When I begin these Halloween Countdowns, I usually start with around 4 movies that I want to cover, and then I just go kind of stream-of-consciousness style from there, as one movie will remind me of another, and so on.
And it seems like, for me, all roads lead back to Hammer Studios. After covering Girly last week, I was reminded of some other Freddie Francis movies that I hadn't covered, and that led me to today's film, Paranoiac (1963), directed by Francis and written by the great Jimmy Sangster, who was responsible for writing some of the earliest Hammer horror classics.
Next year, I should really do Hammer all month.
Paranoiac is more of a modern gothic mystery with a horror undertone than it is a typical Hammer horror film. Beautifully shot in black and white by Francis, who had won an Oscar a few years previously for the cinematography to Sons and Lovers, this film looks amazing, with a strong, atmospheric contrast between light and dark that lends to the film's mood.
The Ashbys are a disfunctional, upper-class British family. Eleven years earlier, the two parents were killed in a plane crash, leaving three orphaned children in the care of their aunt Harriet. Soon after, the eldest son, Tony, commits suicide, leaving Simon (Oliver Reed) and Eleanor (Janette "Day of the Triffids" Scott) as the sole heirs to the Ashby estate.
When the movie opens, Simon is less than one month away from coming into the fortune, which he will need, as he has long expended his budget on booze, and the local liquor shops will no longer cover him. This role may not have been a stretch for Oliver Reed, but he is perfect as the spoiled, dangerously unstable, and unapologetically nasty young man. This is an early film for Reed, but everything that's great about his screen performances is here--the charisma and physical energy that are both just teetering on the edge of restraint.
Eleanor, meanwhile, appears to be going mad, and has herself been unstable since her beloved brother's suicide. At the beginning of the movie, however, she starts to see what she thinks are visions of Tony, first at church and later outside their home.
It turns out that these aren't visions, and a man claiming to be the long-lost Tony Ashby (Alexander Davion) shows up to claim his inheritance.
This feels like a fairly standard mystery plot, but Sangster takes it in some surprising directions. First, he reveals fairly quickly to the audience that Tony is indeed a fake--a grifter hired by the Ashby lawyer's son to try to scam the family out of their fortune. Also, a romance develops between fake Tony and Eleanor, yet the movie pretty much suspends the idea that this is a romance between a mentally unstable woman and a man who is identical to her dead brother.
And that raises one of the most fascinating elements of this movie. Sangster and Francis create a world for the Ashbys in which, by virtue of their wealth, they get to create their own moral system, though one that has been difficult to maintain. Simon has become more and more dissolute over the years, endangering himself and others in his decline; Eleanor has deteriorated mentally; and Aunt Harriet has tried desperately to maintain the status quo. Even fake Tony, whose real name is never revealed, should hardly get to function as the hero of the story, though his intrusion into the family tears down that status quo once and for all. And once it starts to go, the movie transitions from mystery to horror.
At 80 minutes, this is a tight movie, filled with solid performances across the board, a smart plot, and beautiful black-and-white cinematography. However, I would add that the film's sensational title is a bit inappropriate for such an intense but cerebral thriller.
After watching Let the Right One In on Monday, I decided to check out the English-language remake, Let Me In. I had a free ticket to the local theater that was about to expire, and I figured that if I went to the early matinee on a Wednesday, I would have a good chance of a private screening.
Alas, that didn't happen. In fact, in a huge, virtually empty theater, some dude with a huge bucket of popcorn and a giant soda decided to sit in the seat directly behind me for some reason. I'm guessing this guy is a 12:00 Wednesday regular, and he was passionately tied to that one perfect seat in the theater.
As most reviews of Let Me In have noted, the film is surprisingly faithful to the original, and if I were to have seen it on its own terms, I would have considered it an innovative, challenging horror movie. Director Matt Reeves, who also adapted the screenplay, pretty much hits the major notes of the original, with only subtle differences and rare improvement.
In the Swedish original, we get subplots involving the lives of various neighbors in the apartment complex where Eli and Oskar live. This ramps up the emotional impact when Eli kills one of the neighbors and later turns another into a vampire. The audience feels the impact of Eli's presence on the larger community, and that creates a complex ambivalence for the vampire: we understand that she needs to feed, but we also feel something for her victims. This is especially effective when Ginia, the woman Eli accidentally turns into a vampire, chooses to end her life when she discovers what she's become.
In the remake, we only see these neighbors as subjects of Owen's (the film's version of Oskar) voyeurism. The characters are not even named, and the impact is reduced when Abby (Eli) accidentally transforms the woman. Then, the woman's death comes by accident rather than choice. We get a different sense of the impact of Abby on the community, but it also resonates less. Ginia's death is tragic, but it also reminds us that the life of a vampire is itself horrible.
The new version has the great Richard Jenkins as Abby's "father"--the man who goes out and obtains blood for Abby's survival. In Jenkins's performance, this man is at the end of his road, making sloppy mistakes because he has finally reached his limit in a job that we assume he has been doing for decades. One of the few improvements Reeves makes on the original occurs in Jenkins's bungled attempt to kill one of the bullies that besets Owen. Reeves places the camera inside the car that Jenkins tries to escape in when he's caught, and the long take used traps us in this confined space as things go horribly wrong.
As I mentioned in Monday's post, the original film uses a more subdued style that heightens the film's tension in surprising ways. Reeves takes a more conventional route in terms of style, and the impact is again reduced. In one scene, a police detective (Elias Koteas, in a role added for this movie) searches through Abby's apartment. As the tension increases, a wind-up toy drops on the floor, providing a sudden, cheap shock through a red herring that has become a cliche in horror movies. Then, as Koteas approaches the bathroom door, behind which Abby sleeps, the music ratchets up to prepare the audience for another shock to come. In fact, the musical score is pervasive throughout the movie, and I wish Reeves had trusted in silence more. But this particular scene highlights the film's major problem: while it's focus on the relationship between Abby and Owen feels different from other horror movies, it gets its shocks in a highly conventional, and occasionally cliched, way.
The remake also deals less with Abby's gender-ambiguity, though the idea is definitely raised. However, it does explore more overtly something that is only subtly touched on in the original. We get the sense that Owen is not Abby's first "friend" of this sort, and that Richard Jenkins's character had been in Owen's shoes decades earlier. That lends a more intensely tragic air to the film, as we see in Jenkins the end of the inevitable path that Owen is just beginning.
Let Me In is a better than average horror movie, mainly because Matt Reeves smartly adheres to the original's plot. However, I wish Reeves had been bolder in his stylistic choices, matching the plot with a style that relied less on convention and cliche.
Also, I'd like to add that Let Me In is the first big release from the revived Hammer brand, and I got a kick out of seeing the Hammer logo at the beginning of the film. I'm curious to see what the future holds for this brand.
Rather than review a movie today, I want to point readers to Turner Classic Movies, which is showing 4 Hammer horror films tonight, and every Friday night in October.
First up is Plague of the Zombies (1966), a movie I have some fondness for:
I especially like how this film uses zombies as a critique of British class structure, anticipating anticipating the way George Romero uses zombies as a means of social critique. The film also anticipates Romero in the appearance of the zombies, though it's still tied to an earlier tradition of voodoo as the source for the zombie outbreak.
I'm looking forward to the second movie, The Devil's Bride (1967; a.k.a. The Devil Rides Out) because it's one of the Hammer films I have never seen.
Set in the 1920s, it stars Christopher Lee, this time as the hero, and Charles Gray as the Crowley-esque Satanist. It's directed by Terence Fisher, who made most of the great, early Hammer productions, and it's written by the great horror novelist Richard Matheson, adapting Dennis Wheatley's story.
The other two movies, The Reptile (1966) and The Gorgon (1964) are both worth checking out. I especially like The Gorgon because Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing team up as partners, rather than antagonists, which was usually the case. Also, these two movies are linked together nicely by virtue of the fact that they both feature female monsters, and to different degrees make commentary on the gender dynamics at work in each.
So, enjoy this opportunity to see a few non-franchise Hammer horror movies tonight!
Watch enough Hammer horror movies, especially the vampire movies, and certain formulas and tropes become apparent. For example, many of the vampire movies begin in an idyllic, pastoral setting--a place intrinsic to the British cultural consciousness--that is then disrupted by the appearance of supernatural violence.
This is definitely the case in Vampire Circus (1972), directed by Robert Young. The film opens with a man out in nature, reading near the woods, while a young girl plays nearby. A woman begins to talk and play with the girl, and soon they disappear into the woods, while the man is distracted by his reading. He chases after them, but they go inside an old castle before he can catch up.
The castle is owned by Count Mittenhaus, a vampire who has beset the local village for years. The young girl is still in a state of happiness, unaware of the danger she is in until too late, when the Count bites her neck and drains her blood. Announcing, "One lust feeds the other," the Count then begins making out with the woman.
This opening scene is decadent and effectively chilling, and it sets up the rest of the movie well. It sets the stakes high by killing a kid within the first few minutes, and the unsettling mood created by this scene builds throughout the rest of the film. What I like most about Vampire Circus is that it comes very close to being the exact movie that I would want a film called "Vampire Circus" to be.
The man who witnessed the girl's kidnapping turns out to be the local schoolteacher, as well as the husband of the woman shacked up with the Count, and he gathers the village men to storm the castle. Many of these men have also lost their daughters to the Count, so emotions are running high.
When they get in, they are too late to save the girl, but after some grappling with the Count, they are able to bring down the vampire with a handy stake to the chest. Before he dies, the Count vows vengeance on the village that brought him down. The men then prepare to blow up the castle, but the schoolteacher's wife runs back in to take the Count's body deep into the catacombs and preserves his body.
The film then jumps ahead 15 years, when the village is beset by a plague and quarantined by the military. Some believe the plague is the manifestation of the Count's curse, while the local doctor and others seek a medical cure. In the midst of this, a mysterious circus arrives in town, somehow making their way past the roadblocks around town.
Circuses are inherently creepy, but this circus in particular has a series of bizarre acts that do not make it seem family friendly. The first act we see involves a naked woman painted like a snake, who fights a dude with a whip. At another point, a panther turns into a guy, and this does not set off signals that this might be a, you know, vampire circus. Even the weird twin acrobats who turn into actual bats don't set off any signals in the villagers. These villagers are basically the definition of easy marks.
There is also a little clown who is scary as hell.
Seriously, this guy makes this guy look like this guy:
The other performers in the troupe are creepy across the board. The panther man turns out to be Emil, the Count's cousin who is in the village for revenge. The acrobat twins clearly have some kind of incestuous relationship, plus they have some kind of Corsican Brothers deal where they feel each other's pain. Also, the female twin is played by Lalla Ward, who would later go on to be Mrs. Tom Baker and is currently Mrs. Richard Dawkins.
The cast is, in fact, filled with other performers who would go on to some notoriety. The mute circus strongman is played by David Prowse, who later played Darth Vader. And the primary female victim, Dora, went on to marry Peter Sellers and inherit his estate.
Vampire Circus is genuinely unsettling, with a real subversive quality. Tension builds through the effect that constant isolation and threat has on the village. The movie also paces the deaths well throughout, without any lapse in dramatic tension that many other Hammer films often get in the middle.
But it does have its flaws. A nice, suspenseful scene where a family tries to escape the village with the aid of the little clown is partially undermined when they are attacked by a very fake panther. Still, the fake panther kills the hell out of these people. Also, according to behind-the-scenes information on the making of this film, several key scenes weren't shot when budget problems arised, and there is a sense that some crucial information is missing.
The finale is also a mixed bag. A vampire is weakened when a crossbow is held up as a cross, which is just cheating. However, the moment is redeemed when the vampire is cleverly killed with said crossbow. Also, the villagers, with all their experience fighting vampires in the past, don't come to the final fight very well equipped. For one, you don't bring a gun to a vampire fight, and only one person seemed to think to bring a stake.
Still, the movie succeeds more than it fails, and even after almost 40 years, there is something truly unsettling about this movie. For one, children are constantly at risk in the film, and the opening shows the filmmakers' willingness to see that risk through to the gruesome end. Also, the circus itself is decadent and mysterious, and for most of the film, it seems as if the villagers can do nothing to stop it. And like The Vampire Lovers from two years earlier, Hammer continued to push the boundaries of sex and violence in this movie, but here it doesn't yet seem excessive, as it feeds the feeling of unrestrained evil that the circus presents.
Here's a look at the film's trailer:
Before I go, I'd want to comment on some sad news relevant to the films I've been discussing this week. Director Roy Ward Baker passed away today at the age of 93. Baker is probably best known for directing A Night to Remember, but I'm particularly fond of the many great films he did for Hammer studios, including Quatermass and the Pit, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Dracula Meets the 7 Golden Vampires, and the aforementioned The Vampire Lovers. Baker's audio-commentary on the Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde DVD is especially enlightening and gives a good sense of how Hammer films got made. RIP
Yesterday, I covered the 1970 Hammer horror film The Vampire Lovers, starring Ingrid Pitt, and as promised, here's Ingrid Pitt's second starring role for Hammer in the 1971 film Countess Dracula.
One thing to note about Countess Dracula is that the title is really misleading. No actual vampires appear in this movie, and the title character is in no way connected to the Dracula family. Instead, Hammer went to the horror well to find new source material and came up with the historical story of Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who was rumored to bathe in virgins' blood in order to stay young.
And that is basically the plot of this movie. The film opens with the funeral of Count Nodosheen, and at the reading of his will, the aging Countess finds out that she has to split most of the estate with her absent daughter. In addition, a young man named Toth--the son of a soldier who served in the military with the Count--inherits the stables, horses, and cottage. Also, Captain Dobi, who is the Countess's lover and the Count's chief steward (played by the great Nigel Green), is pissed because all he gets are a few lousy suits of armor.
As the Countess prepares for her bath that evening, she beats her servant for making the bath too hot. The Countess gets some blood on her face, and quickly discovers that it causes part of her face to look younger. She then enlists her nurse and Captain Dobi to retrieve the servant and see what a full-body blood dousing will do. It has the desired effect, and she becomes a young woman again.
This, and all the subsequent blood-bathing that follows, happens off-screen, which some may find as a drawback for a horror movie. In fact, one of the problems with this film is that it's not much of a horror movie. Instead, it's a kind of romantic melodrama with some supernatural undertones. The Countess spurns her older lover, Dobi for the dashing young Toth. But in order to pull off this romance, she has to pretend to be her daughter. This creates some problems, as the daughter (played by a young and almost unrecognizeable Lesley-Anne Down) is on her way to the castle. Dobi arranges for some Serbs to kidnap her before she arrives.
Toth falls in love with the young Countess, and she becomes increasingly desperate to keep her young appearance. After bathing in the blood of a whore, however, she discovers that not all blood will work. And she has a nasty case of hepatitis. What she really needs is some virgin blood.
In general, the movie doesn't quite live up to the potential of its subject matter. Some class conflice emerges early in the movie, as the Countess's first victims are a servant and a gypsy, but the movie really does nothing with this until the end, when the local village women celebrate the Countess's execution. Also, the inherent potential for sex and violence the Elizabeth Bathory story is almost completely missed, and that in particular seems odd, considering how excessive Hammer would become along those lines in the next few years.
However, the movie does look very good, and Ingrid Pitt also looks great, though she's unfortunately and unnecessarily dubbed throughout the movie. Also, Nigel Green seems to be having fun as the flustered and quite whipped Captain Dobi, who continues to do the Countess's dirty work while she prances right in front of him with her young boy toy.
Here's a link to the trailer for Countess Dracula. One of the things evident in the trailer: the aging makeup used on Ingrid Pitt is actually pretty good.
Every Halloween season, I try to watch a bunch of Hammer horror films, and I feel that's especially appropriate this year, as Hammer Productions has returned with Let Me In.
I'm curious to see where Hammer goes with its revival, but in the meantime, let's look at one of the classics produced by the company in the past.
(I love how this poster--which has nothing to do with the actual movie, by the way--provides the warning "Not for the mentally immature!" In other words, "Don't giggle at the sexy lesbian parts!")
One of the more notorious Hammer productions was The Vampire Lovers (1970), directed by Roy Ward Baker and based on Sheridan Le Fanu's great early vampire novel, Carmilla (1872). Like Hammer's other adaptations, this plays fast and loose with its source material, but it remains a solid vampire movie from a time when Hammer films were starting to slip in quality.
In the late 60s and early 70s, Hammer went looking for other source material, as the main franchises--Dracula and Frankenstein--were wearing thin. Le Fanu's Carmilla seems like a logical choice, especially as the story's lesbian undertones could be exploited by a studio that was further pushing the boundaries of sex and violence in its movies.
The film opens in a typical Hammer milieu: a gothic castle surrounded by a fog-strewn moor. Voice-over narration from Baron Hartog explains the situation--he has dedicated his life to destroying the Karnsteins, a family of vampires that was responsible for his sister's death. He also explains the vampire rules for this story, in that vampires can only be killed by a stake through the heart or decapitation. He then proves this by slicing the head off of a hot blond vampire who is trying to seduce him.
The importance of this opening won't be clear, however, until much later in the movie, as Baron Hartog pretty much disappears until the end.
Years later, General von Spielsdorf (Peter Cushing, who cuts a fine figure in a Prussian officer's uniform) holds a fancy ball, which is attended by a mysterious Countess (Dawn Addams) and her daughter, Marcilla (Ingrid Pitt). However, soon after their arrival, the Countess is called away by a pale man in black, who gives her some news that requires her to leave immediately. The General offers to let Marcilla stay at his estate and serve as a companion for his daughter, Laura (Pippa Steele), until the Countess can return.
This whole scenario turns out to be a scam orchestrated by the Countess so Marcilla can infiltrate the household and feed on young Laura. Over the course of several evenings, Marcilla comes to Laura in the form of a cat, and then proceeds to feed from her breast. Every night, Laura wakes up screaming while also getting progressively weaker. In typical vampire story fashion, the General and the local doctor chalks the weakness up to anemia, and both miss the supernatural explanation.
Laura dies, and Marcilla and the Countess take their scam back on the road, working their way into the Morton house, with their young daughter, Emma (Madeline Smith). When Mr. Morton goes away, Marcilla, now known as "Carmilla," has the run of the house, seducing both Emma and her attractive governess (Kate O'Mara). The film generates much of its tension from Carmilla savvily overcoming obstacles and potential exposure before her vampire identity is finally revealed. In the meantime, though, Ingrid Pitt and Madeline Smith get down to some sexy times.
Interestingly, the plot of this movie follows that of Bram Stoker's Dracula even better than any of the other Hammer Dracula movies. In particular, when Morton becomes aware of his daughter's plight, he enlists the help of the General and Laura's boyfriend, Carl (Jon Finch, in his first film role). The General and Carl have also tracked down an aged Baron Hartog in order to take advantage of his expertise in killing Karnstein vampires. So, like Dracula, the male characters band together to combat the danger created by the female vampire. In general, the movie raises a few interesting gender issues.
The movie follows its own internal logic well enough, though it doesn't quite match the standard vampire rules. Carmilla travels during the daytime frequently, though she does have some photosensitivity, and we see her reflection in mirrors quite often. Also, the vampires don't reproduce through biting, but instead only feed. The cross and garlic still work, though, as well as staking and decapitation.
Though the film comes to a satisfying conclusion, a couple of loose ends are left dangling. We never really learn the true role of the Countess, for one. Baron Hartog claims that he killed all the Karnstein vampires but one--Carmilla--so the Countess is probably not Carmilla's real mother, and it's not clear if she's a vampire. Also, the mysterious, pale man in black appears to watch all the events of the film unfold, but we never find out who he is or what purpose he serves.
In the end, The Vampire Lovers is a solid vampire movie with a lesbian twist. It pushes the envelope of sex and violence compared to earlier Hammer films, but it looks positively constrained alongside those of the following years. Ingrid Pitt stands out as one of the great female vampires in Hammer history, and Madeline Smith makes a nice transformation from sweet innocent to willing companion to physical wreck in the course of the film. However, while the movie tends to focus on the female characters, great actors like Peter Cushing and Jon Finch are underused. And like a lot of Hammer films, it has a rather weak second act, but it is otherwise stylish and well-made.
Here is the trailer for The Vampire Lovers:
Ingrid Pitt would return to Hammer films the following year in Countess Dracula, the movie I will be covering tomorrow.
In past years, I have tried, with varying degrees of success,to do a Halloween blogging marathon during the month of October. I can't say that this year will be any more successful than last, but I'm going to give it a shot. So, check in regularly for posts about horror movies and comics over the next month.
I'd also like to thank the people at the Countdown to Halloween website for organizing all the blogs that are participating in this marathon. If you haven't done so, go over to the site and check out some of the other cool stuff people are doing this month.
To start off, I want to share one of my favorite horror movie scenes, from the 1962 Hammer film, Kiss of the Vampire:
The atmosphere of this scene is perfect, as is the way the tension builds to the final, satisfying payoff. And while that payoff comes as a shock, it's earned through the slow, meticulous build-up.
Keep coming back all month for more of the Halloween Countdown!
Hammer's fourth Dracula film, Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), runs a close second to Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter as my favorite Hammer horror film. That's because Taste... represents the quintessential Hammer horror film for me, and it comes just as the Dracula series dips into the ridiculousness and excesses of the last three Hammer films: The Scars of Dracula, Dracula AD 1972, and The Satanic Rites of Dracula. Taste... is definiitely more decadent than previous outings, and it's clear that writer Anthony Hinds (credited as "John Elder") has cut loose on this film in ways that he didn't on the previous one, and director Peter Sasdy makes this film look like a high budget period production.
The film opens with the great British character actor, Roy Kinnear, travelling by carriage through an unidentified European forest, on his way back to England with new wares to sell in his shop. He offers to sell some fellow passengers a new snow globe he picked up, but one of the passengers turns out to be a mentally damaged, violent individual, in dress resembling a Victorian undertaker, who takes the globe and throws Kinnear from the carriage. We never see the characters in the carriage again, but we can imagine that they go off into another Hammer movie of their own.
Kinnear is knocked unconscious, and when he wakes up, he begins to walk through the woods in order to find a way back to civilization. He hears, however, some unearthly screams, and when he goes to check out the noise, he discovers Dracula, impaled and writing on a cross, which occurred during the climax of the previous film.
I like how Anthony Hinds binds these two movies together, but he does have to cheat a little to get there. Kinnear walks very easily from the road, through the woods, to Dracula's castle, while characters in the previous movie had to go through some pretty exhausting climbs in order to reach the same goal.
Kinnear witnesses Dracula dissolve into a red, bubbly, jelly-like substance, but as a merchant, he quickly sees an opportunity for profit. He leaves the scene with Dracula's clasp, cape, signet ring, and blood.
After the title card, the film moves to a bucolic English church, where several of London's prominent citizens and their families are leaving after Sunday service. Several of the young people also discuss their plans for later. We then follow one young woman, Alice Hargood (Linda Hayden), as she returns home with her family. Her father, William (Geoffrey Keen), is none too pleased with his daughter, who he witnessed flirting with a young man, Paul Paxton (Anthony Corlan). The father accuses the daughter of acting like a harlot in church, and he forbids her from seeing young Paul anymore.
This sets the stage for the exposure of some good old Victorian hypocrisy. One evening, Hargood gets into a carriage along with two other prominent citizens: Samuel Paxton (Peter Sallis) and Jonathon Secker (John Carson). They head off to do their weekly "charitable work," which takes their carriage to a London soup kitchen. The three men are usured through the establishment, where it's revealed that the soup kitchen is merely a front for an elaborate, decadent brothel, where all three are welcomed as regulars by the flamboyant host.
These three men are self-defined pleasure seekers who get together every week at this brothel in order to be exposed to some new kind of thrill. However, it seems that the new thrills are not bringing the same level of unique excitement, and the men are getting bored. Even the snake charmer that the host produces for them only barely gets a rise out of them.
Meanwhile, into the brothel bursts Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates), who rudely goes from room to room searching out the prostitute he wants, much to the host's distress. Courtley bursts into the room where the three men are watching the snake charmer, and he quickly snaps his fingers, drawing to him the prostitute that had previously been serving Mr. Hargood. She and Courtley then depart, leaving the host to make his apologies.
The men, however, have become curious about this bold, extravagant lord, and they quiz the host on his identity and situation. Lord Courtley has been disowned by his father for dabbling in the dark arts. Secker inquires as to how Courtley could then afford the services of these prostitutes, and the host explains that none of them charge Courtley; in fact, they seek him out for the intense pleasures he provides! The men then decide that they need to get to know this guy in order to take them to the next level.
They take Courtley to dinner in order to enlist him as their guide in the dark arts. Courtley makes them an offer: they can provide financial support for his new effort to revive the greatest evil of all, Count Dracula!
Courtley takes the men to Kinnear's shop, where they are shown the relics of Dracula that will be needed for the ceremony. Despite some early resistance from Paxton, the three agree to pay for the items, and the plan is set for the resurrection ceremony.
It is during the resurrection ceremony that the film's title becomes all too literal, unlike the previous movie. Courtley performs a ceremony in which his blood is mingled with the fine red dust that had been Dracula's blood. This mixture then bubbles and overflows the goblets of the three men, who are then instructed to drink up. At this point, they all get cold feet and refuse, leaving Courtley to drink it himself. This proves to be a bad idea, as he begins to choke and gag. The three men, fearing what they've done, proceed to kick Courtley to death and escape the deconsecrated church where the ceremony was taking place.
Unlike the previous film, where Dracula's resurrection is handled quickly and efficiently, this movie takes a long time with the resurrection, and Dracula doesn't even appear until about the halfway point. This is perfectly fine, though. One of the reasons I've spent so much time here just describing the film's first half is because this story is so well done here. I love the way the film delves into this dark underbelly of Victorian England, with the strict, proper, religious father hiding a secret life as a closeted decadent. And Ralph Bates, who's great some of the later Hammer films, like The Horror of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, is wild and unrestrained as the Crowley-esque Lord Courtley. And while the film loses some steam when he leaves it, it's too the filmmakers credit that the movie manages to maintain its quality through the end, which is not something that can be said about all Hammer films.
Dracula (Christopher Lee, naturally) emerges from the chrysalis of Courtley's corpse in the only scene of the movie that betrays the film's low budget. Dracula then vows revenge on the three men who destroyed his "servant," but this vow raises some questions. Clearly, that "servant" was going to die anyway once Dracula burst forth from his body, so this revenge does seem a bit misguided. However, it is the revenge plot that, as in the previous movie, drives the rest of the film.
The three men each experience a different level of stress and near breakdown from their guilt and nervousness over Courtley's death. Even when they become convinced that no legal harm will come to them, they are still quite nervous. Dracula, then, gets his revenge against them by doing what he does best--turning their women into his servants. That revenge works out in some particularly effective and shocking ways, and a genuine sense of dread kicks in to the film when it becomes apparent that Dracula may not be stopped. The filmmakers really tap into one of Dracula's characteristics that makes him such a particularly horrifying figure: he can manipulate your loved ones to turn against you, making even the home an unsafe place and turning normal, intimate family situations into opportunities for murder. No one in the film knows how much danger they are in until it's too late, and victory is achieved only with great cost.
The series really peaks with this film, and Christopher Lee even felt strong dissatisfaction with the scripts he was given for the following films. It seems that, on this film, Hammer got its mix of ingredients just right. The sex and violence that marked the studio's horror output has progressively increased from previous films, yet this film does not rely entirely on those kinds of shocks as the later films do, and it manages to still be inventive and fun.
Here is the trailer for Taste the Blood of Dracula, which features many of the film's highlights. Enjoy!
As a crossover between the Halloween Countdown and The ISB's Dracula Week, today I'm going to cover Hammer Films' Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1969) Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is Hammer's third Dracula movie, following The Blood of Dracula (1957) and Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) (The Brides of Dracula [1960] is not technically a Dracula movie because he never actually appears in the movie, though Peter Cushing does reprise his roll as Van Helsing). Blood of Dracula is a relatively loose adaptation of Stoker's novel, while Dracula: Prince of Darkness spends a huge chunk of its running time with Dracula's resurrection. In this third outing, Hammer's formula for these Dracula movies becomes set: Dracula threatens a woman and is then challenged by her lover.
Many of these Hammer vampire movies also begin with an effectively suspenseful opening scene that builds toward a horrifying reveal. In this case, a young mute boy arrives at the local church for his job as caretaker. As he goes about his rounds, he grabs the bell rope and finds it covered in dripping blood. The priest arrives and investigates the mystery that the mute boy can't explain, and he finds a dead woman hanging upsidedown inside the bell. The woman has two distinct bite marks on her neck, which leads the priest to cry out, "When will we be free of his evil?"
This scene works great on its own, but as the film progresses, it becomes clear that the scene has no real place in the movie. As we find out shortly, Dracula has not yet returned; in fact, he is still encased in ice as he was left at the end of the last movie (which is, by the way, one of the worst methods for disposing of Dracula. All you need is a good thaw and Dracula's free again.) So, this movie never explains how the girl got into the belltower in the first place.
However, after this incident, no one in the village goes to church anymore, and the priest is left to hold mass for an empty hall. It is here that Monsignor Mueller (Rpert Davies) comes to town--a man with experience dealing with vampires. Father Mueller decides to take care of the village's fears once and for all by climbing the mountain that overlooks the town and exorcising Dracula's castle.
Mueller and the village priest make their way up the mountain, but a combination of fear and exhaustion causes the priest to lag behind. Mueller successfully performs the exorcism, which seems to cause a thunderstorm to break out. The lightning causes the priest to fall, cut his head, and crack the ice surrounding Dracula (Christopher Lee) (this also puts the lie to the film's title, as Dracula does not actually rise from a grave. But then, "Dracula Breaks Free from his Icy Tomb" is not as catchy a title). The blood from the priest's headwound then runs down Dracula's mouth and revives him. So, Monsignor Mueller has only succeeded in locking Dracula out of his castle, though the Monsignor does not know this yet and instead returns to his own village, comfortable in the knowledge that Dracula has been defeated once and for all.
Dracula finds that he can no longer enter his castle, so he vows revenge on the one that did this. To track down Mueller, Dracula takes control of the village priest, who then leads the vampire to his prey.
Meanwhile, Mueller returns home to his sister and niece. Maria, the niece, is nervous to introduce her uncle to her new beau, Paul, whose shirtless introduction makes him look like a buff, 19th-century version of Roger Daltry. During their introductory dinner, Paul reveals to the Monsignor that he is an atheist, which, as you can imagine, doesn't sit well with the holy man.
One of the major flaws in these more formulaic Hammer movies is the fact that nothing much happens in the second acts. So, while the movies are only about 90 minutes long, they tend to drag in the middle 30 minutes or so.
Paul works at the local bar while he also studies for some undefined degree. A co-worker at the bar--a saucy redhead named Zena--is always hitting on Paul, but he remains true to Maria. We know, however, that the redhead is obviously going to come under the thrall of Dracula, and this proves true soon enough.
Dracula, now accompanied by both Zena and the cowardly priest, seeks to take revenge on the Monsignor through his niece, and this brings Paul into the fight as well, and his atheism becomes an obstacle for defeating Dracula.
In fact, the movie makes a weird addition to the rules for destroying vampires--not only is a stake through the heart necessary, but the "staker" must also pray while doing so. This is actually closer to the rules established in Stoker's novel, but it's highly inconsistent with the other Hammer vampire movies, and it seems to be here only to present a challenge for Paul.
The director of this film, Freddie Francis, was one of the greatest cinematographers in film history, and he got the chance to direct at Hammer. As such, his films for Hammer have a distinctive visual style. Here, Dracula is always shot through an odd, prismatic filter that gives a rainbow hue around the edges of the frame while making Dracula's skin look unearthly in the center. He also uses a lot of closeups of Dracula's bloodshot eyes, and Dracula has almost no lines in the movie.
This movie also makes up for the weak ending of Prince of Darkness by giving Dracula one of the most awesome, most visually exciting deaths in the Hammer films. You can see it here if you don't mind the spoilers:
Also, as an added bonus, here's one of the posters for Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, which serves as a perfect marketing strategy for what Hammer was trying to do with this series.
This film was followed by Taste the Blood of Dracula, and that title reflects the increasing luridness of Hammer's Dracula films.
To wrap up Hammer Week in this year's Halloween Countdown, I wanted to share my single favorite scene from a Hammer movie.
This clip features the first ten minutes of Kiss of the Vampire (1963), but it's really just the first four minutes or so that interest me here.
This scene encapsulates the effectively creepy gothic mileau of most Hammer films, and I just love how the guy walks up in the middle of the funeral and throws the shovel through the casket. There's also a slow building of suspense here that's measured well. Unfortunately, the rest of this movie doesn't hold up to the quality of its opening scene, and it's especially marred by some really awful special effects in the ending.
I'm realizing in my selection for Hammer films this week, I haven't picked any that fit the typical Hammer formula, like their more popular Dracula and Frankenstein movies. It's not that I don't like these movies--it's just that they tend to blur together in my head and often remain indistinguishable from one another. So, the ones that stand out for me here are the movies that do something different and move beyond the formula.
It also seems like I'm picking films from late in the Hammer horror cycle, which ended in the late 70s just before new executives launched the Hammer House of Horror TV series in the 80s. By the late 60s, the Hammer formula had been pretty well worn after ten years, and audiences were looking for newer, more sophisticated horror movies after the success of Rosemary's Baby and Night of the Living Dead. Hammer executive Michael Carreras tried a variety of approaches to bring new life to his company. For one, he tried to add even more sex and graphic violence into the company's films, with decidedly mixed results. Other attempts were made to revise the tired horror genre by mixing in elements from other genres, and these had much more interesting results, though not much box office success.
One of these revisionist horror movies happens also to be my favorite Hammer movie: Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974). Though it takes place in 18th century Europe, Captain Kronos blends elements of Westerns and samurai movies with some basic horror conventions, though writer/director Brian Clemens (probably best known for his work on The Avengers) has a good time playing with horror conventions as well.
Kronos (played by German actor Horst Janson, whose voice is dubbed throughout the movie) has a past that remains a mystery. He has a military background, and upon his return home from war, he found his mother and sister had been turned into vampires. He killed them, but not before they bit him on the neck and he had to do something to survive the bite, though what that is is not explained. He has a massive scar that runs halfway around his torso, which seems to have happened during a military campaign. Kronos's partner is Professor Grost, who does most of the basic work of making weapons and so on while Kronos remains in a constant state of readiness for a fight with vampires (Kronos also trains, smokes pot, and meditates during his downtime).
And Kronos is a total badass, cut from the same cloth as Clint Eastwood and Toshiro Mifune (Clemens even admits to the Western and Kurosawa influence in the DVD commentary). In one of my favorite scenes, Kronos and Grost visit the local tavern and have to face down three thugs who have been hired by the villain to kill the heroes. The thugs, led by Ian Hendry in a fabulous cameo, try to antagonize Kronos by insulting his hunchbacked colleague. Rather than take their bait, Kronos explains that it's rude to call attention to another's physical misfortunes, as they each have characteristics that would open them up to ridicule as well. Here, we get the quick-draw scene, but instead of guns, they all have swords, and Kronos dispatches the thugs with two quick swings of his sword. The action happens so fast, however, that we don't really see anything: Kronos reaches for his sword, we hear two quick slicing motions in the air, and then the sword is back in its scabbard. It happens so fast, in fact, that the thugs require several seconds before they realize they're dead. It's a great scene, with editing taken right out of Leone. (In a later awesome badass scene, Kronos uses two swords to disarm--but not kill--a group of attacking villagers in a cemetary.)
Kronos and Grost are first introduced in the movie traveling through the forest, when the come across a young gypsy woman in stocks and covered with tomatoes. Kronos asks her what she has done, and she responds, "I danced on a Sunday." Kronos reaches for his blade, and we're not quite sure what he's going to do with it, nor is the girl. He cuts open the lock on the stocks, and sets her free. The girl, Carla (Caroline Munro--one of the great stars of horror and sci-fi), decides to travel with the duo, though she doesn't yet know what they do for a living.
Both Janson and Munro have considerable chemistry, as scenes between Kronos and Carla are erotically charged, though the two say almost nothing to each other. Clemens makes some interesting creative choices in filming their love scenes. In the key example, Clemens uses lighting and shadows to frame each character as they approach each other to embrace. It's a great scene, and especially surprising in its subtlety considering how other Hammer films of the same period were engaging in more graphic depictions of sexuality. It also reveals something important about the characters--neither speaks much in the film, but we get the sense that Kronos especially lives his life as if he could get killed by a vampire at any time, and Carla, with her mysterious past, finds this life attractive as well. A friend from their past, Dr. Marcus, has called on Kronos and Grost to help his village out with a strange epidemic of vampire attacks. These attacks, however, don't follow typical vampire conventions: they take place during the day time, the victims (all young women) look prematurely aged but are not drained of blood, and they have blood stains on their mouths. Grost seems to have an idea what is going on, and he launches in to an explanation that establishes a key trope of the film--many different species of vampires exist, and all require different methods of destruction. While this does give Clemens the opportunity to play fast and loose with vampire lore, it also solves a big problem that a lot of vampire films have. Rather than establishing unique rules for killing vampires that don't exist in any other vampire story, Clemens basically concedes that every rule from every vampire story works in this world.
This trope also prepares us for one of the film's key set pieces. In a surprise twist, Dr. Marcus gets turned into a vampire, so Kronos and Grost tie him up and try to find out how to kill him in order to determine exactly what kind of vampire they're dealing with. This is a pretty effective horror scene: they try stabbing him with a wooden stake, hanging, and burning before stumbling on to the correct method.
Grost also has some unique methods for tracking down and identifying vampires. One, which becomes a funny gag that runs through much of the movie, involves placing a dead toad in the path of a suspected vampire. This comes, he explains, from an old folk rhyme:
“If a vampire should bestrode Close to the grave of a dead toad Then the vampire life shall give And suddenly, the toad shall live.”
In other words, a vampire passing near the grave of a dead toad will cause the toad to return to life. Though this has the diction and rhyme scheme of Lord Byron's 1813 vampire poem "The Giaour," I think the rhyme is a creation of Brian Clemens. Whatever the case, it does set up one of the funniest lines in the movie. Grost and Carla have set about burying dead toads throughout the woods in order to track the vampire's movements. Grost seals the toad corpse in a wooden box, drops it in a freshly dug grave, and announces, "Toad in the hole." I don't know exactly why that line's funny, but it makes me laugh every time I see the film.
The film ends with an exciting sword fight, made especially realistic by the fact that Horst Janson is a trained fencer, as is the actor playing his opponent. Therefore, Clemens did not need to double either actor, and he had much more freedom to choreograph and film this scene. Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter is clearly meant to set up a franchise that unfortunately never happened. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the fact that Captain Kronos didn't become a huge multimedia franchise is one of my biggest pop culture disappointments. In the DVD commentary, Brian Clemens, who also owns the rights to the character, discusses attempts he has made to revive the character as a TV series or in further movies, none of which have come to fruition. There were a few unauthorized comic stories that ran in the Hammer House of Horror magazine, but that's it, as far as I can tell. However, what seemed inventive and original in this movie has been borrowed so frequently by the likes of Buffy, Blade, and Anita Blake that I fear any new Captain Kronos work would seem derivative. Also, I think we have all the vampire hunters and slayers that we need right now, though none are quite as cool as Captain Kronos.
Here's a link to the trailer, which highlights some of the more awesome parts of the film, including Kronos's costume, the swordfighting, and Caroline Munro. I also like the stylized "K" that serves as Kronos's logo and could function very well for this blog, too.
While Hammer Films is best known for their gothic horror films featuring Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Mummy, and various other creatures, they also produced a series of suspense thrillers in the 60s and 70s. These thrillers have not fared so well over time, mainly because their contemporary setting tends to date them, but also because they lack the sex and violence that the gothic horror films are often known for. However, these "mini-Hitchcocks," as they were known around Hammer studios, are often quite well done.
One such film is Fear in the Night (aka Dynasty of Fear and Honeymoon of Fear), written and directed by Jimmy Sangster and starring Judy Geeson, Ralph Bates, Joan Collins, and Peter Cushing. Most of the film takes place in a quaint British boarding school run by Headmaster Michael Carmichael (Cushing). A young woman named Peggy (Geeson) has just married a teacher at the school (Bates), and as the movie opens, Peggy is packing in preparation for moving to her new home, which, for some reason, she hasn't seen yet. The night before she leaves, she's attacked by a one-armed assailant in her room. However, because she has a history of mental breakdown, no one seems ready to believe that she was assaulted, including her new husband. The suspense in this movie then stems from the question: is she imagining these attacks, or is she being gaslit?
Once she arrives at the school, she hopes that its isolation will provide safety from her unknown attacker, but that is not the case. On an afternoon alone in her cottage, she is attacked again by the same one-armed man.
While wandering around the empty school, Peggy is introduced to Headmaster Carmichael, who is sitting in a classroom listening to recordings of students in a Latin class. Carmichael, as played by Cushing, does not put one at ease: he describes his bizarre fascination with knots, and he has a creepy conversation with Peggy about her hair (where he also reveals that he has a prosthetic arm!). It goes without saying that Cushing is the red herring in the film, but he is perfectly effective and creepy as the imbalanced headmaster.
Joan Collins also appears in the middle of the film as Carmichael's wife, Molly. Her introduction is also creepy: just as Peggy is admiring a cute bunny rabbit in the woods, Molly walks up and shoots it. She then proceeds to carry the bleeding rabbit carcass around for the next few minutes, later offering it to Peggy as a housewarming gift. Other than this and one other scene later in the film, however, Joan Collins has little to do here, so her billing in the film (and the DVD packaging that features her prominently on the front cover) are a bit misleading.
The film manages to build suspense slowly, with long, silent scenes of Peggy exploring her new location. Writer/director Jimmy Sangster says on the DVD commentary for the film that many of these sequences were shot to pad the film out to 90 minutes. That may be true, and some viewers may complain that the movie is slow going at first, but I found these scenes worked to help develop the sense of dread that permeates the action.
And no matter how slow the first half of the movie is, it picks up considerably in the last half-hour, with a series of twists that continue to throw Peggy off and undermine her mental stability. The whole plot becomes wildly preposterous, but the characters acknowledge the preposterousness. I don't want to spoil it because I did find it all great fun and genuinely surprising. In fact, on watching the film a second time, I found it held up well--none of the movies twists violate anything that happens in the first half of the movie.
I also like this movie because of its star, Judy Geeson. Geeson was among the group of mod young British actresses in the late 60s and early 70s who emerged in the wake of Julie Christie's popularity. She's in To Sir with Love--a movie I like a whole lot more than I know I should--and her career, at its peak, alternated between horror films and bawdy comedies. Danny Peary's description of her in his essential reference book, The Cult Movie Stars, explains exactly how I feel: "she was likable and had a 'look' that makes some of us nostalgic when we see her on screen." In Fear in the Night, she really gets the shit kicked out of her, and it's difficult to say that she ends up triumphant in the end. The movie posters all highlight her victimization as the key selling point of the film.
Here's the trailer. Unfortunately, the trailer spoils the big twist at the end, so watch with care if you plan on seeing this movie.
One of the nice surprises in the Hammer Horror Series DVD set that came out in 2005 was the inclusion of Night Creatures, aka Captain Clegg (1962). This little known Hammer gem adapts the story of Dr. Syn, from the 1915 novel by Russell Thorndike, though here the character's name is changed to "Dr. Blyss." Other than the name, however, the movie follows the basic story faithfully. The story takes place in the late 18th century, with Dr. Blyss as the reverend in the British port town of Dymchurch. Blyss (Peter Cushing), however, is secretly the notorious pirate Captain Clegg, who is believed dead after being hanged in prison. Instead, Clegg reformed (somewhat) and made his way to Dymchurch, where he also helps the town escape economic depression with a large-scale liquor smuggling operation that occasionally catches the attention of British authorities.
The smugglers, led by Blyss and also including a young Oliver Reed, put on phosphorescent skeleton costumes and ride around the local swamp as the "Marsh Phantoms," who effectively scare away the curious and the superstitious. However, a group of British soldiers, led by Captain Collier, come to investigate reports of smuggling, and they prove much more difficult to dissuade.
This story doesn't fit the typical Hammer Horror model, as there is little of the supernatural or other horror elements (though there is some tongue trauma reminiscent of The Mummy). The "Marsh Phantoms" are certainly visually effective, but the audience knows from the beginning that these are men in costumes, so they are not meant to scare us. It is, however, an entertaining adventure story, and the fact that the heroes use costumes--including a creepy scarecrow disguise--makes this film Halloween-appropriate.
But, like the best Hammer films, this one is dense and efficient. It clocks in under 90 minutes, as most Hammer films do, but it manages to squeeze in a pretty complicated plot with many obstacles, villains, and sudden turns. But what stands out about this film for me is Peter Cushing's performance as Dr. Blyss/Captain Clegg.
Even moreso than Christopher Lee, Cushing is a staple of Hammer films, and he nails both the stoic heroism of Dr. Van Helsing and the obsessed villainy of Dr. Frankenstein. But he played those two roles in particular so often, that it's nice to see him give a different kind of performance. And here, he seems to be having more fun than normal, even getting the chance to laugh once in a while.
Here's a link to the trailer, which makes the film seem more like a horror movie than it actually is.
Soon after this film was released in 1962, Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color ran their own version of the Dr. Syn story--The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh--starring Patrick "Number 6" McGoohan as Dr. Syn, which may be one reason why Night Creatures/Captain Clegg is not as well known as other Hammer films. On November 11, Disney is going to release Dr. Syn: The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, in a DVD set that includes both the three-episode series from 1963 and the re-edited theatrical release version, Dr. Syn, Alias the Scarecrow. I loved the Disney version when I was a kid, but I haven't seen it since, so I'm curious to see if it holds up. It's too bad Disney can't put this out before Halloween.
The first Hammer horror film I ever saw, though I was far from aware of the Hammer brand, was The Mummy (1959). I saw it, like much of my early exposure to classic horror movies, as a 3:00 Movie on WPIX when I lived in New Jersey in the 1970s. And, like many of the horror movies I watched at that time, it scared the shit out of me.
Specifically, the flashback scene that reveals the origin of the Mummy etched itself in my memory like very few movie scenes at the time. Nothing is particularly graphic in this scene, but enough is suggested that activated my young imagination. I was especially disturbed by the scene of the priest Kharis (Christopher Lee) having his tongue cut out. We see the clamp go down on his tongue in a medium shot, and then the film cuts to a reverse shot from behind Kharis's head, as the guard slices the tongue off, though the cut is not visible to us (this sequence is used in the preview below).
This series of shots best encapsulates my appreciation of the early Hammer horror films. They are slightly more graphic in their violence than the classic horror movies of the 30s and 40s, but they still rely heavily on suggestion--the suggestions, however, are more disturbing.
Other than this long flashback scene, Christopher Lee doesn't get much to do as the Mummy in this film. However, he is still effective as Kharis, with an imposing presence, a slow, lumbering gait, and expressive eyes that reveal his inner conflict toward the end of the movie. And Peter Cushing once again plays the hero role that he nailed in so many of these movies: the deadly serious hero who is utterly, single-mindedly convinced that the supernatural exists and must be destroyed.
The Mummy is among the first group of classic horror revisions that Hammer undertook, with the creative team of writer Jimmy Sangster, director Terence Fisher, and producer Michael Carreras on board as they were for The Curse of Frankenstein and The Horror of Dracula. Unlike those other two movies, however, The Mummy varies little from the basic plot of the Univeral Mummy movies: the Mummy sets out to seek revenge on those British archeologists who desecrated the tomb of the queen he protected.
The Mummy does have problems with an overt colonialism that's never really challenged, and this may affect the way the movie ages. England is presented as the locus of order, which is only disrupted by the intrusion of a chaotic, foreign, Eastern influence. Also, Cushing provokes Mehemet Bey, the Mummy's keeper, by insulting his religious beliefs. But, despite those inevitable problems with this particular property, The Mummy serves as a model for Hammer horror at its best: a lean, efficient, and effective movie, with a creative team and ensemble of actors at the top of their game. Though the movie no longer gives me nightmares like it did my 7-year-old self, I find that the shocking moments in this movie still earn their shocks honestly, and the Mummy itself is well-designed and haunting.
Here's the trailer for The Mummy, which highlights many of the qualities I've referenced above.
Tonight, I'm launching a sub-series within the larger Halloween Countdown: Hammer Week! During last year's Countdown, I covered a couple of Hammer films: the crazy awesome Brides of Dracula and the should-be-awesomer Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. This year, I'm going to devote a whole week to my favorite Hammer films, starting with one of my favorites, Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971). Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde is a late entry in the Hammer Horror films, and it comes across as atypical when compared to some of the more famous of the studio's films. Though the movie does feature some graphic violence and the nudity that was becoming increasingly popular in the latter days of the Hammer cycle, it's much more subdued and cerebral than other Hammer films of the early 70s, such as The Vampire Lovers.
On the DVD commentary for the film (which is worth listening to, as many of the principle creators behind the film are still alive, and some of their anecdotes are quite entertaining), writer and producer Brian Clemens explains the creative origins of the film: he simply walked up to a Hammer executive at the studio cafeteria and said, "How about 'Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde'?" The exec told him to meet on Wednesday, and by the meeting, the studio had already drawn up a poster campaign. The fact is, all you really need to know about the film is in the title--it's pure high concept.
Ralph Bates, who at that point had become a mainstay at Hammer and an alternative to Peter Cushing as leading man, stars as Dr. Jekyll, who seeks out the secret to immortality in order to give himself more time to come up with cures for humanity's many ailments. He seeks out immortality through female hormones because they, as he explains, give women's skin its texture and cause them to keep their hair longer than men do. He manages to get the hormones from recently dead women in the Whitechapel district of London, where the local undertaker is less than ethically sound.
Jekyll first performs his experiment on a normally short-lived fly. The experiment works, and the fly lives far beyond its life-expectancy, but with a shocking side-effect: the fly has changed gender from male to female.
The doctor continues with his experiments, but he soon runs out of recently dead female sources for hormones. The undertaker proposes a solution and introduces Jekyll to Burke and Hare, based on the real-life murderers who, 60 years prior to the film's events, sold their victims' corpses to a Dr. Knox in Edinburgh for the purpose of training doctors in dissection. This is one of the more interesting elements of the film: writer Clemens weaves in to the Jekyll and Hyde story the (anachronistic) historical details of Burke and Hare, along with the Jack the Ripper slayings.
In fact, after Burke and Hare are caught (and one of them is horribly blinded with lye), Jekyll has to get his female hormones himself, now by killing prostitutes, and he becomes the Whitechapel murderer. The moral ambiguity of the Jekyll character here presents yet another interesting wrinkle in the conventional Jekyll and Hyde story: although Jekyll's ultimate goal is the benefit of mankind, the Jekyll/Hyde split hardly falls along lines of good and evil. Both, in fact, are guilty of murder, and both argue that their murders are justified--his for the future benefit of mankind, hers for self-protection.
A poster for the film advertises quite sensationally, "Warning: The sexual transformation of Man into Woman will actually take place before your eyes." Though the film itself doesn't quite live up to that hype, the film manages to make the transformation work within a limited budget. Much of the credit should go to the casting of Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick, who look remarkably alike,with similar hair, bone-structure, and the added effect of a mole on the right side of the face.
In the trailer, you can see here how well cast the two leads are. The trailer also highlights some of the clever effects used in the film during the transformation sequences, such as having Beswick replace Bates off-screen during an unedited take. You also see one of the more effective images from the film's climax: Jekyll and Hyde's face morphing behind a red stained-glass window. Also, Hyde's transformation back into Jekyll is usually signified by Hyde developing a case of "man hands," where Bates's hand comes into the screen as if it belongs to Beswick. However, the movie isn't quite as shocking as either the trailer or the poster claim.
Martine Beswick is certainly stunning as Sister Hyde, but I do wish she were given more to do. In fact, while this movie is effectively atmospheric and entertaining, it never quite gets as much out of its central concept as one might hope. One scene in particular reveals the missed opportunity: when Jekyll's friend, Professor Robertson, who is investigating the Whitechapel murders, meets Mrs. Hyde, who claims to be Jekyll's widowed sister. Robertson is a lech, and he suspends his investigation at a crucial point in order to take Hyde back to his room. There, she seduces him and stabs him in the back. She then proceeds to continue stabbing him in a murderous frenzy, which quickly cuts back and forth between her face and Jekyll's in make-up and women's clothes.
Another line hints at the film's potential in terms of sexuality as well. When Hyde seduces the upstairs neighbor, Howard, she claims to know what man's pleasure feels like. The viewer realizes at this moment that Hyde and Jekyll are one in the same, sharing the same experiences, and that Hyde may be acting out Jekyll's desires as well as her own, but the scene pulls back before going much further. The issues of gender distortion and ambiguous sexuality are only hinted at in this scene, and I wish that the filmmakers had really cut loose with these ideas.
Director Roy Ward Baker, who did more journeyman work on other Hammer films like The 7 Golden Vampires, ultimately makes this film work despite its limitations. The limited sets, depicting urban Victorian streets, are encased in fog, giving the stalking and murder scenes some added claustrophobic atmosphere. In general, the film looks really good (with the exception of the final shot, which should be more effective than it is due to some weak make-up effects). But no Hammer film ever achieves perfection, and, in the end, I might prefer the restraint of this film to the direction the studio ultimately pursued in the 1970s, which became more and more exploitative and less interesting (with some exceptions I deal with later in the week).
Here's an extended clip of the first transformation scene from the movie. Warning: this does contain some nudity as Sister Hyde explores her new body.
Also featured in this scene is Susan Brodrick as Jekyll's love interest and upstairs neighbor, Susan Spencer. Brodrick (or Broderick, as her name is sometimes spelled) memorably first appeared as the antique store owner in Blow-Up, but, other than some stage work in the late 70s, I can't seem to find anything else about her acting career after Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. I'd be curious to know what happened to her, and if she is even still alive.
I teach Bram Stoker's novel Dracula almost every semester in an introduction to literature course, so I have a certain fondness for vampire films. But, as I tell my students every semester, the "quality-to-crap ratio" is pretty off balance in the genre, and I've given up on seeking out new vampire films unless they have something extraordinary to recommend them. I do, however, frequently extoll to my students the virtues of the Dracula cycle from England's Hammer Studios, despite the presence of many duds in the final years of Hammer productions. The Hammer films were known for kicking up the sex and violence from the Universal horror cycle while also featuring a fine repertory of actors: most notably, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. The series started with Horror of Dracula (1958), a very loose adaptation of the Stoker novel with Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing and Lee as Dracula. Lee wouldn't return to play Dracula for another eight years in Dracula--Prince of Darkness (1966), and even in that film, it takes more than half the movie for Dracula's servant to revive his master from the ashes of his fate in the first film. (The conclusion of that movie also featured one of the worst ways to defeat a vampire: Dracula is frozen in a lake. That doesn't defeat him--it just makes him someone else's problem later.)
In between those two movies, however, Hammer put out a couple of very good vampire movies: Brides of Dracula (1960) and Kiss of the Vampire (1962). Kiss of the Vampire, unfortunately, devolves from an awesome opening scene, where a mysterious, possibly drunk man stumbles into a somber funeral and suddenly thrusts a shovel into the grave and through the casket. When a scream and fountain of blood emit from the casket, several attendants faint and the man walks away. The camera then goes into the grave and through the casket to reveal that the young woman being buried is really a vampire! Unfortunately, the rest of the film does not live up to the opening, though it's still enjoyable.
I really enjoy Brides of Dracula, despite the false advertising of the title. While there are several vampire brides, Dracula is nowhere to be seen. Instead, we have Dracula's apprentice, of sorts: Baron Meinster, played by blond actor David Peel. Also, the poster claims that the vampire "turns a girls' school into a Chamber of Horrors," but the movie fails to live up to that tantalizing promise as well. However, we do get the return of Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing, putting this film in continuity with the rest of the Dracula cycle. So, minus Christopher Lee, this film has everything I love about the Hammer Dracula films, including the gothic setting and the psychosexual horror elements. The film was also directed by Terence Fisher, who directed most of the great Hammer horror films.
The film opens, as so many of these Hammer films do, with a young woman, Marianne, arriving in a strange village, near an all-girls school where she's about to start work as a teacher. Her carriage stops at an inn along the way, and the villagers start behaving strangely, refusing to serve her and advising her to move along. However, her carriage suddenly leaves without her, and the villagers all clear out of the inn for some mysterious reason. Moments later, thundering hooves can be heard from another carriage, and the Baroness Meinster enters the inn. She begins striking up a conversation wit Marianne despite the protestations of the innkeepers, who seem to know something about the Baroness. Soon, the Baroness has convinced Marianne to spend the night at Castle Meinster before embarking on the last leg of her journey in the morning.
I'm a sucker for this kind of opening--you see it in a lot of Hammer films, as well as movies like Die, Monster, Die!, which I commented on in an earlier post. These villagers have been living with this unspeakable horror their entire lives, and their moral system is so completely tuned to self-preservation that they easily sacrifice a total stranger.
While getting settled in her room at Castle Meinster, Marianne steps out on her balcony and sees a beautiful young man chained up in a room below. When she asks the Baroness about this, she responds that her son is "ill." Later, Marianne again looks out to the balcony to see the young man apparently trying to leap to his death, fearing the worst, she rushes to the room to save him. The young man then explains that he is the Baron Meinster, and his mother keeps him prisoner in the room. Feeling sympathy, Marianne resolves to help him escape.
Throughout these opening scenes, the viewer is in the same position as Marianne, assuming that the mother is the monster here, keeping her innocent son chained in his room. However, once Marianne allows him to escape, we learn that the truth is far worse: he's a deadly vampire, and his mother was the only one keeping him from running amok in the nearby villages. We also learn, though, that the mother has had to make some serious moral compromises to keep her son this way--she frequently would bring him young women to satisfy his hunger, and Marianne was soon to be the next victim.
The mother/son relationship is just one of the elements that make this movie interesting. Once the Baron is free, the first thing he does is transform his own mother into a vampire by biting her neck in a scene that does more than imply incest: "He has taken the blood of his own mother," she explains to Van Helsing as willingly allows herself to be destroyed by him later in the movie.
Van Helsing appears in the village at the behest of the local priest, who is trying to convince villagers that something must be done about the recent deaths of many of their young women. Peter Cushing's Van Helsing is coldly methodical. He's long since dealt with the emotional and moral issues of destroying vampires, and he has little time or patience for those who wish to treat the vampires as if they were still their loved ones. My favorite part of this movie, though, is the climax, which contains one of the more clever methods of destroying a vampire. Van Helsing tracks a recently turned vampire bride to an old windmill, where The Baron soon arrives with Marianne. In the ensuing fight, the Baron bites Van Helsing and leaves him to his transformation. Van Helsing, however, acts quickly, cauterizing the bite wounds with a hot blacksmith's iron and dousing the burn with holy water. This does the trick, and he returns to the fight. The Baron then attempts to escape by torching the windmill. As the Baron runs away, Van Helsing makes his way to the top of the windmill, jumping on the blades and turning them so that their shadow, when cast across the Baron's path, make the form of a cross. The Baron then collapses dead in the shadow. This may be a bit silly, but it shows some of the inventiveness of these early Hammer horror films.
There are two good Hammer horror DVD boxed sets that I know about. The "Horror Collection" contains six movies all together, including three Dracula films: Horror of Dracula, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, and Taste the Blood of Dracula. Unfortunately, the set skips Dracula--Prince of Darkness, and therefore confuses the continuity between movies. Brides of Dracula , along with Kiss of the Vampire, can be found on "The Hammer Horror Series," which features eight movies on two disks with no extras.
I am an English professor at a small university in South Carolina, where I teach courses in British literature, film, and detective fiction. I blog about comics, movies, and other pop culture topics. And I like everything that you like.
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