffell, THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD benefits from strong performances by Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Denholm Elliott.

Yet TORTURE GARDEN and particularly THE SKULL provide such a footing. TORTURE GARDEN is the name of a sideshow where Dr Diablo (Burgess Meredith) invites patrons backstage for further excitement. As each customer stares into the shears of fate held by Atropos (Clytie Jessop) - a fortune-telling mannequin - they become hypnotised and glimpse their ultimate fate. Four stories are revealed: the first, Enoch, sees a nephew (Michael Bryant) demanding to know where his uncle's stash of gold coins are hidden; the second, Terror Over Hollywood, has a struggling actress stymieing her roommate's date to meet a prominent Hollywood producer; the third, Mr Steinway, is about a killer piano; and in The Man Who Collected Poe, Jack Palance and Peter Cushing play competing Edgar Allan Poe fanatics.

Directed by Freddie Francis, TORTURE GARDEN is a turgid affair. Bloch had proposed that the film be called HORRORSCOPE, an effective moniker more apt than the redundant one chosen: Torture Garden comes from the decadent novel by French anarchist Octave Mirabeau published in 1898, a fact that irritated Bloch up until his death. The middle two stories are simply embarrassing: not only are we subjected to the most laughable Hollywood nightclub set, it is difficult to see how any filmmaker could successfully bring to screen a story where a woman is murdered by a piano. However Enoch is atmospheric, and The Man Who Collected Poe is a mini-masterpiece; the final revelation that Poe himself (Hedger Wallace) is lovingly preserved in a cobwebbed vault underneath Cushing's private museum presents Amicus with its most lasting Gothic image.

"Look deeply into the Shears of Fate!" A promotional gimmick for the film was to give away sachets of "fright seeds" so audiences could go home and plant their own TORTURE GARDEN.

Despite its lurid title, THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD is relatively anaemic. Following the disappearance of its current occupant - horror film star Paul Henderson (Jon Pertwee) - Inspector Holloway (John Bennett) discovers that the three previous owners of a house in the Home Counties have all come to unpleasant ends. The first story - Method For Murder - sees horror writer Charles Hillyer (Denholm Elliott) move into the house with his young wife to finish his latest novel. He is very proud of his creation - a psychotic strangler named Dominick - but becomes increasingly unnerved as he begins to see the killer making appearances in his everyday life. The second - Waxworks - has Philip Grayson (Peter Cushing) haunted by memories of the woman whom he loved and lost many years before. Sweets To The Sweet tells of stiff-backed disciplinarian John Reid (Christopher Lee), a father who is terrified that his small daughter Jane (Chloë Franks) may have inherited her dead mother's unsavoury hobbies, and in the final tale - the light-hearted The Cloak - Henderson arrives at the house as he prepares to appear in his latest film opus. Irritated at the low production values, the self-important actor declines the moth-eaten garment he is offered for his costume and insists on obtaining one of his own. Visiting an obscure costumier, he acquires a much more convincing item.

The four tales have differing tones that make the film entertaining but hackneyed. Elliott gives a bravura performance in the opening segment, and the unpredictable introductions of the grinning Dominick are genuinely unsettling. Waxworks is an overtly thin entry raised by Cushing's controlled evocation of loss and jealousy, Sweets to the Sweet is an effective family drama, and The Cloak is more amusing in outline than on screen.

For THE SKULL, director Freddie Francis and cameraman John Wilcox filmed the POV shots with a large prop cranium mounted in front of the lens, a trick Francis would repeat for THE CREEPING FLESH.

Based on Bloch's The Skull of the Marquis de Sade (published in the September 1945 issue of Weird Tales), THE SKULL is the crowning achievement of Amicus and the most accomplished of the many horror films directed by cinematographer Francis, as well as being the finest of the Cushing/Lee team-ups since their Hammer breakthroughs. The lengthy pre-credits sequence is set in the early 19th century, where a French phrenologist (Maurice Good) steals the head of the Marquis de Sade from his grave, intending to study its formation to prove that de Sade was not insane but rather possessed by an evil spirit. Jumping forward to modern day, against the advice of fellow collector Sir Matthew Phillips (Lee), occult writer Christopher Maitland (Cushing) adds the skull of de Sade to his collection, acquiring the item from seedy supplier Marco (Patrick Wymark). It is also ironic that with this film it was Amicus - rather than the risible Hammer attempts DRACULA, A.D. 1972 and THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA - that succeeded in transposing Gothic horror to the present.

An exceptionally downbeat movie, THE SKULL portrays Maitland, Marco and Phillips living suffocating lives; neither Maitland or Phillips are practising students of the black arts, more armchair occultists cocooned in their own dark academia. Unusually - especially for the straight-laced Amicus - THE SKULL experiments with form: the third act is virtually silent, there is a surreal nightmare sequence, and shots are shown from the Skull's subjective point of view (actions viewed through hollow sockets, with inner bone aglow with an unnatural green hue). This fluid nature was imposed on Francis by trying to provide a feature-length film from a meagre Subotsky script only 53 pages in length, but the result is a marvel of production design and ingenuity.

The Figurehead

Dodgem Logic (2009 - )

National treasure and Glycon snake cultist Alan Moore is unsurprisingly the mastermind behind a return to the 1960s style underground press.

WHEN Alan Moore wrote an article for OVR2U - a youth and community publication in his native Northampton - about a particularly deprived area of the Borough, the piece was rejected by the funding body on grounds that it was critical of the council. Consequently, Moore felt he couldn't talk about the real problems people were facing without breaking free, and the seeds for Dodgem Logic were sown. Part entertainment and part grassroots activism, the first issue - released in November 2009 - contained the tagline "colliding ideas to see what happens," which fittingly describes this refreshingly free-wheeling enterprise. Dodgem Logic #1 contained a CD celebrating 50 years of Northampton music, while #2 (February 2010) has an inserted mini-comic Astounding Weird Penises.

Moore's new venture has the luddite appeal, for those who tearfully yearn for the tangible fanzine. Whether it's recipe pages or political agenda, Dodgem Logic resurrects the spirit of 60s alternative papers International Times and Oz, whose fanatical anti-war stance was flanked by gay liberation and extreme political views which now seem mundane but were frighteningly prophetic. There is also a real sense that this is a personal project for the scribe; there are rumours that he delivered a batch of Dodgems to his local comic shop in person asking "Does Frank Miller do that?" But Dodgem Logic is by no means a one-man show: think of Moore as the curator of an varied display of talent, sincerity and open-mindedness.

Dodgem Logic #2 contains Melinda Gebbie’s article on Burlesque, past, present and future.

But no matter now earnest Dodgem Logic strives to be, it cannot begin to compare with the tempestuous and influential period International Times or Oz were published. In 1970, reacting to criticism that they had lost touch with the young generation, Oz's editors invited school children to edit an issue. The opportunity was taken up by mostly Public School students, and one of the resulting articles was a sexualised Rupert Bear parody created by pasting the head of Rupert onto the lead character of an X-rated cartoon by Robert Crumb. Oz's offices had already been raided on several occasions, but the conjunction of school children and what some viewed as obscene material set the scene for the infamous obscenity trial of 1971.

Forty years on, however, the status of the printed magazine has changed radically. Since the World Wide Web, publications have been rendered redundant by their online counterparts, with websites offering free content (often reproducing the exact same articles that you'd find in the magazines themselves) and delivering news in a far timelier manner than their printed counterparts. Similarly, the bonafide fanzine has been reborn as the WeBlog, with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter mirroring the society's fixation with texting, as the morons wallow in their world of self-gratification and zero substance. In this context, the launch of Dodgem Logic seems even more brave, and it is gratifying it has been so well received. At just £2.50, it represents superb value for money.

Beswick Rules

ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. (1966)
PREHISTORIC WOMEN (1966)

Martine Beswick - a B-Movie queen before the term was created - as Kari in the bewildering PREHISTORIC WOMEN. Here is the actress on the cover of Britain's short-lived movie magazine Showtime (May 1966).

HAMMER'S biggest commercial hit and greatest folly, Don Chaffey's ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. was a success jointly because of Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion dinosaurs and Raquel Welch's doeskin and fur bikini. The feature is a hopelessly anachronistic melange of prehistoric man, volcanoes and reptiles; not only is the film a scientific abnormality, it is also an aberration in the context of the maturing cinematic landscape of the 60s. Away from Harryhausen's creations, ONE MILLION YEARS B.C.'s wafer-thin plot tells of a mixed-tribe love affair between Tumak (John Richardson) of the Rock People and Loana (Welch) of the Shell People. It is all marvellously silly stuff - Michael Carreras' screenplay is devoid of dialogue, relying instead on grunting and pointing.

The sequel to ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. was actually completed while the dino-epic was still in post-production. PREHISTORIC WOMEN - initially released in the UK as SLAVE GIRLS - was hastily devised by Carreras to optimise the costumes and Elstree sets made for the earlier film, and to include the talents of its supporting player, Jamaican-born model/actress Martine Beswick. This fatuous, non-dinosaur production opens with African big game hunter David Marchant (Michael Latimer) mysteriously transported back in time (or is he dreaming?) to the kingdom of a fabled white rhinoceros cult. He encounters Saria (Edina Ronay), one of a number of fair-haired tribe women oppressed by a group of dark-haired vixens led by the evil Queen Kari (played with infectious relish by Beswick).

Ray Harryhausen’s Allosaurus during the village raid sequence of ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. All of his stop motion creatures are filled with enough charisma to act the entire human cast off the screen.

With her angular facial features and stunning physique, Beswick commands attention every moment she's on screen, not so much stealing the film from the others as to rip it from them and devour it whole. Beswick first came to the attention in a pair of James Bond movies - FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (as wrestling gypsy Zora) and THUNDERBALL (as Jamaican spy Paula Caplan) - and in her first starring role here Beswick treats Queen Kari seriously, alternately seductive, childish and sluttish. When the warriors first push Marchant before the Queen, she parades in front of him naked, oblivious to anything remotely resembling modesty.

Produced, directed and written (under the pseudonym of Henry Younger) by Carreras, PREHISTORIC WOMEN is fittingly dismissed by critics and Hammer historians alike. However, the movie is a treasure trove for connoisseurs of camp; not only do the phallic implications of the rhino horn make for uneasy viewing, the climactic rhino-on-tracks is unintentionally hilarious. Additionally, the script is a litter of hyperbole, trumped by "the women are sad, and when the heart is heavy, the feet are not light - let there be no more dancing," a statement which the viewer can only wish for during the seemingly endless tribal dance numbers.

Fresh Blood

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rising from the Moat

DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968)

Christopher Lee's Prince of Darkness is again reduced to petty revenge, this time lusting after Veronica Carlson's Maria.

DIRECTED by Freddie Francis and scripted by Anthony Hinds, DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE is set a year after the vampire's death by drowning at the end of Terence Fisher's DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS. A priest (Ewan Hooper) finds a woman with bite marks hanging dead inside his church bell, a discovery that further convinces the parishioners that this place of worship – which is touched at dusk by the shadow of Dracula's castle – is tainted by the unholy. A visiting Monsignor (Rupert Davies) - disgusted by the townsfolk fear of an already vanquished monster - takes the priest to the Count's castle and places a giant golden cross across the door, though not before a storm causes the priest to fall down the mountain and bleed, conveniently, on the shattered ice that has imprisoned Dracula (Christopher Lee). Free to resume his demonic business, the Count seeks revenge on the Monsignor and his blond niece Maria (Veronica Carlson), who's in love – much to the Monsignor's disapproval – with God-denying baker Paul (Barry Andrews).

Like most Hammer Dracula films, the Count is given little to do, here lurking in the basement of the bakery-cum-public house, staring imperiously and baring his fangs on cue. Being a Francis film, its weak script and continuity are offset by a series of exquisite set pieces - none more effective than Paul's attempted staking of Dracula. Francis and cinematographer Arthur Grant use a dour, restrained tableaux, which gives the one big colour (red, inevitably) maximum impact. At the climax, after falling - in an unlikely manner - onto the golden cross, Dracula cries tears of blood and, for once, has the tragic nobility of Bram Stoker's source novel. Francis also makes the most of the lenient censorship which was extant by 1968: there is ample blood, and the liberal approach to sex is illustrated by lower necklines and more orgasmic shrieks.

Carlson’s mix of good looks and pale complexion made her one of Hammer’s most striking leading ladies.

Although DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE dabbles with intolerance and Christian discovery, it lacks the tension and dynamism that Fisher habitually brought to equally poor scripts. But perhaps Fisher's overall reputation was enhanced by his lesser involvement as the Hammer empire was running out of steam; his earlier masterpieces were certainly made when the studio was more clear-cut and less commercially confused. This change from Fisher-like efficiency to the stylish dashes of Francis seems to mirror Hammer's shift from their confined, spiritual home of Bray Studios to the more sprawling Elstree and Pinewood. The intimate feel and tone of such Bray-filmed classics as THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES is ultimately lost on the bigger sound stages, and such releases as LUST FOR A VAMPIRE and THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA typify a certain loss of soul.

Disciples of Dracula

THE BRIDES OF DRACULA (1960)
DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS (1966)

"Say you forgive me for letting him love me";
Andree Melly is one of THE BRIDES OF DRACULA.

DIRECTOR Terence Fisher's reputation rests almost entirely on the horror films he directed for Hammer in the 50s and 60s, but he was a more versatile filmmaker than this output suggests. Fisher had previously helmed projects with a variety of themes - such as tragic romance and light comedy - but he was accused of representing a conservative and pedantic force within British horror. Yet within his construction a primal yet supremely visual ethos was created, mixing precise framing and acting with negligee-wearing vampire brides and claustrophobic burial vaults. In fact, Fisher epitomised Andrew Sarris' definition of the auteur in The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968 "…to evoke a self-contained world with its own laws and landscapes." Above all, Fisher was a storyteller, preserving the coherence of his films by containing few flashbacks and virtually no dream sequences.

Fisher's THE BRIDES OF DRACULA begins with Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) - en route to a teaching engagement - taking shelter at the invitation of Baroness Meinster (Marita Hunt). From her room's balcony, Marianne sees a young man chained by his ankle, Baron Meinster (David Peel), her hostess’ vampire son whom his mother has been acquiring peasant girls for feeding. After freeing the Baron without knowing of his past, the woman escapes into the woods where she is rescued by Dr Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), who must face the Seal of Dracula once more.

Despite a relatively late introduction, Peter Cushing effortlessly commands the screen in THE BRIDES OF DRACULA. The scene where Van Helsing proceeds to burn out his bite from Meinster with holy water and a red-hot branding iron is one of Hammer's most heart-rending.

Despite a contradiction from DRACULA that vampires cannot change their form (though curiously unavailable to the Baron when held in leg irons), and the arrival of Hammer's customary unconvincing bat, THE BRIDES OF DRACULA is a sumptuous production. With the absence of Christopher Lee, the androgynous Peel makes for an engaging, Byronic, manipulative charmer in his role "to spread the cult and corrupt the world." Subsequent Lee/Dracula Hammers all de-vitalised rather than embodied The Count, and the followers of the vampire in THE BRIDES OF DRACULA are painted with a complex stroke that the series would not feature so successfully again; when the cackling Greta (Freda Jackson) - Meinster’s childhood nurse - lies full length on a freshly dug grave beckoning its occupant "I know it’s dark, but you’ve got to push, push…", no wonder Van Helsing is startled. Van Helsing demonstrated a cool but obsessive intensity in DRACULA, but his character changes substantially here; now a vampire slaying hero, much of his scientifically detached persona and harsher edges have been smoothed over. With Lee not taking centre stage, it is Cushing that must carry the film.

What is often overlooked with Lee's return in Fisher's DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS is that THE BRIDES OF DRACULA was the last film to feature Cushing until his modern day return in DRACULA A.D. 1972, although DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS does have a Van Helsing replacement, Andrew Keir’s warrior-monk Father Sandor. However, Lee's much-anticipated reprisal is reduced to a series of mute, melodramatic and repetitive attacks, and the two stand-out sequences don't feature The Count at all: the sacrifice of Alan (Charles Tingwell) and the controversial ecclesiastical gang rape of his wife Helen (Barbara Shelley). Such sequences, however, do subscribe to the poetry of flesh and blood akin to Bram Stoker's source material. The Count slipping through broken ice to be swallowed by the running waters of the moat around his castle makes for a powerful ending, with the scene seeming reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno, which shows Satan trapped in the ice in the lower pit of hell.

Barbara Shelley succumbs to DRACULA, PRINCE OF DARKNESS.

Whereas the economic retelling of Stoker’s novel in DRACULA left no room for the characters of Dr Seward and Renfield, a Renfield substitute appears in the guise of Ludwig (Thorley Walters). Here an obsessive but chivalrous bookbinder in the hospitality of a monastery, Ludwig is the one Renfield in cinema who actually encapsulates the character as Stoker describes him. Although partial to eating flies, Walters never radiates total madness, instead performing such transgression as mischief in an existence vague to everyone and thing except the needs of his Master.

Hitchcock Comes Home

FRENZY (1972)

Strangulation as art in Hitchcock’s penultimate picture.

IN England for his first feature since STAGE FRIGHT in 1950, Alfred Hitchcock's FRENZY seized the opportunity for what most critics term a return to form. Adapted by playwright Anthony Shaffer from Arthur La Bern's novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square, FRENZY is the story of a series of rape-murders committed by suave Covent Garden fruit-merchant Bob Rusk (Barry Foster), who throttles women with a necktie. Being Hitchcock - himself the son of a greengrocer - suspicion falls on the wrong person, ill-tempered former-RAF officer turned bartender Richard Blaney (Jon Finch). The screenplay is crafted a little too deliberately, as the detective plot seems mechanical underneath its oh-so-English tone. But the film has long been greatly undervalued, and resurrects many conventions of the director's first hit, THE LODGER.

Hitchcock had laboured under censorship restrictions throughout his career, yet FRENZY was made when controls had eased. Consequently, the rape and murder of Blaney's ex-wife Brenda (Barbara Leigh-Hunt) is as explicitly nasty as the director ever got, and after this scene the film doesn't need to portray subsequent killings. This enables Hitchcock to execute one of his finest shots, as Blaney's girlfriend Babs (Anna Massey) is killed off-screen ("you're my type of woman") while the camera retreats backwards down the stairs, through the front door, and then across the street to join the people outside. And the sequence where Rusk has a tussle in a potato truck with Bab' uncooperative corpse - clutching the discriminating evidence of a tie pin - is the most black comedic scene Hitchcock ever filmed. It's rewarding to see Hitch - after fifty years in the business - still executing with such aplomb.

"Lovely, lovely”; Barry Foster is The Necktie Killer.

Claims that Hitchcock was a misogynist - or at least had a neurotic compulsion to mistreat women in his films - had increasingly haunted the auteur; true, Tippi Hedren's ordeal in the attic with THE BIRDS is gratuitous, but arises inevitably from dramatic situation. Even Hedren, despite her quarrels over the director's possessiveness, had no complaints about the support he normally gave her. In his private and professional live Hitchcock was always surrounded by women; he and his wife had one child, a daughter, and she produced three grandchildren, all females. There was a succession of women personal assistants, as well as the usual complement of secretaries, but his wife Alma was the most professional aid of all, and always the ultimate authority in the cutting room.

Similarly, Hitchcock's hatred of actors has been exaggerated. The director believed that performers should only concentrate on their artistic presentation and leave work on the script to the director and screenwriter. Before filming began, tensions grew between Hitchcock and Finch, with the actor earnestly telling reporters that the director seemed past his prime, and that the cast might have to improvise to improve the quaint script. Hitchcock never forgot this violation, and gave Finch no warmth on set, so the actor remained as off balance as Blaney throughout the story. Over the years, there was a persistent rumour that the director had said that actors were cattle; Hitchcock denied this - typically tongue-in-cheek - clarifying that he had only said that actors should be treated like cattle. For him, like the props, the performers were part of the film's setting.

"The Governor" shooting in Covent Garden.

In contrast, Foster relishes his role as the psychotic market trader, a character who is deliberately made more agreeable than the unappetising man he is framing for his crimes. Massey is genuinely touching as the naive girlfriend, and there are plenty of recognisable faces in the supporting cast, such as Clive Swift, Billie Whitelaw and Bernard Cribbins as a sleazy pub landlord. Best of all, however, is Alec McCowan as Inspector Oxford, an old-fashioned copper right down to the ironic final line (“Mr Rusk, you‘re not wearing your necktie”). The scenes between him and his gourmet wife (Vivien Merchant) extend the films obsession with food, as well as portraying a cinematic equivalent of Mr and Mrs Hitchcock.

There is little hope in FRENZY, reflecting a world which is irrevocably fallen; women are harridans or naive lambs for the slaughter, while the men are either brutes (the hero Blaney is an implied wife-beater) or simpletons telling rape jokes over the bar, and the nicest people end up dead. Somehow the world seems to be at the end of its tether, where human beings are reduced to the same level as food and waste, and abandoned - as the rape scene suggests - by any rationale. In fact, FRENZY can be viewed as the culmination of a hostility against the world that Hitchcock begun back in the 1920s.

Dead Reckoning

COLIN (2008)
DOGHOUSE (2008)
OUTPOST (2008)

The bulk of the £45 budget for COLIN went on tea, coffee and biscuits.

BILLED as "The £45 Zombie Movie" and the "First Zombie Movie told from the zombie's perspective” (though RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD 3 and I, ZOMBIE: THE CHRONICLES OF PAIN portrayed a descent into putrefaction fifteen and ten years previously), Marc Price's COLIN conveys its apocalyptic world through an accompaniment of alarms, gunfire, explosions and screams. This ambience is accompanied by a threadbare electronic soundtrack, which envelopes the eponymous Colin (Alastair Kirton) in his new life as a shambling ghoul. Colin is the most sympathetic screen zombie since Bub (Howard Sherman) in DAY OF THE DEAD - its no coincidence that Colin's girlfriend Laura (Leanne Pammen) works in Sherman's Café - and there is some wonderful black humour: a victim’s ear is removed complete with earphone, and Colin is mugged for his trainers.

The title star prefers to avoid confrontation, and it is testament to Kirton's virtually silent performance that Colin remains such a pitiful figure with echoes of Karloff's Frankenstein. But many will find COLIN too slow, sombre and uneventful, perhaps missing the human survivor stories we're accustomed to in the sub-genre. The film does find some room for the living, and perhaps ironically it's in these scenes that the film loses its way. The bulk of co-stars cannot compete with Kirton, and it's in the busier, more populated sequences – the street attacks and especially in a house siege – that the DIY nature of the production is most apparent. Unlike most living dead pictures where you relish the gore and the scale of destruction, COLIN instead leaves you with a sense of melancholy.

Z-movie starlet Emily Booth plays The Snipper in DOGHOUSE.

After his own amateur effort EVIL ALIENS, Jake West returns with the immature DOGHOUSE, armed with a budget and the Britflick equivalent of a name cast. It tells the story of a group of men who, leaving behind relationships in varying degrees of dysfunction in London, descend on the rural backwater of Moodley (where women outnumber the men 4 to 1) for a lads weekend. But their destination is filled with ravenous zombirds, or as Neil (Danny Dyer) has it, "an army of pissed-off, man-hating feminist cannibals." There is a genuine revulsion towards woman and their emotional tirade on menkind as we enter an alternate England envisioned by the CARRY ON team or George Best. The zombirds aren't just normal women who have been infected by a military virus, they're Sid James stereotypes; a bride in her underwear, a dominatrix hairdresser et al, and there is even a Hattie Jacques sauce pot. DOGHOUSE is riddled with in-jokes but this isn't flattery so much as smirking, with the director fittingly calling the bus-hire company West Tours.

Away from the Romeroesque COLIN and juvenile DOGHOUSE, Steve Barker's OUTPOST is a robust British zombie movie which focuses on that most interesting sub-genre within a sub-genre: the Nazi undead. Equating the Third Reich with the zombie makes perfect sense, as it is easy to see the brutish automatons of Hitler's Germany as monsters rather than human beings; in fact, there exists a compulsion to dehumanise all our enemies. Arabella Croft and Kieran Parker mortgaged their Glasgow home in order to raise finance for the film, which is a bunker-bound horror where mercenaries (led by DC (Ray Stevenson)) fight against an advancing zombie tide. The Nazi ghouls here are effectively realised, and owe more than a passing debt to the mariners of THE FOG as they torment victims by pushing bullets and bayonets into eyes and mouths. But they also adhere to that particular John Carpenter film in their ambiguousness: are they zombies, ghosts, genetic supermen or a combination of all three?

Nazi zombies haunt the OUTPOST.

The lack of budget doesn’t work against OUTPOST because nearly all of the film takes place in the confines of the bunker, and when the camera does venture outside, it is usually at night preceding a mist-bound attack. The performances are strong, yet the nihilistic tone fittingly tells of a mission for people we never meet, and the characters are never fully realised for the audience to care if anyone does pull through. However, the film has developed enough of a following for a sequel to be announced, OUTPOST II: BLACK SUN, which is currently in pre-production.