Spectre (1977)

(This is based on the film’s longer UK cut with a bit of nudity and more sleaze that never made it to NBC at the time, for obvious reasons)

Former top criminologist turned occult detective William Sebastian (Robert Culp) calls his estranged former friend and associate, alcoholic sleazebag and medical doctor “Ham” Hamilton (Gig Young) for help in his newest case. He really needs a doctor, too, for somebody is regularly using magic to pierce his heart, leaving him not in ideal fighting shape. Ham doesn’t really believe in anything occult, and the men’s parting of ways some time ago might have had something to do with their difference in opinion. Ham is beginning to change his mind when Sebastian’s witch assistant Lilith (Majel Barrett) gives him a draught that causes an instant aversion to alcohol, and even more so when an oversexed succubus version of Sebastian’s client, one Anitra Cyon (Ann Bell) appears and tries to seduce our hero into what looks a lot like an erection based heart attack to me, or as much as a TV movie from 1977 can suggest that. But don’t worry, hitting her with the right page in an occult tome does get rid of her nicely.

After that business is through, we finally learn what the real Anitry Cyon wants from Sebastian and Ham: find out if she’s assuming right and her decadent brother Geoffrey (James Villiers) has indeed been possessed by EVIL, and when necessary, kill him. So off to Great Britain our heroes jet, piloted by Anitra’s other brother Mitri (John Hurt) who may or may not already be under a malevolent influence himself. There are further attempts on our heroes’ lives and virtue (such as it is), of course, action archaeology happens, and exposition tells of the time when druids and Christian priests teamed up to imprison Asmodeus.

This pretty incredible artefact directed by Clive Donner is another of the many attempts of Gene Roddenberry to make a successful non-Star Trek TV show, this time around with British money. I’m not surprised Spectre never made it to series, because it is absolutely bonkers. What we have here is a mix of a Dennis Wheatley style occult thriller minus Wheatley’s actual ideas about occultism (though fortunately also minus his unpleasant politics) with the toned down “sexy” fantasies of a middle-aged guy with very peculiar interests who never left the swinger party mindset behind, paired with the sort of random crap you put in your movie not because it is a good idea to use it, but because you think it is absolutely awesome.

As a serious horror film the result is of course pretty terrible, but it’s also ridiculously fun to watch, having given up all restraint that could turn it into a proper movie and replaced it with the mandate to just make as much absurd fun, and quite a bit embarrassing stuff, up as possible. So of course Sir Geoffrey proves his decadence by only employing young, female servants who try way too hard to be sexy; of course his sister dresses like the old maid in a 30s comedy; of course one of the main characters turns out to be Asmodeus and looks a lot like a bluish Klingon when uncovered. Of course there’s a particularly awkwardly staged satanic orgy with dancing bad and half-hearted even by the standards of bad movie satanic orgies (one hopes real-life ones are a bit more enthusiastic, because this really doesn’t cut it as a seduction to evil). There’s an evil sort of ape person costume; things feel evil to the touch; Asmodeus lives by rather complicated rules; Gordon Jackson wears demon make-up; more “how we get rid of demons” nonsense that makes not a lick of sense than one could possibly hope for is expounded upon, and so much more.

The film’s tone wavers between embarrassing – just cringe through the unbelievable scene with Ham and the three maids trying to “seduce” him and ask yourself how many people must have thought this was an idea that needed to be put to film – and utterly hysterical, Culp, Young, Hurt and Villiers hamming it up in each and every way possible. I am usually not much of a fan of Culp and find him rather bland and affectless, but clearly, if he wanted, he could take bites out of scenery so large, Vincent Price must have been jealous; it’s the only correct acting decision to take in this particular movie, too, for playing any of this straight would simply ruin the film by dragging it back to Earth from whichever planet Roddenberry was on at the time.

Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)

Eighteen years ago, archaeologist Fuchs (Andrew Keir) and his associates apparently found the grave of the Egyptian queen Tera (Valerie Leon), killed and mutilated by priests for their fear of the huge magical powers she had developed, and perhaps her evil. Let’s not get into what “evil” might have meant to an ancient Egyptian priest. Since her hacked-off hands murdered a bunch of jackals who were trying to eat them, they can’t have been too wrong about her having powers, at least.

In any case, when Fuchs and company found Tera’s tomb, they made the startling discovery that her body was untouched by any kind of decay. Something the film never makes quite clear happened in the tomb, and eventually, Keir and associates scattered to the winds, each one taking one artefact belonging to Tera with them to protect it for – or perhaps against – her, while Fuchs secretly built a replica of the tomb in the cellar of his mansion, also taking Tera’s body there.

Now, nearly eighteen years later, the powers connected with Tera seem to awaken. This shouldn’t be too surprising to Fuchs, either, for his daughter Margaret looks exactly like Tera (and is obviously also played by Valerie Leon). In fact, Margaret was born dead and suddenly came back to live the very same moment the expedition found Tera’s body, so there’s a connection that’s pretty difficult to deny, try as Fuchs might. Though, really, Fuchs doesn’t seem to know his on mind on the situation, if he believes in any mystical connection between Tera and Margaret at all, or if he wants Tera to use Margaret for her own goals, whatever those may be exactly or if he wants to protect his daughter from Tera’s influence. He does not become more decisive now that Margaret begins to display strange powers and curious personality shifts.

Corbeck (James Villiers), one of Fuchs’s former colleagues, on the other hand, has very much made up his mind about things: he wants to shove Tera’s spirits into Margaret’s body by force, so he can then control her and use her for his own lust for power. He’s trying to manipulate Margaret into that direction, but really, he is much further out of his depth than his mock-decadent left-hand magus demeanour suggests, looking rather a lot like an ant pretending it is controlling where the woman on whose shoulder it sits goes.

Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb, a film not containing a single mummy, is one of the lesser loved films from Hammer’s risk-taking phase in the early 70s when they tried to shake off the image of stuffiness they had developed over the course of the last decade and reach the increasingly elusive younger audiences again. I get why people don’t love the film as much as others from this stage. Director Seth Holt (a man with a small but excellent filmography, and apparently a rather intense personality) died four fifths through the production, which was finished by Michael Carreras without a clear idea where the whole of the film was supposed to go. So there’s a sense of something, maybe some explanations or some connective tissue, perhaps even important scenes, missing from what is nominally an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Jewel of the Seven Stars” (but is really inspired by motives from it more than anything). It can be a bit like watching a second draft of something that probably needed a third or a fourth, and this feeling of the film not being quite finished or quite whole tends to stand between a movie and the status of a classic for most people.

For me, Blood works as a fascinating artefact more because of this great flaw than despite of it. There’s clearly meant to be a lot of ambiguity surrounding Tera’s nature anyway, and this mystery and ambiguity is only strengthened by the film’s state. As it stands, it’s difficult to understand what Tera actually wants, the audience only ever seeing her through Fuchs’s or Corbeck’s interpretation, and the psychic pressure she puts on Margaret. But how much of Margaret’s actions under Tera’s influence are Tera’s decisions, Margaret’s own psychological torment caused by the various men in her life trying to dominate her in one way or the other is unclear. As it stands – certainly also helped by Tera never speaking – the Egyptian queen feels more like a force of nature, something much bigger than any of the human characters can comprehend, everyone, well, every man deciding what she is or wants on the basis of very little actual evidence.

Which of course also does the curious trick of putting this as close to Lovecraftian cosmsicism as well as to feminism as Hammer movies get. The latter aspect of the movie is additionally strengthened by Valerie Leon’s wonderful performance that should have recommended her to Hammer for a whole load of other substantial roles. Of course, they never did try very hard to develop any of their actresses with obvious staying power and charisma, while wasting a surprising amount of energy on some obvious male failures.

Anyway, all of Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb’s flaws, its ambiguities purposeful and not, some fine horror scenes, as well as the cosmsicism and feminist readings it suggests combine for my taste into a very enticing whole, the sort of film I come to Hammer in this phase of their existence to.

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