Death Line (1972)

          Rarely will genre-picture viewers encounter a harder tonal shift than the transition occurring around the 23-minute mark of UK horror show Death Line, released in the U.S. as Raw Meat. The opening stretch of the movie proceeds like a standard-issue thriller. After a well-dressed gentleman is killed by an unseen assailant in a London subway station, a young couple discovers his body and learns from his ID that he’s an important official. The couple solicits help from a nearby cop, but upon returning to the scene of the crime, the victim has vanished—thus making the couple suspects in the disappearance of a VIP. Thereafter, quirky Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence) probes the lives of the couple, American Alex Campbell (David Ladd) and Brit Patricia Wilson (Sharon Gurney). Then writer-director Gary Sherman abruptly cuts to secret catacombs adjoining the subway station, wherein a grotesque creature (Hugh Armstrong) tries feeding pieces of 

the gentleman’s body to another creature, who dies. Enter the world of “The Man,” last survivor of an inbred cannibal tribe evolved from survivors of a construction cave-in that occurred 80 years previous.

          From the moment Sherman introduces “The Man,” Death Line transforms into a depressing meditation on the nature of humanity. Lengthy and wordless scenes reveal aspects of The Man’s dismal existence. We see that he lovingly preserves the corpses of his dead companions, and that generations of mutations have rendered him animalistic, hence his taste for human flesh. Sherman approaches these scenes with a sort of tenderness, even though Death Line gets quite gory during moments of violence, as when The Man impales a victim. Meanwhile, Sherman tracks a melodrama aboveground, because Alex becomes cranky about getting roped into a police investigation, which has the effect of driving away Patricia, who finds Alex’s behavior to be callous. Scenes with Pleasence joking and sniffling as the persistent inspector lend much-needed humor, though the overall vibe is grim.

         It’s not hard to see why the picture has gained a small cult following over the years. While there are myriad misunderstood-monster movies, Death Line employs its subterranean metaphor to good effect while exploring the always-interesting idea that civilized man is never all that far removed from his origins as a savage animal. If one indulges Sherman’s outlandish premise, the suggestion that The Man is merely following his nature comes across with a smidge of emotional heft. And if certain elements of Death Line are bland (such as Ladd’s performance), there’s usually something interesting to compensate. Not only does Christopher Lee show up for an entertaining cameo, but Sherman’s camera captures a whole lot of ’70s kitsch, from Gurney’s shag haircut to loving glances at London’s seedy red-light district. Does it matter that Sherman can’t quite land his ending, which tries to be simultaneously horrific and poignant? Not really. Even with its flaws, Death Line is memorably bleak.

Death Line: FUNKY

Meatcleaver Massacre (1977)

Here’s the most striking scene in this atrocious horror flick—for several anguished moments, a young man contemplates suicide while holding a straight razor over his wrist, then abruptly says, “Oh, Jesus, I’m late for work,” sets the razor down, and zooms off to start his day. Need it even be mentioned that he’s alone in his apartment, so it’s unclear to whom he directed that line? Finding a morbidly funny non sequitur is about the only enjoyment one can derive from watching Meatcleaver Massacre, a supernatural-themed revenge saga that not only lacks any scenes featuring meatcleavers, but also lacks any scenes featuring demons, even though characters talk endlessly about them. The plot is simple enough: After several college students beat up a professor who teaches classes in the occult, the professor summons a demon to menace his attackers. Alas, the plot accounts for only a portion of what appears onscreen. In some scenes, characters run around as if they’re being pursued, and in other scenes, characters experience psychological freakouts that are presented like acid trips. None of what happens is interesting, very little of it makes sense, and none of it is scary. Basically incoherent beyond the opening scenes that set up the relationship between the professor and his tormenters, Meatcleaver Massacre offers just one familiar actor, horror-cinema icon Christopher Lee. But don’t get your hopes up—he appears only briefly at the beginning and end, sitting in an office while reciting eerie mumbo-jumbo factoids. Apparently Lee shot the footage for a separate movie, and the producer of that never-completed flick sold Lee’s clips to the folks behind Meatcleaver Massacre, prompting Lee to explore litigation. If only he’d successfully injoined the film from being shown anywhere.

Meatcleaver Massacre: SQUARE

1980 Week: Serial

          Perhaps more than any other American movie released in 1980, Serial makes an appropriate cinematic headstone for the ’70s, meaning the spiritual ethos of that wild decade rather than the chronological decade itself. Set in California’s Marin County, that affluent enclave long maligned as a nesting place for privileged white folks with a weakness for cultural fads, Serial concerns a character who’s sick to death of people talking about feelings and self-realization and social issues, because what he really craves is the Eisenhower-era ideal of a secure career and a stable home. This dude dug getting his rocks off during the anything-goes ’70s, and he’s hip enough to grasp why his daughter joins a cult and why his best friend becomes a swinger, but when consciousness-raising compels his wife to seek meaning outside the home, enough is enough. Like the disappointed boomers whom Lawrence Kasdan depicted so sharply thee years later in The Big Chill (1983), the nominal hero of Serial is a man for whom the ’70s left a bittersweet aftertaste.

          Based on a novel by Cyra McFadden, Serial has more in the way of concepts and themes than it does in the way of narrative clarity. Although the picture ostensibly tracks the adventures of businessman Harvey Holroyd (Martin Mull), it’s really more of an ensemble piece. Similarly, although the picture fares best when it cruises along with verbal satire, director Bill Persky and his collaborators unwisely attempt laugh-out-loud farce at many points, such as the hellzapoppin climax. That stuff falls flat more often than not, and the chaos it creates adds to the sense that Serial is an unwieldy mess. After all, the movie involves gay romantic drama, a motorcycle gang, myriad sexual affairs, a suicide, and many other things. Will the real Serial stand up? And for that matter, does the title, which was extrapolated from the source material, really make sense given how the story evolved during the transition from one medium to another? Oh, well.

          Its discombobulated nature aside, Serial contains some wonderful stuff. Mull slays with his signature deadpan delivery, and his rendering of the line “I’m going to love-bomb the shit out of them” is priceless. The name of the movie’s cult, the Church of Oriental Christian Harmony, is a fabulous one-liner. Costar Sally Kellerman’s remark, “I want to talk about how I’m having trouble talking about it,” captures the ridiculous extremes of the Me Decade, as does the bit when Tuesday Weld, as the wife of Mull’s character, castigates Harvey for daring to criticize their daughter in front of friends: “Do you know what you’ve done to her peer-group dynamics?” Mention should also be made of Tom Smothers’ droll supporting performance as a hippy-dippy clergyman, as well as Bill Macy’s fine work portraying the hero’s confused pal. Alas, there’s a lot of stuff in Serial that is the opposite of wonderful. Christopher Lee is horribly miscast, and the portrayal of gay characters is grossly dehumanizing. Whether the good outweighs the bad is a highly subjective matter.

Serial: FUNKY

Poor Devil (1973)

          One of the cinematic rabbit holes I find most alluring is the one containing lost feature-length TV pilots from the ’70s. Sure, it’s fun to revisit the initial episodes of series that later became cult favorites or even iconic boob-tube mainstays, but it’s even more revealing to investigate concepts that almost became series. For instance, it’s astonishing the pilot episode of Poor Devil was actually filmed and exhibited. It’s a broad-as-a-barn comedy about a low-ranking demon who’s desperate to escape his mundane job in Hell, which involves stoking the fires of the underworld by literally shoveling coal into a furnace. The price of getting a promotion? Persuading a mortal to sell his soul. Yep. Had Poor Devil gone to series, every week, the show’s “hero” would presumably have lured some dumb putz into eternal damnation, and/or attempt to do so and suffer a crisis of conscience. Oh, and the project’s star was Sammy Davis Jr.

          In the pilot movie, which has a few moments of pith but never overcomes the innately untenable nature of the premise, the would-be “client” is Burnett (Jack Klugman), a department-store accountant. His wife wants nice things that he can’t afford; his smarmy supervisor, Dennis (Adam West), has the store’s top accounting job simply because he’s better at kissing ass; and Burnett has sunken so low as to attempt robbing the store one night. Meanwhile, ne’er-do-well demon Sammy (Davis) has spent centuries in torment after screwing up previous assignments, so he’s eager to impress Lucifer (Christopher Lee) by getting someone to sign a contract. Sammy talks his way into becoming Burnett’s handler, with the understanding that if he fails, his punishment will be hundreds more years of shoveling. The bulk of the pilot depicts Sammy’s attempts to fulfill Burnett’s every wish, per the terms of the contract, even though Burnett knows he can wrangle out of the deal if Sammy botches anything. Proving how the series premise was never going to work, Sammy deliberately screws up once he realizes that Burnett is too nice a guy for Hell.

          Nonetheless, Poor Devil has a colorful cast, and Davis does his best to sell the wackadoodle idea. He’s charming if perhaps a bit overzealous. Lee and West are fine if uncharacteristically restrained, and Klugman fares best of all, bouncing between comic anguish and exasperated one-liners. For instance, when Sammy magically appears in Burnett’s bedroom, Sammy helpfully explains, “I’m from down below.” Burnett’s response: “You’re from the Feldmans’ apartment?” Or, as Burnett says later, “I don’t wanna go to Hell—I haven’t even been to Europe yet!” You get the idea. By the by, this movie’s vision of the underworld has a very Austin Powers vibe, with lots of medallions and turtlenecks—apparently the road to Hell is paved with polyester.

Poor Devil: FUNKY

Killer Force (1976)

          A heist thriller that sacrifices believability and logic in the name of plot twists, Killer Force—also known as The Diamond Mercenaries—features an offbeat cast and a moderately exciting climax filled with bloodshed and chases and gunfights. Getting to the finale requires a bit of patience, since the picture’s first two acts are a bit on the sluggish side, and none should seek out Killer Force hoping for anything along the lines of resonance or substance. This is manly-man escapism of the most vapid sort imaginable, although the macho posturing is leavened by leading man Peter Fonda’s sensitive-dude mannerisms. Plus, it’s hard to take the movie too seriously, not only because of the far-fetched storyline, but also because of two peculiar visual tropes: Costar Telly Savalas wears sunglasses throughout the entire movie, removing them only in the final shot, and Fonda sports a goofy perm that looks like a half-hearted attempt at a white-guy Afro. The innate silliness of Killer Force is part of the movie’s appeal, but that’s to be expected of any movie featuring O.J. Simpson in a supporting role.

          Set in the South African desert, the picture revolves around a heavily fortified diamond mine. Harry Webb (Savalas), a cold-blooded security specialist, arrives at the sprawling facility because clues indicate that someone is planning an inside-job robbery. Mike Bradley (Fonda) is a member of the private army that patrols the facility and the surrounding area. Criminal mastermind John Lewis (Hugh O’Brien) has assembled a small team to invade the mine and steal diamonds. His accomplices include easygoing “Bopper” Alexander (Simpson) and sadistic ex-solider Major Chilton (Christopher Lee). Another player in the convoluted plot is Chambers (Stuart Brown), the facility’s administrator. Distrusting Webb, Chambers asks Bradley to play double agent by seeking out and joining the conspirators, thus drawing them into a trap. Complicating matters is Mike’s romantic involvement with Chambers’ fashion-model daughter, Clare (Maud Adams). And so it goes from there. Intrigue compounds intrigue, with the body count growing as the date of the inevitable heist attempt draws ever closer.

          About half of what happens in Killer Force makes logical sense, although everything goes down smoothly in a dunderheaded, Saturday-matinee sort of way. There’s a little romance, a little sex, a little male bonding, and lots of dudes grimacing with fierce determination. Director Val Guest—a somewhat unlikely candidate for this gig, seeing as how he’s best known for his sci-fi pictures—shoots Killer Force with the bland, boxy style of episodic television, so Killer Force doesn’t get any points for style. Still, the cast is hard to beat as a random assortment of familiar faces, and there’s just enough action to keep the picture’s blood pumping.

Killer Force: FUNKY

Jaguar Lives! (1979)

A dunderheaded take on James Bond-style international espionage with a heavy element of martial arts, Jaguar Lives! is roughly the equivalent of a second-rate television pilot, thanks to adequate production values, a blandly handsome leading actor, several faded stars playing vapid cameo roles, and a nonstop barrage of noisy action. The story is as stupid as it is trite, so not one frame of the picture is likely to lodge in the viewer’s memory. Jaguar Lives! is not even fun to watch ironically, excerpt perhaps for the snarky thrill of noting how many of the film’s macho moments come across as accidental homoerotica. In fact, viewers who enjoy watching leading man Joe Lewis perform martial-arts rituals while his naked, sculpted torso gleams in the sun may be the only ones who can derive uncomplicated pleasure from Jaguar Lives! The movie begins with secret agent Jonathan Cross, code-named “Jaguar” (Lewis), conducting a mission with his buddy, Bret Barrett, code-named “Cougar” (Anthony De Longis). The mission ends in tragedy, sending Jaguar into seclusion. He licks his spiritual wounds by doing martial arts in the desert under the watchful eye of his sensei (Woody Strode), whom the filmmakers helpfully adorn with the character name “Sensei.” Then intelligence operative Anna Thompson (played by onetime Bond girl Barbara Bach) arrives with a new mission, and—oh, forget it. International locations are visited, stuff explodes, and villains get their asses kicked. Beyond Bach and Strode, others collecting paychecks for playing pointless roles include Capucine, John Huston, Christopher Lee, Donald Pleasance, and Dr. No himself, Joseph Wiseman. Lewis, who enjoyed a hugely successful career in competitive karate and kickboxing, is impressively athletic, and that may be the only reason to associate any form of the adjective “impressive” with Jaguar Lives!

Jaguar Lives!: LAME

Arabian Adventure (1979)

          A towering figure both because of his impressive height and because of his unique screen presence, the British actor Christopher Lee—best known for playing Count Dracula in myriad pictures from Hammer and other companies, and whose massive presence in fantasy and science fiction films spans The Wicker Man to the 007, Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars franchises and beyond—has died at the age of 93. His melodious voice and his stately manner of personifying menace rightfully earned Lee generations of fans. RIP.

          Made in the UK by the same folks responsible for At the Earth’s Core (1976) and other such Saturday-matinee silliness, Arabian Adventure is as generic as its title, providing little more than 98 minutes of brainless distraction. The story is a shameless pastiche of elements from myriad sources—The Prince and the Pauper, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, The Thief of Bagdad, The Wizard of Ox, and the adventures of King Arthur and Sinbad the Sailor, to name but a few—while the casting of American and English actors as Arabs is ridiculous. That said, credibility and originality aren’t generally the qualities that viewers seek in kiddie-cinema escapism, and Arabian Adventure delivers the goods with archetypal characters, elaborate special effects, and robust adventure. Hell, the movie’s got Christopher Lee as a moustache-twirling villain and the climax involves a mid-air dogfight between combatants on magic carpets, so why complain?

          Set in some vague mythical version of the Middle East circa the Middle Ages, Arabian Adventure revolves around the evil caliph Alquazar (Lee), who needs a magical object called “The Rose of Ilyl” to consolidate his power. Various clichéd characters orbit the caliph. The virginal Princess Zuleira (Emma Samms) lives in Alquazar’s castle, unaware of his insidious nature. The heroic Prince Hasan (Oliver Tobias) wanders in exile, unable to claim his throne. The innocent street urchin Majeed (Puneet Sira) lives off scraps, waiting to discover his destiny. Eventually, Hasan agrees to find the Rose of Ilyl for Alquazar, in exchange for Zuleira’s hand in marriage, and he begins a quest accompanied by Majeed and by Alquazar’s evil henchman, Khasim (Milo O’Shea). Encounters with genies and monsters and other such things soon follow, with one of the goofiest episodes featuring Mickey Rooney (!) as the keeper of a mechanical dragon’s lair. The whole affair culminates, predictably, with Hasan leading a revolution against Alquazar, hence the aforementioned magic-carpet dogfight.

          Costumes and sets in Arabian Adventure are fairly opulent, the special effects are okay (some of the flying-carpet scenes are quite persuasive), and the pacing is fairly strong. The acting is not as impressive, though it’s a hoot to see Lee’s frequent costar, Peter Cushing, turn up for two quick scenes, and it’s strange to watch future Cheers regular John Ratzenberger play a thug named Achmed. The leads deliver forgettable work, though Lee, as always, strikes a great figure and Samms—well, if nothing else, she has a great figure. Pulling the whole thing together is a characteristically rousing score by the reliable UK composer Ken Thorne.

Arabian Adventure: FUNKY

End of the World (1977)

Given the popularity of disaster films in the ’70s, it was inevitable that some enterprising producer would make a movie about the apocalypse, and it was probably just as inevitable that the resulting film would be awful. Produced by grade-Z horror/sci-fi purveyor Charles Band, End of the World contains so many colorful elements that it should be a crap-cinema jamboree—the plot involves conspiracies, natural disasters, religion, and space aliens. Yet Band clearly held the purses strings tightly closed throughout production, so what viewers actually see are lots of interminable scenes featuring people talking about interesting things that are happening elsewhere. The opening scene includes a few weak pyrotechnic effects, and the finale showcases tacky sci-fi transportation effects that wouldn’t have passed muster on an episode of Star Trek. In between is an ocean of nothing. The plot, such as it is, concerns NASA scientist Andrew Boran (Kirk Scott), who detects weird signals beaming from somewhere on Earth into outer space. Meanwhile, news reports indicate a surge in natural disasters. Andrew and his wife, Sylvia (Sue Lyon), track the signal to a remote convent. Soon, Andrew and Sylvia discover that a priest named Father Pergado (Christopher Lee) is actually an alien in human disguise, and that he’s been sent to annihilate Earth lest the “disease” of humankind spread throughout the universe. All of the actors in the film (including the aforementioned plus big-screen veterans Lew Ayres, Macdonald Carey, and Dean Jagger) look bored, which is understandable, and not even the persistent bleeps and bloops of the tacky electronic score are enough to enliven the lethargic footage. Worst of all, End of the World isn’t so aggressively stupid that it achieves camp value. Instead, it’s just lazily stupid, raising the unanswerable question of why Band and his people bothered to waste time making this drivel.

End of the World: SQUARE

I, Monster (1971)

          A competent but perfunctory adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this offering from second-rate UK horror manufacturers Amicus Productions reteams the formidable duo of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, beloved by generations of shock-cinema fans for their work with Hammer Films. Written for the screen (poorly) by Amicus stalwart Milton Subotsky, I, Monster changes the main characters’ names and jettisons nearly all of Stevenson’s ruminations on the nature of evil, thus delivering a highly generic series of laboratory scenes and murder vignettes over the course of 75 plodding minutes. Sometimes, less is less.
          Though by far the inferior actor of the top-billed duo, Lee gets the showy part, as “Dr. Marlowe” and “Mr. Blake.” Cushing, meanwhile, plays a gentleman named Utterson, who belongs to the same private club as Dr. Marlowe and conducts an investigation into several murders that eventually leads him to discover Dr. Marlowe’s horrible secret. For the benefit of the few people left on earth who remain unfamiliar with Stevenson’s deathless tale, the gist is that a scientist creates a serum that brings out the evil buried within every person, using himself as a subject and becoming a killer whenever he’s under the influence of the serum. Considering the movie’s brief running time, it takes a while for Subotsky and director Stephen Weeks to get to the good stuff; Marlowe doesn’t change for the first time until about 25 minutes into the movie. Furthermore, the Blake scenes are quite bland, even though Lee plays his character’s evil incarnation with bugged-out eyes and grubby makeup that’s unpleasant without seeming wholly unrealistic.

          On the plus side, the story gains momentum about halfway through, once Blake kills a child and thereby jacks up the movie’s overall intensity. While I, Monster ultimately feels more like a made-for-TV project than a proper feature—and while the change of character names seems pointless since Stevenson’s narrative survives largely intact—it’s always a kick to see Cushing and Lee share screen time. Better still, composer Carl Davis bathes the film in a sophisticated musical patina thanks to a dense orchestral score right out of the Masterpiece Theater playbook.

I, Monster: FUNKY

In Search of Dracula (1975)

          Not to be confused with the Leonard Nimoy-hosted TV series In Search of . . . (which spotlighted Dracula in one episode), this flimsy European documentary explores the real-life roots of vampire mythology while also including dramatic scenes featuring Hammer Films icon Christopher Lee as both the fictional character Dracula and the 15th-century historical figure Vlad Tepes, whose bloody reign in Transylvania helped inspire Irish novelist Bram Stoker to pen his enduring 1897 novel Dracula. Additionally, Lee narrates the piece in his usual stentorian style. In Search of Dracula is an odd hybrid. During many passages, it’s like a bland educational film; scenes of modern-day Transylvanians dancing around a town square are particularly unexciting. Yet whenever Lee appears onscreen as Dracula, he preys upon nubile women who seem to spend most of their time dressing and undressing. That said, while the makers of In Search of Dracula succumbed to the lure of sensational gimmicks, they didn’t have the nerve to present full-on Grand Guignol excess.

          At the time of the picture’s release, some of the information that director/coproducer/cowriter Calvin Floyd presents was relatively fresh, such as the connection between Stoker’s creation and Tepes (better known as “Vlad the Impaler”). The movie also does an adequate job of tracing bloodsucker iconography from ancient Egypt to post-medieval Hungary, where notorious murderess Elizabeth Báthory bathed in the blood of her victims, and beyond. There’s even some cringe-inducing laboratory footage of a real vampire bat in action, as well as interesting sequences explaining how Stoker wrote about a region he’d never visited. Floyd shows restraint in terms of describing Dracula’s prominence in films, although clips from F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and other silent films unspool at excessive length, presumably because the public-domain content was available for Floyd’s use free of charge.

          By far the weirdest sequence in the movie is an extended vignette about a modern-day European named “Bill,” who is shown practicing vampirism on himself—he nicks his throat with a razor and drinks the blood that flows from his wound. The “Bill” images, however, feel as fabricated as the shots of Lee playing Tepes while wearing a silly wig and a series of even sillier headdresses. Still, even though subsequent documentaries and TV specials have undoubtedly improved on the scholarship of this low-budget enterprise, the grungy ’70s vibe and Lee’s participation lend In Search of Dracula a measure of kitschy appeal.

In Search of Dracula: FUNKY

Scream and Scream Again (1970)

          How badly do the makers of Scream and Scream Again contort themselves while trying to generate pulpy thrills? Consider this line, spoken by policeman Detective Sergeant Believer (Alfred Marks): “Well, either this is coincidence—some kinky freak burglary turned tragic—or we’ve got more than one supernormal maniac on our hands.” Like that cumbersome dialogue, Scream and Scream Again contains too many elements for its own good. Although the picture features iconic horror stars Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and Vincent Price, it’s not a straight horror film. Rather, it’s more of a Twilight Zone-style head trip involving experimental surgery, a fictional Eastern European nation run by a Third Reich-esque government, quasi-invulnerable killers, and, to make sure Price has something to do, a mad scientist. There’s also a musical number.

          Made in Britain, with Price the only American star in the cast, the picture is confusing and jumbled. For the first 30 minutes or so, director Gordon Hessler bounces around between espionage-type scenes involving mysterious characters played by Lee and Marshall Jones, investigative bits featuring Marks and Price, and nightclub scenes during which arrogant young stud Keith (Michael Gothard) picks up ladies. Somewhere in the bewildering mix is Cushing’s brief appearance, which includes little more than one scene. Then, in the middle of the movie—once audiences and authorities have figured out that Keith is a serial killer—Scream and Scream Again stops dead for an interminable chase scene while cops pursue Keith through city streets, country roads, a quarry, and finally a secret laboratory. After the epic chase scene, the movie shifts into biological-horror mode, with lots of gruesome scenes during which unethical doctors and nurses steal body parts from victims. And finally, Scream and Scream Again reaches a long operating-theater scene dominated by Price’s character delivering a trite monologue about his grand scheme for genetic engineering.

          The overarching story of Scream and Scream Again, which was based on a novel by Peter Saxon, makes sense in a comic-book sort of way, but the Grand Guignol Lite conclusion raises as many questions as it answers. It’s hard to imagine whom this movie might satisfy, since horror fans will be disappointed that Cushing appears briefly, Lee plays a non-monstrous role, and Price delivers a terrible performance owing to the script’s overripe treatment of his character. Similarly, fans of conspiracy and/or sci-fi movies will probably find the chase scene painfully boring and the horror aspects silly. On the plus side, the title song—yes, there’s a title song—is actually a pretty happening ’60s blues-rock number, performed onscreen by the real-life Welsh band Amen Corner.

Scream and Scream Again: FUNKY

Nothing But the Night (1973)

          Marketed as a horror movie, presumably because of the involvement of Hammer Films veterans Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, Nothing But the Night is really more of a whodunit with a supernatural angle. It’s also not particularly coherent or interesting, although the picture includes some atmospheric location photography during an extended chase scene that takes place in Scotland.

          The disjointed story begins with vignettes featuring violent deaths, culminating in the crash of a tour bus carrying dozens of children and adults. One of the survivors is young Mary Valley (Gwyneth Strong), ward of a charitable trust that runs a home for girls from troubled families. Following the crash, Mary ends up in a hospital under the care of physicians including Sir Mark Ashley (Cushing), who, at the urging of a colleague, investigates Mary’s background. Concurrently, police detective Charles Bingham (Lee) examines whether the earlier deaths are connected to the crash. Charles believes that Mary might be capable of providing key information. Making the already-murky story unnecessarily convoluted is the presence of Mary’s biological mother, a deranged ex-prostitute named Anna Harb (Diana Dors). After being contacted by a representative from the hospital, Anna becomes obsessed with seeing Mary, who was taken away from her by authorities three years previous. Observing a fraught mother/daughter encounter causes Sir Mark to embrace the odd notion that Anna and Mary share some sort of psychic link, and that the psychic link relates to the mysterious deaths. Whatever.

          Following the plot of Nothing But the Night is an arduous and ultimately pointless endeavor, because the movie slowly spirals from an intricate conspiracy story to a trite race-against-time melodrama. That said, Nothing but the Night has strong production values, occasional thrills, and lively acting. Cushing is terrific, likely savoring the opportunity to play a normal human being instead of someone extreme, and Dors is a holy terror as Anna, all mile-high hair and whorish makeup. Lee is less impressive, his character’s inner machinations hidden too deeply behind a stiff-upper-lip façade, and costar Georgia Brown, who plays a pushy journalist, is merely adequate. (Future Harry Potter star Michael Gambon shows up in a small role, as well.) The violent ending of Nothing But the Night—which vaguely resembles the climax of another 1973 British release, The Wicker Man—is something of a cheat, but at least the finale has energy, which is more than can be said for much of this middling effort.

Nothing But the Night: FUNKY

The House That Dripped Blood (1970)

           Arguably the best of several horror-anthology films that Amicus Productions made in the ’60s and ’70s, The House That Dripped Blood benefits from a droll sense of humor, glossy cinematography, and a cast filled with some of the best actors borrowed from the stable of Amicus’ predecessor in the British-horror market, Hammer Films. Like nearly all the “portmanteau” pictures that Amicus made, The House That Dripped Blood is much more frothy than frightening, benefiting from a (mostly) brisk pace and a varied mixture of supernatural signifiers.

          Written by Robert Bloch (author of the novel Psycho, which was adapted into the Hitchcock film of the same name), The House That Dripped Blood concerns a U.K. mansion where tenants experience macabre tragedies. The perfunctory wraparound device involves a Scotland Yard detective who has traveled to the area surrounding the house in order to investigate the most recent death. As he’s given the case histories on previous mortalities, flashbacks illustrate the creepy goings-on at the haunted abode.

           The first story, “Method for Murder,” is about a crime novelist (Denholm Elliot) who believes a homicidal character he invented has come to life. In “Wax Works,” a retired gentleman (Peter Cushing) discovers that a wax museum near the house contains a likeness of the gentleman’s lost love. “Sweets to the Sweet” follows a stern father (Christopher Lee) as he tries to control the life of his angelic-looking daughter, who, naturally, has a dark secret. “The Cloak,” the only full-on comedy vignette of the batch, portrays the adventures of a pompous movie actor (Jon Pertwee) whose quest for authenticity in a vampire role goes too far, and whose buxom costar (Ingrid Pitt) goes batty for him.

           Director Peter Duffell and cinematographer Ray Parslow shoot the hell out of the movie, using ironically selected foreground objects and elaborately moody lighting to create a colorful look that both captures and satirizes the cartoonish visuals associated with classic screen horror. And except for “Sweets to the Sweet,” which takes too long laying groundwork before things get evil, Duffell paces the movie elegantly. In so doing, he gives his seasoned performers room to mug and scowl, which works well since florid acting is yet another staple of vintage fright films. (In fact, stylized horror acting is overtly lampooned in “The Cloak.”)

           Of the four stories, “Method for Murder” is probably the best simply because it gets down to business immediately and creates actual tension during scenes in which the novelist thinks he’s going crazy. (It also helps that Elliott is masterful at conveying barely contained anxiety.) “The Cloak” is whimsical, if not laugh-out-loud funny, and the combination of Pertwee’s flamboyance and Pitt’s sensuality works well. (Pertwee played the title role in the enduring Doctor Who BBC series during the early ’70s, and Pitt starred in various eroticized features for Hammer.) Made at a time when horror movies were getting nastier by the minute—more gore, more skin, more violation of every kind—The House That Dripped Blood is cheerfully old-fashioned entertainment.

The House That Dripped Blood: GROOVY

Count Dracula (1970)

The affection that horror fans of a certain vintage feel for Christopher Lee, the man who played Dracula in myriad offerings from Hammer Films, is such that even Lee’s lesser efforts with the horror genre are held in some esteem. Combine that with the admiration some people feel for the work of Spanish director Jesús Franco, a prolific purveyor of low-budget shockers, and you begin to understand why there’s a small but loyal following around Count Dracula. The behind-the-scenes story goes that Lee was tired of starring in repetitive Hammer movies about Bram Stoker’s most famous creation, so when Franco and co. approached Lee about starring in a “faithful” adaptation of Stoker’s original book, the actor saw an opportunity to do something more edifying than his usual fare. Unfortunately, good intentions only go so far. While Count Dracula hews more closely to Stoker’s storyline than most previous films, there’s a huge fundamental problem. Stoker’s book is written in the epistolary style, meaning that characters describe their emotions via diary entries and letters. Franco’s movie includes events without the accompanying nuances (there’s no voiceover), so the result is incredibly slow pacing. Characters walk around with flat expressions on their faces, speak in monotones, and react to startling sights with so little vigor that many scenes feel more like lighting tests with stand-ins than final footage with proper actors. Lee, whose reputation as a formidable screen villain is, ironically enough, predicated on the lurid excesses of his Hammer work, gives a genuinely boring performance here—glowering and stiff. Even costars Klaus Kinski (as Dracula’s mad accomplice, Renfield) and Herbert Lom (as the vampire’s rival, Van Helsing) deliver uncharacteristically drab performances. Clearly, there’s a good reason Hammer prioritized sensational thrills over loyalty to the source material when adapting Stoker.

Count Dracula: LAME

The Bloody Judge (1970)

          Although Spanish B-movie director Jesús Franco’s career seems to represent quantity over quality—he’s credited on IMDb with helming over 200 projects—his exuberant way of telling pulpy stories has gained many admirers. Plus, every so often, Franco came dangerously close to making a “real” movie, despite never leaving the ghetto of exploitation films. For instance, The Bloody Judge offers a fairly serious look at a grim chapter in history, even if the project seems as if it was designed to piggyback on the notoriety of the Vincent Price picture Witchfinder General (1968). Like the earlier film, The Bloody Judge is about a 17th-century jurist who employs heresy as an all-purpose accusation with which to pressure victims into providing financial, political, and/or sexual favors. Yet while stylish UK director Michael Reeves elevated Witchfinder General into high drama, Franco stays mired in the muck. The Bloody Judge has coherent dialogue scenes and a reasonable plot with intense moral ramifications, but it also contains prurient torture scenes that accentuate beautiful women. Try as he might to incorporate highbrow elements, Franco seems fundamentally more interested in the trashy aspects of this story.

          In any event, horror-cinema icon Christopher Lee plays Jeffries, a cold-hearted inquisitor tasked with rooting out witches in rural England. At the beginning of the story, lovely Alice Gray (Margaret Lee) is captured fornicating with a lover and brought before Jeffries. Alice’s sister, Mary (Maria Rohm), pleads with Jeffries for mercy, but refuses his proposed trade of sex for clemency. Jeffries has Alice burned at the stake. This sets in motion a complex series of political machinations, because Jeffries gets embroiled in a power struggle with an aristocrat, Lord Wessex (Leo Genn), who resents being kept under the imperious Jeffries’ thumb. Meanwhile, Mary maneuvers to get justice in her late sister’s name. The plot’s a bit hard to follow, and this problem is exacerbated by long stretches during which Lee is offscreen; like so many B-movies, The Bloody Judge teases the presence of a star, then devotes most of its screen time to supporting actors.

          The movie also rides a fine line because Franco’s filming of torture scenes is sleazy but not stomach-turning. It’s as if the director can’t decide whether The Bloody Judge is a genre movie with historical components or a historical picture with genre elements. Accordingly, The Bloody Judge is unlikely to entirely satisfy fans of either serious cinema or schlock. Still, the subject matter is interesting, the supporting performances are lusty, and Lee glowers in his inimitable fashion. For no discernible reason, by the way, the picture was released in the US as Night of the Blood Monster, hence the absurd poster pictured above, which has nothing to do with the story.

The Bloody Judge: FUNKY

One More Time (1970)

The easygoing entertainers comprising the Rat Pack appeared in lighthearted movies throughout the ’60s, whether separately or together—with the most notable Rat Pack flick being the original Ocean’s Eleven (1960), which features the whole gang. Among the lesser examples of Rat Pack cinema is a pair of frothy comedies costarring energetic showman Sammy Davis Jr. and suave British actor Peter Lawford. The first of these pictures, Salt and Pepper (1968), introduced fun-loving London nightclub operators Charles Salt (Sammy Davis Jr.) and Christopher Pepper (Lawford). Directed by future superstar Richard Donner, Salt and Pepper did well enough to warrant a sequel, One More Time, which probably should’ve been titled One Time Too Many. Whatever charm was present in the original film is absent from the sequel, which compensates for the absence of a real story by bludgeoning viewers with outlandish situations and unfunny jokes. Davis works hard to sell physical-comedy shtick and Lawford delivers urbane charm, but the whole enterprise is so drab, pointless, and silly that star power isn’t reason enough to watch. Plus, because One More Time was directed by comedy legend Jerry Lewis as a particularly fallow point in his creative life, the movie’s gags feel tired even before Lewis milks the gags with irritating embellishments and repetition. For instance, Salt dresses up in a Little Lord Fauntleroy costume and fills his nostrils with snuff—then goes through what seems like an eternity of facial contortions before sneezing so powerfully he knocks over everyone in a crowded ballroom. This is Lewis’ comedy at its worst, simultaneously infantile and overwrought. As for the movie’s narrative, One More Time is nominally about Pepper investigating the murder of his twin brother, but it also concerns diamond smuggling, mistaken identity, and other random nonsense. (How random? At one point, Salt enters a hidden chamber in a castle, only to discover a mad-scientist laboratory occupied by Dracula and Dr. Frankenstein, played in cameos by Hammer Films stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.) Lewis periodically stops the movie cold so Davis can perform musical numbers, and the director goes for cheap laughs with a fourth-wall-breaking gag at the end. In sum, One More Time isn’t worth your time—unless you’re a hardcore fan of the leading players.

One More Time: LAME

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

          One of Hollywood’s most glorious careers began a steady downward slide with this intelligent but overwrought riff on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s beloved fictional detective. Billy Wilder, who directed and produced the film in addition to co-writing the script (with longtime collaborator I.A.L. Diamond), was probably the wrong person to make a Holmes movie, simply because Wilder’s career was filled with so many brilliantly original stories and witty adaptations. In other words, making a new iteration of a familiar character was beneath his talents. Further confounding expectations is the misleading title, since The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is more of a mystery than a character piece. (The 1976 Holmes film The Seven-Per-Cent Solution dug far deeper into the detective’s psychological makeup.) Another caveat regarding The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is that the movie is far too long given its trifling narrative. Released at 125 minutes but originally envisioned as being even longer, the picture represents a tendency toward cinematic bloat that troubled Wilder throughout the last decade, give or take, of his career.

          Taking these disclaimers into consideration, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is perhaps best characterized as frustrating but rewarding for viewers who are willing to accept narrative detours.

          The clever story begins with a long preamble about Holmes’ amusing meeting with a Russian ballerina, which leads to an elaborate mistaken-sexuality joke at the expense of Holmes’ best friend, Dr. Watson. Wilder stages these farcical scenes beautifully, and the prologue introduces viewers to the enchanting world of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, courtesy of Christopher Challis’ painterly cinematography and Miklós Rósca’s resplendent music. Nonetheless, the whole sequence is superfluous. After the prologue, Wilder unveils his main story, a larky caper involving a beautiful Belgian amnesiac; ancient Scottish castles; nefarious monks; clandestine operations of the British government; Holmes’ secret-agent brother, Mycroft; and, after a fashion, the Loch Ness Monster. Had Wilder simply filmed this surprising story, without the prologue, and given the piece a less ponderous title, the public reception of this movie might have been much different. (Changed, too, might have been the studio’s attitude toward the project, since MGM reportedly ordered the removal of large sections from Wilder’s first cut.)

          Yet another problematic aspect of The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is the casting. To be clear, British stage actor Robert Stephens does a fine job as Holmes, filling his characterization with erudite bitchiness that feels like a logical extension of Basil Rathbone’s classic take on the role. Similarly, Colin Blakely is wonderful as Watson, dependable in a pinch but flummoxed by Holmes’ wilder schemes and occasionally, for comic relief, prone to buffoonery. Furthermore, French actress Geneviève Page’s beauty and poise define her character as a formidable companion for Holmes, which pays off nicely at the end of the movie, and it’s a kick to see horror star Christopher Lee in one of his straightest roles, as Mycroft. Clearly, Wilder cast without taking the U.S. box office into consideration. (American ticketbuyers responded in kind, avoiding the film in droves.) Viewed as a career move, Wilder’s choice to eschew Hollywood stars was reckless, but viewed from the perspective of cinematic artistry, it was prudent—especially given the dexterity with which Wilder’s actors tackle his wonderfully intricate dialogue.

          In sum, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is not for everyone, but it’s an interesting museum piece that overflows with sophistication on many levels.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes: GROOVY