A History of Horror

Mark Gatiss' wide ranging and fascinating three part 2010 documentary on the history of horror cinema.

The three episodes, "Frankenstein Goes To Hollywood", "Home Counties Horror" and "The American Scream" take us from the 1920's to the 1970s taking in the likes of Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Vincent Price, George Romero, John Carpenter and Tobe Hooper and exploring key movies such as the 1931 Dracula and the 1958 one, Blood on Satan's Claw, The Wicker Man, Night of the Living Dead and The Exorcist.

There is, perhaps, little new information here for horror devotees but as an introduction and an overview to the genre it's hard to beat and Gatiss is always an engaging host.

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Cry of the Banshee

1970's 'Cry of the Banshee' was director Gordon Hessler's third film for American International Pictures (AIP) starring Vincent Price following 'The Oblong Box' and 'Scream and Scream Again' and is by far the less successful of the three - but still infinitely better than the Kiss movie he was to make in 1978.  

Price is cast as Lord Edward Whitman a ludicrously evil presence at the centre of the film taking delight in hunting and torturing the nubile young ladies he and his sons, literally, brand as witches.  Leading the witches is Elisabeth Bergner as Oona who in revenge for the death of her 'children' asks Satan for help which arrives in the form of Patrick Mower as Lord Whitman's groom, Roderick, a former foundling and the proud wearer of an ostentatious necklace.

Alongside them are Essy Persson as his wife Patricia who proves to be even more of a scenery chewer than Price which is quite something to behold as well as the likes of Sally Geeson, Michael Elphick and the great Hugh Griffith who's always worth watching.

This film is magnificently terrible, it's script is barely coherent, the acting is terrible and the film is entirely daft and it makes for a fairly punishing watch unless, of course, you, like me, have a bit of a penchant for the magnificently terrible in which case you'll have a great time and it does have a fabulous animated title sequence by Terry Gilliam.

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City Under the Sea

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave, there is a movement there!
As if their tops given death
His undivided time.

Known in the US as 'War-Gods of the Deep', 'City Under the Sea' is a Vincent Price helmed movie from American International Pictures home of Price's Phibes movies as well as Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe movies to which this owes much of it's genesis, parts of it's title and flashes of it's script including that opening quote above which paraphrases Poe's poem, 'The City in the Sea' and was one of a number of movies produced by the studio that was lumbered with a Poe related title - see also 'The Conqueror Worm' the entirely irrelevant US title of 'The Witchfinder General'.

Tab Hunter plays mining engineer Ben Harris who along with (Mary Poppins' David Tomlinson) Harold Tufnell-Jones FRA (Fellow of the Rooster Association) is plunged into the submerged city of Lyonesse in pursuit of landlord's daughter Jill Tregillis (Susan Hart).  There they meet Sir Hugh (Vincent Price) and his band of  smugglers who along with their subservient 'gill men'  have been hiding in the sunken city kept alive by the rejuvenating gases of the increasingly active volcano upon which the city is built.

It's an engaging enough romp and there's a decidedly low budget feel to the movie that rarely ventures beyond the confines of the studio. Price is uncharacteristically subdued here leaving much of the scenery unchewed whilst John Le Mesurier cuts a delicately sympathetic figure as the Rev Jonathan Ives. Hunter in his first starring role makes for a clumsy lead as does Hart but Tomlinson is well within his comfort zone as the buffoonish Tufnell-Jones.  The movie makes a valiant attempt at replicating the appeal of Jules Verne stories such as '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea' but ultimately falls far short thanks to a lacklustre script and some uninspired direction from Jacques Tournier, here making his last film after a career that included such highlights as 'Cat People' and 'Night of the Demon'.

 

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House of the Long Shadows

Brash, materialistic American writer Kenneth Magee (Desi Arnaz, Jr.) accepts a bet from his publisher Sam Allyson (Richard Todd) that he can write a gothic classic of the calibre of Wuthering Heights in 24 hours given the right atmosphere.  Relocating to a supposedly deserted manor house in Wales named, 'Bllyddpaetwr Manor' where in its gloomy corridors he meets the eccentric Grisbane family and learns their terrible secret.

Made seemingly with the sole purpose of finally getting four horror icons Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and John Carradine onto the big screen together which is an absolute pleasure to see with each playing very much to type - Price in particular letting rip with his customary OTT style - with each making a memorable entrance from the shadows but unfortunately there is little else to recommend here.  

Director Pete Walker ('The Flesh and Blood Show' (UK / US)) and screenwriter Michael Armstrong's 'comedy' horror is a wasted opportunity all round with a paper thin plot and unfunny jokes cobbled together within an adaptation of the novel / play / movies Seven Keys to Baldpate.

Arnaz and Julie Peasgood (as Allyson's secretary Mary) have neither the chops nor the presence to carry the film and the presence of the four greats cannot make up for some very poor acting and the woeful script that inflicts on us an ending that will make you want to kick your TV screen in.  It is though the one time that we got to see Cushing, Price, Lee and Carradine together on screen and for that reason and pretty much only that reason it's worth at least a watch.

Buy it here - UK / US.

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The Oblong Box

Vincent Price stars in what is purported to be an adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story but in actuality beyond the title bears little (by which I mean no) resemblance to the source material which is a rather gentle and bittersweet tale of a sea voyage and a man with a large oblong box that he keeps hidden in his cabin.

In this version Sir Edward Markham (Alister Williamson) is kept locked away from the world by his brother Julian (Price) after being horribly disfigured and driven to madness in an African voodoo ceremony.  Faking his own death in order to escape and finding himself in the hands of the resurrectionist Dr Newhartt (a spectacularly bewigged Christopher Lee) he embarks on a campaign of revenge against his brother.

'The Oblong Box' was originally intended to be the next project for director Michael Reeves following 'Witchfinder General' and featuring the return of three cast members (Price, Rupert Davies & Hilary Dwyer) but unforunately he had to leave the film due to illness, dying soon after, and the directors chair was taken over by Gordon Hessler who'd subsequently make 'Scream and Scream Again' (also with Price and Lee) but who would 8 years later bear the blame for the travesty that was 'Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park'.

Now, I love watching him gnaw on the scenery but Price is unusually reserved here - and all the better for it - with both him and Lee taking a backseat to the masked (and dubbed) Williamson as his rampages bring him closer to the truth of his disfiguration.  It's a slightly hodge-podgey sort of affair due, I suspect, in no small part to its troubled beginnings and the script-tweaking it was apparently given but there's a strong ensemble cast and its low-key nature and slowly unfurling plot makes for an enjoyable and absorbing experience.

Buy it here - UK / US - or watch it below.

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Scream and Scream Again

'Scream and Scream Again' was the first time the three titans of horror movies, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, had appeared in a movie together which, as you can tell from the movie poster, was a big deal with the three sharing top billing.  Unfortunately, Cushing is only in it for about 5 minutes and never shares a scene with either of the other two who also only meet for a single, brief, scene at the very end and are both little more than supporting cast in the rest of the movie.

Made by Gordon Hexler for Amicus Productions, his second film in a row to feature both Lee and Price (after 'The Oblong Box'), and based on the novel 'The Disorientated Man' by the pseudonymous Peter Saxon, it's a strange sort of movie all round being built around three narrative strands that, to varying degrees, feel entirely unconnected until they all come together in the finale.

The first strand features a jogger trapped in a hospital bed, cared for by an uncommunicative nurse (Uta Levka), who keeps waking up to find another limb has been removed.  The second strand concerns an un-named Eastern European military junta where various high ranking officials are being 'spocked' to death with some sort of vulcan neck pinch whilst the third, and main, storyline tells of the police investigation into a series of violent, vampiric murders of young women picked up in a London hippie club.

I like this film a lot but truthfully they could have easily ditched the entire Eastern European storyline and made more of the other two for a far more cohesive film.  As I said Cushing makes no more than a cameo appearance and Lee's combined scenes don't add up to much more.  Price is as reliable as ever but the film really belongs to Michael Gothard as Keith the vampire and Alfred Marks as the sardonic Detective Superintendent Bellaver, the copper hunting him down.  It has it's flaws for sure but it tried to do something a bit different to the norm for which I'll always give it kudos and whilst it doesn't entirely succeed it certainly makes for an entertaining watch.

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The Monster Club

The 1980s wasn't exactly what you'd call a golden era for British horror movies.  There were some good TV series and some good novelists but the horror movie industry in the UK mostly gave up and stayed home.  It did though occasionally pop its head out from under the bed and give us the goods.

Very loosely adapted from stories written by British horror writer R. Chetwynd-Hayes, 'The Monster Club' is, in the great tradition, a portmanteau featuring three tales told inside a framing story which in this instance involves a vampire named Eramus (Vincent Price) taking the human author also named R. Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine) that he's just chewed on for a drink at the titular club. 

In the club we and Chetwynd-Hayes are treated to four musical performances by The Viewers, B.A. Robertson, Night and The Pretty Things and three stories about a shadmock, a vampire and a ghoul.

Like the music the three stories vary wildly in terms of quality.  The story of the lonely shadmock (James Laurenson) with its murderous whistle being robbed by heartless villains Barbara Kellerman and Simon Ward  feels like a filler story that has fallen out of one of the Amicus anthologies which is hardly surprising given that this particular movie was produced by that company's founder Milton Subotsky and directed by the great Roy Ward Baker who'd made two of them ('Asylum' & 'The Vault of Horror').  The vampire tale is played strictly for laughs featuring a frumpy looking - if such a thing is possible - Britt Ekland and The Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water himself Donald Pleasence as a civil service vampire hunter. The third story, and according to Chetwynd-Hayes the only one to resemble his source material, is the most effective and tells of a horror movie director searching for locations who happens upon a mist shrouded village where he is set upon by corpse eating ghouls and has to take refuge on holy ground all to a lovely, haunted synth tune called 'Ghouls Galore' by Alan Hawkshaw and some fantastic John Bolton illustrations.

'The Monster Club' was a flop on it's original release in 1981 and it's not hard to see why,  even at the time it was horrendously dated looking, the monster costumes laughably cheap and shoddy, the stories daft and the acting hammy but to me all those things sound like positives and I have long loved this film since I first saw it on my old black and white portable TV with both me and the television set hiding under the blankets because it was on late on a school night.

Buy it here - UK - or watch it below.



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Witchfinder General

Witchfinder General was the third and final film by Director Michael Reeves before his death from a barbiturate overdose and stars his childhood friend Ian Ogilvy and is based on a fictionalised account of the life of self appointed 'Witchfinder General', Matthew Hopkins, played here with sleazy conviction by Vincent Price.

Following the witchcraft accusation and hanging of a priest, 'John Lowes' (Rupert Davies) and the rape of his niece (and Ogilvy's fiance) 'Sara' (Hilary Dwyer) by Hopkins and his brutal assistant John Stearne (Robert Russell) Ogilvy's roundhead officer 'Richard Marshall' sets out looking for revenge against the despicable duo.

Reeve's vision of Civil War era England is one adrift in political turmoil, rife with misogynist superstition and in the thrall of the charismatic Hopkins.  Both the world he conjured and the film he made are unrelentingly and unrepentantly brutal; with the exception of the short burst of hammering as a gallows is constructed the film opens and closes to the sound of screaming with little respite in between.  The fact that it is mostly shot, presumably for budgetary reasons, mostly in daylight and amidst the bucolic delights of the English countryside only adds to the intensity of the experience as every act of callous violence is thrown into stark relief.

Buy it here - Witchfinder General [DVD] - or watch it below.



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Theatre of Blood

Released in 1973 Theatre of Blood stars Vincent Price as Edward Lionheart a hammy actor exacting Shakespeare inspired revenge on the theatre critics he blames for ruining his career.

With a line-up that includes the cream of British character actors of the likes of Michael Hordern, Robert Morley, Arthur Lowe, Dennis Price, Diana Dors, Joan Hickson, Eric Sykes & Jack Hawkins and with Vincent Price and Diana Rigg in the lead Theatre of Blood is a gloriously over-casted extravaganza of ghoulish camp.

Theatre of Blood was the third movie in three years that saw Price taking revenge for perceived wrongs and indeed it bears a very strong resemblance to the first of these, 1971's 'The Abominable Dr Phibes', but for all Theatre of Blood's many charms for me it lacks something of it's predecessors gleefully macabre charms.

Vincent Price is of course Vincent Price, here revelling in the chance to deliver key Shakespearean soliloquies as only he (and possibly William Shatner) can and surely thoroughly enjoying the chance to dish out gruesome retribution to an array of critics.  Diana Rigg is, as always, effortlessly wonderful and the menagerie of faces I mentioned earlier are all blatantly having a ball in a movie that is ridiculously good fun.

Buy it here - Theatre Of Blood [DVD] - or watch it below.

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Dr. Phibes Rises Again!

Even though he failed in his revenge on the men he blamed for the death of his beloved wife Victoria (Caroline Munro) a newly resurrected Dr. Phibes (Vincent Price) gathers up her immaculately preserved corpse, his mechanical musicians and his glamorous assistant Vulnavia (Valli Kemp) - who has somehow survived having her head dissolved in the previous film although she does look different as  Virginia North was unable to reprise her role due to pregnancy - and heads off to Egypt on a quest for resurrection for his wife and eternal life for them both.

Ranged against him are Inspector Trout (Peter Jeffrey) and Superintendent Waverley ((John Cater) - both returning in their roles from the previous film - and his rival in the search for immortality Darius Biederbeck (Robert Quarry).  In his customary elaborate manner Phibes contrives to murder his way through Biederbeck's team in search of his goal.

With cameos from Peter Cushing, Terry-Thomas, Beryl Reid and John Thaw this sequel is a same but different sort of beast as it's predecessor, it's every bit as elaborately bloodthirsty but played more for laughs, for instance one character (Baker played by Lewis Fiander) is shown reading Henry James' 'The Turn of the Screw' before being crushed to death in a giant screw press.  Price is of course his usual wonderfully melodramatic self but Kemp is a poor replacement as Vulnavia as she lacks the poise and simmering sensuousness of North.

It's an entertaining sequel that tries valiantly to live up to the idiosyncratic original but the over-reliance on comedy, the police double act of Trout and Waverley in particular,  bogs the film down and hampers the story a tad but that said it is still a film unlike most others and a camp monstrosity of divine proportions in it's own right.

Buy it here - Dr. Phibes Rises Again [DVD] - or watch it below.

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The Abominable Dr. Phibes

Every now and again I feel the need to dip into a classic and today is definitely one of those days and 'The Abominable Dr. Phibes' is most definitely a classic.

The film tells of the elaborate revenge Dr. Anton Phibes (Vincent Price) and his chauffeur Vulnavia (Virginia North) take on the medical team he blames for the death of his wife.   Taking his cues from the 10 biblical plagues of Egypt he exacts a bloody retribution whilst being hunted by Inspector Harry Trout (the great Peter Jeffrey) and potential victim Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotten).

Price is at the top of his game here, no piece of scenery is left unchewed and his silent presence for the first 30 odd minutes of the film show just how good an actor he could be and how perfectly cast he is here.  The film manages to be both gory and amusing (occasionally downright silly) is beautifully made with a fantastically creepy ambience especially with regard to Phibes' automaton orchestra and the phenomenal Basil Kirchin score.  Both the actors opposite him give as solid performances as you'd expect given their respective pedigrees and indeed the cast as a whole seem to be relishing the gothic campness; my particular favourite being the gravedigger with the immortal line of "Fools! Fools! They'll have the worms soon enough."

Enjoy.

Buy it here - The Abominable Dr. Phibes [DVD]- or watch it below



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Aliens in the Mind

Robert Holmes & Rene Basilico
(BBC)

Strange people are discovered on a remote Scottish island. Classic radio sci-fi starring Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, written by Doctor Who script editor Robert Holmes

Originally starting life as a proposed Doctor Who script (Second Doctor) this was later made into this fantastic sci-fi serial starring real-life friends Peter Cushing and Vincent Price as old college friends – eminent brain surgeon John Cornelius and the laconic parapsychologist Curtis Lark. I’m very pleased that it was turned down. Cushing & Price are in phenomenal form trading banter and handling the often pretty absurd dialogue with aplomb. And, let’s be honest here they both have amazing voices that one could happily listen to all day.

The story details their discovery (via another old friend) of a colony of telepathic ‘mutants’ on a small Scottish island. Amongst their number they identify two women they describe as ‘controllers’, mutants who can control the actions of other mutants. Their investigation into this phenomena leads them to London and an attempt to take over the government which they foil in what must be said is an anticlimactic ending.

The whole thing is gloriously dated and sublimely archaic and great, great, great fun.

Buy it here - Aliens in the Mind (Classic Radio Sci-Fi) - or listen below.



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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain