QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967) - invades Blu-ray

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT

(1967, UK, Five Million Years To Earth)

A unified theory that explains everything that's wrong with the world...

For Halloween, we watched all three Hammer films featuring that unlikely sci-fi hero Professor Bernard Quatermass, prompted by the arrival of the new Blu-ray release of Quatermass and the Pit (above).

Although it's the third of the films and adapted from a BBC TV series, this low-budget movie pushes ideas that rival and even mingle with the extra-terrestrial plot of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As alien visitations go, it looks small scale, not showing the global reaction but just a few streets and buildings in the centre of London. Even so, its claustrophobic approach is still largely effective today, mixing up apocalypse, sci-fi and horror into a unique, fantastic story.

With three hours of TV scripts to cut down into a fairly short film, the story rips along, throwing up some very grand ideas along the way. An Underground subway extension project hits a wall when a large metal object is found buried in the clay. A huge futuristic missile that appears to have landed before the Stone Age. Archaeologists and military experts can only guess what it might be. The more clues they get, the less sense it makes. Only Quatermass's wild theories can explain it all. But while he tries to warn everyone away, curiosity and the need for public transport unleashes forces that threaten to destroy the whole city.

Thankfully, Nigel Kneale gets to adapt his best story for the big screen (unlike Hammer's The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass II). Besides original scripts, Kneale was excellent at adapting other people's work for the screen, such as 1984 and The Woman In Black for TV, and HG Wells' First Men In The Moon for the Ray Harryhausen movie.

Andrew Keir (Dracula - Prince of Darkness) provides Quatermass's most rounded characterisation, better than even Sir John Mills in The Quatermass Conclusion. Besides his usual bullish attitude, the rocket scientist here shows warmth and even vulnerability. He's teamed up with a pair of experts as inquisitive and open-minded as himself, James Donald (The Bridge On The River Kwai, The Great Escape) and Barbara Shelley (also Dracula - Prince of Darkness, Village of the Damned), both of whom steal several scenes when it's their turn.

After her startling transformation from prim and proper wife into a ravening vampire, it was hard to imagine Shelley could top that. But she convinces us that she's possessed in several scary scenes that purely work due to her performance. A telekinetic troublemaker, years before Carrie.

In another brief scene that gives me the chills, a timid victim is cut down by the uncaring power of the silent majority. As chaos spreads through the city, blank-faced crowds mindlessly kill any 'others' with their telekinetic powers. It's like the Children of the Damned have all grown up and gone on a rampage. 

Admittedly, the special effects are stretched to their limits, considering it's a low Hammer budget trying to put on a Lifeforce city-wide catastrophe. Some of the exterior sets look too much like a backlot, but the London Underground station interior at the core of the story still looks excellent. On Blu-ray you can now check out all the Hammer movie posters lining the walls! It's clever the way that so much happens on the same street - every house, door and alleyway outside the station entrance gets its own scene.

Wires are occasionally visible, you can see them if you look for them, but not if you're following the story. Barbara's 'vision' is the lowpoint of the film in an over-ambitious scene.

After a lifetime of immediately unravelling every single movie special effect that has fooled my eyes, I now avoid certain 'making of' reveals. I want the creatures of The Mist and Monsters to continue to mystify me. I like to think of Teddy in A.I. as a character rather an effect, so I've avoided any behind-the-scenes footage or articles. I want to remember them the way they were in the story. Similarly, the final ethereal apparition in Quatermass and The Pit. I've no idea quite what I'm looking at - it might as well be real. I don't want to know how they did it - to me I'm looking at the thing from the pit.

While it was regularly shown on late night TV throughout the seventies and eighties, Quatermass and the Pit gathered a growing hive of fans through the years and its continuing popularity has inspired well-produced editions on every home video format.

The new Blu-ray, from Optimum UK, looks superb - it's never looked so sharp, so clean and colourful. The aspect ratio refrains from cropping the original 1.66 image down to the standard Blu-ray 1.77:1 (16:9) shape. So with the 1.66 ratio, there are thin black 'pillars' at the sides of the image, but these might not even be visible on a screen set to 'overscan'. I'd have liked even a little more headroom, but this is the best aspect ratio presentation for the film that I've seen for many years.

 

In the extras (only on the Blu-ray) there's sadly no archive footage behind the scenes, but there is a commentary track from the late writer Nigel Kneale and the late director Roy Ward Baker. Plus a group of insightful and often funny new reflections on the Quatermass phenomenon, with The Pit being everyone's favourite. There are valuable stories from Kneale's widow Judith Kerr, some set recollections from star Julian Glover (Colonel Breen), reminiscences from expert horror fans Kim Newman and Mark Gatiss, (who made me laugh out loud with their descriptions of Brian Donlevy's acting), Hammer expert Marcus Hearn and an American perspective from Joe Dante. The US didn't get the TV series so the name Quatermass didn't mean anything, so it was renamed Five Million Years to Earth (a title which I still confuse with Harryhausen's Twenty Million Miles to Earth).

Several of the commentators tease the idea that Arthur C. Clarke's 1954 novel Childhood's End (to which I'd also add his 1951 short story The Sentinel) may have influenced this Quatermass story. There are several echoes and parallels between The Pit and 2001: A Space Odyssey, but as Newman observes, Kneale deals with the immense ideas a lot less pretentiously!

SPOILER-FRENZY: AVOID THE U.S. TRAILER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE FILM BEFORE! It's also included in the extras.

All six episodes of the original BBC TV series (from 1958) are also out on DVD - a low-budget TV production recorded as it went out live on air! The surviving episodes of The Quatermass Experiment and all of Quatermass II is also in this DVD set. The series expand on many of the ideas and scenes in the films. It maybe less distracting to read the TV scripts, which have also been re-published through the years (like the editions below).

  

Tristram Cary's scary electronic soundtrack offered in many scenes instead of an orchestral score were released on a couple of CDs (the best is pictured below, and includes a couple of surviving tracks from the first two films). The haunting closing track provides a fantastic end to the story, but was in fact a library track.

More great publicity photos and posters from the film are over at Coming Attractions Of The Past.

HORROR OF DRACULA (1958) - bloody good

HORROR OF DRACULA

(1958, UK, Dracula)

A compact classic Hammer Horror film, that's still working

Previously, Dracula was gothic, black and white, with a thick Eastern European accent, and no fangs. Hammer's Dracula starts with bright red Technicolor blood dripping over the titles, to signal that a new era had arrived, with a far scarier vampire. Out came the fangs, in went the stakes, and down went the necklines. The producers were fighting the censor along the way, especially after the savage critical reaction to Curse of Frankenstein which first teamed Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. What they offered was a little more sex and violence.

Lee's performance is still startling today. One minute he's a charming aristocrat, the next a wild-eyed animal - swift, strong, and single-mindedly hungry for blood. With no prosthetic make-up, his Dracula is scary because of the blood dripping from his lips, his bloodshot eyes and his demonic performance. When a crucifix comes out, he reacts like a cornered snake, and hisses in disgust. Here is a villain from Hell, clever, dangerous and evil. There's no moral dilemma - Dracula must be destroyed.

Although the film is fifty years old, Christopher Lee is still with us, still acting. While he's found a new fanbase as Saruman in Lord of the Rings and Count Dooku in the Star Wars franchise, he landed both roles because of the lasting impression of his Dracula films.

Lower down the cast, but also still with us is Geoffrey Bayldon. This actor often played far older characters. Here's he's a grey-haired porter, even though he was only 34! You may have seen him as the tour guide in Tales From The Crypt, creepy Max in Asylum and Theo the cloak-seller in The House that Dripped Blood. Like Lee, he's still working!

Likewise, the lovely Janina Faye as the little girl being pursued by the undead. Her scene with Van Helsing, as he protects her from the night's chill, is a lovely moment of calm amidst the horror. It's not easy finding talented child actors who act their age. I also enjoyed her roles in two Janette Scott movies The Day of the Triffids and The Beauty Jungle.

Christopher Lee starred as Dracula in six more Hammer films. They'd have used him more - but he was substituted by other actors when he put his foot down and avoided Brides of Dracula and The Legend of Seven Golden Vampires.

Horror of Dracula (as it was released in the USA) moved the character of Van Helsing into the spotlight, a character who's as virtuous as Dracula is evil. On the face of it, Van Helsing is an anti-hero, a man who digs up the dead and mutilates them, but played by Peter Cushing, he's not only pure, he's a polite and considerate gentleman as well. You couldn't find a better role model... who stakes vampires. It's a shame that modern audiences only know Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin in the first Star Wars, because it was such an atypical role for a versatile and compassionate actor - my very favourite in the horror genre.


After the prologue, where the unlucky Jonathan Harker arrives at Dracula's castle, the rest of the film is spent in the company of Lee or Cushing. If that wasn't enough of a treat, there's also the distinctive Michael Gough, temporarily upgraded from his schlocky (though very enjoyable) b-movie horrors.

The story is a heavily abridged version of the rambling book, omitting most of the supernatural elements. like Dracula's shape-shifting abilities, and instead focusing on blood-drinking and the transmission of evil, as his victims become other vampires. Jimmy sangster's best script for a Dracula film fast-forwards through much of the story and loses many characters, even Renfield. Gone are the sea crossings - Dracula's castle is now a short horseride across the border from a mythical English-speaking town in central Europe. This leaves a taut, tight story, unlike the other movie versions.

After fifty years, this is still a great introduction to the crux of a classic horror tale. The period setting, combined with the film's age make it almost look like it was filmed at the turn of the century when it was supposed to take place. The only annoyances are the brief but lame comedy relief.


A newly-restored print was shown recently in London and has reportedly been remastered in high-definition. But there's no blu-ray release in sight, which could also be the film's uncensored debut in digital. I watched my region 1 DVD (pictured at top), which crops the action fairly tightly into a 16:9 frame. It's a watchable transfer for now, and is only missing a little close-up staking, as far as I know.

Here's the original trailer

TO THE DEVIL... A DAUGHTER (1976) - hard-hitting Hammer horror

TO THE DEVIL... A DAUGHTER
(1976, UK)

Unfortunately, the first Hammer film I ever saw in the cinema was also the last Hammer horror film that was produced. I saw it only a couple of years after its release in an all-night horror show at a local suburban cinema in Ewell. I’d gotten used to the Hammer style of lush-looking gothic dramas on TV, and was rather surprised by the ultra-modern looking psycho-logical satanism that is To The Devil... A Daughter. Through the years, it’s endured as a unique and earnest attempt to visualise the modern practice of black magic.

Through the early 1970s, Hammer Studios were continuing to move forward and experiment with the genre, but not quite fast enough for the plunge into gore and sensationalism. The wide-angle cinematography borders on experimental and the subtle, cold lighting makes for a gritty and realistic look. The far-from-stagey acting is helped enormously by the star, Richard Widmark’s performance. The nudity and violence is still eye-opening today. It’s not wall-to-wall, but when it happens it doesn’t pull any punches. For instance, the birthing scene isn't explicit, but it is painfully nasty.

The unusual story structure initially presents a string of unexplained events. For once, the baddies are one step ahead of the goodies, as well as the audience. We have to be patient as the plot gradually takes shape. Widmark plays John Verney, an occult expert called on to look after a young nun, by her father (Denholm Elliott), who hasn't told him the whole story about her value to an underground band of satanists. The depiction of various black magic rituals and their effects look very real, and the story starts to convince that it might all actually work...

Hammer regular Christopher Lee is for once a very human monster - posing as a priest. Lee is in his prime here, desperate to do his beloved author Dennis Wheatley justice. The mainly British cast includes Anthony Valentine (Tower of Evil) and Honor Blackman (Goldfinger, The Avengers) as a normal couple,dragged into extraordinary circumstances, much the same as Paul Eddington and Sarah Lawson's characters did in The Devil Rides Out (1968), Hammer’s earlier excursion into Dennis Wheatley’s satanic novels. Denholm Elliott (The House That Dripped Blood) is the rightfully paranoid informant, mirroring David Warner’s frightened retreat inside the pages of the bible in The Omen, the same year.



And of course Nastassia Kinski, in an early role, plays the nun at the centre of the deadly chess game. Her full-frontal scenes, at only aged seventeen, mirror the sexuality at the heart of the decade's wave of sexual explicitness in horror films. Using those stills as publicity for thje film shows a huge lapse of taste, only possible in that very different time. I also can’t remember whether she was dubbed for this role by another actress. While German actors were no doubt part of the deal, in this a German co-production, Kinski is perfect in the role.

The only drawbacks to the solid and gripping story, are towards the finale, as an unconvincing demon animatronic effect intrudes poorly into two scenes, and the ending is a famous anticlimax, thankfully discussed in the extra documentaries on the recent Optimum DVD in the UK. The film is also part of the massive 21-movie Hammer Horror boxset/cube.



There are filming locations in Germany and around London, indeed the whole film looks like it was shot outside of studios and sets. Widmark’s flat and several scenes take place just next to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge - the site is now now a huge, boring block of offices, but back then a maze of locks and canals.

The Optimum DVD extras include several interesting and frank interviews including Christopher Lee himself. The late veteran stuntman Eddie Powell also describes the danger of his main stunt, the first British 'full body burn', as well as an unusual assignment doubling for Lee…

There's a trailer here on the revived Hammer Studio's new website.

MOON ZERO TWO (1969) - finally on DVD

MOON ZERO TWO
(1969, UK)

2001 – A Space Odyssey (1968), Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic vision of near-future space travel, and the excitement of the Apollo Moon landings in 1969, inspired film-makers to cash in.

In the same year, compared to the deadly slow Marooned directed by Robert Altman, and Journey to the Far Side of the Sun produced by Gerry Anderson, Hammer Films’ tongue-in-cheek space adventure was a breath of fresh air. Moon Zero Two looked forward to lunar colonisation, envisaging it as the next frontier.

In 2021, there are small cities on the Moon, regular shuttles from Earth, and a race to claim all the mineral riches. The crew of spaceship Moon Zero Two earn their money by salvaging space junk but are also the only independent space vehicle for hire.

Captain Kemp (James Olsen) is approached by shady millionaire J.J. Hubbard (Warren Mitchell) to illegally crash an asteroid on the far side of the Moon. Clementine Taplin (Catherine Schell) also hires him to look for her brother, who has a claim on the far side. Kemp is having a busy few days, and he also has to dodge the attention of the Moon Sheriff who happens to be his girlfriend!


Using American westerns as inspiration, the story weaves in gunfights, claim-jumping, and a bar-room brawl, while accurately predicting life fifty years on. Plastic money, laptop computers, sub-surface ice, and solar energy are now a reality. Made during the Cold War, the film looks forward to Americans and Russians being friends again, pointedly making the crew of Moon Zero Two a citizen of each. It all looks like the sixties, but only the designs date the film, not the story. Spookily, even the date rings true, as NASA are gearing up for more Moonshots by 2020.

The baddies here are money-grabbers and monolithic corporations, and the race for space is now purely economic. Exploration will only happen if it’s for economic gain.

There’s a cheeky reference to 2001, when the Pan Am lunar express tries to jump the cue for re-entry. But like 2001, it encourages a modicum of realism regarding the temperature, pressure, and air supplies needed for human survival. Though for budgetary reasons, there’s an artificial gravity switch inside the buildings, no more of a cheat than in Star Trek.

The impressive sets are huge for a Hammer Film, though the visual FX aren’t so consistent. The spaceship isn’t bad, the wirework space walks and slow-motion low gravity work OK. The most obvious effect is the moon bug tractor – the model looks like a toy, which is a shame as it cross-cuts with an impressive full-scale version. Of course, they didn’t have the budget that Kubrick had.


I’ve always found the film very watchable, with likeable characters and a fast-moving story. All helped enormously by the echoey jazzy score by Don Ellis, in a completely different style to the pounding Julie Driscoll theme tune (the only track that’s out on CD).


James Olsen is the confident hero, Kemp, and token American actor in the cast – he was about to land his biggest screen role, starring in Robert Wise’s The Andromeda Strain (1971). Catherine Schell was also a Bond girl in 1969, but is best remembered as space alien Maya in Space 1999. Carry On regular Bernard Bresslaw, as Hubbard’s brute henchman, was trying hard to get serious roles, but still can’t resist pulling a few comedy faces. Another famous comedian, Warren Mitchell as Hubbard, is far more convincing in villainy.

Adrienne Corri gets a strong role to match her screen presence as Moon Federation Sheriff. She was in many cult films in the seventies, like Madhouse with Vincent Price, Vampire Circus as the ring-master, and A Clockwork Orange, as the main victim of Malcolm McDowell’s Droogs. But this was the only time she had holsters built into thigh-length plastic boots.


Looking at some of the lacklustre poster art for the film, it’s easier to understand why the film wasn’t a success at the time, and why Hammer never ventured into space again. But I’m not the only fan – here’s a website full of photos, modelwork and missing scenes.

Missing from home video for decades, Moon Zero Two has finally been released on DVD in the US as a Best Buy exclusive by Warner Bros. Subtly listed as Sci-Fi 70's Double Feature #1, with the similarly rare When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (there's a fantastic appreciation of that film here on SciFi Japan). Both are remastered 16:9 anamorphic, which frames the action quite tightly, but after a wait like that, I’m glad they're available again and finally off my Not On DVD list.

UPDATE: 22nd September

This DVD is now more widely available than just Best Buy stores, and can be ordered online like here from Diabolik.

HAZEL COURT - horror heroine nevermore

I'd been waiting for the publication of this autobiography for many months now. Sadly, just days before it's release, the author passed away.

Hazel Court was Hammer Horror's first female star. The winning combination of 'Hammer glamour' and acting ability in their leading ladies often proved elusive, but Hazel ably and amply provided both. She starred opposite Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), setting herself up as a 'horror heroine' for the next decade.

Her subsequent horror films, including three in the Roger Corman/Edgar Allen Poe series, are all recommended. For Hammer, she also appeared in The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) opposite Anton Diffring (Circus of Horrors), in which she famously appeared topless for the saucier 'continental' version. Neither version of the film has appeared on DVD yet.

Roger Corman's adaption of The Premature Burial (1962) cast her opposite Ray Milland. The resulting film makes me claustrophobic just thinking about it. In 1963, she starred with Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and a young Jack Nicholson in the comedy-horror The Raven. But her greatest role was in The Masque of the Red Death (1964), where her character is practically Lady Macbeth. Her satanic villainy and masochistic nightmares rival Vincent Price's evildoing in the story. Her altercation with a frenzied falcon is as fierce and frightening as anything in Hitchcock's The Birds.

The book talks about all of her films, even the silly Devil Girl From Mars, and is available online from Tomahawk Press. Beautifully illustrated with rare photos, some in colour, this is a book I've been wanting to read for years, but not with such sad timing.

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DRACULA (1958) if you only see one Hammer Film on the big screen...

. . . make sure it's this one!

On the front of the November programme for BFI Southbank, (the new name for London's National Film Theatre), is Christopher Lee in the original Hammer Film of Dracula, known as Horror of Dracula in the US.

Almost 50 years old, the film has been carefully and completely restored in time for a special Halloween screening in the BFI IMAX cinema on October 31st. That's followed by a two-week run in NFT1 and NFT3. Both screens would be an ideal way to see one of the best British horror films ever made.

Peter Cushing redefined the role of Van Helsing, and Christopher Lee added an animalistic evil to Dracula, adding the ghastly bloody hiss when he's really angry. Beloved director Terence Fisher doesn't miss a beat with a tight, layered and compelling style of storytelling. Lush art direction, pounding music, and gory special effects make this a complete entertainment even today.

In 1958 (just imagine it) the effect was so strong that it launched the studio's international success. It's a marvellous choice for a thorough preservation. But will there be any more Hammer Films treated this royally?

Why not ask them yourself? Nigel Algar and Ben Thompson, the two men in charge of this restoration will be talking about the project at a free event in NFT3 on the afternoon of Friday 9th November.

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CAPTAIN KRONOS - VAMPIRE HUNTER (1973) soundtrack now on CD

Captain Kronos finally on CD

I was only remembering Laurie Johnson's music recently, in my review of And Soon The Darkness. Now out of the blue, some great news. This film had one of my favourite opening themes - the galloping title music as Captain Kronos comes to the aid of a village suffering a mysterious rash of vampiric attacks.

The music will sound familiar to fans of The Avengers and The New Avengers, which Laurie also scored. The new CD soundtrack marks the first time the music has ever been available, apart from two tracks on previous compilations. Better late than never!

A good place to listen to samples and purchase the CD is here on BuySoundtrax which I regularly use...



Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter is available on region 1 and region 2 DVD - an excellent example of latter day Hammer Horror, when stories and direction got more experimental.

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R.I.P. Freddie Francis

Dino and Raffaella De Laurentiis, David Lynch and Freddie Francis, working on Dune

Freddie Francis has passed away at the age of 89.

There are many obituaries online, like from The Independent, but I'd like skew my own towards his horror credits. To me his name was quickly connected with my love of horror films at an early age. As I started watching them, his name kept coming up...

In all, Freddie Francis seemed to have had three careers one after the other – each of them impressive. It makes for a formidable IMDB entry.

His black and white cinematography for gritty British dramas won him an early Oscar in 1960. But I loved his work on The Innocents, which ensures this as easily the best film version of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw. It’s an edgy ghost story that still works today. The Governess of two small children (Deborah Kerr) is either being haunted by evil spirits with a debauched past, or is imagining it all as a result of her own inhibitions.

Tiring of being told what to do, (not to mention low wages), Francis broke into directing, salvaging The Day of the Triffids (1962) without earning a screen credit. But he became typecast as a horror director. In contrast to the critical, artistic successes he worked on as a director of photography, he was soon villified for making ‘schlock’. But I’d argue that many of his ‘horrors’ will easily last as long as his acclaimed mainstream work. Critics look through his films and quickly point to Trog (1970) as being awful, but I don’t think he ever needed to be told! Even though it’s not at all typical of the quality of his many horror films, it’s still highly enjoyable and is about to be remastered on DVD.

The films he directed for Hammer Studios, and it’s many rivals, read like a catalogue of my favourite late-night TV horror film experiences. For me his name became a guarantee of something interesting.

His best are The Skull, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, The Creeping Flesh, Dr Terror’s House of Horrors and of course the superb Tales from the Crypt. Inventive and unusual camerawork, an intelligent and imaginative approach, elevates unlikely supernatural material to effective and shocking cinema.

Among his own favourites is a rare movie that ought to be more widely seen – the perverse black comedy Mummy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly.

As British cinema declined through the seventies, he reluctantly went back to cinematography, for the third phase in his working life. But this again produced some of his finest work and another Oscar, for Glory (1989) of which he is rightly proud.

But for me, it’s his work with David Lynch that was so important. His work in widescreen black and white for The Elephant Man (1980) is exceptional. It enabled Lynch to make a mainstream film, while remaining partly in the atmospheric universe of Eraserhead.

Lynch again wanted a team of familiar faces on Dune (1984), an entirely different scale of project, though Francis was undaunted by the challenge of making a special-effects heavy science-fiction epic.

A third project with Lynch was Francis’ final film, as cinematographer on The Straight Story (1999), for which he had an agreement to get shorter working days as a compensation for his advancing years. This was a request Lynch was happy to oblige, especially since leading man Richard Farnsworth was in his seventies.

Seeing Freddie Francis interviewed about his work at the NFT in London, he was unpretentious and almost dismissive about his directing career in horror. But he knew from the constant interest that they were still enthusiastically appreciated. A clip was shown, from Torture Garden, of Peter Cushing being out-manoeuvred by Jack Palance in a quest for Edgar Allen Poe memorabilia. The scene was intense and gripping, and left the audience begging for more. It was my first chance to see even a glimpse of something he’d directed on the big screen, and it was gratifying that it still worked so effectively.

He was obviously proud of the great films that he’d lensed, and that working with the likes of Scorcese, Lynch, Karel Reisz and Jack Clayton meant that his work was appreciated both technically and artistically.

To me it’s amazing that his career was so schizophrenic, balanced between arthouse, mainstream and low-budget horror. He knew when the scripts were poor, the titles daft, the money tight, and the schedules rushed, that the critics wouldn’t be amused. But to me it was the heights he elevated the material to. Like the acting of Peter Cushing, he could take an awful script and make it both believable and thrilling.

Mr Francis, your work has been a great pleasure and I’m very sorry to see you go.

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STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING (1972) psycho thriller

STRAIGHT ON TILL MORNING (1972)
NTSC region 1 DVD (from Anchor Bay)

Be careful what you wish for...

I've been watching Hammer films for over 30 years, usually on TV, and have tried to watch all of their horror output. Initially lead by the photos and posters from a book I bought in the seventies, The House of Horror, the titles all looked interesting and they seemed to be fairly consistent in delivering the goods. Today, I still haven't seen them all, and have only recently seen Night Creatures and Straight on Till Morning because of their scarcity on home video.

I bought this DVD a few months ago, and was reminded to watch it while reading The Making of the Italian Job. The director of that classic British car chase/heist/comedy was Peter Collinson. Looking at his filmography, I hadn't realised until now, that he was often a horror movie director.

Collinson directed And Then There Were None (1974 - the Harry Alan Towers version of the Agatha Christie tale, with an unusual cast), The Spiral Staircase (1975 - another remake) and Fright (1971 - a gritty, claustrophobic babysitter-in-peril story with Susan George from Straw Dogs as the lead).

His Straight On Till Morning was billed as a Hammer Love Story in the publicity, the implication is of a romantic drama with a dark side. That’s putting it lightly.

Brenda, a young woman with romantic notions of finding the perfect man to marry, leaves Mum alone in the family home in the north of England and moves to London, which is still swinging, despite the end of the sixties.

Unfortunately she contrives to meet Peter, (one of several irrelevant references to the story of Peter Pan), not knowing that he's a psychopathic serial killer with a knack of stabbing the things he loves with a stanley knife (a box cutter)…

A solid cast and interesting direction make this an enjoyable watch, especially with the eclectic fashions and furniture on display.

Rita Tushingham, obviously cast as Brenda because of her famous role as an outcast single mother in one of the earliest ‘kitchen sink dramas’ A Taste of Honey (1961), is a charming lead as the ‘ugly duckling’. She was like a sixties Molly Ringwald – playing engaging leading roles, without having movie-star looks. The actress is still working in TV drama.

Her psychotic love interest, Peter, is played by Shane Briant. He was then being groomed by Hammer as a younger version of Peter Cushing, possibly to even become Frankenstein's successor (he later played the good Doctor’s assistant in Frankenstein and the Monster From Hell). He could also appear in younger groovier roles like this.

Like Cushing, Briant also looked good in period costume, like in Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter. In the seventies, his Austin Powers hairstyle suited him and, not surprisingly, he was cast as the lead in Dan Curtis' TV adaption of The Picture of Dorian Gray. He still works internationally in TV dramas, guesting recently on Farscape.

An actress I was surprised to see here is singer Annie Ross, as Peter’s previous ‘affair’. I remembered her as the fantastic Granny Ruth from Basket Case 2 and 3! Where, again, she managed to get a couple of songs in. Coincidentally, like Basket Case 2, her role involves a scary attic...

There are also small parts for Likely Lads James Bolam, and the villainous Tom Bell who’s almost entirely covered in hair and sideburns – a change from his usual neatly-groomed tough detective roles.

But it’s the editing that’s the star of the show for me. Obviously influenced by the almost revolutionary Performance (eventually released in 1970), from directors Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell. Using inter-cutting between scenes, flash frames, flashbacks (without sound) and disorientating close-ups, all makes for an absorbing and current method of actively involving some concentration from the audience, with several scenes unfolding at once. No surprise then that editor Alan Pattillo had just worked with Roeg on Walkabout (1971).

As the cross-cutting calms down, so does the story, as the characters converge. But the tension continues, because we still haven't seen inside Peter's room in the attic, where women enter, but are never seen again.

The film relies on the sound of murder to be terrifying, with short ‘flash’ visual cuts to give the impression of violence, still leaving much to the imagination. Like the Psycho shower scene and the trowel murder in Night of the Living Dead (1968), it's mostly implied with editing, but still strong stuff.

The King’s Road, West London setting related to the trendy in-crowd of the ‘Chelsea set’. Another shooting location is the concrete clad South Bank Centre, which at the time looked remarkably clean - it still houses the National Film Theatre, one of the only major retrospective cinemas in the country.

The story is suspenseful right up to the end, but is let down by a sudden, unsatisfactory ending, which leaves some major plotlines unresolved. But it was good while it lasted.

This is available in the US and has just been released in the UK as part of The Ultimate Hammer Collection Box Set, a mixed selection of titles in an unwieldy 21 DVD batch.

Do you want to know more?

Here's another DVD review on DVD Maniacs with full plot spoilers and screengrabs.

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CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (1961) vintage Oliver Reed

CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (UK, 1960)
Region 1 NTSC DVD
(from Universal's 'Hammer Horrors Series' boxset)

Wallace and a Werewolf but no Gromit

I was inspired to watch this again after reading the latest Video Watchdog, who reviewed this entire DVD set of Hammer films - I previously looked at Night Creatures, heralding it's debut on DVD.

Casting a young Oliver Reed as a werewolf is obviously, in retrospect, a genius stroke. Years before he had a reputation as a boozy wildman, and years before he gained critical attention in leading roles for boozy wildman director Ken Russell (like The Devils and Women in Love), he was doing bit parts and horror films for Hammer, like Paranoiac and These are the Damned.

In it's heyday, Hammer was trying to match Universal Studios successful gallery of monsters, but had to carefully avoid copyright problems. They wanted a werewolf, but couldn't copy the make-up design of The Wolfman. They couldn't even call it The Wolfman, because that was based on an original script written for Universal. Instead they bought the rights to Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris written in 1933. The novel may have influenced Universal's unsuccessful Werewolf of London (1935).

Decades later other werewolves that made an impression were memorable due to special effects rather than performances. In The Howling (1981) Rob Bottin used different make-up appliances for every different shot of Robert Picardo transforming. Similarly, An American Werewolf in London (1982) had Rick Baker throwing every trick in the book at David Naughton. In both cases, the final creature was mostly operated as a full-size puppet. A special effect rather than an actor. I love both movies, but the end results are successful in different ways.

Part of the success of Roy Ashton's make-up, is the way we can still see most of Oliver Reed's face. He looks part wolf, but importantly we can still see he's part man. Together with Reed's acting, the glimpses we get of the werewolf are electrifying. His contorted snarling face, blood dripping from his mouth - it's quite startling in every glimpse we get.

However, it's a film from a different era. the aforementioned eighties werewolf movies would still play today, providing a rollercoaster of blood, shocks and in-jokes. Sixties Hammer films play more like costume dramas, Curse of the Werewolf is so traditional, it refuses to veer from a linear narrative by using flashbacks. The story of young Leon and his unfortunate conception is so involved, that we don't actually get any scenes with Reed until the film is halfway through.

Amusingly, when he does appear, he's soon working in a winery, surrounded by bottles. Note also that, at the time, Oliver Reed was much more likely to get romantic leading roles, because in 1960 he had yet to pick up the huge trademark scar down his left cheek. After being 'glassed' in a pub brawl, the young actor thought his film career was over. Yet he was wrong, and the disfigurement rarely meant that he was consigned to baddie roles.

The rest of the cast is quite fascinating - I'd forgotten how many familiar faces were in it, and not all the usual Hammer crew either (Michael Ripper notwithstanding). A couple of James Bond regulars appear - Desmond Llewellyn has a bit part here as a butler, just before he became Q in almost all the Bond films. Also Anthony Dawson as the lecherous disintegrating Marquess, a successfully OTT role - he was a baddie in the first Bond Doctor No, and was also Blofeld's stand-in in From Russia With Love and Thunderball. Though his voice was dubbed, he was the unseen presence behind the blinds in the famous Spectre meeting room, where the chairs are all wired for electrocution - a key scene referenced in the first Austin Powers films.

Richard Wordsworth gives an extraordinary performance ranging two decades, from abused beggar to feral man. Both touching and frightening, he had been similarly effective as the man/monster in Hammer's first horror The Quatermass Xperiment.

Yvonne Romain spiced up the publicity stills for the film, even though she was playing Leon's mother and couldn't possibly have shared a scene with him. The two actors also appeared together in Devil Ship Pirates. Romain had another iconic part in the same year's Circus of Horrors, for a rival studio. (More on Yvonne at Brian's Drive In Theatre.)

Bizarrely, Peter Sallis, instantly recognisable as the distinctive voice of Wallace, from the hugely successful Wallace and Gromit animations, appears here in his prime as the town mayor. I didn't see anything in the publicity for the Wallace and Gromit movie Curse of the Were-Rabbit to exploit the fact that he'd also appeared in Curse of the Werewolf.

Besides enjoying the film again, I was also checking that Universal had delivered a correct widescreen aspect, generously framed at 1.85, and that the print was also uncut. For years I thought the film dragged in places, but that's because British movie and TV censors had snipped away the distasteful and violent scenes away. The climax of the film even includes an early use of squirting blood - possibly a squib or hidden syringe effect - which was popularised by it's excessive use at the end of the decade, by director Sam Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch.

The film has a unique werewolf mythos, a unique werewolf performance from Reed, and an atmospheric standout soundtrack from Benjamin Frankel. Admittedly it's more of a violent melodrama than a werewolf movie, but I hope I've demonstrated that it's watchable for many reasons.

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The Nigel Kneale Conclusion (1922 - 2006)

Well, sadly I heard today that the writer Nigel Kneale has passed away. It hasn't quite sunk in yet, but I'm going to really miss him.

His fantastic Quatermass series inspired sci-fi and horror fiction ever since he first began writing stories about the character in the early 1950’s. There were four TV series, and he was working on a fifth story - a prequel set in Nazi Germany, which will hopefully see print in some form one day. Three series were made into classic Hammer films, in fact the success of The Quatermass Xperiment launched Hammer Studios into horror films in the first place.

He excelled at writing and adapting ghost stories for the screen, and cleverly linked the supernatural to scientific origins. The Stone Tape (1970) boggled my mind with its accurate prophecy of home video formats, and then chillingly set my hair on end. Very rare for TV to have such a chilling effect.

My very favourite work of his is the movie version of Quatermass and the Pit (1967) which he adapted from his scripts for the BBC TV series. It’s haunted my imagination ever since I saw it as a teenager. If London ever descends into chaos, under attack from Martians, demons and robotic humans, I feel that I’m ready for it, having lived through the film so many times.

Before home video, Kneale's TV scripts enjoyed many years in print

I can’t do him justice the way obituaries hopefully will. I’ll instead just recommend to you his newly-published biography - a catalogue of his life and work, with an impressive look at the many films he's influenced over the years.

One of several covers for the new biography

Coincidentally, I was reading it only yesterday.

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