Finally on DVD:
CURSE OF THE FLY (1965)
Region 2 PAL DVD (20th Century Fox)
“Half-human monsters from the fourth dimension…”
The malfunctioning matter-transporter appeared again in this rare British incarnation.
The Delambre family are at it again, this time with transporters on both sides of the Atlantic. As usual, there are disastrous side-effects from disintegrating and reintegrating human test subjects. As a young woman marries into the family, she discovers that probing the secrets in their remote mansion, isn’t the best way to recover from a nervous breakdown. What’s kept behind the four locked doors behind the garage? Why does the electricity keep dimming in the evenings? Who plays the piano in the middle of the night?
Here, Shepperton Studios stands in for Canada. Apart from Brian Donlevy, the British actors are pretty good at North American accents (to these ears), but the locations give the game away – we’re back at Hammer Film’s favourite location Black Park, once again.
As you can tell, I’ve been distracted from all the horror and the plot by other trivial details. I also found myself scrutinising Donlevy’s faultless toupee, and his ability to act whilst drunk.
The film, like it’s predecessors The Fly (1958) and Return of the Fly (1959), is filmed in 2.35 widescreen, yet the frame is barely filled by the sparse sets.
What passed for horror in the early sixties is watchable by 12 year olds now, though now it’s questionable for other reasons. The two bodies reintegrated as one is a ghastly sight, but what really made me squirm was the British actress made up as Chinese, and using an inscrutably evil accent.
Also, way back then, facial and physical disfigurement automatically made you a ‘horror creature’. Nowadays, similar real-life disfigurement is now widely depicted in documentaries and is of course reason for scientific interest and sympathy, not horror. If the motivation for the creatures could be explained other than ‘I’m a monster and I’m going to stalk the heroine’, it might make more sense.
The film stars Carole Gray, a beauty who also livened up Island of Terror (Night of the Silicates), George Baker (Sir Hillary Bray in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and TV’s The Prisoner), and of course token ‘Yank’ Brian Donlevy (twice times Professor Quatermass in Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment and Quatermass II). The director
Don Sharp, also notably brought us the 'Hell’s Angels from Hell' movie, Psychomania – a mad sixties horror that’s still watchable today for all the wrong reasons.
The DVD of Curse of the Fly has finally been released, no frills. But it’s in a beautiful 2.35 anamorphic widescreen release.
Black-and-white films shot 2.35 widescreen were a crossover phenomenon when b/w film was much cheaper than colour. Jack Clayton's The Innocents is probably the best example of this ‘genre’, yet The Alligator People, The Land Unknown, and Hammer Film’s These are the Damned, Nightmare and Paranoiac are also worth a look.
The DVD has a reversible cover, one representative of the film, the other side a tie-in with the other four Fly films – which is a bit of a cheat because it’s so dissimilar from the rest of the series. Oh yes, there’s no half-man, fly-head monster in this one!Mark H
Finally on DVD:
NIGHT CREATURES (1962)
Out of the blue, a previously unreleased Hammer film suddenly appears on DVD nestled away in a Region 1 Universal DVD Boxset (pictured). Made at the height of the studio’s powers, the only reason this one isn’t hailed as a classic alongside Curse of Frankenstein, Horror of Dracula, The Mummy and Curse of the Werewolf, is that no one has had much chance to see it before. I can’t remember it even being shown on British TV in the London region.
More popularly known as Captain Clegg, it was made at Bray Studios, and is the best example of Hammer’s ‘swashbuckler’ strand - slightly sadistic period adventure yarns, with a hint of supernatural horror (in this case, luminous skeletal horse-riding marsh phantoms, years before the Knights of the Blind Dead ever rode out).
The cast features many Hammer regulars, but mainly this is a perfect showcase for horror maestro Peter Cushing’s talents. To me he was a versatile and subtle actor who, like Boris Karloff, had the ability to make the supernatural believable. Even with some of the hastily written scripts that were thrown at him, he could still convince an audience that the outlandish events of the plot were actually happening… Here he enjoys playing a pirate captain hiding from the King’s soldiers by disguising himself as the village vicar!
There’s also a marvellous early performance from Oliver Reed, seen here reunited with his Curse of the Werewolf co-star Yvonne Romain.
Perhaps one of the reasons Night Creatures has had a rough ride over the years is because it was based on a story that was also being adapted as a movie by Disney, at the same time! Dr Syn Alias the Scarecrow was a live action movie, starring Patrick McGoohan, and was aimed safely at a family audience.
Beside making a belated debut on home video, Night Creatures has been digitally mastered, it looks fantastic, and is presented in anamorphic widescreen (though the aspect ratio looks closer to 1.85 than the 2.0 stated on the packaging) – there’s a slight letterbox but it looks overmatted - some of the headroom is a tightly framed at the top edge. But the picture definition is sharp and the rich colour does justice to the sets and costumes, not to mention the countryside exteriors – altogether the film effortlessly recreates the 18th century setting.
The boxset features 7 other Hammer horrors from the early 1960’s, some of them making their widescreen debuts on DVD. I must warn you though that all 8 films have been crammed onto 2 double-sided double-layered DVDs, (known as ‘DVD-18’s), a format that is the most technically difficult to manufacture without playback problems. My set, I’m happy to report, plays perfectly.
Update, June 2014 - Captain Clegg is now on blu-ray in the UK!
