Temporal disruption approaching the Black Hole...

A New Year's message!

It's enjoyable to talk about the movies I've enjoyed watching, and do a little armchair research. It's even more worthwhile because so many of you visit each week.

But don't let the recent clutch of mega-articles fool you. Although I've successfully posted two reviews a week throughout 2009 (despite Twitter), a massive personal project may reduce my output considerably for the first half of 2010. As we demolish and remodel our home, moving every last item we own... twice. This will be no mean feat, but I intend to do my very best to keep the reviews flowing. As always, non-Twitterers can read my micro-reviews in the side column at any time, and I'll keep tweeting news and warn you when new articles and reviews are imminent. But I'm not sure quite how much chaos there's going to be! I'm not going away and I've still plenty to recommend but please be patient with me for the next few months.

As they say: Twittering is easy. Blogging is hard.

Mark H

Miami, Summer, 1978 - two weeks, eight movies

An English teenage movie nut in disco-era Florida

In October last year, I travelled from London to Key West, revisiting three places from a family holiday over 30 years ago. While I struggled to find anything I could still recognise, my memories were jogged enough to remember my eight trips to the movies during that vacation. Because it had been exciting and unusual to be in a different country, the experience remained quite vivid in my memory, enough to present this snapshot of American movie-going in the summer of '78.

July 1978, my family spent over two weeks staying with friends in Miami. We did tourist stuff, visiting Key West, Disney World and Cape Kennedy (when the Space Shuttle was just starting to be tested out). But with time to kill in Miami, I was hunting around for movie stuff, comics and disco on vinyl (honestly), as well seeing as many movies as I could. Luckily I've kept hold of several newspapers to jog my memory.

There were no home videotapes of movies for sale back then. The only way to see new films was at the cinema, and everything in the US came out months in advance of the UK (I think the same prints had to travel around the States before Britain could have them). That summer, it was fun to go see movies far in advance of my friends, and without knowing much in advance. Going in cold, no spoilers.

In 1970s in the UK, a few large local cinemas had already been converted and split into 2 or 3 screens. But this trip to Miami was my first sight of a movie multiplex - a purpose-built cinema boasting a spectacular six screens - the 'Omni 6' in the Omni shopping mall on Biscayne Boulevard. I'll never forget seeing the large painted numbers counting across the foyer walls, each one leading to a different cinema. It was exciting to get this much choice in one place.

For that matter, I'd not even seen shopping malls before. The idea of living in one building, restaurants, shops, even hotels and apartments, meant you never had to go outside again. The Omni Mall fired my imagination, it was perfect for The Omega Man, or anyone facing the Dawn of the Dead. My favourite store was an early type of Gadget Store, selling optical fibre lamps and the touch-tone game 'Simon', which I wanted but couldn't afford.

So, what to see? My first priority was to see Jaws 2. Sequels were rare, and I fully expected this to be as good as the first. Jaws had been huge, they wanted Jaws 2 to be huge too. There were full-page press ads and posters everywhere. Plus T-shirts and books (the novelisation and a making of paperback). Hardly a wealth of merchandising, but it wasn't yet a big money-making machine. 

The exception being Star Wars stuff, which was still selling well from the previous year's release - with T-shirts, poster magazines and trading cards. It was exciting, offered new thrills, but not as good as the first. I still got my money's worth - not everyday you see someone swallowed whole or a shark attacking a helicopter! There's a full review of my updated take on Jaws 2 here.

The only real horror film I caught was Damien: Omen II, another big sequel that was less impressive than the first film. Despite a great cast, the murderous set-pieces that provided so many shocks in the original were largely absent here. The actor playing Damien wasn't even as creepy as the little boy in the first. But it was certainly glossier than many thrillers and horrors of the decade.

My favourite movie of the holiday was Animal House, the first movie from National Lampoon. Even now, we still don't get Saturday Night Live on British TV. Back then, we didn't get National Lampoon magazine either. So I went to see National Lampoon's Animal House purely on the strength of the funny newspaper ads that all featured John Belushi. 

I didn't know who he was or recognise anyone else in the cast, except Donald Sutherland. I knew the director, John Landis, from Kentucky Fried Movie, which had been a big hit in Britain.


During National Lampoon's Animal House I laughed myself stupid and took to heart the cast and the characters. It was fast-paced, every scene was funny, edgy, and suggestively and explicitly ruder than any US comedy I'd seen. I pounced on the tie-in book, a fantastic large-format paperback that told the story in the many layout styles of National Lampoon magazine (pictured) - a mix of cartoon and text, double-page satirical artwork and photos from the film - one of the most creative and enjoyable movie tie-ins I've seen, and it was only available in the US. Of course, I saw the movie again when it finally got its UK release.

While Animal House was my first experience of John Belushi, a trailer for Foul Play was my first sight of Chevy Chase. I didn't know who he was but he was instantly funny. I knew Goldie Hawn from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In and director Colin Higgins from Silver Streak. But Foul Play launched both Chase and Hawn into a string of movie comedy hits, as well as Dudley Moore, who is only a minor character. His own megahits Arthur and 10 soon followed.


Foul Play is a fast-paced comedy that's also a homage to Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, with plenty of physical comedy and some fairly adult gags (the old ladies playing swearword scrabble and Dudley's penthouse full of sextoys). It's very daft and very seventies, a mainstream summer comedy hit typical of the time. The opening song, written for the film by Barry Manilow, 'Ready To Take A Chance Again', is probably better remembered than the film itself.


I'd loved Return of the Pink Panther and The Pink Panther Strikes Again, so I couldn't miss Revenge of the Pink Panther, and this time I went with my parents. In a packed cinema, we watched the entire comedy without hearing much of the dialogue, the audience completely drowned it out with laughter. We were used to hearing Peter Sellers' mangled accents and gags, but the American audience were way more vocal than the British, laughing so hard at the sight gags, pratfalls and stupid disguises that we couldn't hear it. Particularly mystifying to us was costume storeowner August Balls' bandaged hand continually flipping the bird - a hand signal that wasn't rude in Britain, as yet. Everyone fell about, but we didn't know why.

Besides seeing these new releases in the Omni cineplex, recent hits were being held over in older cinemas spread all over Miami, some at half the price of the multiplex. I travelled around to catch Hooper, Capricorn One and Grease. I also thankfully passed on Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Warren Beatty in Heaven Can Wait, Disney's The Cat From Outer Space and The Swarm. Also wisely avoided Lee Majors as The Norseman, but was tempted by the great poster for Slithis (still haven't caught that). Somehow missed The Eyes of Laura Mars but hey, I did my best. Strangely, there were already full-page ads trailing Meteor for the following year.

I missed most of the sexual wordplay in Grease, not knowing much Stateside sexual slang. But I was one of the oldest in the audience, apart from the parents with really young kids - I guess they missed it all too (in the UK it was released in cinemas with an 'A' certificate warning, but now carries a much higher and restrictive '15', now the censors know what the dialogue all means). It was hugely popular at the time, with young teens seeing it again, mainly because of the many hit singles still riding high in the charts.

But the Grease take on High School nostalgia was miles away from Animal House and far cheesier. The much funnier Animal House set me up with a raucous mindset for my own impending trip to a college campus, where we actually had toga parties and food fights, not because it was a tradition, but because we loved the film.


Capricorn One was exciting even though the cinema was almost empty that afternoon, the temperature was in the 90's outside, and there were only four of us in the theater. One cliffhanger was so exciting that the one guy down in the front stood up and cheered. I'd expect that at a football game surrounded by thousands of others, but in an empty cinema it was very impressive. I think I saw this at the Regency Cinema on Lincoln Street. We took a look it and the foyer looked familiar - I also found a 1978 newspaper ad that said it had played there.

I then sought out Hooper because I used to catch every Burt Reynolds movie. Smokey and the Bandit, The Cannonball Run (and sequels) guaranteed spectacular car stunts if nothing else, but Hooper proved to be my favourite of his non-serious roles. As a stuntman himself, the film is a homage to this dangerous and unsung profession, showcasing every stunt technique in the game, while gently satirising movie-making. Regular co-star Sally Field, a pre-Airwolf Jan-Michael Vincent and a cameo from Adam West added to the fun.

Of course I went to Miami Beach as well, tempted by the chance to swim in the actual Bermuda Triangle. I avoided the deeper water because I'd just seen Jaws 2.


31 years later, Miami has completely changed. I didn't recognise any of Biscayne Boulevard or Downtown. The Omni Mall has been closed down for years, currently annexed to a Hilton Hotel. It may yet rise again! I was delighted to catch a glimpse of it again after all these years (I grabbed this photo from a moving car).


The Miami Seaquarium was the only other place that I recognised, where a time warp has kept the Flipper dolphin show playing (I must have seen one of the original Flipper dolphins when I first saw the show in 1973). It's still cool to visit as a retro experience, because the Flipper TV series were recognisably shot there. We were told that one of the dolphins and one of the manatees had been there since my last visit in 1978 - which I find quite astonishing.

(As you may have guessed, the records, books and newspaper clippings are all actual mementos of the trip).

TREASURE ISLAND (1950) - it be pirate gold!

TREASURE ISLAND
(1950, USA)

This was a joy to watch because of the master of all pirate performances, Robert Newton as Long John Silver. Arrrrrr!

Why else am I recommending a 60-year old Disney film? Well, because it's action-packed fun, and... it's not very different from a classic Hammer film, honestly! Non-stop peril, death round every corner, insane characters, and menacing hand-to-hand combat. If you like the 'high adventure' Hammer films, like Captain Clegg and Pirates of Blood River (recently released on DVD), then this is practically the same in content and atmosphere!

For decades, pirate stories were a staple part of fantasy adventures for boys. Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island is the perfect example, a tight relentless story where a young boy is in the middle of pirates, treasure, villainy, mutiny and parrots on shoulders. Seeing this version in the cinema in the 1960s, I was transported to a faraway tropical island where pirates buried treasure. Watching it again, I now realise it was mostly filmed at Pinewood Studios, and in the same London park (with THAT lake) so familiar from many Hammer films. Another childhood dream smashed on the rocks!

Stevenson should be familiar to horror fans because his stories also spawned dozens of adaptions of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, as well as Val Lewton's The Body Snatcher (1945).

Treasure Island was the start of a hugely successful pirate theme for Disney, long before Pirates of the Caribbean the ride, let alone the movies. It also predates the historical high sea adventure 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Captain Hook and his pirate crew in Peter Pan. It was Disney's first completely live-action film, made to compensate for the huge cost of making animated films. Director Byron Haskin (in the 1984 booklength DGA interview) also recalls that Disney saw it as a gangster picture, and called in Haskin for that reason.

Such a perfect adaption of the classic tale, it was still playing in cinemas when I saw it on a double-bill with Sleeping Beauty. Watching it again recently, I was amazed that I could remember so many scenes so vividly: Jim Hawkins getting into peril so often, the fear of his close scrapes must have imprinted themselves. We're not talking 'mild scenes of danger', but more like horror movie strength terror - as Jim gets repeatedly cornered by bloodthirsty pirates with guns, sabres and nasty-looking knives. People getting shot in the face, skewered with swords, spiked with daggers... It's astonishing this still sells under the lowest film classification in the UK!

Treasure Island looks spectacular, being filmed in three-strip Technicolor, when that was a hugely expensive process to use. Special optical effects help to recreate period towns and ships, mostly by using beautiful matte paintings. Byron Haskin had plenty of technical expertise with visual effects - three years later he made the original The War of the Worlds. There's a strange over-reliance on jarring back-projection. But if you want Black Park in the background, why not shoot in Black Park? It's right next to the studio!

The casting of the actors is painstakingly apt for every character - this production nails every single one... to the yard arm. Robert Newton was English, but found fame in America. Anyone who's ever imitated a pirate by going "arrrrrr" owes him a debt. This is THE movie pirate with the missing leg, the crutch, the green parrot on rhe shoukder ("pieces of eight") and THAT pirate accent. Definitive, hilarious and creatively used in the film. "Arrrrr-men!"


Bobby Driscoll as young Jim 'awkins was already child star for Disney, his most famous role would later be the voice of Peter Pan. He was also the child lead in Disney's first feature-length live-action movie The Song of the South (1946) which is currently 'out of circulation' while Disney decide whether the depiction of African-Americans can be unleashed on the public again. With it's pioneering mix of live-action and animation and positive portrayals of a largely black cast, especially the sensitive performance by star James Baskett, who won an Academy Award as Uncle Remus, there's no question it should be released on DVD.

Shot in England, the rest of the cast is made up of British character actors, many familiar from children's TV, such as Sam Kydd (Orlando, Island of Terror). John Laurie as Blind Pew has such an hilariously thick, Scottish(?) accent that he's almost completely unintelligible. Frightening though. (When did American audiences lose the willingness to understand regional British accents?) Laurie's long career spanned from early Alfred Hitchcock films to Hammer horror (The Reptile). Though he's most famous for the sitcom (and spin-off movie) Dad's Army.


Over a decade before he was the second Doctor Who, Patrick Troughton has a great scene as a fearsomely swashbuckling pirate. A serious character actor, he also appeared in Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts and Hammer's Scars of Dracula.


The incredible Geoffrey Wilkinson almost leaps off the screen as Ben Gunn, but only has one movie credit on IMDB (a mistake?). An incredibly lunatic performance, his voice, manner and obsession with treasure reminded us immediately of Andy Serkis as Gollum. He gets some priceless one-liners, "Many a night, I dreamed of cheese". Haskin mentions that they almost got Alec Guinness for the role! In honesty, I don't think he could have matched Wilkinson's level of manic insanity!

Screengrabs of all the characters can be seen at Aveley man.

The DVD (pictured as top) is presented 4:3 full-frame, which is how early 1950s films were usually framed. In Britain it has U certificate - the censors somehow allowed the pistol shots in the face...

In 1954, Newton appeared again in two non-Disney sequels, both called Long John Silver. One was also directed by Byron Haskin, and featured a completely unrecognisable Rod Taylor (The Birds, Inglourious Basterds) as a blinded wildman. While it picks up from the events of Treasure Island, it's very slow-going until the last half hour, when they eventually reach the island! The other was a B-movie starring Tab Hunter. Newton also starred in an Australian TV series, The Adventures of Long John Silver. Sadly this late career spurt ended with bankruptcy, and he was dead through alcoholism, aged 50. Dammit.

His definitive portrayal of the ultimate pirate lives on, anywhere there's fancy dress, a crutch and a parrot. Arrrrrrrr!

THE CASE OF THE MUKKINESE BATTLE HORN (1956) - a missing link in spoof comedy

THE CASE OF THE MUKKINESE BATTLE-HORN
(1956, UK)

Before Airplane, The Naked Gun, and even Monty Python, were The Goons...

Why is this not on DVD? It's like it disappeared completely. Constantly funny and fantastic, hysterical and historical! The roots of popular surrealist British comedy stems from The Goon Show - a hugely popular radio show that combined the talents of Peter Sellers mad knack for comedy voices and the startlingly inventive scripts of Spike Milligan. While several attempts were made to catch their insanity on film, this short feature is by far the most successful. The Goons had to disband when Peter Sellers movie career took off.

Insane comedy, where the actors often sent up their own movie, dates back to the silent genius of Buster Keaton, through The Marx Brothers movies and Olsen and Johnson's live-action looney toon movie Hellzapoppin'. In Britain, it was The Goons that took surreal and satirical comedy to extremes, inspiring the TV comedy of Monty Python's Flying Circus among many others. Hence Spike Milligan's cameo in Life of Brian, an onscreen tribute.

The Case of the Mukkinese Battle-Horn takes The Goons brand of comedy an important step further. Not only does it attempt to visualise a few of their famous radio characters, it adapts effortlessly into film. Fast-paced gags, asides to camera, lampoon, and twists on movie conventions. It's a clear forerunner of the straight-faced send-up of movie cliches, later monopolised by Airplane! and The Naked Gun, some of the most successful comedies ever. It hits a fast gag-a-minute pace that every comedy hopes for.

In fogbound London, a priceless but unwieldy antique disappears from a museum. A bumbling detective (Peter Sellers) and his dimwitted assistant (Spike Milligan) eventually investigate ("A robbery? Anything stolen?"). The trail leads to a pawnbrokers shop that has not three but four balls hanging outside ("Business must be good!"). From Scotland Yard to sleazy Soho, which of their suspects would steal this priceless musical monstrosity?

Superintendent Quilt is an obvious forerunner of Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau character, who first appeared in The Pink Panther (1963), and then in the even better A Shot In The Dark (1964). The series often featured Sellers' love for heavily disguised characters, buried under wigs, moustaches, humps and hats. These props are also on display in Battle-Horn as Sellers portrays his effete boss Assistant Commissioner Jervis Fruit (in blond wig, above) and the crumbling hunchbacked pawnbroker Henry Crun. While made up as caricatures, his performances aren't overplayed like his co-stars. There's still a sense that these could be real characters, and Sellers is ready for acting them out on the big screen.

Besides playing his enthusiastic but stupid sidekick, writer and lunatic Spike Milligan successfully visualises his beloved character Eccles, an absolute idiot. His star turn in the film is as an unemployed silent movie actor...


Leading Goon member Harry Secombe is notably missing (the producer suggests that he wanted too much money). But he's ably replaced by multiple-personality TV comedian Dick Emery (above left), a big influence on Harry Enfield's TV sketch shows. Emery effortlessly fits into the madness, and it's a great shame he didn't collaborate further in anything else this mad. Harry Secombe had appeared in the previous Goons movie Down Among The Z-Men but it never impressed me as being nearly as successful or funny, strung out to feature-length - wedging Goons characters into a standard formula Brit-com. Secombe's better remembered as a powerful singer, and his role in Oliver! ("You want moooooore?").

The highlight for me is to see Sellers perform onscreen a regular Goon Show character - the very, very deaf and dusty, senile, doddering Henry Crun. While trying to tempt a cat out of a gramophone using a saucer of milk, he fails to communicate with his equally deaf and senile (offscreen) wife Minnie.


Trivia-wise, this short film also marks Michael Deeley's first production credit. He went on to produce, among others, The Italian Job, The Deer Hunter and Blade Runner, no less. In his amusing, recently published autobiography, he mentions Battle-Horn as the first film he ever produced - an unsuccessful attempt to pilot a Goons TV show to the US.

Battle-Horn took its structure and presentation from the Edgar Lustgarten Scotland Yard true-crime short films, which were also being shot at Merton Park Film Studios. More about the horror films also shot at Merton Park here.

The entire script is online here.

Apologies for the poor screengrabs, but I haven't found a better way to illustrate this.


It was a kick to see this in the cinema as a supporting feature when Monty Python and the Holy Grail was first released. Very little else came close to being a suitable second film.

The Case of the Mukkinese Battle-Horn used to appear on TV, but has since disappeared from view, surfacing once on home video on VHS (pictured). I'd hope this gem would be enjoying a better showcase by now. Not a broken one with a brick in it.

The British Film Institute have screened it recently, using a print donated by Michael Deeley. Hopefully they will also restore and release it for wider consumption...

There's a short clip on YouTube here...

Finished all your wrapping?

Wishing every visitor to the Black Hole, a very Black Christmas...

THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD (1975) - the first incarnation

THE REINCARNATION OF PETER PROUD
(1975, USA)

Soon to be remade - but not on DVD

I must have just missed this in the cinemas back in 1975, but I caught the paperback (UK edition, pictured above). The photos spread in British monster mag World of Horror #9 (see below) intrigued me enough to want to see it. But I never found it on British TV and so, thirty years later, I look around for a DVD to find it's not been released. This is why I'm still buying VHS! Back to eBay, and I found an 1980s' US release (with really nasty artwork, pictured below).
In recent years, there've been several films about Buddha plus Vincent Ward's spectacular What Dreams May Come, all of which treated reincarnation fairly straightforwardly. But in the 1970s, the only genre interested in 'life after death' was horror. The Reincarnation of Peter Proud wasn't a big hit, so it's a surprise to see that director David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) is currently interested in a remake. it's an odd choice, but could be very interesting if it happens.
Peter Proud is having recurring dreams, of places he's never been, people he doesn't know, and in a time before he was born. Vividly, he also feels that he's been swimming in a lake at night, just before being violently murdered. While he tries to stop the dreams through sleep therapy and psychoanalysis, he starts to recognise elements of these dreams in real life. They're not in his imagination after all. A car, actual landmarks and eventually faces that are all familiar.

Past-life regression was one of many psychic bandwagons that got popular. Hypnotism helped people remember the experiences of their former selves (just before they started remembering alien abduction scenarios). When science fails him, Peter has to seek the advice of less conventional experts... But he quickly (too quickly) decides he's reincarnated and sets off in search of who he was in his previous life...

This is a very seventies, very adult thriller, strong on a sexual theme. It's a good example of just how far you could go in a mainstream film. While the men flashed their chests and bums, the women were expected to go further, more often - while baring their chests was a big deal, full frontal nudity was both encouraged and permitted.

Two of the actresses seem to have been picked for their willingness to get sexual, rather than be able to act. The result is that the film opens rather shakily with some rather flat punny dialogue. Not helped by Corinne O'Neil (Peter's girlfriend, Nora) who exclaims her way through the early scenes. But she looks good in bed, so she got the part I guess. There's a bizarre scene where even a helpful teenager tries to vamp Peter, and seems disappointed that she doesn't get jumped. Her only reason to be in the film is for a car washing scene in cutoff denim shorts - all very seventies. She's useless to the plot, except for making Peter look less like Mr Average and more like James Bond.

The acting settles down when Margot Kidder (inbetween Black Christmas and The Amityville Horror) and Jennifer O'Neill (before Scanners and Cover Up) get involved, though both get compulsory sex scenes. Kidder famously also gets very naked in the bath, during a flashback of a sexual assault. In true 70s style, it's ambiguous whether she's actually enjoying the memory.

But there's also man-flesh. Michael Sarrazin (pictured below on the CD cover) was a body beautiful back then, swanning around in a towel in Eye of the Cat, and being the perfect physical creation for Frankenstein - The True Story. But his physique is outclassed by actor Tony Stephano (also in Tron but nothing else), who reminds me a lot of Joe Dallesandro (Blood for Dracula, Flesh For Frankenstein) who, as far as I'm concerned, looked like raw sex. Stephano was also extremely fit and gets to show it all off, well, almost all. I also think that it's Stephano who's in the 'screaming' movie poster, and not Sarrazin.

From the end of the sixties (They Shoot Horses Don't They?, The Flim-Flam Man) through most of the seventies (For Pete's Sake, The Gumball Rally) Michael Sarrazin was a leading man. But none of his films have endured with any sizable success to keep his career outside of TV work, or ensure any sort of comeback like, say, Burt Reynolds. But at the time he was big and almost always the star. Good in both comedy and drama, he also did mainstream fantasy - Peter Proud, Frankenstein, Eye of the Cat and The Groundstar Conspiracy (where, after he survives a huge explosion, the authorities aren't sure whether or not he's an alien). I last saw him in the two recent Harry Alan Towers adaptions of Harry Palmer novels (Bullet To Beijing, Midnight In Saint Petersburg), the return of Michael Caine's cold war spy.

The excess of swinging sex is matched by 70s visuals, mostly frantic intercutting as the past 'flashes' into the present, when Peter's "pre-natal memories" start catching up on him. Like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he accidentally catches one of his dreamed images on TV. Like Friday the 13th, the trail of clues leads to Crystal Lake... I'm not making this up, see it for yourself!

The film is quite hypnotic. Maybe because it's from a different era (it feels odd to be looking back in time at a film that's looking back in time), but it has plenty to offer as a mystery, as to how it's all going to pan out. Also, it's not coy! I don't think there's nearly as much sex or nudity in mainstream horror (or thrillers) at the moment. There are some surprises from the director J. Lee Thompson (Happy Birthday to Me, Cape Fear (1962), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) as well as the actors. Interesting to see Margot Kidder playing in two different timeframes, old and young - let down slightly by the old-age make-up.

The rather linear, inevitable storyline has only one place to go... I guess An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge (1962, a short film showcased in The Twilight Zone) could've been more of an influence here than any real-life case.

For me the film was also spoilt by most of the publicity shots coming from the closing seconds of the movie! Audrey Rose (1977) also presented reincarnation as horror material and was a much bigger hit, perhaps because Anthony Hopkins was already a bigger star, but it bored me tears at the time and was certainly not as downright dirty.

Once again, the soundtrack was released on CD (pictured) while the film hasn't made it to DVD. Jerry Goldsmith's haunting score helps the film immeasurably, and includes some spooky burbling synthesizers to clue us in that we're on the edge of something strange.
As far as I can tell, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud last surfaced on home video in America on VHS. Hopefully David Fincher's project will revive interest in Max Ehrlich's novel, and inspire a DVD release. But perhaps Margot isn't keen on any more exposure...


This 1975 issue of World of Horror gave me an appetite to see The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. Full of cartoons, fiction, movie news and gory colour photos, you can see that Fangoria wasn't the first magazine to have shocking front covers. The cover girl is Sheila Keith in Frightmare! Very eye-catching!

IT! (1967) - the golem from Merton Park Studios

IT!
(1967, UK)

Not the one with the killer clown...

 I wouldn't have bought this on DVD if IT! hadn't been on a double-bill with The Shuttered Room. But seeing a decent presentation of IT! has actually increased my appreciation of IT!. I used to dismiss this as one of my least favourite British horrors, but now IT!'s looking better than ever.

IT!'s still not great, but IT!'s never boring. I'm fascinated that IT! was made close to where I live. IT!'s also the only English-language movie about the golem, the mythical avenger from Jewish legend (more about the golem movies here).



After a warehouse fire, the museum owners are relieved and a little perplexed that a statue has survived completely unscathed. A further surprise is that the statue can be reanimated, follow orders and is virtually indestructible. Knowledge is power, but the only one who knows about it has small dreams, using the golem to get his boss's job and the girl of his dreams.

Quite an ambitious story for Merton Park Film Studios, this also has recognisable locations, by the River Thames at Hammersmith Bridge and in front of the Imperial War Museum. There are even a few visual effects of varying success, though nothing to match the potential scale of the story - especially in the climax. There's some simple modelwork on display and IT! has an impressive monster suit.



An added twist is that the man with the power is a little bit Norman Bates. He still keeps his mummified Mum around the house - a dessicated corpse almost more impressive than the golem outfit. I'd assumed that IT! looked melted because of the warehouse fire, but we soon learn IT!'s indestructible! I'm now guessing that the film-makers couldn't breach any copyrights by using the look from previous golem movies, hence the very different face.



With so much meat for a horror story, the film falls short by lacking in atmosphere and pulling its punches with any action scenes. There's plenty of murder but it's unimaginatively shot and mostly offscreen. It it wasn't for a semi-nude scene by Jill Haworth, IT! could easily pass with the lowest rating.



The fun is in the cast - Roddy McDowall is the main man, the year before he became his most popular screen character - an ape. As Cornelius, then Caesar, then Galen in the Planet of the Apes franchise, where he appeared in four of the original five films, as well as the TV series. He was also no stranger to the horror genre (like The Legend of Hell House, Fright Night) and is as famous for his voice (The Mad Hatter in Batman: The Animated Series and VINCENT in The Black Hole). Here he's at his paranoid best, especially in a nightmare scene that illuminates his character's obsessions far more than his dialogue does.

The obsessional love interest is Jill Haworth, who found fame in Exodus, but soon slipped into genre roles. She was in the classic The Outer Limits ('The Sixth Finger' episode), as well as Tower of Evil, and my favourite of hers The Haunted House Of Horror. In IT! she's less pro-active than her other roles, reduced to the classic 'mummy carrying a girl' cliche that ad-men loved to use in their posters.

Canadian-born Paul Maxwell was getting plenty of work in the sixties, adding an authentic North American accent to movies aimed at the international market. Here he gets some onscreen heroics to match his macho voice, which was so useful for beefing up Gerry Anderson's puppet characters. Maxwell voiced Steve Zodiac, the space-hero of Fireball XL5 and Captain Grey from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Here's a chance to see him in the flesh.

Horror fans may spot a young Ian McCulloch, before he became one of TV's original Survivors and famously battled the Zombie Flesh Eaters, but he barely gets a word in, in this his movie debut.



The movie has been digitally remastered anamorphic widescreen, and definition and Eastmancolour have never looked better. IT! is on a double-bill DVD with the Lovecraftian The Shuttered Room (pictured above).

Now I'm off to look around for the strange castle used in the climax - it's got to be around here somewhere...