After visiting his torture-based mobile cabinet of wax that’s apparently part
of a fairground sideshow, the proprietor, one Dr Diabolo (Burgess Meredith),
invites five of his customers (Michael Bryant, Beverly Adams, Barbara Ewing,
Jack Palance and Michael Ripper, who confusingly enough does not seem to play an
innkeeper) to a very special show. There, he presents warnings of possible
futures where they do evil by getting them to stare at the shears of a figure of
Atropos. Since this is an Amicus anthology movie, every vision makes one segment
of the movie.
First up is “Enoch”, in which something that presents as a cat develops a
rather unholy influence on a young would-be playboy who basically murdered his
uncle.
Then follows “Terror Over Hollywood”, in which we learn the rather boring
secret that keeps certain Hollywood stars seemingly immortal. No, it’s not
cosmetic surgery or the injection of snake toxins, silly!
Next up is “Mr. Steinway”, concerning that most classic of love triangle
between Man, Woman and Grand Piano.
We finish up on “The Man Who Collected Poe”, where the greatest of all Poe
collectors (Peter Cushing) meets a rather too enthusiastic sharer (Jack
Palance) in his interest.
Poor Michael Ripper doesn’t actually get his own segment but is used to close
the framing story. You’ll never guess who Dr Diabolo actually is (if you are
very, very slow)!
As friends of weird fiction and literary horror will probably have noticed
(if you didn’t simply know already), the segments of this film directed by the
great Freddie Francis are all based on stories by the equally great Robert Bloch
(who did so much more than just write the novel Hitchock’s Psycho is
based on). In fact, this is one of the three Amicus anthology films scripted by
Bloch himself. So it’s no surprise it is full of the man’s interest in classic
supernatural authors as well as (usually aberrant) psychology, with a healthy
dose of the macabre added for good measure.
Quality-wise, this isn’t my favourite of the Bloch/Amicus bunch (that would
obviously be Asylum), but it does have quite a bit to recommend it.
Well, “Terror Over Hollywood” is just bland, taking way too much time to come to
a not terribly interesting or shocking ending, but every anthology needs to have
one single bad entry at least. “Enoch” provides Francis with some nice
opportunities for creating a creepy, gothic-style mood; this is also one of the
few films I know which feature an evil cat the filmmakers actually manage to
make look rather sinister.
“Mr. Steinway” works best if you treat it as a work of black humour of the
most sardonic type; its psychological basis is a bit too obvious and so outdated
it weakens the whole thing considerably if you take it too seriously. On the
other hand, a pianist having an unhealthy connection to his supernaturally
endowed instrument certainly isn’t without resonance.
The last one’s the greatest treasure here, though, and “The Man Who Collected
Poe” doesn’t just have an excellent joke in its title, but also features a
particularly huge dose of Francis’s patented gothic mood – this time aiming for
a heated version of the same very fitting to the tale’s Poe theme – and a great
outing by Jack Palance. Seeing Palance orgasmically (I’m not even sure that’s a
metaphor) rubbing himself against all sorts of Poe paraphernalia is quite the
thing, as grotesquely funny as it is creepy. Even better is the script’s
emphasis on his obsession with Poe and all thing weird being so great, he’d be
perfectly willing to die for it, if it only provides him with a kind of total
communion with his love.
This final segment alone, in combination with Meredith’s most excellent
mugging as the Devil (spoiler?), would be worth the entry, but the rest of the
film, “Hollywood” excepted, really isn’t bad at all either to watch on a rainy
night.
Showing posts with label michael ripper. Show all posts
Showing posts with label michael ripper. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Friday, August 3, 2018
Past Misdeeds: The Scarlet Blade (1964)
aka The Crimson Blade
Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
The English Civil War is in its last throes. The remaining Royalists, the Cavaliers - who are pure as angels I'll have you know - are fighting a guerrilla war trying to enable the former king Charles to escape from the - satanically evil wouldn't you know - Roundheads.
Despite the Royalists' best efforts the men of Colonel Judd (Lionel Jeffries) - officially a traitor to the royal cause himself - manage to capture the king. Now it's only a matter of holding on tothe arsehis former
royal majesty until he can be transported to the tower, which is supposed to
happen in a few weeks time.
Fortunately or un, a group of especially potent Royalist guerrillas (among them an especially scenery-hungry Michael Ripper in embarrassing brownface as "the gypsy Pablo") led by Edward Beverley (Jack Hedley), calling himself "the Scarlet Blade" is operating in the area. These guerrillas are of course doing everything in their power to decimate the enemy troops in the area, and find a way to rescue the ex-king.
What Judd doesn't know is that his daughter Claire (June Thorburn) has been helping Royalist refugees for quite some time, even though she isn't exactly subtle about her loyalties; from there, it's only a small step to involve herself in the conspiracy meant to save the king. Ironically, Judd's right hand man, the deeply cynical Captain Sylvester (Oliver Reed) sees quite a bit more clearly what Claire is up to, but instead of denouncing her, blackmails himself into the Royalist conspiracy too. For Sylvester has fallen in love with Claire and has decided that the best way into a woman's heart is threatening her with exposure and then helping her out with the things she's afraid of being exposed for. He is a smooth ladies man, Sylvester is.
Alas for poor Sylvester, once Claire lays eyes on the prime middle-aged woodenness of Beverley, her heart is forever lost to him. Of course, being played be Oliver Reed in a very sneering mood, Beverley is not the kind of guy who takes these things on the chin, and again the cause of saving one mass-murdering asshole who is being replaced by another mass-murdering asshole is threatened by the vagaries of love.
The deeper I dive into the pool of non-horror movies Hammer Studios made parallel to their horror output, the more impressed I am by the non-horror movies' general quality.
John Gilling's The Scarlet Blade may not be the second coming of the historical adventure movie, seeing as it uses a period not often seen in this sort of film in a bit too shallow a manner, doing a bit more violence to actual history than seems necessary for the kind of film it is. It's one thing to decide on one side of the English Civil War to be the moustache-twirling bad guys, but it's quite another one to basically have the angels sing on the soundtrack whenever fucking Charles I., who deserves the word "tyrant" the film uses for Cromwell quite well too, appears on screen.
However, whenever the film decides to explore the more complex loyalties and motivations of its characters, and relegates actual history to the attractive background like most modern swashbucklers do for a reason (we're a long way from Weyman, for better or worse), it becomes less annoying, and more believably human. In fact, the strained loyalties all of the film's major characters except for its nominal hero Beverley have give the handful of scenes of actual physical violence much more poignancy than they otherwise would carry, and give the film's melodramatic scenes quite a bit of power. Beverley, on the other hand, is and stays the sort of boring, wooden romantic lead you've come to expect from this sort of film (the times of Errol Flynn alas being over, too), a man whose moral certainty is not based on an ability to work through his doubts and fears, but on a lack of imagination and personality, which makes him pretty difficult to cheer for, even when he puts love before duty.
It doesn't help our theoretical hero's case that Jack Hedley's performance is so neutral it sometimes becomes difficult to remember he's there, nor that his main rivals for screen time are Lionel Jeffries and Oliver Reed, both doing their best to outdo each other in intensity, nor does it improve matters that the script doesn't bother to give him much of interest to do.
June Thorburn's character is quite interesting for an adventure movie of this period (and especially one from Hammer, who weren't exactly front runners when it comes to active female leads) in that her character is actually allowed to have some agency as well as a backbone. In fact, Claire seems a much more heroic character than Beverley to me, because she actually understands the implications of what she is doing, and decides doing it despite of these implications because she thinks she is doing right. I just wish Thorburn were a little better at projecting the force of personality the script suggests her character to have; while she isn't as lacking in screen presence as Hedley is, she's never quite convincing enough, which is a bit of a shame.
Other reviews of The Scarlet Blade on the 'net tend to come down hard on the action scenes. However, I don't think that's particularly fair. It's true nothing Gilling presents here is truly spectacular, but the film's emphasis lies more on its character-based melodrama of loyalties, with the action only meant to provide the story with enough spice to keep it moving. This, I think, the action does quite well.
Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
The English Civil War is in its last throes. The remaining Royalists, the Cavaliers - who are pure as angels I'll have you know - are fighting a guerrilla war trying to enable the former king Charles to escape from the - satanically evil wouldn't you know - Roundheads.
Despite the Royalists' best efforts the men of Colonel Judd (Lionel Jeffries) - officially a traitor to the royal cause himself - manage to capture the king. Now it's only a matter of holding on to
Fortunately or un, a group of especially potent Royalist guerrillas (among them an especially scenery-hungry Michael Ripper in embarrassing brownface as "the gypsy Pablo") led by Edward Beverley (Jack Hedley), calling himself "the Scarlet Blade" is operating in the area. These guerrillas are of course doing everything in their power to decimate the enemy troops in the area, and find a way to rescue the ex-king.
What Judd doesn't know is that his daughter Claire (June Thorburn) has been helping Royalist refugees for quite some time, even though she isn't exactly subtle about her loyalties; from there, it's only a small step to involve herself in the conspiracy meant to save the king. Ironically, Judd's right hand man, the deeply cynical Captain Sylvester (Oliver Reed) sees quite a bit more clearly what Claire is up to, but instead of denouncing her, blackmails himself into the Royalist conspiracy too. For Sylvester has fallen in love with Claire and has decided that the best way into a woman's heart is threatening her with exposure and then helping her out with the things she's afraid of being exposed for. He is a smooth ladies man, Sylvester is.
Alas for poor Sylvester, once Claire lays eyes on the prime middle-aged woodenness of Beverley, her heart is forever lost to him. Of course, being played be Oliver Reed in a very sneering mood, Beverley is not the kind of guy who takes these things on the chin, and again the cause of saving one mass-murdering asshole who is being replaced by another mass-murdering asshole is threatened by the vagaries of love.
The deeper I dive into the pool of non-horror movies Hammer Studios made parallel to their horror output, the more impressed I am by the non-horror movies' general quality.
John Gilling's The Scarlet Blade may not be the second coming of the historical adventure movie, seeing as it uses a period not often seen in this sort of film in a bit too shallow a manner, doing a bit more violence to actual history than seems necessary for the kind of film it is. It's one thing to decide on one side of the English Civil War to be the moustache-twirling bad guys, but it's quite another one to basically have the angels sing on the soundtrack whenever fucking Charles I., who deserves the word "tyrant" the film uses for Cromwell quite well too, appears on screen.
However, whenever the film decides to explore the more complex loyalties and motivations of its characters, and relegates actual history to the attractive background like most modern swashbucklers do for a reason (we're a long way from Weyman, for better or worse), it becomes less annoying, and more believably human. In fact, the strained loyalties all of the film's major characters except for its nominal hero Beverley have give the handful of scenes of actual physical violence much more poignancy than they otherwise would carry, and give the film's melodramatic scenes quite a bit of power. Beverley, on the other hand, is and stays the sort of boring, wooden romantic lead you've come to expect from this sort of film (the times of Errol Flynn alas being over, too), a man whose moral certainty is not based on an ability to work through his doubts and fears, but on a lack of imagination and personality, which makes him pretty difficult to cheer for, even when he puts love before duty.
It doesn't help our theoretical hero's case that Jack Hedley's performance is so neutral it sometimes becomes difficult to remember he's there, nor that his main rivals for screen time are Lionel Jeffries and Oliver Reed, both doing their best to outdo each other in intensity, nor does it improve matters that the script doesn't bother to give him much of interest to do.
June Thorburn's character is quite interesting for an adventure movie of this period (and especially one from Hammer, who weren't exactly front runners when it comes to active female leads) in that her character is actually allowed to have some agency as well as a backbone. In fact, Claire seems a much more heroic character than Beverley to me, because she actually understands the implications of what she is doing, and decides doing it despite of these implications because she thinks she is doing right. I just wish Thorburn were a little better at projecting the force of personality the script suggests her character to have; while she isn't as lacking in screen presence as Hedley is, she's never quite convincing enough, which is a bit of a shame.
Other reviews of The Scarlet Blade on the 'net tend to come down hard on the action scenes. However, I don't think that's particularly fair. It's true nothing Gilling presents here is truly spectacular, but the film's emphasis lies more on its character-based melodrama of loyalties, with the action only meant to provide the story with enough spice to keep it moving. This, I think, the action does quite well.
Friday, June 1, 2018
Past Misdeeds: The Pirates of Blood River (1962)
Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more
glorious Exploder
Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for
the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here
in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
At the end of the 17th century, a group of Huguenots fled France and settled on the tropical, piranha-infested Isle of Devon somewhere in the tropics. Now, two generations later, what once was supposed to be a colony providing freedom from persecution has become the tyranny of a handful of older men with impressive facial hair under the leadership of Jason Standing (Andrew Keir, as intense as always, even though the script doesn't provide him with much to work with here). The bible-wielding elders sentence people to death or life in their own little penal colony for breaking that obscure set of religious laws known as "the ten commandments" (or something of that sort). The less bearded classes aren't too happy with the political state of affairs, yet they're still too respectful of their elders and their elders' leather-vested henchmen to openly rebel.
Standing's own son Jonathon (Kerwin Mathews, one of the better romantic leads for this sort of film) is especially dissatisfied with life on the island, thinking his father lets himself be manipulated into a cruelty that is quite against his nature by his colleagues. Rather lacking in holiness himself, Jonathon's also in love with a married woman who is mistreated by her husband, and plans on fleeing the place together with her. Alas, before the couple can realize their plans, the elders are catching them in the act of rubbing their cheeks together, provoking the poor woman into running into a river full of piranhas.
Graciously, the elders don't sentence Jonathon to death for his unbiblical behaviour, but rather to spend some time in the colony's penal colony, which, as it turns out, is just as much of a death sentence, just a slower one.
Things at the colony are rough, and Jonathon's background makes him not exactly well-liked by the warden, but eventually, the young man escapes. Only to run right into the arms of the pirate band of Captain LaRoche (Christopher "I'm French, no, really" Lee) which counts among its members some beloved Hammer mainstays like young Oliver Reed and Michael Ripper. For a pirate, the Captain seems civilized enough, and claims to be willing to help Jonathon out with peacefully getting rid of the rule of the elders if the younger man only agrees to let the pirates stay in the Huguenot village for rest and recuperation whenever they need it.
In a turn of events that only surprises Jonathon, the pirates are really in it for the raping and the pillaging. LaRoche is convinced that the founders of the colony have hidden away a treasure of gold somewhere (he might even be right), and he's willing to do absolutely anything to get it. Of course, hoping for gold and actually finding it are two things, especially when some of the Huguenots turn out to be quite competent guerrilla fighters.
John Gilling's The Pirates of Blood River is the least among Hammer Film's handful of seafaring averse pirate movies, slightly hampered by a script that sets up conflicts for its first thirty minutes it will then not bother to resolve later on by anything else but hand-waving.
The whole religious oppression angle is very much side-lined - except for two or three wavering dialogue scenes - once the pirates arrive at the colony, and is only ever resolved by the fact that LaRoche kills off the elders one by one, which sure is a solution, but not one that's thematically satisfying. On the positive side, pirates.
Said pirates are a bit sillier than in the other Hammer pirate movies, too, for some genius (Gilling? Anthony Keys? Jimmy Sangster?) decided it would be a bright idea not just to camp up their appearance, but also to let them all - except for Michael Ripper, whose dialogue instead tests out how often a man can use the pirate-appropriate word "matey" without giggling - speak with painfully fake accents. Reed - in an unfortunately minor role - and Lee - doing his evil glowering shtick with some enthusiasm and thanks to that to very good effect - seem to be trying to outdo each other in the badness of their "French" accents. Though this aspect of the movie clearly has camp value (too bad for me I abhor the concept), it's standing in stark opposition to the film's earnest dramatic tone and makes it quite a bit more difficult to take certain scenes seriously.
This isn't to suggest there's nothing enjoyable at all about the movie if you're not into pointing at especially silly pirates; this is, after all a Hammer production made in the early 60s, a time when the high professional standards of the studio and the people working for it made it quite impossible for them to produce a bad movie. Gilling - who directed two of my favourites among the studio's non-series horror movies with The Reptile and Revolt of the Zombies - may have his problems with the film's pacing in the early scenes, but once the final half hour arrives, he milks a lot of excitement out of the guerrilla warfare between the Huguenots and the pirates trying to get away with their ill gotten gains. At that point, there's little left of the silliness of the film's earlier scenes. High camp is replaced by a certain grimness that makes up for a lot of what came before.
My true disappointment isn't so much with the film's problems at the beginning anyway but rather with the idea how fantastic the film could have been if it had been quite as good as those last scenes right from the start. As it stands, the sympathetic viewer needs a bit of patience and the ability to ignore a problematic set-up to enjoy The Pirates of Blood River, but with that patience, the film is still very much worth seeing.
Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.
At the end of the 17th century, a group of Huguenots fled France and settled on the tropical, piranha-infested Isle of Devon somewhere in the tropics. Now, two generations later, what once was supposed to be a colony providing freedom from persecution has become the tyranny of a handful of older men with impressive facial hair under the leadership of Jason Standing (Andrew Keir, as intense as always, even though the script doesn't provide him with much to work with here). The bible-wielding elders sentence people to death or life in their own little penal colony for breaking that obscure set of religious laws known as "the ten commandments" (or something of that sort). The less bearded classes aren't too happy with the political state of affairs, yet they're still too respectful of their elders and their elders' leather-vested henchmen to openly rebel.
Standing's own son Jonathon (Kerwin Mathews, one of the better romantic leads for this sort of film) is especially dissatisfied with life on the island, thinking his father lets himself be manipulated into a cruelty that is quite against his nature by his colleagues. Rather lacking in holiness himself, Jonathon's also in love with a married woman who is mistreated by her husband, and plans on fleeing the place together with her. Alas, before the couple can realize their plans, the elders are catching them in the act of rubbing their cheeks together, provoking the poor woman into running into a river full of piranhas.
Graciously, the elders don't sentence Jonathon to death for his unbiblical behaviour, but rather to spend some time in the colony's penal colony, which, as it turns out, is just as much of a death sentence, just a slower one.
Things at the colony are rough, and Jonathon's background makes him not exactly well-liked by the warden, but eventually, the young man escapes. Only to run right into the arms of the pirate band of Captain LaRoche (Christopher "I'm French, no, really" Lee) which counts among its members some beloved Hammer mainstays like young Oliver Reed and Michael Ripper. For a pirate, the Captain seems civilized enough, and claims to be willing to help Jonathon out with peacefully getting rid of the rule of the elders if the younger man only agrees to let the pirates stay in the Huguenot village for rest and recuperation whenever they need it.
In a turn of events that only surprises Jonathon, the pirates are really in it for the raping and the pillaging. LaRoche is convinced that the founders of the colony have hidden away a treasure of gold somewhere (he might even be right), and he's willing to do absolutely anything to get it. Of course, hoping for gold and actually finding it are two things, especially when some of the Huguenots turn out to be quite competent guerrilla fighters.
John Gilling's The Pirates of Blood River is the least among Hammer Film's handful of seafaring averse pirate movies, slightly hampered by a script that sets up conflicts for its first thirty minutes it will then not bother to resolve later on by anything else but hand-waving.
The whole religious oppression angle is very much side-lined - except for two or three wavering dialogue scenes - once the pirates arrive at the colony, and is only ever resolved by the fact that LaRoche kills off the elders one by one, which sure is a solution, but not one that's thematically satisfying. On the positive side, pirates.
Said pirates are a bit sillier than in the other Hammer pirate movies, too, for some genius (Gilling? Anthony Keys? Jimmy Sangster?) decided it would be a bright idea not just to camp up their appearance, but also to let them all - except for Michael Ripper, whose dialogue instead tests out how often a man can use the pirate-appropriate word "matey" without giggling - speak with painfully fake accents. Reed - in an unfortunately minor role - and Lee - doing his evil glowering shtick with some enthusiasm and thanks to that to very good effect - seem to be trying to outdo each other in the badness of their "French" accents. Though this aspect of the movie clearly has camp value (too bad for me I abhor the concept), it's standing in stark opposition to the film's earnest dramatic tone and makes it quite a bit more difficult to take certain scenes seriously.
This isn't to suggest there's nothing enjoyable at all about the movie if you're not into pointing at especially silly pirates; this is, after all a Hammer production made in the early 60s, a time when the high professional standards of the studio and the people working for it made it quite impossible for them to produce a bad movie. Gilling - who directed two of my favourites among the studio's non-series horror movies with The Reptile and Revolt of the Zombies - may have his problems with the film's pacing in the early scenes, but once the final half hour arrives, he milks a lot of excitement out of the guerrilla warfare between the Huguenots and the pirates trying to get away with their ill gotten gains. At that point, there's little left of the silliness of the film's earlier scenes. High camp is replaced by a certain grimness that makes up for a lot of what came before.
My true disappointment isn't so much with the film's problems at the beginning anyway but rather with the idea how fantastic the film could have been if it had been quite as good as those last scenes right from the start. As it stands, the sympathetic viewer needs a bit of patience and the ability to ignore a problematic set-up to enjoy The Pirates of Blood River, but with that patience, the film is still very much worth seeing.
Friday, June 15, 2012
On WTF: The Scarlet Blade (1964)
aka The Crimson Blade
As you know, Jim, there aren't many adventure movies set during the English Civil War, but fortunately, the glorious people of Hammer did at least provide us with John Gilling's The Scarlet Blade, a film that features a comparatively active female lead, Oliver Reed and others glowering with all their might, and an incredibly boring hero.
Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,adventure,john gilling,lionel jeffries,oliver reed,jack hedley,june thorburn,michael ripper,other places
Friday, April 27, 2012
On WTF: The Pirates of Blood River (1962)
Ah, Hammer Film and their landlubber pirates. The Pirates of Blood River may not be the best movie coming from that particular sub genre, but it does recommend itself with the usual awesome cast (including Christopher Lee, Oliver Reed, Andrew Keir, Michael Ripper and Kerwin Mathews) and some Huguenot guerrilla fighting.
So click on through to my column on WTF-Film for some raping and pillaging.
Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,adventure,reviews,john gilling,kerwin mathews,christopher lee,oliver reed,andrew keir,michael ripper
Thursday, June 30, 2011
In short: Captain Clegg (1962)
aka Night Creatures
1792. The impressively rude Navy Captain Collier (Patrick Allen) and a small boatful of his men enter the small British village of Dymchurch following information that has lead Collier to suspect the village of harbouring a rather effective smuggling operation.
Collier is quite right in his assumption too. Many of the village's upstanding citizens, including the jolly coffin maker (Michael Ripper confusingly not playing an innkeeper), the shady innkeeper (Martin Benson) and even the son of the local squire (Oliver Reed), are part of the smuggling operation, and given the way the representatives of royal authorities are presented throughout film, it's difficult not to sympathize with them. To top it all off, the local parson, a certain Dr Blyss (Peter Cushing) is the smuggler's ringleader.
A large part of the smugglers' success is certainly thanks to Blyss's organisational talents. Blyss uses people dressed as scarecrows and children as lookouts, and also lets the local legend about skeleton riders roaming the marshes come alive as a means of protection.
At first, Collier seems quite helpless against the wily villagers, but eventually, his combination of brutality, stubbornness and sheer good luck does pay off, especially once the innkeeper Rash, who is a rather nasty character, slowly starts to unravel. Things for Blyss are certainly not made easier by the strange fixation on killing him the navy men's nameless mascot and slave (Milton Reid), a mulatto (alas, here comes the racism fairy) who belonged to Captain Clegg's crew until he caused the death of the Captain's wife and lost his tongue and nearly his life for it, shows.
By 1962, the Hammer Studios were mostly known for their impressive series of gothic horror movies, but the Studios did still produce films in other genre, even though many of those films were and still are much less seen and talked about. It's a pretty unfair state of affairs when you look at the pure quality of a film like Captain Clegg.
Directed by Peter Graham Scott (who worked as a producer and director on many BBC TV shows we nerds and geeks love), featuring an ensemble of Hammer's stable actors lead by Peter Cushing in a very good mood, and showing off the lush and detailed look typical of Hammer films of this era (as usual, realized on a much lower budget than you'd expect), the film's pretty impossible for me to dislike.
Once you look closely at the movie, you'll realize how peculiar a film this actually is. Not only is Captain Clegg a pirate movie taking place predominantly on land, it also mixes its adventure movie tropes and techniques with elements of the whydunnit mystery and a few tasty moments of Hammer horror as during the night scenes in the marshes and in the character of "the mulatto". What's most surprising about this genre mix is how organically it actually feels when you are watching the film; Anthony Hinds's script makes the integration of disparate elements in a well-paced plot look easy.
The film's other peculiarity is its politics. Now, I'm quite used to the fact that any form of nobility does hide corruption and evil in a Hammer movie, but the sentiments towards the British crown Captain Clegg shows seem to go a step further. One can't help but see the parallels between a village of smugglers robbing a brutal government (the government here is represented by brutal thugs, a fat squire who does not seem to do anything but eat, and a king who doesn't hold to his promises) of tax revenues and a certain revolution in a certain former British colony. Who knew Hammer was that republican?
Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,in short,adventure,mystery,peter cushing,peter graham scott,oliver reed,patrick allen,michael ripper
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