By Hank Reineke

Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body would enjoy a very brief run – under a new title - on U.S. theatre screens in late summer of 1965. By spring of ‘66 the film was already popping up as a late-night programmer on U.S. television. I was belatedly introduced to the film via a Chiller Theatre telecast on New York’s WPIX-TV, circa 1971/72. I can no longer recall if I was impressed by this atmospheric, mostly monster-less mystery on that first viewing. I was only ten or eleven years of age. My hazy memories are further obscured by it having been broadcast under its U.S. theatrical re-title as What.

The name of now-legendary director Mario Bava wouldn’t have meant very much to me either at young age. Even if I had been familiar with Bava’s oeuvre – which I most certainly wasn’t at age ten – the directorial credit of What had been anglicized, ascribed to one “John M. Old.” The directorial fake wouldn’t have mattered much to me, really. All I knew was Christopher Lee was one of the film’s star players, and I was already a big fan of the actor’s horror pictures.

Regardless of the film title in which you accustomed - The Whip and the Body/ Night is the Phantom/What/The Whip and the Flesh/La frusta e il Corpo etc. etc. - this was the second of two Bava films to feature Christopher Lee. The first was Ercole al centro della terra (1961, aka Hercules in the Haunted World), an Italian peplum. That film pitted the heroic Hercules (Reg Park) against Lee’s villainous Lichas (or Lyco or Lico, depending on the release). Lichas is variously described as “Lord of the Hades Underworld” or “King of the Dead.”

The actor’s typecasting made sense, all things considered. Lee had once enjoyed playing a diverse number of character roles since his 1947 entry into the film business. But following the runaway success of Hammer’s Horror of Dracula (1958), the actor somewhat frustratingly found himself mostly employed as a heavy in an on-going string of horror films, fog-shrouded mysteries, and psychological-thrillers.

Lee would later generously deem Bava as “one of Italy’s greatest cameramen” and, true to form, both Hercules in the Haunted World and The Whip and the Body, are awash in the eerily brilliant and fluorescent colors for which the director is acclaimed. Technically, the cinematographer for the latter film is Ubaldo Terzano, but much of the photography is accepted as Bava’s own, albeit uncredited. Bava’s greatness partly lies in his painter’s eye for style: he combines color, shadows and shadings to create atmosphere and great imagery.

As director, Bava also employs innovative lighting and lots of blue-tinting to create his striking, imaginative visuals. On his wonderful commentary track, author Tim Lucas describes such eerie colorization as Bava’s moonlit “Blue of Night.” Throughout The Whip and the Body, Bava’s visual stylings perfectly reflect the film’s moody and atmospheric aura. His use of purposeful slow tracking shots and pan photography – abetted by composer Carlo Rustichelli’s evocative, mysterious score – masterfully evokes a sense of tangible, shadowy foreboding: who (or what?) lurks behind that candle-lit curtain or door?

The Whip and the Body concerns the unwelcome return of Kurt Menliff (Lee) to his ancestral home, a castle nestled on lonesome cliff side overlooking the sea. His own father, Count Vladimir (Jacques Herlin) is not pleased to see him nor is Giorgia (Harriet White), the Count’s servant. Years earlier, we learn, Kurt had seduced Giorgia’s daughter. His subsequent cruel rejection of the girl is believed to be the cause of her suicide. Although Kurt’s bother Christian (Tony Kendall) is welcoming of his brother’s return, he too will come to regret such forgiveness. His own wife Nevenka (Israeli actress Daliah Lavi) falls prey to Kurt’s Svengali-like attraction – who, true to form, abuses and degrades her with a fetishistic, sadomasochistic whipping. I can’t say much more than that plot-wise without risking spoilers. So I’ll just say that following Kurt’s attack on Nevenka, the film moves from straight-on melodrama to a mostly satisfying scenario combining elements of ghost story and mystery whodunit.

Budgeted at approx. $66, 500, The Whip and the Body began production in July of 1960. The film was slated for a seven-week schedule. Principal photography wrapped in six-weeks, the seventh to begin post-production work. The film was an Italian/French collaboration, a production of Cosmopolis Films and Les Films Marbeuf. Both companies had been involved in the exploitation of the then very-much-in-vogue “sword and sandal” pictures: strongman adventures loosely tethered to tales sourced from Greek and Roman mythologies. On his commentary track, Lucas describes the scenario of The Whip and the Body as essentially akin to “a Greek Tragedy” in its construction.

The film’s screenplay is credited to Ernesto Gastaldi, Ugo Guerra and Luciano Martino, with the film produced (without credit) to Federico Magnaghi. Upon the film’s release in English-speaking markets the writing credits for the original Italian trio were anglicized as “Julian Berry, Robert Hugo and Martin Hardy.” Bava too did not escape such name-change ignominy, his directorial credit ascribed to “John M. Old,” a pseudonym used on several of his films. The time-period and country in which this Gothic mystery is set is indeterminate. This was, according to scenarist Gastaldi, entirely intentional. Though the seaside locations were filmed in Italy near Anzio, the main characters are given Eastern European-sounding names and the set dressing peculiarly mixes period styles and time-dates.

A prolific screenwriter of horror, pirate and peplum films, Ernesto Gastaldi had already written scripts for such Italian melodramas as The Vampire and the Ballerina (1960), Werewolf in a Girls’ Dormitory (1961), and The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962). Following production on The Whip and the Body, producer Magnaghi would team with writers Guerra and Martino (in addition to writer-director Brunello Rondi) to bring Daliah Lavi back in the obscure but sultry exorcism flick II Demonio (1963).

(Photo: Cinema Retro Archive)

The Whip and the Body was not a huge success. Lucas describes the film as Bava’s “biggest box-office flop,” the picture’s final tally generating back only half of its investment. Upon the film’s release, critics gave any number of reasons why the film’s box-office was disappointing. Variety was mildly impressed, describing the film as genuinely suspenseful if best suited for “sophisticated audiences.” But the trade also thought the film flawed in execution: “The Gothic-novel atmosphere and trappings of secret passages, muddy footprints from the crypt and ghost lover, probably will draw more laughs than gasps.”

London’s Monthly Film Bulletin was far more withering in its assessment of Night is the Phantom (the film’s British re-title). Their critic described it as “Another of Italy’s prankish simulations of a British horror movie, the film is slow, repetitive, verging on parody. Censor or distributor cuts have rendered much of the plot incomprehensible, though one doubts if it ever made sense entirely.” In fairness, the same critic conceded the film’s “weird and doom-laden claustrophobia” was, in retrospect, “unfailingly compulsive, mainly because of the redolent Freudian associations.”

The more uncomfortable Freudian moments of Menliff’s fetishistic abuse of Nevenka were cut from the film’s continental version. Christopher Lee only reminisced that he and Lavi shared “some very torrid love scenes” in the making of the film, but left it at that. Most of those scenes would not be made privy to either continental or western cinemagoers. Upon the film’s initial release in Italy, that country’s censors would come down hard on it, deeming several sequences obscene due to “degenerations and anomalies of sexual life.” There were demands that these moments be cut from the film. Though the filmmakers complied in making such trims, producer Magnaghi still found himself standing before a Rome court. He was subsequently acquitted of obscenity charges in January of 1964.

Though Lucas does bring up the censorship issues surrounding The Whip and the Body, he does not make the issue a centerpiece of his commentary. He does points out in his very informative analysis that the film was very much influenced by the earliest of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe productions for American-International. Which, in turn, had been very much styled after such continental productions as Bava’s Black Sunday (1960).

Though A.I.P. had distributed earlier works of Bava’s in the U.S., they balked on The Whip and the Body – likely due to the film’s sadomasochistic salaciousness. Though mild by today’s standards, the film was thought unsuitable for young and impressionable theatergoers. The film was eventually picked up for U.S. distribution in 1965 by Richard G. Yates’ Futuramic Releasing. The film, now curiously re-titled as What, was doomed to play the U.S. drive-in circuit in the summer of 1965. Accompanied by a rather gray and cheapish exploitation campaign, What was top-bill to a second Futuramic import from the continent, Isidore M. Ferry’s Face of Terror (Spain, 1964) (original title La cara del terror).

One needn’t be a particularly avid fan of Christopher Lee (or any of the others on screen) to notice that all dialogue is dubbed throughout. As with many of Bava’s films, his work was intended for wide international release. To that end, many of his films were shot sans sync-sound, with foreign-language market dubbing scheduled long after the original cast had moved on. Upon viewing The Whip and the Body, Lee was left aghast by his character’s misplaced American-affected voice-over dub. He would insist afterward that all of his foreign-language film contracts included the proviso he handle any necessary dubbing himself.

This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray issue of The Whip and the Body is the company’s second issue of this title, the first being released in 2013. The set features a 2023 4K scan and a 2K restoration by 88 Films from an HD master from an original 35mm print. The set includes both the original Italian and English dubs as audio options as well as optional English subtitles and the film’s theatrical trailer as well as trailers from other Bava films. As referenced above, Tim Lucas of Video Watchdog fame and author of the exhaustive one-thousand plus page tome Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark delivers a masterful commentary – though one familiar as it has been ported over from Kino’s 2013 Blu-ray release via VCI’s DVD issue of 2007. The new release is also fitted with the now inevitable cardboard sleeve protector, which apparently are prized by some collectors.. Without question, essential viewing for fans of Bava and Christopher Lee.

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By Hank Reineke

Technically speaking, OSS 117 secret agent Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath is not a James Bond knock off. The creation of wildly prolific French author Jean Bruce, the first literary adventure of the spy arrived in 1949 with the publication of Tu parles d'une ingénue (Ici OSS 117). This would pre-date the April 1953 publication of the first Ian Fleming James Bond novel, Casino Royale, by nearly four years. In the years following the publication of that first 007 thriller to his last in 1965, Fleming would deliver an impressive thirteen James Bond novels and nine short stories.

In contrast, Jean Bruce would publish no fewer (and possibly more) than eighty-eight to ninety OSS 117 pulp-adventures between 1949 and March of 1963, the month and year of his passing. It’s difficult to determine how many of Bruce’s novels were of his composition alone. His widow, Josette – and later a teaming of the Bruce’s son and daughter – would continue the pulp series into the early 1990s. So determined bibliophiles will have their work cut out for them if they wish to track down all of the 250+ published OSS 117 novels.

If OSS 117 beat James Bond to the stalls of book-sellers, he also managed to beat him to the cinema screen. Two OSS 117 films were released throughout Western Europe and foreign markets in 1957 and 1960: OSS 117 n'est pas mort (OSS 117 is not Dead) and Le bal des espions (Danger in the Middle East). The latter title, interestingly, does not feature “Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath.” Though based on one of Bruce’s OSS 117 novels, a messy rights-issue prevented the filmmakers to use the central character’s moniker. These earliest films, produced as routine crime dramas by differing production companies (and featuring different actors in the title role), came and went without attention nor fanfare.

But in 1963 Bruce’s OSS 117 character was resurrected as a cinematic property following the success of Terence’s Young’s Dr. No, the first James Bond screen adventure. The spy pictures comprising Kino Lorber’s OSS 117 Five Film Collection are tailored as pastiches of the popular James Bond adventures of the 1960s. This new Blu ray set features the entirety of OSS 117 film thrillers produced 1963 through 1968 during the height of Bondmania. And, just as the Eon series offered a trio of actors to portray James Bond (1962-1973), the OSS series would likewise present three in the role of Colonel Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath. Each actor would bring some aspect of their own personalities to their characterizations.

Of course, the name Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath is a bit of a Franco-linguistic mouthful to market successfully overseas. So, throughout the five films the character usually assumes an Anglo-friendly alias which helps move things along a bit more smoothly: he alternately assumes – among others - such covert surnames as Landon, Barton, Delcroix, Wilson and Mulligan. It certainly makes his character’s many “personal” on-screen introductions easier for all involved.

The Kino set starts off chronologically with 1963’s OSS 117 is Unleashed (original title OSS 117 se déchaîne). Like the four films to follow, the series were all Franco-Italia co-productions and distributed by Gaumont Films. Unlike those four, OSS 117 is Unleashed is filmed in black-and-white. The monochrome photography is not really an issue. But cinemagoers were certainly cheated of enjoying the beautiful beaches and Cliffside scenery of the village of Bonifacio (off the Corsican strait) in vibrant color.

In OSS 117 is Unleashed our hero (American actor Kerwin Mathews, best known to American audiences for his roles in Ray Harryhausen’s special-effect laden epics The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960), is sent to Corsica to investigate the suspicious death of a fellow agent. We’re told, suspiciously, there’s been, “lots of accidents among agents near Bonifacio.” A preamble to the film, culled mostly of cold war era newsreel footage, alerts that an unspecified enemy is working towards “neutralizing” free-world atomic submarine movements in the area. With conspirators tagged with such names as “Sacha” and “Boris,” we can reasonably assume its east-of-the-Iron Curtain intelligence agents behind the plot.

Initially posing as a relative of the recently targeted and now deceased CIA frogman (and later as a Lloyds of London insurance adjustor), Mathews must dispatch and/or fend off a series of enemy agents and perhaps a duplicitous woman. In due course, he survives a poisoning, several (well-choreographed) hand-to-hand combat sequences and even a submerged spear-gun and knifing frogman attack. The latter occurs while he’s search of a mysterious submerged subterranean grotto. The base is outfitted (as one might expect) with high-tech equipment and a detection system designed to bring about “the end of atomic submarines.” The secreted grotto is also equipped with a built-in self-destruct button… always handy, just in case. This is all definitely Bond-on-a budget style filmmaking. Of course, the idea of covertly tracking atomic submarines movements brings to mind the storyline of the far-more-lavishly staged The Spy Who Loved Me (1977).

As far as I can determine, OSS 117 is Unleashed was never released theatrically in the U.S. But Mathews’ second (and final) outing as OSS 117, Panic in Bangkok (Banco à Bangkok pour OSS 117) (1964) would have a belated release in the U.S. (as Shadow of Evil) in December of 1966. Regardless, Shadow of Evil was not exhibited as a primary attraction in the U.S. market. It most often appeared as the under bill to Christopher Lee in The Brides of Fu Manchu or (more sensibly) to Montgomery Clift’s political suspense-thriller The Defector.

Published by Manchester University Press

October 2023

264 pages

Hardback

ISBN: 978-1-5261-6492-6

RRP: £90

Some credit director Piers Haggard with coining the term ‘Folk Horror’ during an interview to set his film The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) apart from the more traditional horror offerings by the likes of Hammer Films and Amicus. As the term has taken hold, such films have become more closely aligned with a European arthouse style of filmmaking. The genre has since been retrospectively assigned to many films including the aforementioned film, alongside the other two points of the ‘Unholy Trinity’ of British Folk Horror; Witchfinder General (1968) and The Wicker Man (1973). This is a ‘wyrd’ genre, where the films are often unsettling rather than outright horrifying, although in the case of modern folk horrors such as Kill List (2011), both things can be said to be true.

When director Ben Wheatley went into the woods to shoot In the Earth (2021), not only was he returning to the tone and style of his earlier films Kill List and A Field in England (2013), but he was also with the title addressing the very essence of Folk Horror: as this new book discusses in detail, Folk Horror is something with its roots in ancient (pagan) times, something in the earth, just below the surface - perhaps in an English field - that once disturbed seeps out, terrifying some, whilst bringing others together with its community rituals and human sacrifice.

In this new collection of academic essays, the old and new British examples of the genre are explored in detail from a range of fascinating perspectives; studies of history, folklore and Britain’s non-Christian past, the close-knit communities often at the heart of Folk Horror films and their clashes with modernity, Celtic Folk Horror, the way in which female filmmakers have subverted tropes and shifted generic conventions, the recurring use of drums in pagan ceremonies and rituals, the evils of the British landscape, social and political influences on the films across the decades, and the relevance and influence of certain British writers such as Arthur Machen on the genre. As well as the three films of the ‘Unholy Trinity’, each of which gets a fair amount of analysis here, other films under discussion include Ken Russell’s wildly entertaining The Lair of the White Worm (1988), based on the Bram Stoker novel which itself is based on the north-eastern legend of the Lampton Worm, The Company of Wolves (1984), Doomwatch (1972), Cry of the Banshee (1970), Psychomania (1973), and many more including several modern films which this writer was previously unfamiliar but has to now seek out.

As with all academic collections, the caveat must be added that the hardback price is because this edition is aimed at libraries, and a more affordable paperback edition will be available in due course. This is a worthwhile collection for anyone interested in this ‘wyrd’ sub-genre of the British horror film, particularly now that Spring is here and soon ‘Summer is icumen in’.

Folk Horror on Film: Return of the British Repressed is available from Manchester University Press - https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526164926/

By Ernie Magnotta

I’ve always loved action cinema. It’s one of my all-time favorite genres. When I was a teenager in the mid-1980s, I saw a VHS copy of the action film Bucktown and I’ve been a huge fan of its star, Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, ever since.

A former pro football defensive back for (amongst others) the Kansas City Chiefs (1965-1967), Williamson, who holds black belts in Taekwondo, Kenp? and Shotokan karate, later moved on to acting. Some of his first appearances was guest starring on TV shows such as Star Trek and Ironside. He quickly graduated to features, appearing in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H and Otto Preminger’s Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon.

In 1970, Williamson starred in the appropriately titled action movie Hammer (the nickname was given to him during his football days). The film was a success and it began his long and entertaining career as an action movie superstar. Standing at 6ft. 3 inches tall and rarely seen without a prop cigar in his hand, Williamson would go on to appear in a plethora of action classics (many of which were distributed by major Hollywood studios) such as Black Caesar, Take a Hard Ride, Black Eye, Three the Hard Way, Mean Johnny Barrows (which he also produced), and 1978’s Inglorious Bastards.

In 1976, the Hammer created his own company, Po’ Boy Productions, which would not only see him star in, but also direct, a ton of action films the likes of Death Journey, No Way Back, Mr. Mean, Foxtrap, and The Kill Reflex. Williamson is also a veteran of Italian exploitation cinema. He has appeared in the cult classics The New Barbarians, The New Gladiators, and Black Cobra 1-4. Just to name a few. In later years, he would act in films such as From Dusk till Dawn (for cinema titans Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino) and Original Gangstas (directed by the legendary Larry Cohen and co-produced by Williamson) and he shows no signs of slowing down.

Recently, the Hammer’s somewhat forgotten, 1973, action-packed, James Bond-like film That Man Bolt was released on Blu-ray.

Solidly directed by David Lowell Rich and Henry Levin from an entertaining screenplay by Ranald MacDougall and Charles Eric Johnson, That Man Bolt tells the tale of courier and martial arts expert Jefferson Bolt who is hired to transport a million dollars from Hong Kong to Mexico City. However, Bolt soon realizes that he’s been set up and now he’s dead set on paying back everyone who double-crossed him.

Produced by Universal Pictures and released in December of 1973, That Man Bolt, aka Operation Hong Kong, is an exciting adventure flick (sort of a 007/martial arts combo) which not only contains well-crafted action sequences, but also some memorable characters played wonderfully by its talented cast.

Leading the way, of course, is the always charismatic Fred Williamson who convincingly plays the intelligent and capable Jefferson Bolt. There are also appearances by familiar faces such as Byron Webster, Miko Mayama, Teresa Graves, John Orchard, Jack Ging and Paul Mantee; not to mention martial arts champions Mike Stone, Emil Farkas, David Chow and Kenji Kazama. Enter the Dragon fans will recognize Geoffrey Weeks who appears in a brief role, as well as the voice of the great Keye Luke (who not only dubbed Shih Kien in Enter, but also performs the same duty here).

The fun film which was shot in L.A., Las Vegas, Macau and Hong Kong, also features some terrific cinematography by Emmy Award winner Gerald Finnerman, and a cool, Lalo Schifrin/John Barry-like musical score by composer Charles Bernstein.

That Man Bolt has been released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber. The region one disc presents the movie in its original 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The 2K transfer looks gorgeous. The disc not only contains the original theatrical trailer, but also That Man Hammer, a short, but entertaining interview with Fred Williamson. Overall, this is a highly enjoyable, early 70s action-adventure that definitely deserves to be re-discovered. It’s also a very nice addition to your Fred Williamson collection. And if you’re just beginning to get into the Hammer’s filmography, That Man Bolt is a great place to start.

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By Adrian Smith

One of the UK’s most beloved film franchises has been somewhat neglected of late. Despite decades of television reruns, since the DVD boxset release over a decade ago there has been no sign of any sort of upgrade of the ‘Carry On ‘films, which, if there were any justice, would have been raised to Criterion levels by now. Remarkably this is still the case in the UK, so thankfully Australian company Via Vision Entertainment have taken a firm grip of the baton and begun releasing the ‘Carry On’ films in series order, four at a time. The first eight films in the series were mostly shot in black and white and based around everyday life, such as military service, the healthcare system, schools, the police, cruise holidays, and the beginnings of second-wave feminism (Carry On Cabby (1963), if you’re wondering). But then Peter Rogers, the producer and brains behind the series, had the fabulous idea to begin making period dramas and spoofs of current hits. Carry On Jack (1964), about pirates, was the first of these, and with that move, in my opinion, the ‘Carry On’ films really hit their creative and comedic peak.

This means that ‘Carry On... Collection 3’ contains arguably the four best films in the entire franchise (although I know some fans would beg to differ): Carry On Spying (1964), Carry On Cleo (1964), Carry On Cowboy (1965) and Carry On Screaming (1966).

Carry On Spying (1964), the last one shot in black-and-white and the first to directly spoof genre conventions, has perhaps been forgotten in favour of the more smutty ‘Carry On’ films that followed later. Starring regulars Bernard Cribbins, Kenneth Williams, Charles Hawtrey, and introducing newcomer Barbara Windsor as Daphne Honeybutt, a name even Ian Fleming would have been proud of. Far from being the giggling saucepot she would later be known for, Windsor’s character here is brave, intelligent and forthright, more than once saving the mission and her hopeless compatriots. Hot on the heels of From Russia with Love (1963), the film is a hilarious and almost spot-on spoof of the budding James Bond franchise (Cubby Broccoli objected to one character being called Agent 009½ so they were reluctantly renamed 000), coming before the flood of Eurospy films that would take all sorts of liberties with Bond a couple of years later. Shot at Pinewood Studios, already the home of Bond, it is unsurprising that the sets here are very close to Ken Adam’s designs, especially the secret underground headquarters of STENCH, led by the evil Doctor Crow, and were probably built and lit by many of the same technicians. The cast, with Kenneth Wiliams taking a rare lead role, are a joy. Williams, who would often be cast as pompous, arrogant authority types in later films, plays here his idiotic character made famous in Hancock’s Half Hour, complete with his catchphrase “Stop messing about!” The comedy is hilarious, and as a Bond spoof it works very well as a standalone film for those who may be unfamiliar with the charms of the ‘Carry On’ franchise. Naturally, given that it is now sixty years old, some of the humour is a little painful, reflecting some of the post-colonial attitudes of the time. But the odds are that if you are Cinema Retro regular, you can probably handle it.

Carry On Cleo is probably the franchise’s most lavish and high budget production, thanks to the genius decision of Peter Rogers to move in on the abandoned Cleopatra sets left behind at Pinewood when the disastrous Elizabeth Taylor production was shipped off to Cinecittà in Rome to start again. With full access to sets, props and costumes, Carry On Cleo looks a million dollars, and is also a million times more entertaining than Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra. The cast are fabulous, with Kenneth Williams in full arrogant mode as Caesar, Sid James as the lecherous Mark Anthony, Jim Dale as an escaped English slave, but most importantly with Amanda Barrie, who had an important role in Carry On Cabby, as the beautiful and mesmerising Cleopatra. Whether in costumes originally created for Liz Taylor, or bathing naked in ass's milk, she's simply stunning. It has always been my favourite ‘Carry On’ film, packed with sight gags, brilliant nods to the original film (20^th Century Fox were particularly furious at the original Carry On Cleo poster design which mercilessly spoofed theirs) and wonderful sets and matte paintings. This was the heyday of Pinewood Studios, and the skill and expertise on show here sets it apart from the later, cheaper ‘Carry On ‘films shot mainly in muddy fields.

Carry On Cowboy arrived just as the Spaghetti Westerns were getting started in Italy but owes more to the prevalence of American western films and TV shows (Bonanza, Gunsmoke, etc.), and is another clear spoof in the Carry On Spying mode. Genre conventions are milked for all their comic potential, and the cast are uniformly excellent, from Jim Dale’s accidental sheriff, Sid James as the villainous Rumpo Kid, Charles Hawtrey as the whisky-addled Big Chief Heap, Joan Sims as a prostitute with a heart of gold, Kenneth Williams as a cowardly mayor and, in a reference to actual history, Angela Douglas as the first-rate shot Annie Oakley. This is great fun, and not far removed from what Mel Brooks would do less than ten years later, but without the fourth wall breaking.

The last film in the set is possibly the most well known outside of the UK – Carry On Screaming. This time they had Hammer Films firmly in their sights, with references to Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, spooky mansions and the sexiest of sexy vamps, all mixed together with plenty of gags and a plot which borrows heavily from House of Wax (1953), meaning Vincent Price gets a bit of a nod as well. In the lead role as Police Sargeant Bung is Harry H. Corbett, making his only ‘Carry On’ appearance, but he was an extremely popular comedy actor in the UK at the time thanks to his starring role in the sitcom Steptoe and Son. Kenneth Williams plays the undead Dr Watt (his name allowing for some “Who’s on first?”-type comedy confusion), alongside Jim Dale, Angela Douglas, Joan Sims, Charles Hawtrey and the stunning Fenella Fielding, who vamps for all she’s worth in a red dress so tight fitting that she was unable to sit down between takes.

Across the films are appearances from other ‘Carry On’ favourites including Bernard Bresslaw, Kenneth Connor, Peter Butterworth and a pre-Doctor Who Jon Pertwee, who in the early 1960s was probably best known for doing funny voices on radio comedy shows like The Navy Lark.

It’s wonderful to see these films restored and available in HD at last. They look fantastic and remind us of what great craftsmanship there was in British cinema in the 1960s, even at the cheaper end of the production scale. This boxset also comes with a lovely booklet which reproduces in full colour the original pressbooks for the first twelve ‘Carry On’ films. They’re fascinating to look at, although you might need a magnifying glass if you want to read some of them! Bonus features-wise, the sets are a bit light, simply including original trailers for each film and the commentary tracks which were recorded for the original DVD releases more than a decade ago. Whilst it’s great to have these, and they are very entertaining (Fenella Fielding has the kind of voice you could listen to all day), it would be great to see some of the archival documentaries and interviews that have been shown on TV over the years included too, or even commission the official ‘Carry On’ historian Robert Ross, whose new co-authored book Carry On Girls is also excellent, to produce some new documentary material.

However, we physical media collectors are spoiled these days and often expect too much! For the price, this boxset delivers what we really want, which is excellent restorations of much-loved British comedy gems. These really are the best of the series, and if you don’t agree, in the immortal words of Sid James: “Knickers!”

You can order ‘Carry On Collection 3’ direct from Via Vision here:

https://viavision.com.au/shop/carry-on-film-collection-3-limited-edition-blu-ray-booklet/

By Hank Reineke

I much prefer writing about obscure or little-known items of celluloid than attempt to tackle a bona fide film classic as The Quatermass Xperiment.  The best chroniclers and historians of science-fiction and horror film history have proven to be a distinguished, thoroughly immersive, and informed band of researchers, commentators and authors.  Which, sadly, leaves also-rans such as myself little insight to add to what discourse exists already.  But in the rare event that someone who reads Cinema Retro is unfamiliar with Val Guest’s classic of British sci-fi, I’ll press on and attempt at a simple synopsis of The Quatermass Xperiment:

The nose end of an intact rocket ship crash lands in an open misty field deep in the English countryside.  Within minutes, police, fire vehicles, ambulances and curious locals gather to view the wreckage.  Among those taking command at the scene is the irascible and cocksure Professor Quatermass, barking orders that override even those of the assemblage of police and military officials.  Quatermass, we soon learn, was the primary architect of this wrecked three-crew space mission.  We also learn via the protest of an upset official from the Ministry of Defence, that Quatermass’s interstellar space voyage was unsanctioned by the British government.

Only one of the three astronauts originally launched, Victor Carroon, has seemingly survived this orbital freefall. Truth be told, it’s hard for scientists to determine conclusively.  Two of the astronaut’s spacesuits are still aboard the craft, but now curiously empty of their occupants.  Carroon is unable to explain what went on prior to the spacecraft’s unceremonious crash to earth.  Carroon has returned in a near-catatonic state.  He’s unable to speak… save for a desperate, mumbled plea asking his rescuers to “Help Me.”  Unfortunately for all involved, they are mostly unable to.

To make matters more peculiar, upon close examination it becomes unclear to his caregivers if Carroon actually is Carroon.  The fingerprints taken upon his return do not match that of the pre-flight astronaut.  One doctor suggests the prints examined are not “even human” in form.  It’s determined that whomever this “shell of a man” is, he’s being slowly transformed into something decidedly non-human.   

As one might expect, this faux-Carroon manages to escape from his hospital quarantine.  He roams the streets and riverbanks of London and surrounding areas, searching for food and scaring locals in the process.  Quatermass, the police, and the military are in pursuit, helpfully assisted by Carroon’s continual shedding of human-form to something more gelatinous.  As the ill-fated astronaut continues to devolve, he conveniently leaves behind a luminous path of radioactive waste in his wake for his pursuers to follow in trail.  The film climaxes with a climactic showdown between earthlings and alien in the hallowed chamber of Winchester Cathedral.     

The Hollywood Reporter was among the first of the trade papers in the U.S. to confirm that production of The Quatermass Xperiment was to commence in October of 1954.  (Technically speaking, the earliest reports first offered details under the film’s working title of Shock!) It was announced that Val Guest would direct the extravaganza, a film soon to be trumpeted as “The Most Fantastic Story Ever Told!” Hammer Films’ Michael Carreras and Anthony Hinds would produce, with the picture’s U.K. distribution to be handled by London’s Exclusive Films.  The screenplay of Shock! – based on the characters created by writer Nigel Keane for the Quatermass BBC television series of 1953 - was reported as a collaboration of veteran screenwriter Richard Landau and Guest.

Bringing Quatermass to the big screen seemed a sure bet.  The earlier BBC series had proven wildly popular, millions of UK viewers tuning into their parlor sets to watch the extra-terrestrial exploits of the Professor.  In a 1973 interview with Chris Knight (later published in the June 2018 issue of Richard Klemensen’s seminal Little Shoppe of Horrors magazine) Rudolph Cartier, the producer-director of the original BBC television series gave the lion share of credit to Kneale’s brilliantly conceived scenarios.   

Cartier thought Kneale’s cliffhanger scripting was the deciding factor in the success of the television series.  The producer was equally impressed by Kneale’s ability to write the natural dialogue of “real people,” which exhibited an unerring “ability to play on the underlying fears of the human soul.”  In that very same issue of LSOH, director John Carpenter – no slouch in creating totemic horror and sci-fi films himself – equally acknowledged Guest’s big screen version of The Quatermass Xperiment as “horrifyingly groundbreaking.” Carpenter thought the film version offered well-executed and thoughtful explorations of “the fear of the unknown.”   

On one of the supplements included on this release from Kino Lorber, Carpenter on Quatermass: On Camera Interview with Legendary Director John Carpenter,” the auteur recalls catching The Quatermass Xperiment (under its U.S. release title of The Creeping Unknown) as a youngster in Kentucky.  He thought the film both “profound” and mind-blowing, arriving timely on the heels of a world post-atom bomb and on the cusp of American and Soviet interest in space exploration.  Carpenter was of the opinion The Quatermass Xperiment was the “first powerful gift” of Hammer Films’ fright factory.    

Perhaps. But in 1955 the original creators of the television series didn’t share that rosy view.  Cartier acknowledged that Kneale was particularly unhappy with Hammer’s adaptation of his work.  So much so that the scenarist even cautioned Cartier “not to go” to the cinema to visit the film upon release. Kneale might have been – perhaps understandably - over-protective of his personal vision, but he was not alone in his assessment.  Upon the film’s release, one London-based critic mused while the first Hammer Quatermass film certainly offered cinemagoers the “full horror comic treatment,” he thought “Some of the TV Tension” of the original BBC series was “lost in this film’s extravagant chiller gimmicks.”   

Today only aged folks with long memories can say whether Kneale’s The Quatermass Experiment series was greater than Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment (with an “X”). Sadly, only two of the original six-episode summer of 1953 BBC broadcast are extant, so comparisons aren’t possible.  Oh, but about that “Experiment” versus “Xperiment…”

Guest was aware his picture would likely be given an “X” certificate designation – no child under the age of sixteen admitted into the cinema due to alleged “explicit” content.  Such branding was not unexpected given the temperature of the times.  Guest had previously submitted a sample copy of the script to a censor at the British Board of Film Classification who, upon reading, advised as such.  But Guest chose to press on regardless of losing an important audience demographic.  “Some people thought we were mad to go ahead, but I had faith in it,” he offered to Picturegoer.  One BBC feature writer suggested the prominent “X” in the film’s “Xperiment” title was purposeful, Hammer Film’s sly rebuke of the picture’s undeserved “X” classification.     

Upon the film’s release, it appeared Guest’s gambit had paid off.  London’s Picturegoer was particularly enthused with The Quatermass Xperiment, enthusing that a British studio had - at last - managed a production, “to make Hollywood’s Frankenstein’s and Dracula’s curl up in their crypts.”  That might have been so, but Guest nonetheless cautioned the film not be preemptively tagged as a run-of-the-mill “horror” movie.  Such designation brought with it expectations.  “We didn’t really set out to make that kind of film, you know,” Guest corrected.  “I’d prefer it if you call the film a ‘chiller.’”   

Picturegoer noted there were plans to release the film in U.S. markets under its provisional title of Shock!  But that re-title wouldn’t happen.  In March of 1956, Variety reported that Robert Lippert of United Artists had paid a flat fee of $125,000: he believed this “thriller-type film” held “potential value” in the U.S. market.  The brief item also noted the film’s U.S. domestic release title change would be The Creeping Unknown.  Upon its U.S. release - and following its scoring of “fancy” box-office returns for United Artists - a Variety critic acknowledged, The Creeping Unknown (“a gelatinous octopus-like mass that absorbs all plant and animal life that it touches”) was a “competently made drama, containing sufficient suspense and frightening elements.”

The film’s success in the U.S. was not assured.  As neither Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass BBC serial – nor the Professor Bernard Quatermass character – were generally on the radar of American couch-sitters, United Artists retitling The Quatermass Xperiment under the far more provocatively sinister and exploitative name of The Creeping Unknown made sense.  (On a special feature included here that compares the differences between the U.K. and U.S. cuts of the film - the latter running approximately two and-a-half minutes shorter - it’s noted that a surviving continuity script titled the film in pre-release as Monster from Outer Space).

The Creeping Unknown was paired in the U.S. as the undercard of a ballyhoo “Double Horror Show! of “Two Terrific Horror Pictures!” (of which Reginald LeBorg’s The Black Sleep (1956) would top-line).  The LeBorg film, while no venerable classic, was certainly the more marketable of the two – at least in the U.S.  The cast of The Quatermass Xperiment were peopled with faces mostly unfamiliar to U.S. moviegoers. In contrast, The Black Sleep offered an illustrious cast of familiar and beloved genre actors: Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, John Carradine and Tor Johnson amongst them.

United Artists certainly wasn’t about to gamble on its investment in this British undercard.  Under the title banner of The Creeping Unknown, the U.S. marketing department was tasked to play up the film’s more exploitative angles.  The art department conjured up a garish one-sheet poster featuring a crashed rocket ship and gigantic demonic creature hovering above the heads of a terrified, fleeing populace. The poster’s caption read: “You Can’t Escape It!  Nothing Can Destroy It! It’s Coming for You from Space to Wipe all Living Things from the Face of the Earth!  Can it Be Stopped?”

It was a prudent time for United Artists to release the film in the U.S. as the 1950s “Silver Age” of cinematic science-fiction in full bloom.  In 1956 alone, theater cash boxes were stuffed with receipts from such pictures as Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, Forbidden Planet, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Conquered the World, The Creature Walks Among Us, The Mole People, and World Without End – and that’s to name only a few.  Interest in sci-fi would continue to blossom and explode throughout the 1950s, with 1957 and 1958 being particularly banner years for the genre.  

According to the film’s U.S. pressbook, director Val Guest had helmed no fewer than seven motion pictures in a twelve-month span, The Creeping Unknown being the seventh.  Guest had been, all things considered, an odd choice to be asked to direct.  Guest admitted he was a mostly disinterested observer of science fiction of any sort.  So he expressed surprise when producer Anthony Hinds had approached him to helm the film.  Most of the films Guest had previously directed - and was best known for - were straight-on comedies.  Since Guest admitted honestly to having not watched the wildly popular BBC series, Hinds pressed copies of Kneale’s original tele-scripts to help familiarize him with the material.  On holiday with his wife in Tangiers, Guest – at first, reluctantly - began to read through the scripts.  He would acknowledge Kneale’s storytelling left him “pinned to his deckchair.”    

There was certainly interest that Hammer test the viability of The Quatermass Xperiment/The Creeping Unknown playing overseas.  There was one major hurdle.  Should the film employ only or primarily a British cast, the main players would be practically unknown to U.S. moviegoers.  Guest noted it was mostly at the insistence of the American distributor that an actor of some marquee standing in the U.S. be given the lead role.  So the producers brought in the American actor Brian Donlevy to play Professor Quatermass.  

Donlevy was well known to American film audiences.  The actor had worked regularly and steadily in Hollywood, more often than not in rough-and-tumble tough-guy roles: prize-fighters to cowboys to soldiers to film noir detectives.  But certainly not as an egg-head scientist.  (As a completely irrelevant aside – but a fun fact all the same - Donlevy would later wed the widow of Bela Lugosi).  The casting of Donlevy was the only major talent concession.  Most folks cast were familiar faces of past Guest productions, the director preferring to work alongside the dependable professionals of his own repertory company.  

Both Carpenter and Guest suggest that Kneale was particularly unhappy with the casting of a brash, somewhat tactless Yank as Quatermass.  Kneale’s Quatermass was, in Guest’s reading, “a very English, Professor-like character,” a model of British gentility.  Donlevy exhibited none of these qualities, but Guest welcomed bringing the actor’s tough-guy persona to the fore – even if that meant partly re-creating the character as envisioned by the dissatisfied Kneale.  Carpenter too recalled Kneale’s obvious displeasure in the Donlevy casting, but personally found the actor’s performance as suitable.  Having worked with the scenarist on two projects (an ultimately unmade remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon and on Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982, for which the writer’s contribution was uncredited), Carpenter reminisced that Kneale - while certainly talented - was a “handful” to work with.  

In any event, the film was a success.  By spring of 1956, Donlevy was already back in London to work on a second Quatermass film, X the Unknown (also co-written and directed by Guest).  As this follow-up would cost $140,000 to produce (a 60% increase over the more economically-budgeted The Quatermass Xperiment), Exclusive Films, the United Kingdom distributor,  entered into a partnership with United Artists – the latter agreeing to put up 75% of that cost for a 50/50 box office share.  

In some manner of speaking, the American had been upstaged in the first film.  Donlevy’s co-star Richard Wordsworth was mostly unknown to U.S. moviegoers, the actor having only recently graduated from stage to television to film acting.  Indeed, The Quatermass Xperiment would log as his first big-screen credit.  His performance as the alien-infected mute Victor Carroon received good notices: quite a feat considering his character spoke nary a line of dialogue.  In many respects, Wordsworth steals the show, delivering a frightening, tortured portrait of the empty-shell astronaut.  Guest thought Wordsworth “brilliantly” acted the part, relying solely on the conveyance of haunted facial expressions and gentle physical movements to emote.    

By Hank Reineke

As a monster-movie loving kid growing up in the shadow of Manhattan, most of my Saturday night plans in the late 1960s and early 1970s were solidly set. That night was reserved for watching old horror and sci-fi flicks on New York City’s Chiller (WPIX-TV) or Creature Features (WNEW-TV). I don’t recall the latter program surviving past 1980 – and even then there had been an interruption of some six years in the scheduling of Creature Features. Though the program would return to the airwaves in 1979, the 8 PM broadcasts were now a thing of the past. The revived telecasts had moved to midnight and well into the early hours of Sunday morning. It hardly mattered, really. I no longer watched Creature Features with the same fervor of 1969 through 1973. I was age nineteen in 1979 and found other (if not necessarily better) things to do on Saturday nights.

This absence from Creature Features caused me to miss out on a number of obscure, aging films broadcast 1979-1980. Among this mix of occasional cinematic gems with near-misses was a mostly forgotten mystery programmer of 1944 titled The Man in Half Moon Street. I was particularly sorry to have missed this one: if my research is correct, I believe the film was broadcast only once – just shy of 2 A.M. - on March 29, 1980. Though one New York area newspaper listing dismissed the film as little more than a “Moody and marginally interesting tale of eternal youth through murder,” such lukewarm praise actually piqued my interest. This seemed my kind of movie. And for some forty-three years I’ve lamented having missing that broadcast.

It has been a tough film to get ahold of: though I’m guessing gray-market copies could have been found at conventions or through those “specialty” dealers of vintage VHS tapes from the ‘80s onward. But as far as I can tell (and, please, feel free correct me if you know better), The Man in Half Moon Street has never been officially available on any home video format: not Laser Disc, VHS, DVD or Blu Ray. Well, that is until now, as we near the eightieth year of the film’s original cinematic release. We have Australia’s Imprint Films to thank for finally issuing this superlative, region-free coded Blu-ray release.

As in the case of many Hollywood pictures of the day, The Man in Half Moon Street was not an original invention of the filmmakers: the scenario was actually based on the British stage drama of playwright Barré Lyndon. Lyndon’s play, published in 1939 by London’s Hamish Hamilton Publishing House, had first toured Bournemouth, Oxford, Manchester and Brighton on a two-week testing-sortie in February of ’39. The play would formally open at the New Theatre in London’s West End on 22 March 1939.

Lyndon’s main antagonist in the stage drama, chemist John Thackeray (Leslie Banks), is a ninety-year old man. One wouldn’t notice the dotage as Thackeray appears decades younger. This is due to the chemist having discovered that by combining radium and periodically replacing his aging super-renal glands with fresh specimens he can retain both youth and immortality. Of course the collection of fresh glands requires innocent others to lose their lives to Thackeray’s ghoulish harvesting.

Over a fifty-year period eight bank cashiers – those with access to large sums of money - have fallen prey to Thackeray’s criminal doings. Dissolving their bodies in acid baths, the chemist then steals the cash reserves his victims had been minding in their bank-telling guardianship. Thackeray requires the large sums so he can pay a confidant: in this case an ethically-challenged surgeon friend, to perform the necessary life-sustaining gland grafts. But Scotland Yard takes up the case just as the chemist readies to take the life of a targeted ninth victim for his evil ends.

Interestingly, playwright Lyndon would go on to write screenplays for Hollywood studios by the mid-1940s, including such moody mystery-noirs as John Brahm’s The Lodger (1944) and Hangover Square (1945). But in late January of 1940, it was announced that Don Hartman, a dependable scenarist for Paramount, was scheduled to begin work on adapting Lyndon’s stage play to the big screen. Hartman was, at present, in New York, trying to finish up his co-write (with Clifford Goldsmith) of The Further Adventures of Henry Aldrich.

That May of 1940, Paramount optimistically announced there would be no production delays on their twenty-five million dollar film schedule budget for the upcoming year. This declaration was made “despite war conditions in Europe which continue to threaten returns” in both national and international film markets. One of the films on the Paramount schedule was The Man in Half Moon Street. Early reports suggested that Basil Rathbone was to take on the leading role. The actor was available to assume the role of Thackeray as he had only recently completed work on Paramount’s A Date with Destiny (soon retitled The Mad Doctor).

Rathbone had played the villainous role in The Mad Doctor which, despite the intriguing title, was not a horror film, but a mystery crime-drama. The Los Angeles Citizen-News would report in June of 1940 that while Half Moon too was not of “bogeyman classification,” it on the “fantastic side” with its lurid sci-fi angle. In any case, the film project fell temporarily to the wayside, first due to scripting issues and afterward to the cranking out of patriotic films necessitated by America’s entry into WWII following the attack at Pearl Harbor.

But by early winter of 1943, the long dormant Half Moon project was showing signs of revival. On March 2, 1943 it was announced in the Hollywood trades that Lester Fuller, recently arrived in Los Angeles from New York, had been offered the director’s chair for The Man in Half Moon Street. In spring of 1943, Albert Dekker, a Hollywood “heavie” who recently scared audiences as Universal’s Dr. Cyclops (1940), was announced to assume the leading role.

But on June 15, 1943, Variety reported that Fuller was out of the Half Moon project. Ralph Murphy was now chosen to direct. Technically, the pair’s previously assigned directorial spots were merely traded-off. Murphy had initially been chosen to helm Paramount’s production of Marseilles, but former stage director Fuller was now tasked to assume responsibility on that particular film. Murphy was to move over to direct Fuller’s Half Moon project.

Murphy’s first assignment was a formidable one: he was “to order a complete rewrite job on the script.” There was also a report that such rewriting would likely require a recasting of principal characters. Though Swedish film star Nils Asther had been the latest actor announced to assume the film’s leading role, his participation in the project was now suggested as being “off” - for the time being, at least. The film’s producer Walter MacEwan wanted to weigh casting options “until further developments” in the scripting of Half Moon were resolved.

The re-writing of Half Moon would eventually fall to scenarists Charles Kenyon and Garrett Fort. The final screenplay credit would ultimately go to Kenyon alone who, like Fort, was a veteran of old Hollywood: their work in the industry could be traced to silent cinema’s earliest days. Fort’s resume for this sort of film was particularly impressive: he had written or co-written such totemic pre-code Golden Age Horrors for Universal as Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931) and Dracula’s Daughter (1936). But Fort’s credit on Half Moon only noted his role in adapting Lyndon’s play for the screen.

The final screenplay drafted would, peculiarly, expunge most of the ghoulish and murderous elements of Lyndon’s stage play – perhaps America’s real-life wartime experiences were horrific enough. There are no murders of bankers. The Thackeray character (renamed Dr. Julian Karell in the film) appears to be already a man of means, an accomplished portrait artist and scientist. He attends black-tie, high society, posh parties and conducts his experiments at an upscale London row house. The film curiously offers no scenes of on (or off) screen physical violence.

There are no gruesome acid baths in which the bodies of victims are disposed. The film’s lone “action” scene captures a moment when Karell “rescues” a despondent medical student (Morton Lowry) from a watery suicide attempt near the Thames Embankment. Most scenes of this dialogue-heavy script are set in parlors and sitting rooms – which, to be honest, really proves a drag on the film’s ninety-two minute running time. One begins to welcome even the briefest scenes when Karell ventures out into the shrouded night and pea-soup fog of the London Streets. Not that much happens during these interludes, but such moments provide a measure of moodiness to this otherwise slowly paced non-mystery.

Truth be told, The Man in Half Moon Street is no detective nor mystery film; we know almost from the beginning what’s going on. We learn the handsome and youthful Karell is actually more than one hundred years old in age. But through a century of experimentation – and with the assistance of the aging Dr. Kurt Van Bruecken, the “world’s greatest living surgeon and necrologist” (Reinhold Schünzel), Karell has managed to stay young through his drinking of a luminous serum and periodically undergoing fresh glandular transplants at ten year intervals.

There are problems ahead. Following a stroke, the shaky hands of the elderly Van Bruecken are no longer trustworthy to perform the necessary surgeries. Besides, Van Bruecken has undergone a change of heart: he fears that Karell is no longer working in the interest of science and humanity in staving off the aging process. He fears (rightfully) Karell is now consumed only by his burning desire for the lovely Eve Brandon (Helen Walker) and selfish self-interest in maintaining a “fraudulent youth.”

“No man can break the law of God,” Van Bruecken cautions, but Karell is confident if anyone can do it, he can. Even if that means farming the glands of the suicidal medical student he’s imprisoned upstairs. The other more pressing problem facing Karell is that his mysterious activities have finally brought him to the attention of an ethical surgeon (Paul Cavanagh), a cabal of fine art appraisers and Scotland Yard.

With Paramount now holding what they believed an acceptable – and mostly non-horrific - script in place, the casting of the film proceeded in earnest. In May of 1943 it was suggested that young actress Susan Hayward would play a “featured role” in Half Moon, though the report cautioned Paramount was still “having a time of it procuring someone to play the sinister male lead.” The earlier front-running names of Rathbone and Dekker were both out, and rumors of Alan Ladd’s casting were squelched when the actor chose instead to sign up for military service.

That same month producer MacEwan confirmed Nils Asther would in fact play the role of Dr. Julian Karell as earlier rumored. The trades suggested that it was Asther who, in fact, first suggested that Paramount pick up the rights to Lyndon’s play and cast him in the lead role. There was some mild press controversy regarding Asther’s casting. Some Hollywood gossips dismissed the actor as “Yesterday’s Star” (born in 1897, Asther had appeared in silent films with Greta Garbo). Though his character was scripted as someone thirty-five years of age, Asther was in reality 46 years old at the time of production. Still, there was an acknowledgement that the dashingly tall, slender, handsome (and rumored bi-sexual) actor “still has a big following.”

Though the actor was to star opposite the sultry Hayward, the role of Karell’s paramour Eve Brandon was ultimately given to Helen Walker. There would be some delay before she could join the production: the actress, currently on a wartime U.S.O. tour, was expected to report to the set near September’s end. Truthfully, Walker doesn’t have a lot to do in the film. She certainly photographs well as Karell’s doting and perhaps too protective and morally-blind girlfriend. Even though Karell’s work is secretive – so much so that it causes him to disappear for weeks or months at a time – Eve chooses to accept her lover’s “general mysteriousness” as a byproduct of his genius. I personally found Brandon less likable and sympathetic as the film progresses. When it’s finally revealed to her that Karell’s experimentations have brought harm to innocents, she’s so in love with him she dismisses his guilt, choosing instead to reflexively defend the “grandeur” of his ambitions.

If the main characters in this picture aren’t always likable, there’s still a lot to admire about the film. Miklos Rozsa’s moody musical score is certainly worthy of praise. Henry Sharp’s fog-bound “exterior” photography is similarly moody, but unfortunately not up on the screen much. In the final minutes of the film when Karell dramatically reverts to his actual age, long-time make-up man Wally Westmore – of Hollywood’s make-up family dynasty – does his best on the effects. But the camera cheats the audience of a full on-screen transformation ala Westmore’s make-up on Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) – which remains the “gold standard” of Golden Age horror transformations. Ralph Murphy’s direction is competent but workmanlike in execution. He creates very little visual tension until the film’s final scenes and, by then, it’s simply too late. Following the completion of Half Moon, Murphy was planning to move back to New York City to direct the Broadway stage production of Sleep It Off.

Of course World War II was still on-going, interrupting, ruining and/or ending the lives of countless innocents globally. In such an atmosphere Hollywood was not immune to war-time production delays and release date restrictions. Paramount alone had accumulated an unprecedented backlog of thirty-one completed films awaiting release in early summer of 1944. There was some confidence that the tide was turning in favor of the Allies, studios cooperating in the war effort by rolling out whatever patriotic war films they were sitting on. There was a consensus it was time to empty the vault of such films. It was believed that movie audiences would weary of war films following the cessation of fighting overseas.

There was, at long last, a belated screening of The Man in Half Moon Street held at a Hollywood tradeshow on October 16, 1944. Variety thought the script was a “compact and interesting,” the Kenyon/Fort scenario displaying a “few new twists from the formularized style of long-life mystery tales to keep interest at consistent level.” But the reviewer acknowledged, not unreasonably, that the film would best serve as “strong support” to a superior attraction. Other critics likewise suggested Half Moon was too weak to see top-billing on a double-attraction.

Indeed, The Man in Half Moon Street (already in U.S. regional release as early as December 1944 although the film’s copyright is listed as 1945 on the sleeve of the snap case) was featured as the undercard of a double-bill. (On his commentary, Tim Lucas reveals the film actually had its world-wide premiere in Australia in early November of 1944). On its U.S. run, the film was usually topped by director Fritz Lang’s cinematic take of novelist Graham Greene’s Nazi espionage tale Ministry of Fear. This double feature actually did reasonably well, the trades citing solid - if not necessarily boffo - returns as the package was rolled out across U.S. markets and into 1945. Newspaper columnists tended to give the Lang film the lion’s share of its critical attention, though both films were generally branded as little more than decent programmers of primary interest only to devotees of suspense and mystery films.

By Cai Ross

To TV fans of a certain age, the acronym ITC instantly invokes memories of spies, guns, girls, espionage, memorable theme tunes, lush sideburns, flared trousers, almost continuous smoking, purple flock wallpaper and grand, globe-trotting adventures.

Actually, the wide-ranging TV shows made by Lord Lew Grade’s pioneering company have fans of all ages, with shows like The Saint, The Champions, The Persuaders! and Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) (US. My Partner The Ghost) still appearing in television schedules to this day, nearly 70 years after Grade scored his first hit in 1955 with The Adventures of Robin Hood.

And so it’s everyone from grandparents to grandkids who have been tuning in in their droves to hear ITC Entertains The World, a podcast that celebrates all things ITC. Fronted by devotees Jaz Wiseman, Al “Smudge” Samujh and Rodney Marshall, the podcast casts an eye at the output of this much-loved stable, from whole-series overviews to individual episodes. They also look at the movies made under the ITC banner (films like Blake Edwards’s The Tamarind Seed and Peter Sellers’s career-reviving The Return of The Pink Panther).

I spoke to Rodney Marshall about the podcast and his love of all things 1960s, starting with the genesis of the podcast.‘Like a lot of podcasts, ours started in lockdown. Jaz approached me and suggested that we did one based on the little-known ITC show Gideon’s Way, which I hadn’t actually seen. I watched them all and thought it was fantastic. You have all those great 1960s guest actors, the Anton Rodgerses, Peter Bowleses and Annette Andres. I thought the podcast would be very niche but it proved surprisingly popular.

‘I’ve known Jaz for a long time through my late father. Jaz interviewed him for lots of DVD commentaries when The Avengers came out.’ Rodney’s father just happens to be Roger Marshall, a very familiar name to fans of vintage espionage television shows. The creator of popular UK dramas like Travelling Man, Zodiac and Floodtide, Marshall Sr also co-created the highly regarded and influential private detective show Public Eye in 1965, starring Alfred Burke as down-at-heel gumshoe Frank Marker.

He was also a regular contributor of scripts for the likes of The Avengers, writing 15 episodes of the iconic 1960s series.

After the success of the Gideon’s Way podcast, they were encouraged to broaden their scope and cover the entire range of ITC shows, but to do that they needed a new recruit. ‘We thought that in terms of voices, three is better than two. Jaz got in touch with his old friend Smudge, who is very much into the history of Elstree studios, into Hammer films and of course, ITC shows. I think all three of us bring something different to the podcast. Jaz is into things like music and titles, Smudge is very into things like directors and direction, talking about fish-eye lenses and the like. I’m more into the scripts, probably because of dad.

‘It was a learning curve for me because these two guys are ITC-mad. They probably have huge tardis-sized rooms full of all things ITC. If I said to one of them, “Do you have a copy of the scripts for The Persuaders! that my dad wrote for?” and they’d probably have three different copies of it.’

We bemoaned the fact that following the sad demise of the distribution company Network, it now seems unlikely that long-running shows like The Saint will receive the BluRay treatment and be discovered anew in pristine condition. It’s a huge shame since the likes of The Prisoner and Man in a Suitcase have enjoyed BluRay remastering and look breathtakingly fresh and vibrant as a result.

(L to R: Rodney Marshall, Jaz Wiseman and Al Samujh.)

'Man in a Suitcase is very much a shared love. I discovered it in the early nineties when BBC started showing it again during the school holidays. In my early misguided smoking days, I used to copy McGill’s habit of standing my cigarette up on the table between puffs. Naturally, I wasn’t able to pull it off with the same je ne sais quoi as Richard Bradford.

Marshall is very much an admirer of the US actor. ‘Bradford’s performance is astonishing. When you put him up against someone like Colin Blakely or Jacqueline Pearce, Bradford is dynamite. He has an incredibly magnetic presence. A lot is made of the fact that there was a lot of tension between him and the actors and stuntmen, but the main directors on the show absolutely loved him. Peter Duffell who was one of the main directors was our next door neighbour and one of dad’s mates, and he raved about Bradford.

‘He may have overdone the Marlon Brando thing; he would race around the set four or five times in order to look breathless before a take, but he really invested himself in his performances. Like Patrick McGoohan, he was a lead actor who wouldn’t take bullshit. If an actor came along and just wanted a quick cheque, they wouldn’t put up with it. Bernard Lee turned up drunk for an episode of Man in a Suitcase, and Bradford walked up to him and said, ‘I’m not putting up with this crap.’ Bernard Lee immediately switched onto acting-mode and suddenly there were no problems.’

Marshall’s other great ITC love is one of its earlier hits, Danger Man (or Secret Agent in the States), a popular and innovative pre-Bond spy series that made a global star out of Patrick McGoohan. ’I think what kept McGoohan engaged with Danger Man for so long is the fact that he’s undercover in so many different roles. One week he might be playing a roaring drunk, the next week he’s a timid school-teacher in glasses, sending someone into a nervous breakdown by stalking them! That variety made him feel like he was back in his old rep company in Sheffield.’

Danger Man was one of several ITC shows that, like ABC’s The Avengers, made the shift from black and white to colour in the mid sixties, when the US networks made it mandatory. Marshall however, believes that something was lost after the transition.‘I still think that The Prisoner, Man in a Suitcase and the amazing Strange Report aside, the best ITC series are from earlier in the decade like Gideon’s Way, Danger Man and The Saint, which I much prefer in black and white.

‘I always felt that when a show went from black and white to colour, you lost a lot of the subtlety. Take an episode of The Saint like ‘Scorpion’ with Dudley Sutton, who rides around on a motorbike bumping people off and even tries strangling his girlfriend. Perhaps its something to do with the shadows, but you can pull off a kind of darkness in a monochrome episode which doesn’t quite work in colour. Jaz recorded a DVD commentary for the Avengers episode ‘Town of No Return’ with Brian Clemens and director Roy Ward Baker, and they both said, ‘you know, black and white is more…real.’

The podcast casts its net wide to cover not just the big, popular hits but some of the ITC gems that may have faded from the public consciousness. ‘Man of The World from 1962 is very interesting, with Craig Stevens from Peter Gunn playing a photo journalist travelling the world getting himself into scrapes. It actually started in colour then went back to black and white after its budget was slashed.’

Intriguingly, The Sentimental Agent starring Carlos Thompson started off as an episode of Man of The World. The powers that be were so impressed with Thompson that they span it out into a whole series. Marshall explains, ‘Carlos was like a continental Roger Moore, very good looking, very charming, very flirty. But suddenly he fell ill, and they had to make the rest of the series with this humourless guy who was none of the above.’

The podcast, like the work it celebrates, is a labour of love and it’s benefitted from some Lew Grade-style serendipity that brought exactly the right three people together to extol the many virtues of a series of entertainments that are still adored by millions.

‘We’re lucky,’ concludes Marshall,‘because Jaz has access to a library of things like the music and a lot of interviews and DVD commentaries that he’s done with the likes of Richard Bradford and Sir Roger Moore, who was hilarious. On the commentary for The Saint, they debunked the theory that Patrick McGoohan turned down the role. He was interviewed for it, but producer Bob Baker thought he was unsuitable for the role as he refused to do any romantic scenes. They said to Roger, ‘we knew that kissing ladies on screen wouldn’t be a problem for you,’ and he replied in that most Roger Moore way, ‘Indeed not!’

(ITC Entertains The World is available to listen to across all streaming platforms.)

1000 copies only!

The next four Carry On Films come to Blu-ray in one Limited Edition Box, with an exclusive 112 page booklet featuring reproductions of the original pressbooks for the first twelve films. 

Includes the worldwide Blu-ray premiere for Carry On Spying!

Carry On Spying (1964)

Worldwide first on Blu-ray! Carry On favourite Barbara Windsor makes her debut in this outrageous send-up of the James Bond movies. Fearless agent Desmond Simpkins and Charlie Bind, aided and abetted by the comely Agent Honeybutt and Agent Crump, battle against the evil powers of international bad guys STENCH and their three cronies.

Carry On Cleo (1964)

Two Brits—inventor Hengist Pod, and Horse, a brave and cunning fighter—are captured and enslaved by invading Romans and taken to Rome. One of their first encounters in Rome leaves Hengist being mistaken for a fighter, and gets drafted into the Royal Guard to protect Cleopatra.

Carry On Cowboy (1965)

Stodge City is in the grip of the Rumpo Kid and his gang. Mistaken identity again takes a hand as a ‘sanitary engineer’ named Marshal P. Knutt is mistaken for a law marshal. Being the conscientious sort, Marshal tries to help the town get rid of Rumpo, and a showdown is inevitable. Marshal has two aids—revenge-seeking Annie Oakley and his sanitary expertise.

Carry On Screaming! (1966)

The sinister Dr Watt has an evil scheme going. He’s kidnapping beautiful young women and turning them into mannequins to sell to local stores. Fortunately for Dr Watt, Detective-Sergeant Bung is on the case, and he doesn’t have a clue! In this send up of the Hammer Horror movies, there are send-ups of all the horror greats from Frankenstein to Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde.

Special Features:

• Limited Edition 112-page booklet containing reproductions of the original pressbooks of the first 12 films (1000 copies)
• Carry on Spying Audio Commentary by Bernard Cribbins and Dilys Laye
• Carry on Cleo Audio Commentary by Amanda Barrie and Julie Stevens
• Carry on Cowboy Audio Commentary by Angela Douglas
• Carry on Screaming Audio Commentary by Angela Douglas and Fenella Fielding
• Carry on Spying Textless Titles
• Theatrical Trailers
• Photo Galleries
Imprint limited editions tend to sell out quickly. Click here to  PRE-ORDER. (Prices are in Australian dollars. Use  a currency converter to see what the price is in your local currency.) The Blu-ray set is Region-Free. 

Corman/ Poe: Interviews and Essays Exploring the Making of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe Films, 1960-1964

By Chris Alexander

Foreword by Roger Corman

Headpress paperback
Size: 235mm x 191mm
Pages: 150
105 colour and B&W stills images

ISBN: 978-1-915316-07-3

Retail Price: UK £22.99 / US $27.95

Review by Adrian Smith

The early 1960s was a boom time for gothic horror films. Spurred on by the Hammer Films one-two punch of Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), film companies around the world fell over themselves to produce films set in cobweb-strewn castles and mist-enshrouded graveyards. Directors such as Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti made several Italian gothics, frequently starring Christopher Lee or Barbara Steele, but no one director had such a successful run as Roger Corman, who in the space of five years brought us an incredible series of eight films adapted from the disturbed writing of Edgar Allan Poe: The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), Premature Burial, Tales of Terror, (both 1962), The Haunted Palace, The Raven (both 1963), Masque of the Red Death and The Tomb of Ligeia (both 1964). All but one starred Vincent Price, and they also featured the talents of Ray Milland, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, Barbara Steele (again, proving she was a gothic icon on both sides of the Atlantic), Hazel Court, and even a young Jack Nicholson.

In this new book, the first dedicated solely to these films, Fangoria's Chris Alexander has interviewed Roger Corman (a mere 97 years old, with a pin-sharp memory) at length on each one of these low- budget gems, discussing the themes, the productions, his love-hate relationship with American International Pictures, the cast and crew, and much more. He reflects thoughtfully on his collaborative relationship with Vincent Price, who he rightly describes as a “brilliant actor,” and he is not too proud of his own achievements to acknowledge the important contribution of others, including writer Richard Matheson, who he says was, “One of the finest writers I’ve ever had the chance to work with,” crediting him “for much of the success of those early Poe pictures.” Also featured in the book is a critical appraisal for each film and a wealth of archival material, including a full-colour international poster gallery and censorship documents related to the most controversial of them all, Masque of the Red Death.

Roger Corman is one of the most prolific directors and producers we have ever had, and as such there is always more to be said about his work. Corman/ Poe is an essential addition to the growing Corman library.

For an exclusive hardback edition go to https://headpress.com/product/corman-poe/

Click here to order paperback edition from Amazon USA

Click here to order paperback edition from Amazon UK

(Tom with the legendary Christopher Lee.)

By Mark Cerulli

Tom Johnson, noted Hammer Film expert and longtime friend of many a Hammer star, passed away at his home in Shillington, PA on July 11^th. He was 76.

Tom’s best-known work was his 1995 book, Hammer Films – An Exhaustive Filmography (co-written with Debra Del Vecchio) and exhaustive it was with over 400 pages covering every film the studio made from the 1930s onward. He wrote other books like The Christopher Lee Filmography (co-written with Mark A. Miller and Jimmy Sangster), The Films of Oliver Reed (with Susan D. Cowie) and The Mummy in Fact and Fiction (with Susan D. Cowie) and others. His 2015 tribute to Christopher Lee for Little Shoppe of Horrors – “Christopher Lee – He May Not Have Been… Who You Thought He Was” won the Rondo Award for Best Horror Article.

I met Tom when I covered the 1997 Midnight Marquee Hammer Convention for Cinemax. Along with spending time with Caroline Munro, Freddie Francis and Jimmy Sangster, I got to know Tom. Very smart, with a dry wit and an encyclopedic knowledge of cinema, he was easy to befriend. Tom was close to many Hammer actors and filmmakers, most noticeably Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. I will forever be in his debt for his getting Lee to sign my UK one-sheet to Scars of Dracula. Tom said when he unfolded it for the star, Lee rolled his eyes and mumbled, “Oh my God.” The Count, it seems, was not a fan of the film!

Along with his literary efforts, Tom taught and coached high School track. (He was a medal-winning runner himself back in the day.) An avowed Luddite, Tom didn’t own a computer, never had an e-mail account and never once browsed the web. I remember telling him how great it would be if he got an email address. His response? “Nah.” Old school to his core, he would write his books by hand and his wonderful British writing partner Sue Cowie would type them up and bring them into the 21^st Century.

(Tom with Joyce Broughton, Peter Cushing's long-time secretary and personal assistant.)

As years went by, Tom’s health got worse and he seldom ventured far from his PA home, but we would talk on the phone. He took great delight in my collecting tales – the items that got away and also the things I managed to get, especially anything expensive. Tom laughed uproariously when I told him about buying a rather large helicopter model from You Only Live Twice sight unseen and my wife’s less than enthusiastic reaction. He made ME laugh when he recounted buying an ultra-rare window card for 1935’s Mad Love at an antique store, putting it under his mattress to “straighten it out,” then FORGETTING it for years! When he finally removed it, the brittle paper was in tatters. Ouch.

Tom stoically faced his mounting health problems with his sense of humor and curiosity unchanged. He was a kind and gentle man who truly loved the art of filmmaking and was unrivalled in his knowledge of the entire Hammer canon. He leaves behind seven books, countless articles and an army of people who will truly miss him. Thank you, dear Tom.

You can buy Tom’s books at https://mcfarlandbooks.com/?s=Tom+Johnson&search_id=product&post_type=product

Photos kindly supplied by Dick Klemensen at Little Shoppe of Horrors.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Film Chest.

The film noir genre, which became a staple for movie fans during its heyday in the 1940’s & 50’s, was based on a tough and gritty environment and revolved around those who lived it. It was raw, without much margin for how things went down or who would end up surviving the fallout.Films stylized with elements of film noir have surfaced over the years and perhaps one of the best is the Mickey Spillane stories of Mike Hammer, which offered a more contemporary version of the format.Mike Hammer, Private Eye brings us to the late ‘90’s.

Stacy Keach plays the wiser, tougher, more sarcastic and blunt-worded private eye who offers a salute to the early years with his felt fedora. A bevy of beautiful women still abound in his world, and over-the-top measures with the use of his fists, wits, and savvy tenacity against deceptive enemies are the norm. Still, there is a balance, with Keach managing his character that’s both serious and, at times, more lighthearted with some campy humor.

This 26-episode series (along with the original trailer and episode synopses) includes a new sexy blonde secretary (Velda) played by Shannon Whirry and the introduction of a sidekick (Nick Farrell) played by Shane Conrad. Kent Williams returns with a strong portrayal of Deputy Mayor Barry Lawerence and Peter Jason plays Hammer’s closely aligned police captain, Skip Gleason.Stacy Keach has spent a career making Mike Hammer his own character, and without question, he has succeeded. Private Eye (1997-1998) is a fast-paced, no nonsense Hammer series that will delight the many fans of Mickey Spillane’s character and again prove that STACY KEACH IS MIKE HAMMER!

Click here to order from Amazon

By Hank Reineke

The Asphyx Will Rip You Apart… The Asphyx Will Invade Your Mind… The Asphyx Will Destroy Your Soul… If It Were In Your Power… Would You Sacrifice Your Wife… Your Children For Immortality?

The answers to the questions posed above by the advertising campaign for Peter Newbrook’s The Asphyx (1972) was a resounding “yes.” As the gifted but obsessed psychic-research scientist Hugo Cunningham, celebrated British actor Robert Stephens puts everyone in his family through the proverbial ringer by film’s end. Such single-minded research on his part is not accomplished without a measure of personal guilt, mind you. But as a curious man of science – and one obsessed with paranormal exploration - Cunningham pushes forward determinedly with increasingly morbid experimentations.

Such “experiments” include the exhuming of his dead son for some post-mortem testing, the photographing of a condemned man at a public hanging, a self-administered electrocution, putting his daughter’s head through a guillotine pillory and even willfully torturing a tubercular pauper. Hey, the last guy, a poorhouse resident, had only forty-eight hours to live anyway… so he was fair game.

Like Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, Cunningham is a man driven by obsession. Appearing before members of the Psychic Research Society, the scientist presents to colleagues a series of slides depicting a trio of unfortunates photographed at the precise moment of their deaths. Each photograph has a “smudge” present, a sort of phantasmagorical protoplasmic image hovering nearby. It’s Cunningham’s theory that the image is an Asphyx, a creature of Greek mythology. The Asphyx is a visual manifestation of one’s tortured “soul the moment it departs the body.” It’s the scientists’ belief that if one could pre-emptively isolate and imprison the Asphyx prior to expiration, that person might carry on as an immortal. This appears to be Cunningham’s endgame interest.

Though adopted son Giles (Robert Powell) is wary of his father’s dark experiments (“This isn’t science!” he warns), he begrudgingly becomes one-half of Cunningham’s research team – to disastrous results as one might expect. Since Cunningham, to his credit I guess, puts his own life on the line in pursuit of science and immortality, it seems only fair to him that members of the family do the same - and without complaint. Which certainly makes the case that, on some occasions, father doesn’t know best.

Cameras began rolling on the The Asphyx on Monday, February 7, 1972, at Surrey, England’s Shepperton Studios. Shooting wrapped a mere five weeks following first photography. The film was to be helmed by first time director Peter Newbrook, a former cameraman and cinematographer who boasted a filmography dating back to the early 1940s. The film certainly looks great, even if the pacing of Newbrook’s direction is somewhat suspect. The Academy Award-winning Cinematographer Freddie Young (B.S.C.) - of Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, The Battle of Britain and You Only Live Twice fame - would use the newish Todd-AO 35mm anamorphic system to great effect. In many respects, Newbrook’s The Asphyx is of similar construct to such British parlour-horror films being churned out by Hammer and Amicus in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

The question now was whether or not a Victorian-era set horror picture would make any money in 1972? The horror biz was already moving away from stately, moody gothic films to more exploitative blood-splattered fare. Nevertheless, upon the film’s completion, it was announced The Asphyx was to be distributed in the British market by Scotia-Barber. On week later, Variety reported that Martin Grasgreen, President of Paragon Pictures, had managed a deal with Glendale Film Productions (London) to handle distribution of The Asphyx in both the U.S. and Canada. In early winter of 1972, Paragon already had a number of exploitative horror-thrillers in release, including Blood Suckers, Blood Thirst and Death by Invitation.

In August of 1972 the Independent Film Journal announced that The Asphyx, described as a “science-fiction suspense thriller,” would be released the following month, the first of twenty-two films that Paragon had waiting in the queue. Box Office promised the film would be the recipient of “an extensive national advertising and promotion campaign,” with “key theater” roll-outs in Dallas, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington D.C.

Upon its September release, Variety noted The Asphyx was – welcomingly - bucking the recent trend of blood and gore horrors: Newbrook had intentionally delivered a more “cerebral” or “thinking man’s horror film.” Acknowledging the film was well cast and beautifully photographed, the trade review did rue that Brian Comport’s verbiage-laden screenplay was slow going and riddled with historical improbabilities. Other critics noted Robert Stephen’s mad scientist was one seemingly gifted with precognitive invention.

It was true. As The Asphyx is set in the year 1875, scientist Cunningham had somehow managed to prefigure such mechanical appliances as the first motion picture camera (not actually developed until 1888) and an electric chair (not developed into the early 1880s). To the credit of Box Office, the trade paper cautiously suggested that, “Selling the film as a monster movie would not be to its advantage: a more intelligent approach to sci-fi fans is indicated.” I imagine “less-intelligent” monster movie fans might have shifted restlessly in their seats back in ’72, awaiting even the mildest of jump-scares.

The Asphyx was the fourth and final of writer Brian Comport’s screenplays to be produced. His first screenwriting effort, Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly (Cinerama Releasing Corp., 1970), was an out-and-out freaky and grisly exploitation film. Technically speaking, Girly wasn’t a completely original invention of Comport’s. The original story was loosely based on the stage play Happy Family (aka All Fall Down) by the novelist and BBC radio playwright Maisie Mosco. His second screen credit was a co-authorship with director Pete Walker on Man of Violence (later re-titled The Sex Racketeers). That film was a convoluted and overly talky international-gold smuggling-racketeer-caper-thriller with a pronounced sixties swagger.

In one of those local-lad-makes-good-type newspaper items, journalist Anthony Cardew of the Surrey Mirror and County Post, shared an hour with Comport, then basking in the success of his industry breakthrough with Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly. “I was offered a script which a producer wanted lived up,” the writer told Cardew. “He wanted a bit more action or something. I took the script apart and rewrote it completely. I added new characters, took some out and changed the thing entirely. I wrote it in note form, just suggesting the way I thought it should go.”

The producer was pleased with Comport’s revised scenario and formally commissioned him to draft a new screenplay, in the scripters own words, “from the beginning, according to my own ideas.” With the film in production, Comport was also approached by a representative from London’s Sphere books to turn his screenplay into a novelization, a six-week effort bringing in a bit of extra cash.

Many film critics found Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly – later retitled simply as Girly –aggressively unpleasant in its lurid, sexually suggestive subject matter - and decidedly distasteful in its depiction of depravity and violence. One critic would unflatteringly suggest Comport as a leading “candidate for sickest mind of the year award.” Another nonplussed reviewer thought the film as “Theater of the absurd… absurdly vicious.”

Scolding reviews aside, Comport’s star seemed to be on the rise. In October of 1970, only shortly following the release of Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly, production had already started on Robert Hartford-Davis’ thriller Beware My Brethren (Cinerama Releasing Corp., 1972) also from a Comport script. Things then cooled for an interim but, following a year or so of film-work drought, Comport was back with The Asphyx.

Though Comport’s script – adapted from a story provided by Christina and Laurence Beers – would appropriate more than a few elements from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the Independent Film Journal interestingly suggested The Asphyx was of similar construct to William Castle’s B-movie classic The Tingler (1959): “There too a visible spirit of sorts popped up; but that one was of fear rather than death.” Though some wondered why a classically-trained actor of Robert Stephens’s caliber would agree to appear in a film clearly beneath his station, the former board-trotter of the Royal National Theatre thought The Asphyx “rather good.” He told journalist Neville Nisse of Staffordshire’s Evening Sentinel, “I really enjoyed making it because I liked the script and the people involved.”

The Asphyx performed reasonably well at the box office – not boffo perhaps, but reasonably well. So much so that in January of 1973, Paragon announced they were going to enter into a co-production deal with Glendale for two additional features. Paragon would, of course, retain all U.S. distribution rights, but would now also share in a generous slice of a film’s international profit. When U.S. box office receipts measurably dipped following the film’s initial run, The Asphyx was often paired on the secondary market with other indie horrors: Night of the Living Dead, Son of Blob and Blood Suckers among them.

(Variety trade advertisement)

In Australia, The Asphyx was given the more compelling title Spirit of the Dead, the adverts teasing an audience confrontation with “The Horror That Lurks Halfway Between Heaven and Hell!” The campaign posters for Spirit of the Dead featured accompanying artwork promising a more ghoulish monster than the film would deliver. The Asphyx would also enjoy a sustained life in the United Kingdom. Exploitatively re-titled The Horror of Death on its re-release, the film would play in cinemas throughout the 1970s. It was often incongruously paired on multi-bills with such chop-socky fare as Kung Fu Virgins and The Angry Dragon.

This 2023 Kino Lorber Studio Classics edition of The Asphyx replaces the Kino/Redemption Films co-issue of 2012. The only really new “Special Features” offered is the commentary track provided by film historians Kim Newman and Stephen Jones and six trailers promoting other Kino Product. This new edition is also packaged in a protective slipcase that mimics the artwork of the case insert. Both the 86 minute U.K. theatrical cut and 99 minute U.S. expanded cut are made available to view. But, as the package warns, the “reconstruction of the extended version blends HD footage mastered from the 35mm negative with SD footage mastered from the U.S. release print.” The changes in visual quality are very significant as forewarned.

For the record, I watched the extended version. Though the inclusion of an additional thirteen minutes is welcome, these extra fragments are of no great interest. In fact, it’s possible the added running time further slows down a film already in desperate need of judicious editing. Newbrook’s direction is competent, but Comport’s screenplay is weighed down by too many sermons: the film’s main characters continually perseverate on the moral misguiding’s of Cunningham’s tampering with spiritual and life-and-death issues. Such hand-wringing tires after a while. Having said all this, The Asphyx is an interesting film, if far from a forgotten classic. While aficionados of British horror should certainly add the title to their watch list, it might be best to screen the film with muted expectation.

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By Lee Pfeiffer

"Good Day for a Hanging" is minor 1959 color Western elevated by an unusually intelligent script and an impressive cast of veteran actors and a couple of up-and-comers who would find stardom in the 1960s. Fred MacMurray plays former town marshal Ben Cutler, a widower who is living a serene small town life in the company of his fiancee Ruth (Maggie Hayes) and his teenage daughter Laurie (Joan Blackman). Their peaceful existence is shattered when Laurie's former beau Eddie Campbell (Robert Vaughn) arrives in town in the company of some shady bandits. While Laurie tries to reignite the romance with Eddie, his companions are pulling off a robbery of the bank which goes wrong very quickly when a shootout ensues. Eddie and his companions flea the scene with a posse in hot pursuit led by Marshal Cain (Emile Meyer). Another shootout follows with some of the gang killed and others escaping with half the loot from the bank. In the melee, Ben witnesses Eddie fatally shooting Marshal Cain before Eddie is wounded and captured. When he is brought back to town, Eddie is nursed back to health, in part by Laurie, and admits the obvious- he took part in the robbery. However, he insists that he did not shoot the marshal and that he must have been hit by gunfire from another gang member. Ben knows this is untrue and tells the townspeople as much. He also reluctantly agrees to temporarily resume serving as town marshal until a permanent replacement can be found. Eddie is put on trial and plays the victim, recounting a hardscrabble upbringing and turning on the charm. Nevertheless, he is convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. From his jail cell, he can see the gallows being built. However, he begins to convince the townspeople that he is not guilty of murder and his death sentence should be changed to serving time in jail. Soon, many of the town's most prominent citizens are buying his story and they force Ben to take a petition bearing many signatures to the governor asking him to grant Eddie's request. Laurie, blinded by her romantic interest in Eddie, is his chief defender- a fact that causes Ben great consternation. Because this is a Western, there are dramatic developments that result in an action-packed climax.

What sets "Good Day for a Hanging" apart from many other minor Westerns of the period is the fact that it has a compelling and interesting script that touches upon sociological factors such as the ability of one person to manipulate many others, often against common sense, by using charisma and a strong will. Eddie has both and you can't help but be reminded of how many contemporary people, often in public service, are excused for all sorts of behavior simply because people find them personally likable or intimidating. Doubtless, there have been times when all of us have seen such scenarios and wondered how intelligent people can ignore established facts in their defense of someone whose actions are indefensible. In this case, Ben Cutler is 100% right in his testimony against Eddie but before long he is the odd man out, criticized and resented by the very people who only recently begged him to serve as marshal. Fred MacMurray gives a strong performance as the protagonist- a man who has lost the respect of his own daughter in her misguided quest to benefit a killer. Robert Vaughn gives an excellent, understated performance that allows the viewer to understand why he is able to win over so many townspeople.

It's interesting to analyze the career trajectories of several actors who appear in the film. Fred MacMurray had been going through somewhat of a minor career slump at the time but it would be short-lived. Later in 1959, he starred in his first Walt Disney movie, "The Shaggy Dog", which was a major hit. He would star in many other Disney films over the next decade. Additionally, he would give an outstanding performance as a misogynistic heel in Billy Wilder's Oscar winner, "The Apartment". Capping off his career turnaround, he would also star in the long-running sitcom "My Three Sons". Robert Vaughn would rise to stardom with his performance later that year in "The Young Philadelphians", earning an Oscar nomination for his work. That, in turn, led him to be cast as one of "The Magnificent Seven" and he would reach the level of international teen idol in the mid-Sixties due to his starring role in "The Man from U.N.C.L.E". Some of the fine character actors who would appear in the film would also find major success over the next few years. Howard McNear, who plays one of the prominent townsmen, would create his iconic comedic role as the eccentric Floyd the barber the next year in "The Andy Griffith Show". Denver Pyle, who plays  deputy in the film, would also make periodic appearances in the show as the lovably loony hillbilly patriarch Briscoe Darling, as well as appear in two major John Wayne films, "The Horse Soldiers" and "The Alamo" before landing his most memorable role as Sheriff Frank Hammer in "Bonnie and Clyde". James Drury, who would go on to star in "The Virginian" TV series, also has a supporting role. Special mention should be made of Edmon Ryan, who is especially good, portraying Eddie's defense counsel. One more note of interest: the film was produced by Charles H. Schneer, a respected figure in the British film industry who was most often associated with the films of special effects master Ray Harryhausen.

The Sony DVD has a reasonably good transfer, if a bit soft. The only extras are original trailers for "Silverado" and "The Professionals", both on Sony Home Video. Strangely enough, the trailer for "Good Day for a Hanging" isn't included, but we found it on YouTube and are providing it here. 

I don't want to exaggerate the merits of "Good Day for a Hanging". It isn't a great movie by any means, just a good Western- but it's loaded with fine actors who were on the cusp of major career successes.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release relating to the UK release of "Frankenstein: The True Story":

Presented for the first time in high definition and featuring some incredible bonus material and stunning new artwork by Graham Humphreys, Frankenstein: The True Story is one of the most acclaimed versions of Mary Shelley's masterpiece.

The film features an all-star cast led by James Mason, Leonard Whiting, David McCallum, Jane Seymour, Michael Sarrazin, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Tom Baker.

Frankenstein: The True Story (1973) inspired author Anne Rice to write Interview with the Vampire, the movie of which starred Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.

Having finished The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola and John Boorman, having wrapped up Deliverance were both keen to direct Frankenstein: The True Story as a theatrical release but it was decided to keep it as a made-for-television movie directed by Jack Smight.

Writers Christopher Isherwood (Forever and a Day, The Great Sinner, A Single Man, and author of Goodbye to Berlin, the novel on which the musical Cabaret was based) and Don Bachardy (Isherwood’s longtime lover and chief creative consultant) weren’t happy that Smight played down the homo-eroticism they’d written in to the screenplay and so published it separately.

Leonard Whiting, who stars as Victor Frankenstein, is currently in the process of suing Paramount Studios for ‘forcing them into a nude scene’ in Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Zeffirelli chose Whiting for the part of Romeo because he had “a magnificent face, gentle melancholy, sweet, the kind of idealistic young man Romeo ought to be." The role of Frankenstein saw Whiting growing increasingly hideous as the film progresses. The make-up was by Hammer horror veteran artist Roy Ashton.

Synopsis: In 19th Century England, Dr Victor Frankenstein, bitter over his brother's death, voices his wish that men could have power over life and death. Following a chance encounter with Dr Henry Clerval, a surgeon experimenting in this very field, they begin to work together. Victor achieves the impossible, the creation of life, but with it comes unforeseen and unimaginable terror.

Cast: James Mason, Leonard Whiting, David McCallum, Jane Seymour, Michael Sarrazin, John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Tom Baker, Nicola Pagett, Michael Wilding, Clarissa Kaye, Agnes Moorhead and Margaret Leighton.

Extras: Film Introduction from James Mason; Off with Her Head - An Interview with Jane Seymour; Victor's Story- An Interview with Actor Leonard Whiting; Frankenstein's Diary- A Conversation with Writer Don Bachardy; A Double-Sided Fold Out Poster of the All New Graham Humphreys Artwork; Audio commentary with Filmmaker/Film Historian Sam Irvin.

(This Blu-ray is a Region-2 release.) 

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By Hank Reineke

In case you were wondering, the answer is “yes.” That is Christopher Lee’s visage featured on the slipcase of Kino Lorber’s Blu ray issue of Vernon Sewell’s The Blood Beast Terror. Now, ordinarily, displaying Sir Christopher’s image on a Gothic horror film release wouldn’t make for bad marketing. The problem is that Lee doesn’t actually appear in The Blood Beast Terror. The team at Kino curiously chose to use the poster art of Distribuzione Italiana Films Internazionali, the distributor readying the film for European release as the Mostro di Sangue.

The artwork procured by D.I.F.I. for The Blood Beast Terror was, at the very least, familiar: a reverse-image lifted from the Italian poster of 1958’s Horror of Dracula (Dracula il Vampiro). Kino is taking a fair battering on fan sites for their packaging of this 2022 issue. But let’s be fair. Kino’s decision to forego the original British poster art for the imagery of the Italian campaign might be a bit odd but not technically incorrect. Moviegoers in Italy had, in fact, been lured into visiting their local cinema with such eye-catching - if misleading - artwork.

Though Tigon’s The Blood Beast Terror has a core of supporters – perhaps defenders is a better term - I find the film a mild amusement at best. Which is a shame as I really want to like it. In a sense, it’s a film conceived from a time out of mind. Some critics suggest that’s exactly the film’s failing. Upon UK release in the early spring of 1968, stately Gothic horrors were seemingly growing stale amongst horror film fans. Critics argued a new era of more edgy, sadistic and blood-letting horrors was in the ascendant, old costume-drama gothics now too tame to frighten. While that’s not necessarily untrue, there’s no denying The Blood Beast Terror is of middling interest simply due to it not being terribly involving.

While it’s true goth-horror had lost some of its courtly appeal with a large sect of cinemagoers, the sub-genre was hardly dead. A case in point: upon original release The Blood Beast Terror was paired as the undercard to Michael Reeve’s brilliant Witchfinder General, a film set circa 1645. This too was a Tigon release of Tony Tenser’s, a Vincent Price vehicle far superior to The Blood Beast Terror on every conceivable level. I might be wrong, but I suspect if not for the presence of Peter Cushing in The Blood Beast Terror, Sewell’s more modest film would have far fewer champions than it enjoys today.

So what’s wrong with it? I admit to moments of melancholia when watching The Blood Beast Terror. For starters, it’s difficult to watch old pros Cushing and Robert Flemyng (known best to horror film fans as the titular necrophagic M.D. The Horrible Dr. Hichcock) try their best to rise above the mediocre material they’ve been given to work with. The film’s Director of Photography, Stanley Long, recalled Flemyng complaining “how shit the script was, how shit the effects were.” Even director Sewell wasn’t spared the castigations of an unhappy cast member. He recalled the famously gentlemanly Cushing mildly offering only a couple of days into the shoot, “Vernon, I think this is perhaps the worst film I have ever made.” Sadly, in a few years’ time there would be new challengers to Cushing’s lament. Such clunkers as Tendre Dracula (1974) and Blood Suckers (1971) would prove short term contenders to that particular title.

I won’t give away anything important about the film’s flimsy plot – just in case you’ve yet to see the film and still wish to after reading this review. I’ll just say the trail of mutilated bodies scattering the English countryside are – as ever – the result of bad science gone horribly wrong. In this case entomological science. As transformative feminine-insect monsters go, Wanda Ventham’s fetching “Clare” in The Blood Beast Terror is, IMHO, a far less interesting or menacing creature than Susan Cabot’s “Janice Starlin” in Roger Corman’s low-budget The Wasp Woman (1959). But, again, the fault here lies not with Ventham or Cushing or Flemyng, but with a script riddled with excessive verbiage and slow-moving, sluggish plotting.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Quite a few years ago, my Cinema Retro publishing partner Dave Worrall, a fellow enthusiast of 1960s spy flicks, warned me to avoid "Danger Route", a 1967 espionage concoction that he deemed to be "awful". Worrall had seen a TV broadcast of the film on British TV.  Complying with his advice wasn't a problem since the film has never been released on home video in America. However, I noticed it was streaming through the Screenpix app, which is available through Amazon Prime, Roku and Apple TV for a paltry $2.99 additional charge per month. I decided to ignore my esteemed colleague's advice and take the plunge largely because of the impressive cast in "Danger Route": Richard Johnson, Carol Lynley, Harry Andrews, Sylvia Sims, Diana Dors, Sam Wanamaker, Gordon Jackson and the "go-to" girl for low-budget Sixties spy movies, Barbara Bouchet.  

The film was a rare non-horror production for Amicus, the company that was the main rival to the legendary Hammer Films. The movie was based on Andrew York's well-received novel "The Eliminator" and adapted for the screen by Meade Roberts, who had some estimable credits before and after this film. There were two types of spy movies during this period: those that spoofed or imitated the James Bond films and those that sought to provide a more realistic depiction of espionage work, seemingly inspired by the success of director Martin Ritt's brilliant screen version of "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold". "Danger Route" is squarely in the latter camp. Richard Johnson plays Jonas Wilde, a top assassin for British Intelligence, who dispenses his victims through a couple of well-placed karate chops. He is partnered with fellow agent Brian Stern (Gordon Jackson) and the two travel widely through Europe to carry out missions on the guise of being yachtsmen. When we first meet Jonas, he's exhausted from having carried out a recent mission on the continent. He comes back to his girlfriend Jocelyn (Carol Lynley in a small but pivotal role that bookends the story). She's a hipster who associates with the mod crowd, clearly to Jonas's dismay. He tells her that even though he is only 37 years-old, he wants to retire and get out of the spy game. They make plans to travel the world living off their wits and working odd jobs. However, reality comes calling when Jonas's boss Canning (Harry Andrews) browbeats him into accepting one more mission- and we all know what happens when the protagonist decides to take on one more mission. Canning informs Jonas that the Americans have a Soviet scientist in their possession who has defected. MI6 thinks he's a Soviet double agent but the Americans don't agree. Thus, they want Jonas to kill him before he is transported to the U.S. It's at this point that the main plot becomes almost incidental, as quirky characters of dubious allegiances interact with our hero, all to the detriment of of a coherent story.

Richard Johnson told this writer that he took himself out of the running to be the screen's first James Bond because he didn't see the potential in the series. Ironically, like every other working actor of the 1960s, he would find himself playing the role of Bond imitators in several low-budget espionage flicks. Johnson gives a very fine performance and makes Jonas an interesting and complex character: a man with a conscience working as a paid assassin. He's a also a vulnerable hero. Though quick on his feet to extract himself from jams without the aid of gadgets, he makes miscalculations in terms of who to trust, with important consequences. Jonas has another vulnerability: he's a borderline alcoholic who is always pouring from a bottle. He finds himself in bizarre situations and death traps, captured by enemy agents and even the C.I.A. There is an extended scene played for some comical effect in which Jonas uses a ditzy, sex-starved housekeeper as a pawn to gain entrance into a mansion house where the bad guys convene. The object of his deceit is winningly played by Diana Dors and she affords the film the few brief moments of humor seen onscreen. On the opposite end of the spectrum, when Canning disappears, Jonas teams for a while with his glamorous wife played by Sylvia Sims. 

The film is ably directed by Seth Holt, but he is guilty of bungling a couple of shots. In one scene, Jonas has his hands bound behind his back by heavy rope. He gains access to a small razor and - presto!- he is free in a matter of seconds, when, in fact, such a feat would take hours to accomplish even if it were possible. In a climactic scene aboard a yacht that is in the midst of a dangerous pea soup-like fog near some dangerous reefs, Jonas simply dives overboard with no explanation as to how he survived and made it back to some finely-tailored clothing. A bit more judicious editing would have helped in these scenes.

The plot of "Danger Route" becomes almost incomprehensible and the film, which was largely shot at Shepperton Studios, didn't ignite much interest and was a casualty of the spy movie tidal wave of the era. Thus, a planned sequel never materialized. However, with all due respect to Dave Worrall, I found the film to be enjoyable fun largely due to the inspired cast, especially since I can't resist any movie featuring Harry Andrews.

Cinema Retro has received the following press release from UK-based Fabulous Films.

"Dr Terror’s House of Horrors is a fascinating and fast paced example of portmanteau filmmaking with a deadly twist in the tale.... Dr Terror foretells the future… and five men wish he hadn’t…

This was Amicus Productions’ first of 16 horror films made between 1965 and 1977, 7 of which were portmanteau films. The portmanteau style of film helped Amicus (who’s small budget meant filming was done in 2 weeks) get established actors in their films, enabling them to compete with the better known horror film producer - Hammer Film Productions. Hammer film actors such as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were brought in to the cast whilst only needing to be paid for a fifth of the movie, rather than the full film.

This cult classic is directed by horror veteran and two time Academy Award winner Freddie Francis who worked with David Lynch on The Elephant Man (1980), Dune (1984), and The Straight Story (1999). The film stars Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Roy Castle and Donald Sutherland. Francis directed Peter Cushing 8 times saying “I think Peter is absolutely wonderful - there is not an actor in the world who can speak rubbish like Peter and make it sound real”.

Anyone who ever watched Record Breakers knows that Roy Castle played the trumpet, but Castle who plays a jazz musician in the film, mimed his Voodoo track performance with the Tubby Hayes Quintet in the film. Castle replaced jazz legend Acker Bilk at the last minute after he had a heart attack. Virtuoso musician Tubby Hayes’ performance is a highlight of the film as Tubby was at the peak of his career when the film was released. Castle released "Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors/Voodoo Girl" as a 7-inch 45 vinyl in 1965 which is now highly sought after.

Synopsis: Dr. Terror (Peter Cushing) is a mysterious fortune teller who boards a train to tell fellow passengers (including Christopher Lee, Roy Castle and Donald Sutherland) their fortune withtarot cards. Five possible futures unfold: an architect returns to his ancestral home to find a werewolf out for revenge; a huge flesh-eating vine takes over a house; a musician gets involved with voodoo; an art critic is pursued by a disembodied hand and a doctor discovers his new wife is a vampire. But they all end in the same result…

Cast: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Donald Sutherland, Roy Castle, Neil McCallum, Alan Freeman, Peter Madden, Ann Bell, Ursula Howells.

Extras: All new interviews with Kenny Lynch, Ann Bell and Jeremy Kemp (Blu-ray only), House of Cards Documentary, Gallery of Images (courtesy of Stephen Jones), Original Theatrical Trailer, Double-Sided Foldout Graham Humphreys Artwork Poster, 12 Sided Film Guide Booklet."

(This is a PAL format, Region B release.)

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By Lee Pfeiffer

In the mid 1960s Amicus Productions emerged as a Hammer Films wanna-be. The studio aped the Hammer horror films and even occasionally encroached on Hammer by "stealing" their two biggest stars, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. The first Amicus hit was "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors", released in 1965 and top-lining Lee and Cushing. The format of various horror tales linked by an anthology format proved to be so successful that Amicus would repeat the formula over the next decade in films such as "Tales from the Crypt", "Vault of Horror" and "The House That Dripped Blood". The studio cranked out plenty of other horror flicks and by the mid-to-late 1970s Amicus was producing better fare than Hammer, which had made the mistake of increasingly concentrating on blood and gore and tits and ass to the detriment of the overall productions. Occasionally-indeed, very rarely- Amicus would branch out from the horror genre and produce other fare. (i.e. the Bond-inspired "Danger Route" and the social drama "Thank You All Very Much") but the studio was out of its element when it came to producing non-horror flicks.  A particularly inspired offbeat entry in the Amicus canon was the 1970 production "The Mind of Mr. Soames", based on a novel by Charles Eric Maine. The intriguing premise finds John Soames (Terence Stamp) a 30 year-old man who has been in a coma since birth. He has been studiously tended to by the staff at a medical institution in the British countryside where a round-the-clock team sees to it that he is properly nourished and that his limbs are exercised to prevent atrophy. Soames apparently is an orphan with no living relatives so he is in complete custody of the medical community, which realizes he represents a potentially important opportunity for scientific study- if he can be awakened. That possibility comes to pass when an American, Dr. Bergen (Robert Vaughn) arrives at the clinic possessing what he feels is a successful method of performing an operation that will bring Soames "to life". The operation is surprisingly simple and bares fruit when, hours later, Soames begins to open his eyes and make sounds.The staff realize this is a medical first: Soames will come into the world as a grown man but with the mind and instincts of a baby. 

Soames' primary care in the post-operation period is left to Dr. Maitland (Nigel Davenport), who has constructed a rigid schedule to advance Soames' intellect and maturity as quickly as possible. Initially, Maitland's plans pay off and Soames responds favorably to the new world he is discovering. However, over time, as his intellect reaches that of a small child, he begins to harbor resentment towards Maitland for his "all stick and no carrot" approach to learning. Dr. Bergen tries to impress on Maitland the importance of allowing Soames to have some levity in his life and the opportunity to learn at his own pace. Ultimately, Bergen allows Soames outside to enjoy the fresh air and observe nature first hand on the clinic's lush grounds.  Soames is ecstatic but his joy is short-lived when an outraged Dr. Maitland has him forcibly taken back into the institute. Soames ultimately rebels and makes a violent escape into a world he is ill-equipped to understand. He has the maturity and knowledge of a five or six year old boy but knows that he prefers freedom to incarceration. As a massive manhunt for Soames goes into overdrive, the film traces his abilities to elude his pursuers as he manages to travel considerable distance with the help of well-intentioned strangers who don't realize who he is. Soames is ultimately struck by a car driven by a couple on a remote country road. Because the lout of a husband was drunk at the time, they choose to nurse him back to health in their own home. The wife soon realizes who he is and takes pity on him- but when Soames hear's approaching police cars he bolts, thus setting in motion a suspenseful and emotionally wrenching climax.

"The Mind of Mr. Soames" is unlike any other Amicus feature. It isn't a horror film nor a science fiction story and the plot device of a man having been in a coma for his entire life is presented as a totally viable medical possibility. Although there are moments of tension and suspense, this is basically a mature, psychological drama thanks to the intelligent screenplay John Hale and Edward Simpson and the equally impressive, low-key direction of Alan Cooke, who refrains from overplaying the more sensational aspects of the story. Stamp is outstanding in what may have been the most challenging role of his career and he receives excellent support from Robert Vaughn (sporting the beard he grew for his next film, the remake of "Julius Caesar") and Nigel Davenport. Refreshingly, there are no villains in the film. Both doctors have vastly different theories and approaches to treating Soames but they both want what is best for him. The only unsympathetic character is a hipster TV producer and host played by Christian Roberts who seeks to exploit the situation by filming and telecasting Soames' progress as though it were a daily soap opera.

Amicus had a potential winner with this movie but it punted when it came to the advertising campaign by implying it was a horror film. "The mind of a baby, the strength of a madman!" shouted the trailers and the print ads screamed "CAN THIS BABY KILL?" alongside an absurd image of  Stamp locked inside an infant's crib. In fact, Soames does pose a danger to others and himself simply because he doesn't realize the implications of his own strength- but he is presented sympathetically in much the same way as the monster in the original "Frankenstein".  Perhaps because of the botched marketing campaign, the film came and went quickly. In some major U.S. cities it was relegated to a few art houses before it disappeared. In fact the art house circuit was where it belonged but the ad campaign isolated upper crust viewers who favored films by Bergman and Fellini but balked when the saw the over-the-top elements of the ads.

"The Mind of Mr. Soames" is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Cinema Memories: A People's History of Cinema-going in 1960s Britain

Melvyn Stokes, Matthew Jones & Emma Pett

Bloomsbury/ British Film Institute

Published: March 2022

Hardback

237 pages

10 b&w illustrations

ISBN: 9781911239888

RRP: £76

One evening in June 2016 at the Picturehouse on Piccadilly Circus, cinemagoers were transported back fifty years, where a uniformed commissionaire made them queue outside for a screening of One Million Years B.C. Once inside there were usherettes, a cinema manager chain-smoking and shouting at the staff, dozens of people sporting the best Sixties fashion, cavemen and cavewomen (cavepeople?) dragging unwitting participants into some neanderthal roleplay (including this writer), and even a film producer with a dollybird on his arm. After witnessing a competition to find the next Hammer glamour star, which was interrupted by placard-wielding feminists, the public were finally able to enter the cinema screen. The experience did not end there though: during the film there was constant disturbance from usherettes with torches and people fighting or sneaking in and out of the fire exit. Once it was all over the audience stood for the national anthem (or ran out in mock disgust). This was no ordinary evening at the cinema, this was a fantastic event organised by Dr. Matthew Jones of De Montfort University (the cinema manager himself, whose performance was so convincing that the Picturehouse received complaints from the public about his behaviour towards the usherettes), with the aim of bringing to life the fantastic research project ‘Cultural Memory and British Cinema-going of the 1960s’.

Through questionnaires and interviews with hundreds of people over a three-year period, the project gathered memories of what it was like to go to the cinema in the 1960s. Given the age of participants this meant that most of the memories were connected to recollections of childhood and adolescence, of first dates and first sexual experiences, of happiness and occasional danger, and of community and political awareness. This of course makes sense. When one considers cinemagoing, in particular those favourite cinemas of one’s youth, it is the whole experience that is thought of fondly, not just the film itself; there are the posters outside and in the foyer, the elaborate décor, the cinema manager, the box office, the concessions and then the screen itself, where often one came in after the film had started. There were usherettes in uniforms armed with torches to make sure no one was getting too carried away on the back row, or to police single men moving too close to younger audience members. There was a thick smoky haze, which was not affected by attempts to have a separate non-smoking section of the auditorium, and some cinemas were art deco palaces whilst others were literal fleapits.

This terrific book brings together the results of this research in a non-immersive experience which is sure to bring back memories of the reader’s own cinema memories. The book is organised into topics, with the memories of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ both conforming to established cultural history as well as questioning it. After all, the Sixties were not swinging for everyone, and it often depended on whether you lived in the north or the south. Some people do remember the films of course, and the stars, many of whom were role models and fashion icons. In the chapter on post-colonial audiences, such as the ‘Windrush Generation’, some participants recall learning about English culture and behaviour by attending the cinema. Audience memories of Hollywood are also discussed, as are those who recalled attending European and world cinema, often in a more arthouse-type cinema than the usual family cinema or fleapit.

This research is an excellent reminder of the importance of the cinema experience in that culturally-significant decade (political changes and their impacts on the public, such as the legalisation of both abortion and homosexuality in 1967 are discussed in reference to films such as Alfie and Victim), and it also serves to point out just how much has changed over the last fifty years: intermissions are rare, the smoking has thankfully gone, and popcorn has replaced the choc ice as the snack of choice. Cinema Memories: A People's History of Cinema-going in 1960s Britain may provoke nostalgia in some older readers, whilst for younger readers it’s a fascinating window into an almost lost world. Admittedly it’s not quite the same as that night out at the cinema in 2016, but at least you are less likely to have to pretend to be a caveman.

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“RAIN, A BIKE, WALK-UPS, AND THE DELIVERY GUY”

By Raymond Benson

The filmmaker Sean Baker, who most recently gave us (along with co-producer Shih-Ching Tsou) such striking independent features as The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021), began his career modestly with extremely low-budget indie pictures that take on a cinema verité style (a type of documentary-like filmmaking that is improvisational and attempts to capture “reality” in all of its harsh and spontaneous truths). Baker co-directed with Tsou his second feature film, released in 2004, Take Out, which is a slice of life tale that takes place within the twelve hours of a single day.

Ming Ding (Charles Jang) is an undocumented Chinese immigrant living in New York City’s Chinatown. He had come to America in search of a better way of life, leaving his wife and son in China until a later date when he could afford to bring them over legally. Unfortunately, he owes a great deal of money to an unscrupulous loan shark, whose muscle men show up at Ming’s apartment of squalor (where several immigrants also live) and demand that a payment of $800 be made by the end of the day or else Ming’s balance owed will be doubled. They strike Ming in the back with a hammer to emphasize their seriousness. Ming already has $500—his entire savings—so he must find $300 over the next several hours. Ming works as a delivery boy for a take out Chinese restaurant on the Upper West Side. One of his co-workers, Young (Jeng-Hua Yu), gives him $150. Thus begins a frantic, and tension-filled race against the clock for Ming to deliver enough orders to customers in an attempt to make $150 more in tips. Seeing that many customers barely tip anything at all, the task is definitely a challenge.

Compounding the situation is that Mother Nature has decided that this would be a day in which torrential rain must plummet New York all day long. So poor Ming must ride his bicycle in the downpour back and forth from the restaurant to customers’ residences. Sometimes the elevator in high-rise buildings is out of order. Many times he must trek up the stairs to walk-up apartments. Customers run the gamut—some are nice and friendly; more are cranky or racist or cheapskates or all of the above- and, this being New York City, Ming must also be wary of criminals who might target him for the money he’s carrying.

This is a riveting piece of cinema that is not only suspenseful but also quite revealing. Those of us who have ordered take out Chinese food in the big city perhaps do not appreciate what a difficult job it is for the delivery guy. It is hard, thankless work. We also get to see how a storefront Chinese take-out place (not a sit-down restaurant) works behind the scenes. The manager and counter person, Big Sister (Wang-Thye Lee), is the conduit between the kitchen and the public. She speaks English perhaps better than any of the other employees, but she’s not beyond throwing insults to or cursing out rude customers in Mandarin that the recipients don’t understand.

Shih-Ching Tsou, who has collaborated with Baker as a producer on his subsequent pictures, was instrumental in bringing Take Out to life. She not only co-produced the movie, but also co-wrote and co-directed it with Baker, who cannot speak Mandarin or Cantonese. The script was written in English, but Tsou translated it into Chinese for the actors, who were, for the most part, amateurs. Baker did all of the striking camerawork himself along with the editing. Take Out is truly a “homemade” production.

The acting is remarkably potent. Charles Jang as Ming doesn’t say much in the movie, but his inner turmoil and frustrations are clearly evident in his charismatic demeanor and stoic facial expressions. He rarely reveals his pain, but we know what he’s feeling. Of special note is Wang-Thye Lee as Big Sister, who is in many ways the beating heart of the film. She is a pleasure to watch in action.

The Criterion Collection’s Blu-ray release presents a new 4K digital restoration, supervised and approved by Baker and Tsou. It has an uncompressed stereo soundtrack and comes with an audio commentary by Baker, Tsou, and Jang. There are new English subtitles, as well as English captioning for the hearing impaired. Supplements include a fascinating new documentary on the film featuring interviews with Baker, Tsou, Jang, Lee, and Yu; a vintage documentary on the making of the film; deleted scenes; Jang’s screen test; and the theatrical trailer. The booklet comes with an essay by filmmaker and author J. J. Murphy.

Take Out is for fans of Sean Baker’s work, New York City locales, and independent filmmaking with a bite. Highly recommended.

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Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Midnight Marquee Press.

When Sir Christopher Lee passed away at the age of 93 in 2015, it was truly the end of an era. He was the last of the great horror stars. This book is a comprehensive overview of Lee's work in the horror genre, including movies, books, audio recordings and video games. As well as providing in-depth production histories and critical analysis, new interviews have been conducted with Lee's co-workers (some of them speaking here for the first time), which shed fresh light upon the man and his work. Few actors spanned the generations with more lasting appeal than Christopher Lee. From his ventures with Hammer-whose swift gradation of flesh and blood into a staid 1950s cinema broke new ground-to his work, in the next century, on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and numerous interactive formats, Lee was constantly abreast of advancements in his industry. Consequently, this book can be read not only as an alternative history of the Horror Film, but also of the myriad developments within cinema itself.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

After the Golden Era of Universal monster movies in the 1930s and 40s, the cinematic fiends were largely relegated to "B" movie status. In the mid-1950s, Hammer Films, a production company founded in 1934, discovered there was gold in them 'thar monsters and moved away from the largely nondescript, low-budget films they were known for in favor of the horror and science fiction movies that would quickly define the Hammer legacy. The studio brought to the screen the first color movies featuring Dracula, Frankenstein and The Mummy, not to mention Sherlock Holmes ("The Hound of the Baskervilles"). The British company kept censors on their toes with an ample supply of busty beauties and a good sampling of bloody set pieces. Audiences that were starved for adult-oriented fare in these genres responded with enthusiasm and Hammer continued to supply a good number of hit films on relatively modest budgets. By the 1970s, new screen freedoms resulted in plenty of prurient cinematic films and the shocking aspects of the Hammer films seemed mundane. Consequently, the studio began to up the ante, substituting more sex and violence in place of the production qualities and fine scripts that had been the hallmark of earlier films. By the 1980s, the company was through and existed only as a legal entity. Over the decades, rumors of a comeback drifted through the film industry with no sign of a resurrection. Under a new management team in the 2000s, Hammer rose from the grave and began making films once again. They had a critically acclaimed boxoffice hit in 2012 with the refreshingly traditional ghost story "The Woman in Black" starring Daniel Radcliffe but the output since has proven to be sporadic and erratic.

One "modern" Hammer production that merits some attention is the largely-ignored "The Tenant", released in 2011. Two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank stars as New York Emergency Room doctor Juliet Devereau. Like many Gotham residents, she's on the hunt for an affordable apartment in a city that practically requires a supply of gold bullion to pay the rent. She seems to strike pay dirt with her discovery of a large old building that has a cavernous apartment for rent at the "affordable" price of $3800 a month (and this was in 2011). The place was once an office building but it is being painstakingly and slowly restored by its owner, Max (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a somewhat shy, polite and rather hunky young guy who lives in the building with his grandfather August (Hammer icon Christopher Lee). In fact, they appear to be the only residents, as Max only has one apartment available for rent. Juliet falls in love with the place. It's huge by Manhattan standards. Max points out the negative aspects: he is working long hours on the restoration which requires much of the building to appear unsightly. It's also a noisy process. Additionally, the elevated subway runs almost directly past her bedroom window. Undeterred, Juliet enthusiastically rents the place. It's close to work and affords an atmosphere of solitude and charm. But you know the way these things go in a Hammer film.

Max is rather shy but extremely polite and he's always on hand to carry out any household-related requests. Juliet finds him attractive and before long she is in bed with Max. But before any hanky panky takes place, she thinks the better of becoming romantically involved with her landlord and abruptly puts an end to their dalliance. She just wants to be friends, as she's also nursing the wounds from breaking up with her longtime boyfriend Jack (Lee Pace). Max remains polite but we see he is carrying a lot of psychological baggage. Juliet's rejection of him leads to a meltdown. Before long, he's going the full Norman Bates route, using assorted peepholes that allows him to see the object of his desire as she moves about her apartment. Then things get really dangerous for Juliet.

On one level, "The Resident" is just another "young woman in jeopardy" movie pitting our heroine against a creepy stalker. But director Antti Jokenen is a cut above the directors of similar, disposable films. Aided by fine performances by Swank (who executive produced) and Morgan, he is able to elevate the movie above many entries in this genre. As with numerous Hitchcock films, this one seems intent on demonstrating that there isn't necessarily safety in numbers. The teeming streets of Manhattan lay only yards away, but Juliet ultimately finds herself very much alone and isolated when her life is at stake. By the time the inevitable confrontation with her tormentor finally comes, Jokenen's slow-boil approach has resulted in a considerable degree of nail-biting suspense. It's too bad the film becomes a bit cliched in the final moments (whenever a power tool is shown in a flick such as this, you know someone is going to end up using it as a deadly weapon.) It's also a bit disappointing that Christopher Lee (in his final Hammer film) is not given more screen time. It's a joy to see him on screen, but he has little to do and is primarily only seen in the early part of the movie. Nevertheless, there are other merits including outstanding cinematography by Guillermo Navarro and creative editing by Oscar winner Bob Murawski. There's also an appropriately eerie score by John Ottman and a literate script by Jokinen and Robert Orr. Special kudos to Production Designer J. Dennis Washington, for his creative design of the apartment house and its underlying secret passages.The film was shot in only 30 days, with interiors filmed in a studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Considering the talent involved, it's surprising that "The Resident" went straight to video in America and didn't make much of a splash in that realm. Since Cinema Retro likes to make readers aware of worthy and overlooked films, I can recommend "The Tenant". It is by no means a horror classic, but it deserved a far better fate.

The film is currently streaming on Amazon Prime. Click here to order on Blu-ray from Amazon.

BY ERNIE MAGNOTTA

Ah, the early 1970s. If you were a monster movie fan, this was a fun time to be around. After all, creature features, which became popular with kids of the late 1950s and continued throughout the 60s, were still all the rage. Classic monster movies like Universal’s Son of Frankenstein (1939) starring horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, The Wolf Man (1941) starring the immortal Lon Chaney, Jr. and Hammer Films’ amazing and highly enjoyable Christopher Lee Dracula series were constantly playing on television. The late, great Forrest Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine was required reading for all 70s monster-kids, and Aurora plastics put out a wonderful line of glow-in-the-dark monster model kits which happily kept fans busy for hours. The local drive-ins and hard top theaters also rode the creature feature wave as, every week it seemed, movie houses were filled with outstanding, atmospheric delights starring horror kings Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Sir Lee. Monster enthusiasts couldn’t get enough.

Meanwhile, legendary film studio American International Pictures, who for almost two decades had specialized in producing fun, low-budget, youth-oriented films such as 1957’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf as well as the Beach Party, Edgar Allan Poe and Biker film cycles of the 1960s, decided to create a new creature feature. Most likely due to both the huge popularity of monster films and the Hammer vampire movies of the time, AIP created their own Dracula-like villain; a modern-day bloodsucker named Count Yorga. Benefitting from a solid script, above average direction and an amazing performance by star Robert Quarry (Dr. Phibes Rises Again) as Yorga, Count Yorga, Vampire (1970) did very well at the box office. It’s no surprise that AIP almost immediately started work on a sequel titled, appropriately enough, The Return of Count Yorga.

After crumbling to dust in Count Yorga, Vampire, the evil Count is resurrected when the world famous and supposedly supernatural Santa Ana Winds blow across an old cemetery. In no time, Yorga, his faithful servant, Brudah, and his horde of vampire brides put the bite on oblivious locals and cast a spell over little Billy, younger brother of the beautiful Cynthia who Yorga has developed deep feelings for. The undead fiend then kills Cynthia’s parents, turns her sister, Ellen, into a vampire bride and brings an unconscious Cynthia to his home where he plans to romance the lovely, young woman. Cynthia awakens and is told by Yorga that her parents were in an accident and that he will be caring for her until they are well. Meanwhile, Cynthia’s maid, Jennifer, who discovered the dead bodies, informs the police, but when they arrive, they find that the corpses have mysteriously disappeared. Cynthia’s fiancé, David, suspects that Yorga may be behind the grisly goings-on and, with the help of Lieutenant Madden, Sargent O’Connor and a frightened Reverend, he sneaks into Yorga’s lair in an attempt to rescue his beloved and stop the wicked Count for good.

Originally titled Yorga Returns, but changed to The Return of Count Yorga at the time of its release, the very entertaining sequel contains much of the fun, eerie atmosphere of the first movie and also uses most of the same cast and crew. The film was solidly directed by Bob Kelljan (Scream, Blacula, Scream) who helmed the original, and the engaging and creepy story was written by Kelljan and newcomer (to the Yorga series) Yvonne Wilder (Seems Like Old Times) who also shines in the role of mute maid, Jennifer. Kelljan keeps the film moving while, all along, building tension and dread; most notably in a terrific scene where Yorga sends his vampire brides to attack Cynthia’s family in their home one windy night. The talented director also keeps the film current (for 1971) by having the brides resemble zombies from the 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead as well as giving their terrifying home invasion sequence a definite Charles Manson feel.

Michael Macready (Terror House), who produced and starred in Count Yorga, Vampire, once again takes on producing chores and makes a cameo appearance as well. His dad, actor George Macready (Gilda), who narrated the first film, also appears in a brief, but humorous scene. Talented composer Bill Marx (son of Harpo) returns and contributes another atmospheric and extremely eerie score while the likeable Roger Perry (Harrigan and Son), who played the heroic lead in the first Yorga film, returns in a similar role as Cynthia’s concerned fiancé, David. Edward Walsh (Another 48 Hrs.) is also back as Brudah and he’s just as intimidating as he was the first time around. Last, but certainly not least, the late, great Robert Quarry returns to the role for which he will be forever remembered: Count Yorga. Quarry once again plays the bloodthirsty Count as suave, sophisticated, cultured and magnetic. For the first time ever, the lonely Yorga falls in love and Quarry really makes you believe that he is completely taken with Cynthia. In other scenes, you can sense his pain at feeling this new and powerful emotion. Of course Yorga is also an evil, undead fiend and Quarry doesn’t disappoint in that department either as his vampire can be convincingly cold and extremely ruthless. Also, for a movie that’s over 40 years-old, you wouldn’t expect the scares to still work. However, the frightening image of a crazed, bloodthirsty Quarry/Yorga running out of the darkness in slow motion, fangs bared and arms outstretched while chasing a terrified victim, is still the stuff of nightmares.

We have plenty of newcomers to the series and they’re all wonderful. The lovely, talented and Emmy-winning Mariette Hartley (Marnie) is perfect as the goodhearted Cynthia. Both Rudy De Luca (High Anxiety) and, in an early appearance, Craig T. Nelson (Poltergeist) are believable, likeable and a bit humorous as the skeptical cops. Philip Frame (The Little Ark) is extremely creepy as young Tommy; Tom Toner (Splash) is a bit funny as the Reverend; Karen Houston/Ericson (Night of the Demons) does well as Ellen, Cynthia’s sister (especially in the scene where she vamps out), and David Lampson (Silence) is solid as Ellen’s faithful boyfriend, Jason. Helen Baron (Private Benjamin) and the highly recognizable Walter Brooke (The Graduate) are seen early on as Cynthia’s parents, Corrine Conley (Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer) skulks around as an old witch, and beloved character actor Michael Pataki (Grave of the Vampire) shows up briefly as a concerned boyfriend whose girl (Jesse Wells from Wizards) has been attacked by Yorga. B-movie aficionados of the 60s and 70s will be interested to know that the multi-talented Gary Kent, who appeared in many fun drive-in films such as Schoolgirls in Chains and Dracula vs. Frankenstein, was stunt coordinator on this film, and musician Marilynn Lovell, who provided music for Kelljan’s Scream, Blacula, Scream, Michael Macready’s Terror House and Quarry’s Deathmaster, sings the haunting tune “Think It Over.”

As already stated, the film is scary, atmospheric, well-directed and well-acted, but as much praise as it gets, I believe that it is still quite underrated. American International Pictures was all set to have Count Yorga rise from the grave once more, but, for whatever reason, a third film was, unfortunately, never made.

(Shout Factory’s Blu-ray special edition of the film is out of print but the movie is available for streaming rental or purchase on Amazon).

BY JOHN M. WHALEN

When Trappist Monk Ambrose (Marty Feldman) is told by Brother Thelonious (Alfred Hyde-White), the abbot of the monastery, that he must go out into the world to raise $5,000 to pay off the church’s landlord, he begs him not to make him go. Ambrose was left on the monastery’s doorstep as an infant and has never set foot out in the real world. Universal’s “In God We Trust” (1980) is the story of what happens when a totally innocent character confronts a corrupt world, including and especially those who commercialize and capitalize on religion. In another sense, it’s also the story of Marty Feldman, the British comedian with the bulging eyeballs who believed you could tell the truth and make jokes about society’s sacred cows and not pay a price for it.

Feldman co-wrote (with Chris Allen), starred in and directed “In God We Trust,” (the full title of which is actually, “In God We Trust; Give Me That Prime Time Religion.”) It was the first film of a five-picture deal Feldman made with Universal after having a hit with “The Last Remake of Beau Geste” (1977), and his breakthrough role as Igor, the bug-eyed hunchback in Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.” “In God We Trust” is a scathing satire on the big business of organized religion as practiced by TV evangelists. The film is prophetic in terms of how it predated the TV evangelist scandals of the mid-80s. Jim and Tammy Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart and others would go down in infamy soon after the film was released. (Although some infamy lasts longer than others. Jim Bakker is back on TV and Tammy is the subject of an Oscar-nominated film.) It also warned of the dangers of mixing church and state, something that has become part of American politics today.

The first person Brother Ambrose meets after he’s kicked out of the monastery is Reverend Sebastian Melmoth (Peter Boyle), a traveling minister who drives around in a church built on top of a truck. The reverend takes him to Los Angeles and sets up his stand selling Levitating Lazarus Dolls. “Step right up, sinners!” the reverend says. “Take a miracle home with you! Get your own Levitating Lazarus Doll! See him rise from the dead in the privacy of your own home!”

His next encounter is with a hooker with a heart of gold named Mary (Louise Lasser). She is, in fact, the first woman Ambrose ever met and he’s surprised when she tries to hide from cops by climbing up under his robe. When they stop at an outdoor lunch counter they have a fairly hilarious discussion about sex, in which he tells her he notices that girls are different from men. “You have legs and those bumpy bits.” He ends up staying in her apartment, sleeping on the sofa.

Next day he goes out to look for a job and is hired as a carpenter for P. Pilate Wholesale Religious Novelties, nailing little plastic Jesus figurines to wooden crucifixes. It’s not long until he has sex with Mary and goes into a church called The World Wide Church of Psychic Humiliation, and tries to confess his sins. But the priest’s hearing aid malfunctions and turns into a microphone blaring out Ambrose’s detailed confession to anyone in hearing distance. When he comes out of the church a crowd on the sidewalk gives him a big round of applause.

Ambrose next encounters TV evangelist Armageddon T. Thunderbird (Andy Kaufman), head of the Church of Divine Profit (CDP). The legendary Kaufman dressed in a White Elvis suit with a snow white bouffant hairdo piled on top of his head gives an amazing performance as a power mad preacher out to take over the world. He’s headquartered in a high rise office building that has a replica of the Capitol Dome on the roof. His private office is modeled after the White House Oval Office. There’s a side door that opens into a private room where Thunderbird converses with G.O.D., (General Operational Directorevator), a giant computer containing God himself (Richard Pryor).

The script contains some ruefully funny lines. When Ambrose tells world- weary hooker Mary that he thought the meek were supposed to inherit the earth, she tells him: “The meek may inherit the earth but not until the strong are finished with it. By that time, it won’t be worth having.”

Rev. Thunderbird gets to toss off one liners like: “You can fool some of the people all the time.” When he discovers Rev. Melmoth’s idea of a traveling church: “Mobile Churches!” he says. “Let’s run that up the crucifix and see who genuflects!” On the importance of money, he says: “It takes money to buy things. Who’s going to clothe you? J.C. or J.C. Penney?” He guilts his audience with: “God is in intensive care and who put him there? You did!”

Thunderbird builds a fleet of mobile churches, designed with familiar looking Golden Arches and a neon sign on top that keeps track of how many million souls are being saved every day. He dupes Ambrose into fronting the mobile church business by offering to pay off the monastery’s mortgage. Things seem to be going all Thunderbird’s way until Brother Ambrose has a private talk with G.O.D.

It’s hard to believe how critics back in 1980 dismissed “In God We Trust” as a total failure. Even Roger Ebert gave it one and a half stars and accused Feldman, among other things, of thinking that “characters will seem funny if you give them a funny name.” The movie deserved a better reception. That’s not to say it’s not without its flaws. A little more care could have been taken with continuity. Some scenes don’t seem to flow naturally into the next, and some of the comedy seems forced. But overall it’s a highly entertaining film that has something important to say.

Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray comes with an exceptional audio commentary by Feldman’s close friend, writer Alan Spencer, creator of the “Sledge Hammer” TV series (1986-1988). Spencer provides his explanation for “In God We Trust’s” failure at the box office. In one scene Thunderbird cites numerous three-letter conglomerates, starting with the Holy Trinity, including “ATT, RCA, GMC, ITT, IBM FBI, MCA, KKK . . . .“ Universal demanded that MCA, its parent company, be removed from the soundtrack. Feldman had the right of final cut in his contract and refused. According to Spencer, the studio cut Feldman’s legs out from under him by refusing to promote the film and compromised its distribution when it was released. On top of that they threw his five-movie deal out. Feldman was devastated. His next film, “Slapstick of Another Kind,” (1984) was a Jerry Lewis flop that Siskel and Ebert called the worst film of 1984. Feldman at least was spared hearing that. He died in 1982 of a heart attack in Mexico while on the set of “Yellowbeard” (1983), a pirate comedy starring Graham Chapman and Eric Idle. Mel Brooks took the high road and attributed his death to his habit of smoking five packs of cigarettes a day, drinking gallons of coffee and eating fried eggs every day.

The disc also includes a separate audio commentary by film historian and author Bryan Reesman. Reesman has a mile-a-minute style of delivery that sometimes is hard to keep up with but his commentary contains loads of information. There are a number of trailers included on the disc including a “Trailers from Hell” for “In God We Trust” with Alan Spencer.

This is an important Blu-ray release that hopefully will inspire a reevaluation of “In God We Trust.” Highly recommended.

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(Check out John M. Whalen's blog)

By Hank Reineke

Village of the Damned is the cinematic moniker of John Wyndham’s far less exploitative titled 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos. Wyndham’s writing specialty was science-fiction: he graduated from contributing short stories to such colorful genre magazines as Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories to publishing full-fledged novels. Though his stories were occasionally adapted for such television dramas as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, his cinematic credits were relatively few. Village of the Damned is perhaps his best remembered movie tie-in, but a 1951 novel was also filmed and subsequently released as Day of the Triffids (Allied Artists, 1962).

Village of the Damned was originally conceived to film in Hollywood, and American writer Stirling Silliphant was tapped to compose the screenplay for the movie – which was to be, more or less, a faithful adaptation of Wyndham’s novel. Though Silliphant had accrued a few film credits, he was primarily regarded as a television writer, having contributed a score of 1950s teleplays to a variety of programs ranging from The Mickey Mouse Club to Perry Mason to Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Wolf Rilla, a German-born novelist but long-time a resident of London, was tapped to direct Village of the Damned. Rilla’s background too was mostly in television production, having written or directed a score of TV comedies and dramas over the span of a dozen years. Rilla was approached to direct Village when studio accountants deemed it far more economical to film in England rather than Hollywood. Rilla thought Silliphant’s scenario was workable. But he also thought the Yank’s grasp of contemporary British customs and vernacular was lacking. So Rilla and the film’s British producer Ronald Kinnoch (the latter writing under the pseudonym of “George Barclay”) reworked the original script to better authenticate and Anglicize.

The rewrite was successful in that regard. The atmosphere surrounding Village of the Damned is nothing less than stiff-lipped British in tone. In 2022 looking back, one could easily mistake Village as a Hammer Film Production (ala the Quatermass series).  Several prominent cast members of Village, including Barbara Shelley and Michael Gwynn, would be familiar to Hammer Films devotees, their faces having graced screens in such productions as The Camp on Blood Island, The Revenge of Frankenstein, Quatermass and the Pit, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, Rasputin, the Mad Monk, Scars of Dracula and The Gorgon. The venerable British actor George Sanders, the former star of The Saint film series, is fittingly at the center of the mystery. And there’s plenty of mystery about…

The tiny, sleepy hamlet of Midwich is the “village” referenced in the film’s title.  Nothing much ever happened in Midwich until, for an odd four-hour interval, time not only stops but is seemingly lost. The townspeople, for reasons unknown, all fall into unconsciousness.  Initially there doesn’t appear there was any significant fall-out from this strange time-warping aberration, but several months later every village woman of childbearing age - married, courting or celibate - finds themselves pregnant.  This collective simultaneously give birth to children unusual in both manner and appearance. The children, whom some suspect are the product of some strange “impulse from the universe,” are uniformly uber-intelligent, gifted beyond their years. While polite to their parents and other adults, the children also strangely distant, unusually formal and unemotional in manner.

The children are also endowed with several peculiar special gifts – not the least of which is the ability to read the minds of the adults. This ability has unnerved those members of the community who are forced to interact with these mysterious youngsters.  It’s soon revealed these children are, as suspected, the offspring of alien beings. They have been imbedded in the village to study the minds and culture of their earth-bound galactic neighbors. For what purpose? Well, no one is sure, but the worst is feared.  Once the British military gets involved their intelligence agents report the residents of Midwich are not alone.  Reports are coming in of similar alien birth-takeovers amongst rural Eskimo populations as well as countries sitting behind the Iron Curtain. 

Gordon Zellaby (George Sanders) and his wife Anthea (Barbara Shelley) are the parents of one such “special” child, David (Martin Stephens). David seems to be the spokesman of the children. He also is not shy in demonstrating the bad habit of telepathically coercing those he perceives as enemies to take their own lives.  The situation worsens when the school-age alien brood make the decision to abandon Midwich to imbed more widely among the populace.  The town elders and military realize they can’t allow these aliens, semi- contained in Midwich, to spread further afield.  But how does one plot against those with the ability to read every thought that crosses the minds of those wishing them destruction?

It’s a neat premise and Village of the Damned was a surprising hit for MGM, the B-film’s appeal amongst cinemagoers and critics alike having caught the studio off guard. When studio brass realized they had a commercial steamroller on their hands, the publicity department was free to go full throttle. MGM began to take out full page ads in the trades, boasting that “Village of the Damned Saturation Openings” were rollin-up “Sensational Grosses!” This wasn’t mere ballyhoo, it was the truth. So it wasn’t terribly surprising when MGM announced a follow-up feature was already in consideration.

Anton Leader was chosen to direct this sequel Children of the Damned. Similar to Rilla, Leader was best known for his directorial work on television, not in motion pictures. In fact, following a successful career in the 1940s as a producer of radio dramas, Leader had worked almost exclusively on the small screen. He would subsequently helm an episode or two of practically every iconic television series of the 1950s and 1960s. Leader had left the U.S. for Europe in February 1962, hoping to set up his own production company on the continent. This dream was deferred when Leader was asked to direct Children of the Damned and given a nifty $400,000 budget to do so.

Having worked almost exclusively in the penny-pinching television industry, Leader gladly accepted. He would tell a journalist from Variety that it had been good to get away from TV since a big screen filmmaker was “more respectfully regraded” and given more time and latitude to do a “respectable job.” The problem was Leader envisioned Children of the Damned as an “art picture.” The brass at MGM Britain was less interested in making a profit, not a point. They wanted Children of the Damned be a coattail-riding horror film, which wasn’t the film as delivered.

Variety recorded Leader’s chagrin when the director was first made aware of the “advertising campaign mapped out by MGM […] lurid billing as an exploitation special.” Indeed, the poster art played up only a ghastly sensationalism: “They Come To Conquer the World… So young, so innocent, so utterly deadly!” A second ad mat was no more constrained (nor honest) in its carnival-barking: “Beware the Eyes that Paralyze! All-New Suspense Shocker… even more Eerie and Unearthly than Village of the Damned!”

In truth there’s very little eeriness and only a bit of suspense in the film. Children isn’t a bad film, but it is a curious follow-up, one that wildly detours from the premise of the original. There’s only a smattering of sci-fi elements. The “children” number only six in this sequel and their provenance is multi-national. The children are, again, borne by unwed women “never touched.” All six are brilliant, each possessing “intellect beyond belief.” It’s this reason that makes them of great scientific interest to Dr. Tom Llewellyn (Ian Hendry), a psychologist and Dr. David Neville (Alan Bader), a geneticist. They suggest a UNESCO program should be commissioned to study the children.

The problem is that the children do not wish to be studied. They escape from their respective embassies to gather inside the bowels of an old church. There was no need for them to proactively discuss this decision amongst each other – or, at least, not in the usual oral method. Since they communicate with one another through telepathy, they already share a communal knowledge base. They have no separate nor distinct personalities and mostly, if not exclusively, communicate their wishes to be left alone through an intermediary they control through hypnotism.

A sector of both the scientific establishment and military believe it would be best to “destroy” the children, believing them to be the spearhead of an invasion of aliens. But the army discovers the children are well-equipped to defend themselves against any aggressive action. Unlike the Village children, this new group of moppets choose only to use their telepathic energies towards their own defense. They’re not interested in causing harm to anyone, even as the bowels beneath their church sanctuary are wired with explosives.

Children is, without doubt, a different animal than Village. John Briley, the U.S. born screenwriter would contribute an original screenplay for the sequel, one only loosely based on the premise of the Wyndham novel. Though early in his career, Briley was no hack merely trying to get along by writing B-pictures. In 1983, as the writer of Ghandi, Briley was awarded an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

But the folks going to the cinema to catch Children of the Damned wanted a horror film, and no doubt felt cheated upon exiting. This film was more of a preachy “co-existence not no-existence” exercise. Most reviews of the film were critical of the movie’s high-minded and obvious aspiration as being experienced as a “message film.” One critic thought the concocted scenario was simply too precious. The filmmakers were attempting to endow the film “with moral significance […] heavy-handed, unnecessary and too pretentious an aim for so relatively modest a production venture.”

Although Children of the Damned was Leader’s last feature film of significance, the British trades were reporting the novelist/director had already reworked Christopher Monig’s 1956 mystery novel The Burned Man into a screen treatment, pitching the idea of bringing it to the screen to Hammer’s James Carreras.  That project would not happen, for better or worse, and Leader soon returned to TV directing. Children of the Damned is more of a curio today, but Village of the Damned has enjoyed lasting notoriety, even having been remade by Horror-film maestro John Carpenter in 1995. But while Carpenter’s film easily bests any of the antiquated optical effects of the 1960 version, Rilla’s original remains the more iconic.

Village of the Damned and Children of the Damned are made available as BD-ROMS through the Warner Archive Collection. Village is presented in 1080p High Definition 16 x 9 1:78.1 and in DTS HD Master Audio Mono. Children has been made available in 1080p High Definition 16 x 9 1:85.1 and in DTS HD Master Audio Mono. Both films are relativity sparse with extras, though both offer each film’s theatrical trailer and removable English subs. The only true “special features” is Steve Haberman’s commentary track on Village and screenwriter John Briley’s commentary on Children.

Click here to order "Village of the Damned" Blu-ray from Amazon

Click here to order "Children of the Damned" Blu-ray from Amazon

By Hank Reineke

We’re told the expression “Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold” had origin in seventeenth-century France. I’ve no idea if this is accurate, nor convinced it matters. What is unquestionable is that in life, literature and art, the subject of revenge remains constant. Interestingly, the avenging of injustices, real and perceived, is common to both heroes and their adversaries. Sometimes motivations combine so the separation between heroism and evil becomes muddied. As the iconic and deranged fiend Dr. Anton Phibes, the great Vincent Price adroitly manages to move his audience to cheer as his character carries out a series of brutal and theatrical murders.

Price appears as the titular Dr. Phibes in two of what are, inarguably, the actor’s three best recalled films of the 1970s. The cycle was kicked off by Robert Fuest’s The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971) and Dr. Phibes Rises Again! (1972), with Douglas Hickox’s Theater of Blood (1973) – a similar film in style to the two-pic Phibes’ franchise – serving as an unofficial third act. Truth be told, only Vincent Price could manage to successfully pull off such sadistic and dark malarkey as presented above. Price’s reputation for playing gloomy, sinister characters with a sense of self-parodying gallows-humor whimsy made him a perfect cast.

The early to mid-1970s may not have completely signaled the end of old-school horror films, but it was the end of an era for those players still carrying the torch. It was primarily the British who kept the familiar tropes alive through the bloody, and often Gothic, productions of Hammer, Amicus, Tigon and late-to-the game Tyburn. Though Hammer was reviled in the 1960s for allowing Technicolor on-screen bloodletting, such crimson exploitation was nothing to what was to follow. American independents had already pushed the envelope to the extreme with such disturbing drive-in fare as Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left (1972) and Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974).

Overnight, the performances and films of such polished, academy trained actors as Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were made antiquated and unhip. Empty-headed teenagers were the new principal players, and with the release of John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), old-school horror was relegated to the annals of film studies as a flood of imitations flooded movie screens. While Vincent Price didn’t disappear from movie-house screens, he was seen less often. You were more likely to catch Price on television in a TV-movie, drama, situation comedy or as a guest on Hollywood Squares. Or, perhaps, you might have been fortunate enough to catch the veteran actor trotting the boards in a traveling theatrical production.

Price was, understandably, not a great fan of the so-called “slasher” film genre. Such disgruntlement was, no doubt, partly the result of a loss of big screen offers and opportunities. Price considered the slasher film “with all their blood and violence […] a different genre from the wonderful Edgar Allan Poe films we used to make for Roger Corman.” In interviews from that period Price insisted the recent trend on splashing explicit real-life violence onto the big screen was a worrying trend. “When you have the chain saw at the very beginning of the picture that knocks off about fifteen people, where have you got to go?, he sighed to one journalist. “There’s no humor,” he continued. “They’ve just become too violent for me.”

There’s certainly no absence of humor – dark as it may be - present in The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again!. Price is directly responsible for innumerable murders, most often in devilishly amusing methods. I feel that, in some manner of speaking, the Phibes films had a measure of stylized influence on the slasher film genre. The body counts left in the wake of the subsequent slashers are, generally speaking, no greater nor less than those in the Phibes or Theater of Blood exercises.

In terms of thin plotting the Phibes and early slashers are similar in construction. Both substitute logic and a compelling storyline for a fast flowing series of voyeuristic grim executions. The raison d’etre of both enterprises was to deliver an entertaining, sadistic mix of idiosyncratic killings both inventive and amusing. The big difference is that a slate of seasoned actors are summarily dispatched in the Phibes films. In the slashers we tend to cheer on the fates of the teenage-victims due to their visibly painful absence of acting skills.

In the Phibes films Vincent Price isn’t breaking new ground. He’s merely diligently following the established vengeful tradition of preceding movie ghouls. In the nineteen thirties and forties, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi carried out all sorts of vendettas, nearly all the result of some professional slight. Their targets, deserving or not, were always getting trapped behind locked doors and no-escape rooms. This was usually due to their tormentors having had their scientific research purloined or reputations sullied.

There is one key difference between the old-school and new-school horrors. Karloff and Lugosi were crossed men with personalities - as anti-social and vengeful as those personalities might be. Too many of the slasher films, in my view anyway, featured successions of masked killers who killed in cold, robotic-fashion. Often motivations were not explained (or explained without satisfaction) until a movies’ end. The impersonality of such killings, arguably, might have contributed to the mystery – as in a, “Why is this happening?” But such detachment allowed for too many of the best-remembered slashers to serve as little more than an assembly-line cinematic abattoir. Which brings us back to Dr. Phibes.

In The Abominable Dr. Phibes, the titular character is not a medical doctor at all. A once-celebrated organist, Dr. Anton Phibes (Vincent Price) holds a curious combination of PhDs in Musicology and Theology. He uses his knowledge of the latter to unleash a series of murders fashioned from ancient biblical curses. He unleashes his wrath on the medical team he holds responsible for the April 1921 death of his wife Victoria Regina Phibes (Caroline Munro, more or less). Drawing the final curtains on those of he holds responsible, Phibes – with the assistance of the mysterious and beautiful Vulnavia (Virginia North) - methodically executes a series of Old Testament plagues as outlined in the Book of Exodus. He grimly works his way to his most loathed and final target, Chief of Surgeons Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotton). Having planned the biblical killing of Vesalius’s son, the firstborn, Phibes and Vesalius clash over the boy’s gurney in a tense, feverish confrontation at an extravagant manor house on London’s Maldine Square.

While the casting of The Abominable Dr. Phibes is perfect, it was an odd gamble that Price, the film’s star player, was essentially given no interactive dialogue: the actor’s voice is only heard as a filtered, somewhat robotic, voiceover throughout and even then only sparingly. Actress North, Phibes accessory-in-crime, admitted to frustration when she read the script and learned her role too was an unspeaking one. In July of 1971, North, a former model, sighed to an Associated Press journalist, “I don’t know why they don’t let me speak.” But she conceded “Not speaking is more sinister I suppose.” It certainly was in Phibes case, allowing Price’s disdain for his victims to be projected through his sneering countenance.

One would have thought it we saw the last of The Abominable Dr. Phibes at that film’s conclusion. But since American International had raked in a not inconsiderable profit on investment, a Phibes resurrection was quickly arranged. The first Phibes film was often paired in cinema’s with A.I.P.’s Count Yorga, Vampire (1970), a modern-day spin on the old legend. Count Yorga was very successful in in own right, spawning a sequel of its own. That series success led to rumors that A.I.P. might be grooming Yorga star Robert Quarry as a potential horror film successor to the aging Price.

What is obvious is that A.I.P. was interested in bringing to the screen a collaboration of Price and Quarry. This was made plain in December of 1971 when Louis M. “Deke” Heyward, A.I.P.’s Head of European Production, told reporters, “Bringing the ‘abominable’ Phibes and the ‘insidious’ Yorga together was something that just had to happen. The chemistry was too good to miss.” Heyward’s remarks were recorded as shooting was getting underway at Elstree, the producer crowing, “It’s no secret that when we were making the first ‘Phibes’ we were so sure we had a hit on our hands that we took the trouble to shoot the opening scenes of the sequel that was bound to come.”

Dr. Phibes Rises Again! reunites several members of the original, though North was out: Valli Kemp now filled the role of Price’s murderous assistant. Peter Jeffrey is back as the frustrated Scotland Yard detective who invariably arrives on the scene too late to save anyone from their gruesome, if amusing, fates. Another horror icon, Peter Cushing, also appears in the film. As the U.S. and Western Europe was in the throes of King Tut fever due to public interest in the touring display of ancient Egyptian artifacts, co-screenwriters Fuest and Robert Blees moved the action and ensuing mayhem from London to Egypt.

If not as satisfying as its predecessor, Dr. Phibes Rises Again!, is still great fun. Yes, the sequel simply delivers more of the same, but this is not necessarily a bad strategy as formula films go. If anything, the film might be even lighter in tone than the original, Price camping up the villainy to preposterous proportions. Though teased that a third film would follow – a script was commissioned – alas, the cinematic run of Dr. Phibes was (excuse me) “Phinished.”

This two disc Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu ray issue of The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again! offers both films in 1.85:1 widescreen and with 1920 x 1080p resolution and DTS-audio. The set offers no fewer than four isolated audio commentary tracks. The primary commentary comes directly from director Robert Fuest who shares his production memories of The Abominable Dr. Phibes. Secondary commentaries on both The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again! come courtesy of film historian Justin Humphreys, the author of The Dr. Phibes Companion (Bear Manor Media, 2018), the definitive work on all things Phibesian. Video Watchdog’s Tim Lucas also shares thoughts on Dr. Phibes Rises Again!. The set rounds out with a collection of radio and television spots and theatrical trailers. There’s also a colorful slipcover for collectors and Phibes wonks, like myself, to fawn over.

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BY HANK REINEKE

Following the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in 1960-61, there was – forgive me – a “mad” rush to cash in on that film’s coattails. On one side of the pond, U.S. based pastiches of Psycho would come courtesy of Shlock-horror maestro William Castle. The gimmicky producer would rush out the psychological-thriller Homicidal in 1961 and, a bit later - and more famously - with Joan Crawford in Straiht- Jacket (1964). In England, Hammer Film Productions, riding high due to their reimagining of the classic “Universal” monsters, would likewise bring to the screen four psych-thrillers of similar temperament: Paranoiac and Maniac in 1963, Hysteria and Nightmare in 1965.

One of the connecting threads of this quartet of Hammer efforts were that all scenarios had been dutifully scribed by their “house writer” of sorts, Jimmy Sangster. In his entertaining autobiography Do You Want it Good or Tuesday? From Hammer Films to Hollywood: A Life in the Movies (Midnight Marquee Press, 2009), Sangster doesn’t dwell too long on any reminiscences of Nightmare, but offers he found making the film “as being all fun.” Which, I suppose, is a fair self-assessment.

Sangster’s film (which he also produced) begins with a nightmare sequence, a young woman walking frightened and apprehensive through the empty corridors of an insane asylum. That woman, Janet (Jennie Linden) enters the cell of a deranged woman who cackles and taunts menacingly. The girl awakens from her dream with a tortured scream, scaring the living daylights out of her roommates at Hatcher’s School for Young Ladies. One of her teachers at the school, Miss Mary Lewis (Brenda Bruce) realizes this privileged girl is suffering from some sort of nervous condition. She accompanies her anxious student to Hightower, the tony mansion Janet is to inherit when she comes of age.

The staff at Hightower, particularly John (George A. Cooper) and Mrs. Gibbs (Irene Richmond), seem fond of Janet, sympathetic and protective. In contrast, her guardian and executor of the property Henry Baxter (David Knight) - as well as a new face at the mansion, Grace Maddox (Moira Redmond) appear outwardly friendly… but there’s something about the two that arouses one’s suspicions. We soon learn the disturbed mental patient Janet encounters in her nightmares is her very own mother. It’s revealed that on the day of her eleventh birthday, Janet witnessed the brutal stabbing death of her father by the hand of her mother.

Though mom would be subsequently sent to the local madhouse, the brutal memories of the event have left Janet teetering on the verge of a nervous breakdown. The girl is haunted by the thought that her mother’s insanity might prove to be an inherited trait. It’s not helpful to Janet’s mental condition that each night at Hightower she’s visited by a ghostly figure with a scarred face and white dressing gown. The ghost-woman roams the hallways, her appearances always preceding an act of staged violence. It’s enough to drive a young girl crazy… which is exactly what happens in due course.

So far, so good. Unfortunately, the film’s narrative structure takes an unwelcome turn in its second half. Just as Janet Leigh’s embezzling character disappears – surprisingly - from Psycho a mere twenty-minutes into the film, so does Janet from Nightmare. Unfortunately, while Robert Bloch and Hitchcock’s shocking twist works perfectly in Psycho, Sangster’s cinematic mimic simply does not. Once Janet is out of the picture Nightmare is unable to sustain its tension or dramatic momentum.

With beleaguered Janet out of the film, the movie loses not only its principal character but its heart. The mystery of the ghostly figure and subsequent deterioration of Janet’s mental state – the film’s two most compelling elements – are simply abandoned midway through. There are really no surprises in what follows. The two characters we suspect from the beginning as being ne’er-do-wells are, of course, the two who actually are. The only mystery left is whether or not the pair will get away with their devious scheming. And that’s simply not all that exciting.

That’s not to say there’s no value to Nightmare. As one might expect, director Freddie Francis does a proper if workman-like job on the film. The movie offers many of the requisite elements expected of a thriller: twisting doorknobs, tentative walks through long, shadowy corridors, eerie bedside visitations from a mute, ghostly figure and frightened peeks from beneath the shield of a folded blanket.

In a 2013 memoir Francis recalled he was, for the most part, pleased with his work on Nightmare, believing he successfully managed “to sustain the drama and the shock elements.” He would write Sangster’s “excellent script […] was a genuinely scary mystery with of course a sting in the tail.” Author and Hammer historian Jonathan Rigby seems to agree in part, rightfully pointing out that many of Sangster’s psych-thrillers were thinly disguised “Gothic horror films in modern dress.”

Though Francis was well-schooled in the art of cinematic horror, he would admit he was not terribly enthused with the work of his detached cameraman Johnny Wilcox. But the director suggested the atmospherics of the film’s interior photography were buoyed by his keeping “the edges and corners dark thus giving the overall picture a claustrophobic and menacing feel.” Released in April of 1964 as the under-card of a double bill topped by Hammer’s The Evil of Frankenstein (also directed by Francis), Nightmare was met with mixed critical reviews – a considered view shared by many fans of Hammer thrillers ‘til this very day.

Scream Factory promotes their release of Nightmare as a “Collector’s Edition,” and one must say it certainly is that. There are a bevy of featurettes examining this 83 minute film from every conceivable angle. Kim Newman shares his thoughts during the near seventeen-minute study “Sleepless Nights – Reflecting on a Nightmare of a Movie.” Jonathan Rigby clocks a nearly twenty-five minute rumination during his episode “Slice and Fright. If that’s not enough, there’s also “Reliving the Nightmare: Interviews with Actress Julie Samuel and More,” “Nightmare in the Making,” “Jennie Linden Remembers,” and “Madhouse: Inside Hammer’s Nightmare.” If this bounty of extra-features still leaves you dissatisfied – and I can’t imagine why it ever would – there’s also an audio commentary supplied courtesy of film historian Bruce Hallenbeck. To round things off, we’re also gifted with the now expected theatrical trailer and a generous stills gallery.

In some respects, there’s perhaps too many featurettes complimenting a medium-range film that runs less than an hour-and-a-half. The general nuts and bolts background stories regarding the conception and making of Nightmare are shared with repetition by the usual gang of learned subjects – the trainspotting film scholars of British horror. The inclusion of commentaries by those who actually worked on the film partly offer a measure of balance, sharing time-worn memories and occasionally intriguing glimpses of behind-the-scenes moments. If the historians are somewhat guilty of bombarding us with factoids and ruminations of context, footnotes and filmographies, it’s all good, really. Let’s face it, this is the sort of minutiae we Hammer horror wonks live for and have now come to expect.

It’s fair to say that by the time you make it through all of this set’s special features you will know more about Nightmare than you ever thought possible. There are discussions on the influence that such films as Psycho and Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) had on Sangster’s work. It’s also suggested that the writer’s inspiration in scripting films in the psyche-thriller genre went back even further than 1955, with nods to such predecessors as Gaslight (1944) and The Spiral Staircase (1946).

The commentaries aren’t necessarily dry and academic. Hearing a bit of gossip is always fun. It’s interesting to learn of Sangster’s anguished reaction when discovering his original script for Nightmare had been critically red penciled in its pre-production margins by Hammer producer James Carreras. Then again, Sangster’s screenplay for Nightmare might have seemed a tad familiar to Carreras. It was in many ways reminiscent of the writer’s own scenario for an earlier Hammer effort Scream of Fear (1961). In any event, Sangster’s work would prove to have long legs. The screenwriter would later sell the storyline – and yet another reworking of the script - to producer Aaron Spelling for the ABC-TV film A Taste of Evil (1971) featuring Barbara Stanwyck.

Anyway, if you’ve read this review this far in, you already know you want this. Aficionados of the horror, mystery, and thrillers of Hammer Films Productions will properly celebrate this U.S. Blu-ray release of Nightmare – and well they should. Scream Factory offers a brand new 2K Scan from an interpositive of the B&W film and the image is stunning, with only the slightest and most unobtrusive white emulsion scratches slipping by now and again. The film is offered here in 1080p High-Definition Widescreen (2.35:1) with English DTS-HD master Audio and removable English subtitles. This is an essential film purchase for collectors of Hammer’s legacy films as well as for fans of intelligently crafted psychological-thrillers in the Psycho and Les Diaboliques vein. But make no mistake about it, Nightmare is, at best, a middle-range Hammer film. It’s neither a classic, nor an embarrassment nor a cheap knock-off. It’s simply a passingly engaging thriller that sadly derails due to unsatisfying and curious scripting issues.

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CINEMA RETRO Issue #55 (2023)

• John Murphy provides this issue's "Film in Focus": a 10-page article on Charlton Heston as The Omega Man.
• Ian Brown provides an extensive tribute to the classic Hammer horror films of director Terence Fisher.
• Brian Davidson interviews actress Susan Penhaligon, known as "The British Bardot".
• Roland Schaefli revisits the French actual locations of the D-Day epic The Longest Day
• Tim Greaves shamelessly celebrates his "guilty pleasure" of this issue, Orgy of the Dead.
• Lee Pfeiffer looks back at the MGM crime thriller Signpost to Murder starring Joanne Woodward and Stuart Whitman.
• Gareth Owen takes you inside the Bondstars.com 007 convention at Pinewood Studios
  
• Mark Mawston concludes his 3-part interview with actor and pop singer John Leyton.
• Plus regular columns by Raymond Benson, Darren Allison and Brian Hannan plus a French cinema column by Julien Comelli

THIS ISSUE HAS NOW SOLD OUT. SORRY!

One of our favorite portmanteau-themed horror flicks is "The House That Dripped Blood". Released in 1971 by Amicus,the rival studio to Hammer Films, the movie is constructed of eerie short stories populated by a great cast: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, John Pertwee, Nyree Dawn Porter and Denholm Elliott. Shout! Factory has a terrific Blu-ray. Click here to order from Amazon.

Read Tim Greaves' in-depth story behind the film in Cinema Retro issue #47.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's timeless 1902 Sherlock Holmes novel "The Hound of the Baskervilles" is said to be the most often-filmed adaptation of a book. I don't know if that's true but it's quite clear that over the decades, the tale has indeed inspired many adaptations for the cinema and television. The 1939 classic introduced audiences to the teaming of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson. The 1959 Hammer Films version was the first Holmes movie made in color and starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in another highly impressive adaptation. By the1970s, revisionist versions of Holmes stories were all the rage in cinema and on television, as evidenced by films such as "The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter ", "They Might Be Giants", "The Seven-Per-Cent Solution" and "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes". Thus, the famed comic duo of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore opted to bring a satirical version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles" to the big screen with a cast of highly respected British character actors that included Terry-Thomas, Joan Greenwood, Kenneth Williams, Hugh Griiffith and Roy Kinnear. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty, as it turned out. The first mistake was hiring Paul Morrissey to direct. Morrissey's track record in cinema consisted primarily of directing edgy, avant-garde cult films in conjunction with Andy Warhol. This would be his first foray into mainstream filmmaking. He also co-authored the script with Cook and Moore. Few could have predicted that the film would be  little-seen and much-reviled by those who had the misfortune of viewing it. If you're a fan of misguided, bad movies, your ship has come in with the new Blu-ray release.

On the surface, the script follows the basic plot of the novel. Sir Henry Baskerville (Kenneth Williams) is heir to a remote mansion house located just off the eerie and dangerous moors. However, it appears as though the previous male heirs met with foul fates due to their misdeeds- and some have fallen victim to a legendary murderous hound who stalks them. Holmes and Watson are enlisted to visit Baskerville Hall to protect Sir Henry while they investigate who has made attempts on his life. As in the novel, Holmes disappears from the mid-section of the story, leaving the sleuthing to Watson. As depicted by Cook and Moore, Holmes and Watson are two inept idiots who have gained reputations as great detectives largely through solving cases through the insights of others and by good fortune, when their blundering methods accidentally produce results. Both Cook and Moore play their characters with bizarre, undefined accents that are more annoying than amusing. Cook portrays Holmes as an effeminate fop and Moore's Watson is more Inspector Clouseau than Victorian era sleuth. Moore plays multiple roles in the film including a female character, which only reminded me that aside from "Some Like It Hot" and "The Birdcage", female impersonation tends to be more amusing in theory than execution on the silver screen. The movie lumbers from one unfunny bit to the next and the running time of 85 minutes begins to feel like a double feature of "Ben-Hur" and "Doctor Zhivago"; the cinematic equivalent of water torture as you wait for the next bad joke to drop. Making matters worse is the monotonous piano score "composed" by Dudley Moore which is annoying after several seconds yet is played throughout the entire film. It's like being trapped in a room for 85 minutes with a young piano student who only knows how to play "Chopsticks".

The high profile cast of esteemed character actors is largely wasted. Who would hire one of Britain's great clowns, Terry-Thomas, and cast him in a humorless role? The great Denholm Elliott suffers the indignation of having to carry around a puppy who pees all over everyone he meets (a gag that is repeated numerous times.). Similarly, Oscar winner Hugh Griffith's talents are also wasted but his role is mercifully brief. Kenneth Williams of the "Carry On" films plays Sir Henry with over-the-top stereotypical gay characteristics.The most sympathetic victim is Joan Greenwood, whose portrayal of an upper crust lady-of-the-manor sees her subjected to scenes that spoof "The Exorcist" - five years after that film was released and seemingly every conceivable rip-off of it had already been released. It's the equivalent of making a comedy today that tries to connect with viewers by spoofing "Saturday Night Fever". The exorcism scenes are elaborately staged, given the film's meager production budget, but they are as bizarre as they are grotesque and interminable. You simply have to see it to believe it. One hopes that Ms. Greenwood never saw the final film. Much of the blame for the pacing and erratic nature of the film must be placed squarely with director Morrissey, who is out of his element here. The scenarios are played out in a clunky manner and subtlety is not on the menu, as Morrissey employs a chainsaw instead of a scalpel. Because I'm an eternal optimist, I kept hoping that there would be at least one amusing moment delivered during the course of the film and-Voila!- the hope became a reality. It occurs in Spike Milligan's cameo as a constable who suffers a groin injury from the bumper of a car, causing him to utter a remark that actually woke me from my stupor for a few seconds to emit a genuine laugh. But the tradeoff was hardly worth it: ten seconds of amusement in return for 85 non-retrievable minutes of my diminishing life span. Fortunately for all involved, the movie was a bomb and, thus, the debacle was not witnessed by many. Consequently, everyone's reputation remained intact and Moore's clout rose appreciably after his acclaimed supporting role in the comedy thriller "Foul Play", which was released the same year and overshadowed "The Hound of the Baskervilles".

Code Red has released "The Hound of the Baskervilles" on Blu-ray with a very nice transfer. It's fairly bare bones with only the original trailer included as a bonus. I have to salute the company for bringing out this title, as even bad movies should be preserved and made available for easy access. After all, this review is only one person's opinion. ('lest you suspect that I'm too high brow to enjoy low brow comedy, I consider the Three Stooges to be hilarious. So there.) There may be others who view the film and howl with laughter, but speaking personally, I found this "Hound" to be a real dog. 

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BY HANK REINEKE

On the very month that Roger Corman’s The Raven was to hit theaters in January 1963, AIP announced that they had just signed a four year eight-film contract with that film’s co-star Peter Lorre. The contract was an interesting one as it wasn’t exclusive: the actor wasn’t necessarily barred from accepting acting offers from other studios. But the contract stipulated Lorre could not accept any roles offered of “the horror, science-fiction, macabre type,” and certainly not in any competing non-AIP Edgar Allan Poe film adaptation. Such movies would remain the domain of AIP, which had recently been on a hot streak with their churning of Gothic horrors. Arkoff and Nicholson triumphantly announced they had already readied two new projects for Lorre, one titled It’s Alive (reported to co-star Elsa (The Bride of Frankenstein) Lanchester and a second, The Comedy of Terrors. The former film, alas, would never see the light of day.

Then, in March of ’64, AIP announced a similar deal had been struck with the aging and increasingly frail Boris Karloff. Perhaps sensing that the seventy-six year old Karloff’s faltering health might prove a liability, the actor’s contract called for a more cautious four film, two-year deal. As with Lorre, the rider in Karloff’s contract also precluded him from appearing in any non-AIP horror-type pictures in the years 1963-1965.

In the final tally, Karloff was able to fulfill to the terms of the deal struck, appearing in two films, The Comedy of Terrors and The Terror in 1963. His concluding two films for AIP were less demanding on the beloved actor. He would appear in a cameo role in the Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon romp Bikini Beach (1964) and, lastly, as “The Corpse” – a somewhat more substantial seated role for the mostly wheelchair-bound actor - in the Nancy Sinatra vehicle Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (released 1966).

Lorre’s tenure with AIP was, sadly, cut short. The actor appeared, memorably, in The Comedy of Terrors and, in a brief cameo, in still another Frankie and Annette teen-comedy Muscle Beach Party (1964). These two films would be among his last released. Lorre was found dead, the apparent victim of a stroke, in his apartment on Hollywood Boulevard in March of 1964. He was a mere 59 years of age. Vincent Price, his co-star in both The Raven and The Comedy of Terrors, told the Los Angeles Times that he was “crushed” when he learned of his friend’s passing. “Peter was the most inventive actor I’ve ever known,” Price memorialized. “He was a great scholar, an accomplished dramatic actor and a masterful comedian. Peter liked to make pictures which entertained people, not critics. He didn’t have any pretensions about conveying messages to the world.”

AIP was doing very well, thank you, not making edgy soapbox pictures. So well, in fact, that in October of 1963, Nicholson and Arkoff announced that 1964 was going to be their biggest year ever. The two were feeling, justifiably, cocky. Two months earlier the national Theater Owners Association named the pair “Producers of the Year.” AIP was riding high and the company’s future plans were being readied to be put into aggressive motion. The producers planned for no fewer than twenty-three films to be put into production - with the caveat that only nine would actually be filmed in costly Hollywood. Their promised investment of twenty-five millions dollars into these twenty odd projects would mark a twenty-five percent increase in their budget expenditures of the previous year.

“In the field of Edgar Allan Poe, the teen-age appeal ‘beach’ pictures and in comedy-terror, AIP will continue to be the leaders with even bigger and better productions,” the partners promised via a crowing press release. Though they had definite designs on AIP’s future, they also thought it time to look back on what had been issued since their incorporation in 1955. To stoke interest in two new Poe adaptations scheduled for release in ’64 (The Masque of the Red Death and City in the Sea), the company also planned to reissue twin-bills of earlier efforts, pairing House of Usher with The Pit and the Pendulum and The Premature Burial with Tales of Terror.

One of the films that AIP had hoped would carry the day was The Comedy of Terrors, the title a jokey if macabre homage to the famous Shakespeare play. The title was the idea of screenwriter Richard Matheson. Nicholson wanted to title the film Graveside Story, a lampoon of the recent box-office musical smash West Side Story. Matheson conceded that Nicholson’s suggested moniker might have ultimately brought in more patrons to the cinema to see the film, but he believed that the insert of the word “comedy” into the title might possibly have alienated horror-film stalwarts. Though a non-Poe production, the film would share many of the same qualities – and technical crew - of that series. The movie would re-team the “Triumvirate of Terror” that made The Raven such a great success: Lorre, Karloff, and – of course – AIP’s number one ghoul Vincent Price.

One key member of the team that would be missing from the set was Roger Corman. The antsy director was interested in going off in another direction with such films as his Grand Prix drama The Young Racers (1963). The figure eventually chosen to replace Corman in the director’s chair was certainly no slouch. Matheson suggested that Jacques Tourneur, the French-born director of several of the greatest RKO horror-mystery films of the 1940s (Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie, and The Leopard Man) would be well-suited to the task, the pair having recently worked together on an episode of The Twilight Zone.

The producers agreed and Tourneur was promptly signed. The pipe-smoking auteur had been working in the film industry since the late 1920s, but his fortunes and opportunities had reversed in the succeeding decade. He went from directing critically-acclaimed features in the 1940s to helming television dramas throughout most of the 1950s. The offer to direct The Comedy of Terrors would give the fifty-nine old director an opportunity to get back into the game.

One of the prizes that AIP dangled before him was an opportunity to direct one of the most ambitious films that they had on their schedule. In December of 1963, AIP signed the Frenchman to direct a lavish production of Genghis Kahn, a 70mm “Technirama” epic to be shot in Italy and Spain at a cost of some 4.5 million dollars. That film would, of course, never see production, so Tourneur had to settle on helming AIP’s succeeding Poe-project War Gods of the Deep, a very free adaptation of the author’s City by the Sea.

Matheson recalled that the role of John F. Black, eventually played by Basil Rathbone in The Comedy of Terrors, was originally designed with Karloff in mind. But the role was a hugely physical one, and Karloff’s mobility issues and emphysema precluded his accepting the part. Regardless, having Karloff’s name on the marquee of a horror film still carried a lot of value, so he was given the role – if little substantial screen time - as the doddering Amos Hinchley. Matheson would later sigh that the legendary actor wasn’t given the opportunity to “do too much of anything” in the film – though he would figure as a key player in the film’s dénouement.

Rathbone was actually a splendid replacement, appearing as a hoary poof who recites Shakespeare soliloquies and performs all manner of physical comedy. The problem he causes Price and Lorre, two perversely unethical morticians, is that the cataleptic-prone character he portrays steadfastly chooses to remain un-dead despite the pair’s devious machinations, an obvious detriment to their funeral business. Though the film’s box-office totals did not match that of The Raven, Matheson maintained The Comedy of Terrors still did OK when all was said and done. In his view, the penny-pinching producers of AIP were very box-office savvy and “didn’t spend enough money to lose money.”

The film did well enough that in September of ’63, just as shooting was near completion, there was some scuttlebutt that most of the assembled talent in the film – including actress Joyce Jameson who played Price’s frustrated wife – would be reunited on screen before long. Nicholson once again teased Graveside Story as the working title on the company’s next horror-comedy extravaganza. Matheson recalls that another actress, Tallulah Bankhead, was also in contention for a role in the projected film. The problem was that, similarly to Karloff, the aging actress’s health was also in decline. Bankhead’s recent plum role in the Hammer Films production Die! Die! My Darling (1964) was reportedly almost scrubbed due to her health issues, but the production of that film managed to soldier on regardless.

Matheson had even written the screenplay for the projected new film, a self-described comedy-thriller, now titled Sweethearts and Horror. Sadly, the passing of Lorre in early winter ’64 and the producer’s hesitancy of working with two cast members with day-to-day health issues effectively put the kibosh on the project. If film fans desire to learn what they missed due to this confluence of bad breaks and health-related caution, they need only check out Matheson’s Visions Deferred: Three Unfilmed Screenplays (Gauntlet Press, 2009). The book includes the screenwriter’s unproduced script for Sweethearts and Horror.

If The Comedy of Terrors was to serve as a template for producing Sweethearts and Horror, it might have been for the best. It’s not that the former is not a serviceable and entertaining film – it’s actually quite funny in moments - but its predecessor The Raven was certainly the better film. One might reasonably assume that had Sweethearts been made, that film might have reflected another step down on the pedestal.

I for one, would have loved to have seen it made regardless, even if Lorre was no longer around to once again take part in ghoulish revelry with friends Price and Karloff. I simply love all of these colorful ‘60s AIP horror films – produced tongue-in-cheek or otherwise. Should you share my enthusiasm, dim the lights, stretch out on the couch some late Saturday night, snack on a bowl of popcorn, relax and enjoy The Comedy of Terrors. You might not be enlightened, but you will be entertained.

This impressive Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray edition of The Comedy of Terrors is presented here in a 1920x1080p with an aspect ratio of 2.35:1 and dts sound. There are removable English subtitles and an attractive slipcase cover. The set also includes featurette Richard Matheson: Storyteller and an audio commentary track by film historian, author, and publisher Tim Lucas. The release rounds out with the film’s original theatrical trailer as well as an additional eight titles from Kino’s Vincent Price catalog.

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 If you haven't subscribed for Season 17 of Cinema Retro, here's what you've been missing:

Issue #49 (January, 2021)

Lee Pfeiffer goes undercover for Robert Vaughn's spy thriller "The Venetian Affair" .

Cai Ross goes to hell for "Damien- Omen II"

Ernie Magnotta continues our "Elvis on Film" series with "Elvis: That's the Way It Is"..

Robert Leese scare up some memories of the cult classic "Carnival of Souls"

Dave Worrall and Lee Pfeiffer look back on the 1976 Sensurround sensation "Midway"

Remembering Sir Sean Connery

James Sherlock examines Stanley Kramer's pandemic Cold War classic "On the Beach".

Dave Worrall goes in search of the Disco Volante hydrofoil from "Thunderball"

Gareth Owen's "Pinewood Past" column

Darren Allison reviews the latest soundtrack releases

Issue #50 (May, 2021)

50th anniversary celebration of "The French Connection" : Todd Garbarini interviews director William Friedkin

"Scars of Dracula": Mark Cerulli interviews stars Jenny Hanley and Christopher Matthews

Mark Mawston interviews Luc Roeg about his father Nicholas Roeg's "Walkabout"

James Bond producer Kevin McClory- Matthew Field and Ajay Chowdhury interview his family members

John Harty pays tribute to "Young Cassidy" starring Rod Taylor

"The Curse of the Werewolf"- Nicholas Anez pays tribute to the underrated Hammer horror film

Dave Worrall on the moving 1974 adventure film "The Dove"

Lee Pfeiffer on what worked and didn't work in "Goodbye, Columbus"

PLUS! You will also receive our fall issue:

Dave Worrall chronicles the challenges of bringing Cleopatra to the big screen in a 14 page Film in Focus feature loaded with rare photos.

John Harty looks at the ambitious but disastrous Soviet/Italian co-production of "The Red Tent" starring Sean Connery, Claudia Cardinale and Peter Finch

Terence Denman rides tall in the saddle with his story behind "The Savage Guns", the only Western ever made by Hammer Films

Dave Worrall and Lee Pfeiffer unveil the secrets of "Ice Station Zebra" starring Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan and Jim Brown

Rare original U.S. drive-in movie theater adverts

Brian Davidson's exclusive interview with David McGillivray (aka McG), screenwriter of 1970s horror flicks and looks back at "Hoffman", the bizarre film that Peter Sellers wanted destroyed.

Nicholas Anez examines the underrated thriller "The Night Visitor" starring Max Von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Per Oscarsson and Trevor Howard

Plus regular columns by Raymond Benson, Darren Allison and Gareth Owen

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BY HANK REINEKE

In the early spring of 1961, shortly following the completion of his work on A.I.P.’s Master of the World - and following a series of lectures regarding “The Enjoyment of Great Art” – Renaissance man Vincent Price was to jet off mid-April for two acting assignments in Rome, Italy. The two productions he had signed onto for producer-writer Ottavio Poggi were Gordon, il Pirata Nero (Gordon, the Black Pirate) and Nefertiti, Regina Del Nile (Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile). The former film – arguably the better of the two - was belatedly released in the U.S. in June 1963 under the title Rage of the Buccaneers. The film was distributed regionally in the U.S. with neither fanfare nor critical attention.

Rage of the Buccaneers would first appear on the drive-in circuit as the odd undercard to such films as Broccoli and Saltzman’s Bob Hope/Anita Ekberg comedy Call Me Bwana. Rage was later paired, a bit more sensibly, with The Playgirls and the Vampire, an Italian-horror production mostly recalled by old-school monster movie fans and admirers of voluptuous continental on-screen beauties. The weak-tea newspaper campaign in the U.S. for Rage of the Buccaneers could have hardly been helpful in exciting foot traffic into neighborhood cinemas. Though the posters for the U.S. release promised Furious Action! Passionate Love!, the accompanying newspaper adverts offered the far less sensational promise of Excitement plus… Emotional Turbulence. Emotional Turbulence? Meh.

In truth, Rage of the Buccaneers would be dimly recalled, if at all, by U.S. movie fans due to it popping up on television as 1964 drew to a close. In early November of 1964 it was announced - with some degree of ballyhoo - that the NBC network had acquired no fewer than eight post-1960 “first-run” films for television distribution. But even the network’s big newspaper announcement was late out of the starting block. Rage of the Buccaneers had already been televised by several NBC affiliates as early as September 1964.

Several essays and film books would note that Price’s latter ill-fated Italian film, Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile would not actually see a theatrical release in the U.S. market. This is actually untrue. The film had the briefest of runs – as a second feature in support of the Buddy Ebsen comedy Mail Order Bride - at a drive-in theater outside of Phoenix, AZ in March 1964. The film then seemingly disappeared from movie screens - both big and small - until it was picked up as a late-night television programmer in 1966. Shortly thereafter, Nefertiti too fell pretty much off the face of the planet, at least as far as U.S. audiences were concerned.

Then, in 1985, with the home video boom in the ascendant, Nefertiti, Queen of the Nile was briefly resurrected as a “big box” VHS cassette release in the U.S. on the Force Video label. In the UK, there were at least two video cassette releases of Gordon, il Pirata Nero, first as The Black Pirate (Apex Video) and later as Gordon, The Black Pirate (Midas Video). As far as I’m aware, these are the only three editions of these two obscure Vincent Price films to be officially released on the English-speaking home video market, though there are bootlegs circulating of both films. I only dredge up this old history in the, perhaps, overly optimistic hope that Kino Lorber might make note of these glaring deficiencies in their own burgeoning catalog of Vincent Price home video offerings.

In any case, Price’s second professional visit to Italy would prove to be more successful. In January of 1963, Hollywood scene gossip columnists reported that Price would celebrate the New Year by preparing a return to Italy for a “Halloween release of his next horror movie, The Last Man on Earth.” The film was to be based on the novel I am Legend by Richard Matheson. Matheson’s novel, the author’s first, was published in August of 1954 by Fawcett Gold Medal books. It was a slim paperback of one-hundred and sixty pages, but Matheson was no amateur writer, having previously published a score of science-fiction-based short stories in magazines and anthologies.

Matheson’s novel was optioned by Britain’s Hammer Films in 1957, that studio even commissioning the author to write a screenplay for a proposed production. The problem was that the British censor board found Matheson’s screenplay unrelentingly grim and violent, warning should any production be mounted, there was little chance that the film would pass code. So a wary Anthony Hinds at Hammer chose to sell the rights of Matheson’s screenplay to American producer and cinema theater chain owner Robert L. Lippert (Curse of the Fly). Lippert subsequently engaged Price to star in the project, traveling to Rome in late summer of 1962 to arrange crew and casting of the film’s Italian supporting players.

Matheson’s I am Legend recounts the final years of Robert Neville, one of the few survivors of a pandemic turned plague that killed off most of the earth’s population. The rub is that while those afflicted remained technically dead, they retained mobility. Neville goes to great lengths to investigate why the “undead” have transformed into bacillus vampires of a sort: they drink blood and avoid the rays of the sun much as did the Gothic and folkloric vampires of yore did. But otherwise they remained mostly human in appearance save for a decided graveyard pallor.

Neville (renamed Robert Morgan in the film) is a reluctant, modern day, post-apocalyptic Van Helsing. He has chosen to actively seek out and confront the vampire hordes. He really has no other choice as, much to his disdain, he’s under near-constant assault by them. Matheson’s book is an undeniably grim one with an equally fatalistic ending, but his slim volume would go on to influence countless filmmakers and aspiring science-fiction writers in years following publication. In manner of tone and presentation, it’s reasonable to say that George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was highly and undeniably influenced by The Last Man on Earth.

Price wasn’t terribly excited to travel to Italy in the grim winter season of 1963, but the offer to visit Rome would give the actor the opportunity to canvas galleries and antique stores in search of artworks. In June of 1962 it was announced that Price had entered into his semi-famous partnership with the Sears, Roebuck & Co. to search out art that could be consigned and sold as lithographs through the department store chain. This interest in art was a lifelong passion of the actor’s and he had already been collecting artworks for Sears a month prior to the official press release of their collaboration. The actor told columnist Bob Thomas that his searching out the Vincent Price Collection for Sears had already resulted in a “whirl” of activity, and that he’d already “bought 1,700 paintings and etchings: I’ve got to have 2,500 before the sale starts.”

By Mid-January of 1963 Price was already in Europe, first visiting Paris before traveling on to Rome to begin filming. In the space of three days and visits to the galleries and artist studios of the City of Lights, Price offered that he had already purchased one hundred and fifty paintings that he thought Sears could sell for $300 or less back in the U.S. Columnist Doris Sanders noted that Price had already admitted dropping four thousand U.S. dollars on the very first day of his Parisian shopping spree. It was also noted that the artists Price approached were appreciably happy as the actor – funded by his corporate sponsor - always chose to pay cash up-front.

HIGHLIGHTS OF ISSUE #28 INCLUDE:

• Sheldon Hall's 13 page spectacular tribute to the 50th anniversary of Zulu starring Stanley Baker and Michael Caine. Rare behind the scenes photos and international movie posters.  
• Dave Worrall takes on you on a locations "now and then" tour of where Goldfinger starring Sean Connery was filmed at the legendary Pinewood Studios.
• Ray Morton's exclusive interview with cinematographer Richard Kline, who shot King Kong (1976), Death Wish, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Camelot. 
• Dean Brierly looks at classic American crime movies including The Killers (1974), The Driver, Point Blank, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
• Brian Hannan tells the fascinating story of Elizabeth Taylor's BUtterfield 8, the film she did not want to do but won an Oscar for!
• Tim Greaves looks at the short but exotic career of Victoria Vetri, star of Hammer Films' When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth- and provides some rare provocative photos!
• Illustrated tribute to movie comic book tie-ins from the 1960s and 1970s.
• Howard Hughes continues his history of Oakmont Productions with The Thousand Plane Raid starring Christopher George. 
• Harvey Chartrand tells the fascinating story behind Mary Rose, the dream project that Alfred Hitchcock never filmed.
• Trevor Chapman remembers the glorious Gaumont Theatre, one of Britain's Cinerama gems. 
• Gareth Owen looks at Pinewood Studios in the 1970s and 1980s.
• Raymond Benson's top ten films of 1987
• Plus the latest film book, soundtrack and DVD reviews

USA/ CANADA : CINEMA RETRO #28

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UK : CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #28

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REST OF THE WORLD : CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #28

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LOW STOCKS!

HIGHLIGHTS OF ISSUE #27 INCLUDE:

• Don L. Stradley examines the dramatic life and career of Lolita star Sue Lyon
• John Exshaw's unpublished interview with screen legend Peter Cushing
• Adrian Smith interviews Hugh Hudson, director of Revolution and Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes
• Dean Brierly looks at classic Japanese crime movies
• Stephen C. Jilks celebrates the Hammer horror flick Curse of the Werewolf
• David Savage examines Liz Taylor's little-seen, late career bizarro cult movie The Driver's Seat
• Howard Hughes continues his history of Oakmont Productions with Submarine X-1 starring James Caan
• Paul Thomson provides in-depth coverage of the Amicus Edgar Rice Burroughs film adaptations The Land That Time Forgot, At the Earth's Core and The People That Time Forgot and reviews the long-forgotten electric rock Western Zachariah
• Remember Ray Harryhausen
• Raymond Benson's top ten films of 1986
• Lee Pfeiffer's Take Two column looks back on The Valachi Papers starring Charles Bronson
• Burt Reynolds underrated dark comedy The End is re-evaluated by Tim Greaves
• Gareth Owen's Pinewood Past column features Reach for the Sky starring Kenneth More
• Plus the latest film book, soundtrack and DVD reviews. 

CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #27

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HIGHLIGHTS OF ISSUE #26 INCLUDE:

• Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs: Mike Siegel provides  in-depth coverage of the legendary director's controversial 1971 classic starring Dustin Hoffman and Susan George. Includes extensive rarely seen behind the scenes production photos and rare international ad campaigns. 
• Lee Pfeiffer interviews comedy genius Mel Brooks, who reflects on his long career in TV and feature films.
• Howard Hughes examines the 1969 spaghetti Western classic The Five Man Army starring Peter Graves, Bud Spencer and Tetsuro Tamba
• Dean Brierly pays tribute to the great French crime films of the 1960s and 1970s
• David McCallum recalls the making of Oakmont Studio's 1969 WWII film Mosquito Squadron
• Cinema Retro attends the 40th anniversary cast and crew reunion of Bob Fosse's Cabaret and gets interviews with Joel Grey, Michael York, Marisa Berenson and Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies. Plus we cover the "re-premiere" at New York's Ziegfeld Theatre, attended by Liza Minnelli herself.
• Don R. Stradley looks at Sextette, the bizarre cinematic swan song of Mae West
• Raymond Benson's ten best films of 1985
• Gareth Owen examines the making of the 1969 spy flick The Chairman (aka The Most Dangerous Man in the World) starring Gregory Peck 
• Dave Worrall covers the new restoration of the Hammer horror classic Dracula (aka Horror of Dracula) 
• Remembering the brilliant, cynical comedy of Paddy Chayefsky in The Hospital starring George C. Scott and Diana Rigg
• Plus the latest DVD, soundtrack and  film book reviews 

CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #26

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HIGHLIGHTS OF ISSUE #25 INCLUDE:

• James Bond at 50: Cinema Retro interviews Daniel Craig, producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson and Skyfall director Sam Mendesabout the screen legacy of Agent 007.
• Dr. No cast and crew reunion at Pinewood Studios, England: Gareth Owen reports
• Matthew R. Bradley covers the Blofelds of screen and literature in The Importance of Being Ernst: Part 2
• Major coverage of Hammer Films events: convention report, Hammer horror film locations then and now and coverage of the latest Blu-ray releases.
• In-depth look at the new restoration of David Lean's masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia and exclusive interview with Sony's Grover Crisp, the man who spearheaded the restoration process.
• Best-selling author Robert Sellers provides a fascinating look at the life and career of the ultimate "bad boy" of British cinema, Oliver Reed.
• Dean Brierly looks at the best Italian crime movies of the 60s and 70s.
• Tribute to the creator of master of British film posters, artist Tom Chantrell.
• Michael Davey interviews British sex symbol Liz Fraser
• Sands of the Kalahari starring Stuart Whitman and Susannah York: Lee Pfeiffer revisits an underrated classic adventure
• Nicholas  Anez pays tribute to Burt Lancaster's controversial The Swimmer 
• The"B" British war film Attack on the Iron Coast starring Lloyd Bridges- part one of Howard Hughes' history of Oakmont Studios
• Raymond Benson's top ten films of 1984
• Plus the latest DVD, soundtrack and  film book reviews 

CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #25

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BY HANK REINEKE

On Disc two of the Warner Archive’s new and essential Blu-ray release of The Curse of Frankenstein - the first Hammer horror classic - Richard Klemensen, publisher of Little Shoppe of Horrors magazine, offers a succinct examination of the nuts and bolts of the film’s production history. The Klemensen segment is only one of several generous and informative featurettes included on the set. In the course of The Resurrection Men: Hammer, Frankenstein and the Rebirth of the Horror Film, the publisher explains that Hammer was a small, struggling indie studio that had churned out B pictures and modest second features since its 1934 inception. The studio’s fortune – and existence - was threatened in the early 1950s when television upended the British film industry. Ironically, it was during this same period that Hammer would lens one of their most significant big screen splashes: a sci-fi property adapted from British TV titled The Quatermass Xperiment.

That film would signal the studio’s first successful entry in the theatrical sci-fi/horror genre: even though the picture was a far cry from the Gothic horrors to which the studio would soon be most associated. The public’s interest in Gothic horror had waned in the late 1940s, as enthusiasm for Universal’s famed cycle of Dracula and Frankenstein and Mummy films had peaked and passed. The movie-going public with a penchant for the mysterious had since turned their attentions to flying saucers and alien visitors, of giant radioactive insects, of Ray Harryhausen’s celebrated animated monster-mutations.

So it was an odd time for Hammer to invest money in restages of such literary monsters as Shelley’s Frankenstein Monster and Stoker’s Count Dracula. The initial script for the first of Hammer’s Frankenstein cycle films would come to company producers via two gentleman who would eventually become competitors: Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg, the two principal founders of Amicus Productions. Hammer execs would ultimately reject that script and scenario, but the idea of producing of a Frankenstein film was not dismissed. The studio’s interest in reviving the franchise was ultimately left to screenwriter Jimmy Sangster.

Hammer’s decision to resurrect the monster was not met with enthusiasm by Universal Pictures. As the creators of the original series of Frankenstein films (1931-1948), the studio was very protective of their interests. They would do their best to make certain that no Universal-conceived elements would be co-opted by this British up-start. But as Mary Shelley’s property had long been in the rights-free Public Domain, Universal could not claim copyright to any characters that appeared in the original novel of 1818.

In truth, Hammer had no intention to overlap with the celebrated Universal film series. For starters, there would be no iconic armies of torch and pitchfork toting angry villagers chasing the monster. This wasn’t an artistic choice or due to any executive decision to not shadow Universal’s tropes too closely. The modest budget they set aside for the production of The Curse of Frankenstein simply wouldn’t allow for the employment of that many extras. The use of Jack Pierce’s iconic flat-top Frankenstein monster make-up, replete with neck bolts and callow cheeks was also taboo. Hammer’s make-up wizard Phil Leakey would conjure up an admittedly less iconic - but certainly far more gruesome – set of make-up for Frankenstein’s creation, all boils and melted flesh and cloudy eyes.

Gruesome and bloody would be the order of the day. As the first Frankenstein film to be shot in color, the filmmakers were able to take advantage of relaxed contemporary standards of what was deemed acceptable to show on screen. The resulting film was certainly far more graphic than previously seen, dressed as it was with ample amounts of blood-letting and gory visuals. That’s not to say the censors were happy with the film’s content when submitted for review. The film would receive an “X’ rating in Great Britain. This wasn’t only due to the graphic content and violence as presented, but also due to Hammer’s introducing an element of lurid sexuality and provocative peeks of Hazel Court’s ample cleavage.

Hammer would also wisely make Shelley’s Baron Victor Frankenstein the series central character. Actually, it was the Baron’s lack of character that would make him the series’ central villain. Peter Cushing’s Frankenstein remained as obsessed as ever in his desire to create new life from dead tissue. This ambition was a hallmark of all his mad scientist predecessors at Universal: Colin Clive, Lionel Atwill, Patrick Knowles, Onslow Stevens and even Boris Karloff himself. But Cushing’s Frankenstein was more ambitious in his creating of new monsters. The actor’s Dr. Frankenstein was the monster, producing a series of woeful, tortured creatures in the course of his experimentations.

The Curse of Frankenstein would bring together several members of the production crew whose work would soon become synonymous with Hammer’s brand of horror. Director Terence Fisher was a dependable figure to helm the project. He had creating serviceable thrillers for the studio’s producers since 1951. Despite working with penny-pinching budgets, Production Designer Bernard Robinson was able to create a sense of luxurious, visual ambiance with his opulent set decorations. This was no small feat as most of the films he would design for Hammer were shot within the cramped confines of Bray House on the Thames.

Then there was Jack Asher, whose moody lighting was never short of brilliant. His work became even more nuanced and image-invoking when the success of Curse at the box office convinced the studio to loosen the purse strings… a bit. This decision allowed the studio to invest in bigger budgets and to unleash their creative energies on other horror film properties once the sole domain of Universal. Between 1957 and 1974, Hammer would give us no fewer than seven Frankenstein films, nine Dracula movies, four Mummy pictures and even a one-shot Spaniard Werewolf epic. This in addition, of course, to an impressive number of original monsters and adherents of Satan they would conjure on their own.

I’m preaching to the choir here. If you are a fan of vintage horror movies, you are already acquainted with this classic. Warner’s Blu ray edition of The Curse of Frankenstein provides film fans with beautiful transfers of this 1957 horror classic with the choice of enjoying it in 1.85:1, 1.66:1, and 1.37:1 Open-Matte versions, all restored and remastered from 4K scans. The set also offers a generous amount of supplemental materials providing dedicated fans with backstories on its production. Asher’s contributions are featured in the set’s featurette Torrents of Light: The Art of Jack Asher, with cinematographer David J. Miller (A.S.C.) bringing to the fore the elements that made Asher’s photography so distinctive and compelling. Miller describes Asher as a “perfectionist” and the preeminent “architectural lighting director,” and makes a convincing case of such an honor.

Though the phrase “painting with light” has become an overused stock-phrase to describe the art of cinematography, Miller suggests that Asher’s work is particularly deserving of such accolade. He describes the atmospheric visual imagery as captured by Asher as “an oil painting come to life.” Miller also suggests, not unreasonably, that Asher not only set the template for Hammer’s visual style, but that his work had clearly influenced the styles of cinematographers in Italy and France, the great Mario Bava being the most notable. He also suggests that Asher had freedom to creatively contribute to the “Hammer style” as he had previously worked extensively with Fisher and Production Designer Robinson. Such familiarity and trust with the core creative team was an essential component to the film’s visual flair.

Another figure whose work for Hammer is now considered essential to the Hammer brand was that of composer James Bernard. The composer’s dramatic, string-soaked arrangements would serve as a perfect complement to the often wild melodrama unfolding on screen. Bernard’s contribution to the Hammer legacy is examined in detail in yet another featurette Diabolus in Musica: James Bernard and the Sound of Hammer Horror, moderated by composer Christopher Drake.

Most famously, The Curse of Frankenstein would first pair two names that eventually would forever remain associative with the Hammer Film legacy: actors Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Cushing was a well-known figure to television audiences in Britain when he accepted the role of Victor Frankenstein in Curse. The actor’s feature film work prior to his work with Hammer was less celebrated, though never short of brilliant. In 1956 Christopher Lee wasn’t yet a film star of any magnitude, at least not a household name. He had been a difficult actor to cast due to his height. He dwarfed the lead actors he worked alongside, which no doubt rankled his better-known male co-stars and caused frustrating framing issues to cinematographers. In his casting of the creature in Curse, his height would finally work to his advantage. But ultimately he was cast not due to his towering presence alone. He also impressed with his abilities to communicate effectively as a mime.

BY MARK MAWSTON

We regret to report that actor John Richardson has passed away this week, just two weeks before what would have been his 87th birthday. 

John found fame in the 1960s via films such as Mario Bava's Black Sunday and Hammer Film's remakes of She and One Million Years B.C., wherein he co-starred alongside many of the most beautiful actresses of the era, such as Ursula Andress, Barbara Steele and Raquel Welch who famously bemoaned, on first being introduced to John, that her new leading man was more beautiful than she was! 

John's role in One Million Years B.C. (1966), Ray Harryhausen's prehistoric animated cult classic, led to a long relationship with his co-star Martine Beswick and a move to Hollywood, where he landed roles in big budget Hollywood productions such as Vincente Minnelli's On A Clear Day You Can See Forever with Barbra Streisand. 

Not a fan of Hollywood, John began working in his beloved Italy, starring in low-budget thrillers such as Torso and Eyeball, which he was surprised to find had a larger following than some of his more mainstream features. Some of these films he hadn't seen since he made them and which I had the pleasure of finding and giving them to him to watch. John famously used to ask for the car he drove in these films to be included in his fee and he also informed me that he once bought a vehicle that took his fancy from Steve McQueen.

Cars may have been a passion but his first real love- bar his partner Helen- was photography. We were introduced via a mutual friend, and from this, our shared passion for film and photography led to the interview that subsequently appeared in Cinema Retro (Vol. 15: issues 45 and 46).  John discussed his life both in front of and behind the camera, his first career-spanning interview since retiring from the film world, as he preferred to remain out of the limelight and to spend most of his days walking and taking photographs.

John may have battled dinosaurs and vampires on screen but the current real-life horror of Covid took from us one of the true gentlemen of cinema whose love for life was obvious through the twinkle in his famously blue eyes. The eternal flame that John entered in She is true in a way; for as long as the amazing genre films in which he starred continue to flicker on screen, John will always be with us. 

John’s partner Helen thought it would be fitting that this announcement came via Cinema Retro and myself, as I'd become very close to John after our interview, catching up with each other most weeks via the phone. In his usual down-to-earth way, he initially said "no one would be interested in hearing my stories". They were- and John was shocked to learn that they had been nominated in last year's Rondo Awards. His experiences pertained to a golden age when stars really were just that. Now, another real star is shining in the heavens.

John's time as a movie star led to several iconic roles on screen but it was his work as a photographer that he was most passionate about and through this he has left us with many more iconic images that he took from behind a lens.

John M. Richardson January 19th 1934- January 5th 2020.

BY LEE PFEIFFER

British actress Barbara Shelley has passed away from Covid-19 related ailments. She was 88 years-old. Shelley became popular with horror movie fans in the 1960s when she became one of the resident leading ladies at the legendary Hammer Films where she made several movies with another studio legend, Christopher Lee. Among Shelley's Hammer films were "The Camp on Blood Island" (a rare non-horror entry), "The Gorgon", "Dracula: Prince of Darkness", "Rasputin: The Mad Monk" and "Quatermass and the Pit". Shelley played the lead female role in the 1960 MGM cult classic "Village of the Damned" opposite George Sanders. She also played a recurring character in the 1984 "Doctor Who" television series. She appeared in other iconic British television shows including "Blake's 7", "The Avengers", "EastEnders", "Danger Man", "The Saint" "Man in a Suitcase" and "The Two Ronnies" as well as international favorites including "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "Route 66". For more, click here.

Issue #51 (September, 2021)

John Harty looks at the ambitious but disastrous Soviet/Italian co-production of "The Red Tent" starring Sean Connery, Claudia Cardinale and Peter Finch

Terence Denman rides tall in the saddle with his story behind "The Savage Guns", the only Western ever made by Hammer Films

Dave Worrall and Lee Pfeiffer unveil the secrets of "Ice Station Zebra" starring Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine, Patrick McGoohan and Jim Brown

Rare original U.S. drive-in movie theater adverts

Brian Davidson's exclusive interview with David McGillivray (aka McG), screenwriter of 1970s horror flicks and looks back at "Hoffman", the bizarre film that Peter Sellers wanted destroyed.

Nicholas Anez examines the underrated thriller "The Night Visitor" starring Max Von Sydow, Liv Ullmann, Per Oscarsson and Trevor Howard

Plus regular columns by Raymond Benson, Darren Allison and Gareth Owen

USA/ CANADA : CINEMA RETRO #51

USA/ CANADA : CINEMA RETRO #51 $12.00 USD

UK : CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #51

UK : CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #51 £9.95 GBP

EUROPE : CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #51

EUROPE : CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #51 £12.50 GBP

REST OF THE WORLD : CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #51

REST OF THE WORLD : CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #51 £14.50 GBP

“A NOIR MID-LIFE CRISIS”

By Raymond Benson

Fritz Lang, who emigrated to Hollywood in the 1930s after escaping Nazi Germany, enjoyed a long and productive career in the U.S. He was, of course, one of Germany’s preeminent filmmakers in the silent era, having made such dark and cynical masterpieces as Dr. Mabuse—the Gambler (1922) and Metropolis (1927), and the brilliant sound picture, M (1931). In Hollywood, Lang was adept at many genres, but his films noir stand out. His crime pictures are among the best in this movement that begin in the early 1940s and ran until the late 1950s.

The Woman in the Window (1944) was adapted by Nunnally Johnson from the J. H. Wallis’ novel Once Off Guard. Johnson made some changes to the original story and added a “surprise” ending. In 1944 the conclusion may very well have been a clever twist; today it’s a cliché and a bit of an eye-roller. Nevertheless, there is enough good stuff in Woman for a worthwhile 99-minutes of viewing.

Some film noir fans might consider The Woman in the Window to be astonishingly similar to Lang’s next picture, Scarlet Street (1945). Both movies star Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, and Dan Duryea, they both begin with the protagonist being struck by the beauty of a woman’s painting in a shop window, and the plots involve an older, married man who is infatuated with a younger, perhaps manipulative femme fatale. The comparisons end there, though. The unfolding of the stories in each picture are quite different, and The Woman in the Window ultimately has a much happier wrap-up than Scarlet Street.

Robinson is Professor Wanley, a respected teacher who frequents a club where he and his friends, District Attorney Lalor (Raymond Massey) and Dr. Barkstane (Edmund Breon), enjoy drinks and gossip. Wanley’s wife and children are away. The three men have all noticed the painting of a beautiful woman in the window of the shop next door to the club, especially Wanley, and they muse on the woes of “middle-age” (what we today call a “mid-life crisis”). One night, after Lalor and Barkstane have left the club, Wanley wanders out to the street to gaze at the painting again. Lo and behold, the model, a young woman named Alice Reed (Joan Bennett) appears and strikes up a conversation. Wanley is all too vulnerable to accept an invitation from Alice to see more paintings at her apartment. While there, another man shows up, is angered by Wanley’s presence, and the two men get into a fight. Wanley is forced to kill the man in self-defense. Then things go the way of a Coen Brothers movie if one had been made in the 40s. Wanley and Reed concoct a rather hairbrained scheme to get rid of the body and cover up the incident. Enter the dead man’s bodyguard, Heidt (Dan Duryea), who attempts to blackmail Reed.

There are twists and turns and even some humor thrown in as Wanley begins to count all the mistakes he and Reed have made to cover up the crime. The suspense builds in waiting for the hammer to fall… or does it?

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release of this unusually rare title is a welcome acquisition. The restoration looks terrific, and it comes with an audio commentary by film historian Imogen Sara Smith, along with the trailers for this and other Kino Lorber releases.

The Woman in the Window is a must-have for fans of film noir, director Fritz Lang, and the charismatic cast members. Edward G. Robinson, especially, seems to have infrequently received recognition for his professionalism and talent. Recommended.

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BY DARREN ALLISON

In 1965, maverick British producer and writer Harry Alan Towers (The Bloody Judge) scored a hit with The Face of Fu Manchu, a thrilling revival of Sax Rohmer’s super-villain imperiously portrayed by Christopher Lee. Powerhouse/Indicator have lovingly brought together all five films in the series and in the process produced a rather spectacular collection.

Christopher Lee was of course no stranger to playing maniacal, Asian characters. He had already played Chung King, leader of the Red Dragon Tong's in Hammer’s movie The Terror of the Tongs (1961) directed by Anthony Bushell. Tall, dark and menacing in his stature, Lee was perfect casting for novelist Sax Rohmer’s notorious Chinese criminal mastermind. Produced by Harry Alan Towers and Oliver A. Unger, The Face of Fu Manchu was a British / West German co-production. Behind the camera was Australian-born British film director Don Sharp, a man who had made some fine film’s for Hammer including The Kiss of the Vampire (1961) and The Devil-Ship Pirates (1964) also starring Christopher Lee.

The film sets out in rather unusual style with the apparent beheading of Fu Manchu. Where do we go from here one might ask? Back in London, his nemesis Nayland Smith (superbly played by Nigel Green), becomes increasingly concerned that Dr. Fu Manchu is not only still alive – but also back and operating in London. The kidnapping of Professor Muller (German actor Walter Rilla) unravels a plot involving a potentially lethal solution created from the seeds of a rare Tibetan flower: the Blackhill poppy. Fu Manchu learns that the poppy seed's poison can be used as a weapon and that just a pint of this solution is powerful enough to kill every person and animal in London. And so begins the classic encounter between good and evil.

It is naturally a perfect example of pulp fiction in its purist form. Producer Towers (as writer Peter Welbeck) seems to relish in his comic book approach, and in fairness, it all works incredibly well and to great effect. One has to remember that these films were made as family-orientated adventures, although some minor cuts were made in order to retain its ‘U’ certificate which obviously made good business sense. Unlike the ‘X’ certified Terror of the Tongs which contained much darker, adult themes, Fu Manchu, in its context is more like a Bulldog Drummond mystery or perhaps a Charlie Chan adventure from the forties or fifties. It succeeds in creating a perfect balance of dramatic excitement and a sense of innocent, harmless fun – all of which is indicative of its period.

Powerhouse/Indicator has produced a wonderful presentation of the film. Restored from a 4K scan of the original negative, the Techniscope frame and Technicolor print has never looked so good, revealing sharp detail and a rich, vibrant colour palette. Blacks are deep and solid and work especially well in contrast to the silky fabrics of Lee’s costuming. The audio (its original mono) is also clear and clean without any evidence of hiss or pops. It’s clear that these films have been worked upon with a great degree of love and care. Powerhouse has also offered a choice of two versions of the film. It was revealed at the time of production, reel 3 of the original negative contained a degree of damage to the left side of frame. This was dealt with at the time by zooming in on certain shots for the cinema prints and thereby eliminating the damage from view. Subsequent prints (for TV and other media formats) have always used the same ‘fixed’ theatrical version. However, for the first time, Powerhouse has offered the option to view the original print in its uncorrected version. Whilst the damage is of course still evident, it does however provide the opportunity of viewing the film without the use of panning or the post-production corrective fix. It’s a nice little touch on the part of Powerhouse and one which is bound to please the purists.

The wealth of bonus material is also very impressive. Firstly, there’s an enjoyable, fact-filled audio commentary with genre-film experts, critics and authors Stephen Jones and Kim Newman recorded in 2020. Other bonus extras include an archival Interview with Don Sharp – Part One: From Hobart to Hammer (1993, 96 mins) made as part of the British Entertainment History Project, featuring Sharp in conversation with Teddy Darvas and Alan Lawson; the BEHP Interview with Ernest Steward – Part One: The BIP Years (1990, 96 mins): archival audio recording of an interview with the respected cinematographer, also made as part of the British Entertainment History Project. There’s a b/w archival interview with Christopher Lee (1965, 4 mins); an extract from the Irish television programme Newsbeat, filmed during location shooting in Dublin. Vic Pratt Introduces ‘The Face of Fu Manchu’ (2020, 7 mins), an appreciation by the BFI curator. Underneath the Skin (2020, 49 mins) in which broadcaster, educationalist and author of The Yellow Peril: Dr Fu Manchu & The Rise of Chinaphobia, the wonderful Sir Christopher Frayling examines the origin, history and reputation of Sax Rohmer’s works. There are also a few alternative titles and credits sequences. For those of a certain age, there are Super 8mm versions: cut-down home cinema presentations which provide a nostalgic trip down memory lane. Original UK, German and French theatrical trailers and a generous image gallery featuring promotional posters, photos and publicity material round off this impressive world premiere on Blu-ray.

Due to the success of The Face of Fu Manchu – especially in America- producer Harry Alan Towers wasted very little time by setting the wheels in motion for a hasty sequel. Hoping to achieve the same success, Towers again pulled in West Germany’s Constantin Films along with his own Hallam Productions to co-finance the next project, The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966). Regardless of a very busy 1966, (a year that also included Hammer’s ‘back-to-back’ productions of Dracula: Prince of Darkness and Rasputin, the Mad Monk), Towers nevertheless managed to secure his leading man Christopher Lee. He was also fortunate enough to have original director Don Sharp sign again on the dotted line.

The story once again revolves around world domination, this time through the use radio waves which can carry destructive blast frequencies. In order to carry out his plan, Fu Manchu has kidnapped the daughters of prominent scientists whom he blackmails into helping him create his deadly transmitter. It was a simple enough narrative, written again in easy, comic book style by Harry Alan Towers. The great loss to this particular film is that of Nigel Green as Nayland Smith. Smith is this time played by Douglas Wilmer, an actor that had just played Sherlock Holmes in the TV series of 1965. Wilmer fits the role perfectly well and proves he can handle himself when it comes to the obligatory fist fight with the dacoits. However, he doesn’t quite possess the same regimented and commanding drive displayed by that of Nigel Green. As with his later portrayals of Dracula, Lee also has far less demanding role in The Brides of Fu Manchu. His presence is still dominating but he has far less to do. Here he seems more comfortable behind a control or instrument panel. In fact, it’s his depraved daughter Lin Tang (Tsai Chin) who this time takes a far more active role alongside lead henchman Feng (played wonderful by Burt Kwouk) who almost steals the show. Everything here though is all sufficiently menacing and a great deal of fun.

Powerhouse has again delivered where it counts. Creating a newly restored transfer from a 4K scan of the original negative, the film looks beautiful and includes the original BBFC theatrical card. Director Don Sharp this time opted to drop the Techniscope process (probably due to Towers ever tightening of the budget) and instead chose to use a standard 1.85:1 lens – but thankfully this never distracts or lessons the overall viewing pleasure or impact. The rich greens, golds and pinks of the costuming again appear so rich. The restoration also reveals a much greater depth, particularly those cantered in the subterranean chamber; another beautifully lit set which looks far greater on screen than in probably was in reality. Every element of these scenes is greatly enhanced and benefit hugely from the new restoration. Powerhouse has also satisfied the purists by sensibly utilizing the cleaned original mono audio.

The disc’s bonus material is also impressive and contains a full audio commentary, this time provided by film historians Kevin Lyons and Jonathan Rigby (2020). Then there is a continuation of the BEHP Interview with Don Sharp – Part Two: A Director of Substance (1993, 95 mins) and Part 2 of the BEHP Interview with Ernest Steward: From Teddington to ‘Carry On’ (1990, 93 mins). Then there’s a real treat in the shape of The Guardian interview with Christopher Lee (1994, 87 mins): a wide-ranging onstage interview with the legendary actor, conducted by the film critic David Robinson. Lee was renowned as a great talker, and this is no exception. The iconic actor delves deep and concise providing the audience with a rare insight of the business and a feast of industry stories. BFI curator Vic Pratt provides another unique and newly filmed introduction to The Brides of Fu Manchu (2020, 7 mins). Pages of Peril (2020, 21 mins): has genre-film expert, critic and author Kim Newman discuss Sax Rohmer and the Fu Manchu novels. The film’s original theatrical trailer, a b/w TV spot and an Image gallery containing production photos, promotional and publicity material round off the world premiere Blu-ray very nicely.

Any time we at Cinema Retro might feel self-congratulatory about staying in print for sixteen years, we're immediately humbled by the fact that Dick Klemensen has been publishing Little Shoppe of Horrors magazine since 1972. You read that right...1972, the same year it seemed like a good idea to re-elect Richard Nixon in the biggest landslide in American history and Marlon Brando regained his mojo as The Godfather. Since then, Dick's magazine has been the gold standard for coverage of everything and anything to do with the Hammer films horror classics. The vast majority of every issue is dedicated to Hammer and yet he never gets repetitive. Dick started to reach out to the Hammer stars, directors, producers and technicians in the early 1970s and thus acquired a priceless archive of their stories and memories during an era in which most critics didn't take the films seriously. Dick's latest issue features the wonderful Hammer version of the Sherlock Holmes classic "The Hound of the Baskerville" on the cover and the interior is chock full of informative and entertaining articles. Click here to visit Little Shoppe of Horrors site and prepare to go on a shopping spree. Remember, print media needs your support!

Here is official list of contents for the latest issue:

v The Hyman Horrors.

v 'Behind the Scenes' on The Hound of the Baskervilles

v 'Murder Their Religion!'

v Murder By Hatchet!'

v 'He Painted With Light! Jack Asher'

v 'Michael Medwin: Hammer's First Star'  

v Dracula 2020 — The recent BBC/Netflix/Hartswood Film version of Bram Stoker's classic Novel.  

v 'The Hammer Diaries of Christopher Wicking - 1975 - Part 2'

v Vampirella Live

All our regular features - Letters to LSoH - Ralph's One-and-Only Traveling Reviews CVompany - Hammer News.

Covers

Front Cover by Mark Maddox

Back Cover by David Robinson

Inside Front Covers by Paul Watts & David Brooks

Inside Back Cover by Alistair Hughes

BY HANK REINEKE

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray edition of Calvin Floyd’s documentary In Search of Dracula is the third hard copy to find its way into my collection. I no longer own a copy of that first edition, a VHS tape of dubious origin and purchased at a convention. That was jettisoned when an authorized copy on DVD was issued by Wellspring Media in 2003. Truth be told, I’m not sure a manufacture of a Blu-ray for this particular film is necessarily merited. But it’s here now and will likely displace the DVD sitting on my home video shelf. The circle of life, I suppose.

This quirky and occasionally interesting documentary would make its debut on the small screen, initially produced for exclusive broadcast on Swedish television. But it was a popular and professional enough effort to be later telecast in Great Britain on the B.B.C. The film would make the transition as a genuine cinematic property in 1975 when Samuel M. Sherman’s Independent International Pictures Corporation bought the U.S. distribution rights. The producer would pad the program’s running time to feature-length with a sprinkling of non-essential bits and pieces here and there.

The film was released theatrically in the U.S., playing the New York City metropolitan area in May 1975. This NYC-area engagement lasted little more than a week, mostly playing drive-ins and second-run cinemas throughout the city’s outer boroughs, Long Island and the wilds of New Jersey. Sherman’s ballyhoo newspaper advertising was purposefully misleading. It highlighted Christopher Lee’s participation in the production and referenced “An Open Letter to the Descendants of Count Dracula.” Subsequent ad copy coyly disguised that the film was actually an historical documentary rather than a new Dracula feature.

In any event, the film was not strong enough to stand alone as a potential draw, so it was paired with an appropriate co-feature, albeit movies of previous-release and exhibiting some mileage and history. These co-features would include the like of Hammer’s The Mummy (1959) with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and Al Adamson’s bargain-basement cheapie Blood of Ghastly Horror (1967) with John Carradine. (This second feature made some strategic sense as Sherman was co-producer of the latter film). Sherman is listed here in the revised opening credits of In Search of Dracula as “production consultant.” With all due respect to Mr. Sherman, Floyd’s original documentary was inspired by consulting Raymond T. McNally and Radu Florescu’s best-selling tome of the same title (New York Graphic Society, 1972). The film, to the best of its ability, attempts to touch on many of the same subjects more thoroughly detailed in that book.

Unfortunately, it does so with only mixed success as director Floyd’s somber narrative tends to meander. The film certainly starts promisingly enough, advising viewers that it was photographed not only “on location” in Transylvania itself (we’re told “Transylvania” translates to the “land beyond the forest”), but also in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Sweden. “All film locations are authentic and historically accurate” a title credit promisingly brags. Indeed, the travelogue snippets of green fields, the Carpathian Mountains, broke-down castles, and small-village folkways are amongst the film’s strongest assets. We’re also treated to somewhat tangential footage documenting a colorful performance by the Romanian Folklore Dance Company and the so-called “mysticism” of a Greek Orthodox Church ceremony.

The real masterstroke of producer/director/composer Floyd was his ability to bring in a favorite cinematic Dracula, Christopher Lee, to narrate and guide viewers through this fractured history lesson. The fact that he was able to convince Lee to do so is surprising in itself. Lee had walked away, somewhat disgruntled, from the Dracula character following his appearance in seven mostly beloved – and mostly profitable - films for Hammer Studios… and an eighth, if less celebrated Dracula movie, for Spanish director Jess Franco (1970). Lee proudly boasts here near the film’s end that his Horror of Dracula (1958) made “eight times its production costs!” for Hammer. For the record, Lee hadn’t totally abandoned his cloaked on-screen vampirism, having also appeared as an ersatz Dracula in such mostly forgotten continental productions as Italy’s Tempi duri per i vampiri (1959) and France’s Dracula Père et Fils (1976). Lee provides narration throughout but also appears on screen - surprisingly “in character” - in several brief vignettes. He’s seen here, in silent footage, as both the (Stoker-described) mustachioed Count Dracula as well as the character’s presumed historical forebear Vlad Tepes (aka “Vlad the Impaler”), the one-time Prince of Wallachia.

It’s unfair to expect an eighty-two minute film to adequately convey the contents of a 300 page book, and director Floyd (along with writer Yvonne Floyd) tries their best to condense and impart information in an educational and entertaining manner. Unfortunately, there’s just not enough running time to discuss any item to satisfaction. We are offered some teachable, if rushed along, informational tidbits along the way. We learn that Bram Stoker, who would first publish his novel Dracula in 1897, never actually visited Transylvania prior to writing. Despite this, Lee ensures, the novelist was “remarkably accurate” in his descriptions as he had studied period maps and guidebooks in careful preparation. There’s a discussion of the origin of vampire legends which, we’re told, originated in Asia before migrating westward to other far-flung places. Stories of vampires eventually traveled to Eastern Europe where they seamlessly filtered into and intertwined with local folklore beliefs. It was in Eastern Europe that tales of vampirism and “the undead” would appear most common.

The film also treats us to tangential, thumbnail case studies and psychological profiles of other infamous - and terribly real - “vampires.” These include Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Hungary (aka Countess Dracula) who, legend has it, bathed in the blood of virgins in an attempt to stay youthful. Then there was the awful Peter Kürten, the “Vampire of Düsseldorf,” a sexual deviant and serial killer who reportedly cannibalized and drank the blood of several of his victims. Another addition to this unpleasant rogue’s gallery was John Haigh, the so-called “Vampire of London.” The delightful Mister Haigh treated his victim’s to acid baths and claimed to have drunk their blood as well.

It’s almost a relief when, somewhere around the sixty-minute mark, Floyd – in a head-scratching manner - segues into an odd sidebar regarding the origins of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. Its inclusion here is almost totally out of place in this particular documentary but, in hindsight, it did foreshadow Floyd’s next and more ambitious project. This would be the director’s attempt at a dramatic telling of the authentic and original Shelley text “as written.” This feature would subsequently be released to European cinemas in 1977 as the Terror of Frankenstein.

Though no classic, Floyd’s take on Frankenstein – unseen by many until the home video boom made the film more available – is often lauded as the first faithful attempt to follow the novels genuine and more complex storyline. This declaration wasn’t entirely true. In 1973, NBC-TV would broadcast their three and a half hour television drama Frankenstein: The True Story in two parts. So that television production had gotten their first and, quite frankly, did a better job of it. In any event, Calvin Floyd’s Terror of Frankenstein is certainly worth seeking out by film scholars, if only for its oddity.

Unfortunately, Floyd’s In Search of Dracula begins to fall apart near the end as we pass through brief mentions of the nineteenth century literary legacies of such “undead” figures as Le Fanu’s Carmilla and Polidori’s Vampyre. As we enter the age of cinema, we’re treated to an over-long, but time-chewing, excerpt of the public-domain silent classic Nosferatu. Since clips from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr and Tod Browning’s Dracula (the latter featuring the iconic 1931 performance of Bela Lugosi), were under copyright protection, we’re treated only to a few production stills and a lengthy, and not terribly relevant, excerpt from Lugosi’s appearance in the non-protected 1925 silent drama The Midnight Girl.

In any event, I’m guessing that fans of Sir Christopher Lee and students of the Dracula legend will be compelled to add this film to their collections: as someone who has triple-dipped on this title I completely understand. Others less-obsessed might find the film an outdated celluloid relic, best forgotten. While I’m certainly glad that the film has been made available once again for those interested, I would be dishonest to deem it as an essential study.

This Kino Lorber Studio Classics Blu-ray of In Search of Dracula has been transferred from a new 2K master, in a ratio of 1.37:1 and in 1920p x 1080p with DTS monaural sound. The set also features an audio commentary track supplied by film historians Lee Gambin and John Harrison. The set includes a few bonus trailers for other Christopher Lee films available from the Kino Lorber library: The Crimson Cult, The Oblong Box, Scream and Scream Again, Arabian Adventure, and House of Long Shadows.

BY DARREN ALLISON

“Light into Ink: A Critical Survey of 50 Film Novelizations” [DeLuxe Edition]: [Colour Interior] by S.M. Guariento. Publisher: Independently published. Softback: 480 pages, ISBN-10: 1687489084 ISBN-13: 978-1687489081, Product Dimensions: 20.3 x 2.8 x 25.4 cm, price £39.99

As most film fans would concur, the humble film ‘tie-in’ paperback, or if you would prefer, novelisation – was pretty much an essential element for movie lovers. Perhaps ‘tie-in’ is a somewhat dated term these days, but it still relates to the same thing - a book whose jacket, packaging, contents, or promotion relates to a feature film or a television show. Back in the day, the paperback novelisation had a magnetic effect, usually because it contained the wonderful film artwork or an iconic photo of its star in a scene from the movie. They proved quite irresistible and the newsagent’s rotary stands were often the place to find many treasurers. However, it was also a little piece of collecting history that hadn’t really been examined to any great depth – until now.

S.M. Guariento’s book is an excellent examination of 50 such books. The London-born author provides a detailed case study of various genres. In his research, Guariento doesn’t skip or avoid and leaves no stone unturned. He examines the evolution of the softback, particularly from its 1950s explosion where the paperback began being a preference over that of the hardback equivalent. It’s an excellent historical journey and it’s a great education in how it all evolved. However, there is no escaping the overriding appeal of their presentation and the genuine pulling power of their lush and varied cover art.

Guariento provides some glorious memories with the turn of each page, delving into TV titles such as Target’s Doctor Who, Bantam’s Star Trek and Futura’s Space 1999 – all of which contained heart racing cover imagery.

The book’s subtitle ‘50 Film Novelizations’ can perhaps be easily misinterpreted and arguably underrates this book’s mammoth amount of content. In terms of subject genres, Guariento hits the sweet spot every single time. In his chapter selections he has chosen very wisely, covering Eastwood, Bond, Planet of the Apes, Horror, Sci-fi, Hammer, Crime, Spy – in fact, everything that is both engaging and appealing to a key audience. Other chapters focus more specifically, such as cult filmmakers (including David Cronenberg and John Carpenter) and the adaptations of their various films. Most importantly, do not be misled into thinking that 50 film novelisations simply equates to 50 cover illustrations. The book also serves as a spectacular pictorial treasury with hundreds of covers featured - either related within the context of a chapter or shown as different or alternative editions of certain titles. Guariento certainly has this covered. This book is practically a dream.

Despite the glowing praise I’m happy to bestow upon this book, readers should also take note - and it’s a very important note: Guariento’s book does come in two very different versions. The version submitted for the purposes of this review is, in fact, the deluxe edition, meaning simply that all images contained within its pages are presented in stunning colour.

However, the book is also available in a Midnight Edition, which is identical in terms of content except that its pages consist of monochrome (b/w) images. I also know I can speak for a great number of similar minded colleagues and friends who will find this somewhat disappointing. For me, it practically punctured the heart of the book and its overall enjoyment. For people who grew up with these books, seeing them reproduced in black and white simply diminishes the retrospective element of its joy. Of course, it does provide a more affordable (£14.99) alternative. Nevertheless, given the books’ subject, it does slightly contradict what the book originally sets out to celebrate.

There’s very little doubt about it, ‘Light into Ink’ is an exceptionally detailed, well produced and yes, a beautifully illustrated book. But just be aware; make sure you know exactly which edition you are ordering should you choose to indulge further. If it’s entirely possible, make every effort towards the deluxe colour edition, I can promise you – you’ll be very glad you went the extra yard.

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BY LEE PFEIFFER

Way back in the 1970s while in college, I took a course dedicated to classic films. The teacher was Herbert J. Leder, an affable, if eccentric, professor who also had the distinction of having directed some films for major studios. They were all "B" movies, but they did get wide release. One of them was titled "The Frozen Dead", a 1967 Hammer horror wanna be with Dana Andrews as a mad Nazi doctor who plans to use cloning to revive the Third Reich in modern day England. As a joke, Herb showed the film one day in his "Classics of the Cinema" class. It was mildly diverting fare, no better or worse than much of what Hammer itself was releasing during this time period. A couple of years later, Fox released "The Boys From Brazil", a major adaptation of Ira Levin's bestselling thriller. The plot centered on a mad Nazi doctor who was using cloning to revive the Third Reich in modern society. I was rather shocked at the similarity of the story lines and discussed it with Herb Leder, who was dismissive of pursuing any possibility that Levin's novel might have been influenced by his "B" movie. Today, of course, the mindset would probably be different and a lawsuit, frivolous or not, would probably have been brought against all parties concerned with "The Boys From Brazil". The film version of Levin's novel was greeted with mixed reviews. I recall arguing the movie's merits (or lack thereof) with my mentor, Playboy film critic Bruce Williamson. I found the movie to be highly enjoyable and I was particularly impressed by Gregory Peck's refreshing change of pace, playing an outright villain, the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. Williamson said he felt that Peck reminded him of a drunk at a party who puts a lampshade on his head in an attempt to bring attention to himself. Nevertheless, upon seeing the film again through the Blu-ray release from Shout! Factory, my admiration for the movie remains undiminished.  

The film begins with a series of suspenseful sequences in which a determined young American, Barry Kohler, (Steve Guttenberg) in South America doggedly and surreptitiously tracks and photographs the activities of suspected former Nazis.He becomes increasingly audacious and manages to bug one of their meetings. He is shocked to learn that they have launched a plan to revive the Third Reich through the efforts of the world's most wanted man, the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, who oversaw barbaric "medical experiments" at Auschwitz. Kohler makes contact with the legendary Nazi hunter Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier), who runs a drastically underfunded operation with his sister (Lili Palmer) that attempts to bring war criminals to justice. Lieberman is sarcastic to the young man and dismisses his information- until he suspects that he has been murdered. Lieberman then launches his own investigation, traveling internationally to interview parties who might shed light on the conspiracy. He finds that the ex-Nazis have ordered the murder of 94 civil servants around the globe who are all in their mid-60s. As the investigation continues, he suspects that Mengele has cloned DNA from Adolf Hitler and that there are now teenage boys coming of age as sons of the men who have been marked for murder. Mengele needs to replicate the exact occurrences in the life of Hitler, including the death of his father when he was a teenager. By doing so, he hopes that at least one of the 94 boys will become a leader for the revived Reich.

The premise of the plot is an unlikely one to involve the talents of Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier and James Mason, who plays another ex-Nazi who pulls the plug on Mengele's plans, thus forcing the arch villain to act independently to see his scheme through to fruition.  Indeed, there are times the film seems like a dusted off vehicle for old time character actor George Zucco, who reveled in playing mad doctors. However, under the direction of Franklin J. Schaffner, the pace is brisk, the story involving and the performances are compelling. Add to all this a superb musical score by Jerry Goldsmith and it's hard to resist the movie, despite its abundance of guilty pleasures. The finale is a bizarre doozy in which  Mengele and Lieberman (who is obviously supposed to be real life Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal) end up in a wrestling match in the presence of bloodthirsty hounds! Olivier overdoes the feeble old Jewish guy routine (a performance he would recreate practically verbatim as Neil Diamond's cantor father in "The Jazz Singer" a couple of years later). Nevertheless, he's fun to watch. An irony is that, although Gregory Peck gives the superior performance, it was Olivier who got a Best Actor nomination. Adding to the irony, Olivier had been nominated for Best Supporting Actor two years before for playing a thinly-veiled Mengele in "Marathon Man". There are plenty of fine supporting performances including Anne Meara in a rare dramatic role, Bond baddie Walter Gotell, John Dehner, Rosemary Harris, Uta Hagen, Denholm Elliott, Bruno Ganz and Linda Hayden. Young Jeremy Black is especially creepy as the teenage boy who doesn't realize he is carrying Hitler's DNA. 

The Shout! Factory Blu-ray does justice to this opulent production that is dripping in atmosphere. An original trailer is also included.

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BY JOHN M. WHALEN

In “My Gun Is Quick” (1957), Mickey Spillane’s famous private detective Mike Hammer (Robert Bray) meets a sad young hooker named “Red” (Patricia Donahue) in a greasy spoon and rescues her from a goon trying to put the muscle on her. Hammer slaps him around and kicks him out the door and gives her bus fare plus change to go back home and start over. He’s a hardnose but he’s got a tender spot somewhere under that tough exterior. He writes down his name and number on a slip of paper and tell her to call him to let him know she made it okay. Before they part he notices a very ornate ring on the third finger of her right hand. Hammer has been up for 52 hours and just wants to go home and get some sleep, but police detective Pat Chambers’ (Booth Colman) sends a patrolman to bring him downtown. The sad young hooker was found dead—broken neck from a hit and run “accident”—with Hammer’s name in her purse.

Hammer explodes in anger. “She was a nice kid,” he tells Chambers, who pours out the contents of the girl’s purse on his desk. “Where’s the ring?” Hammer asks. He describes it to Chambers, the silver letter “V” in a black antique setting. Chambers pulls a file out of a drawer and shows him pictures of some jewelry. “It’s the Venacci Collection,” Chambers says. The jewelry was stolen in Italy during the war by a Colonel Holloway, who was caught and served 10 years in prison. The jewels were never found, but Holloway was just released. Hammer says he doesn’t give a damn about the jewels, he just wants to find the girl’s killer. He goes back to the diner and slaps around the ex-con who works behind the counter until he coughs up a lead on the girl. He tells Mike to check out the Blue Bell Strip Club and ask for Maria (Gina Core), one of the dancers there. She and Red were pals.

What follows next is a very long stretch of film showing Hammer tailing a goon from LA to Long Beach. You might find such a sequence kind of dull, despite the jazzy music on the soundtrack. But I found it fascinating. Seeing the freeway as it was in 1957, with that Fairlane 500 cruising down the highway with the oil derricks on the left side of the road and the beach rolling in on the right. Seeing the cars moving so freely, with lots of space for everybody, the houses along the way with plenty of room between them, well, it was fascinating. It gave me a nostalgic feeling, a memory of a time when the air was still clean and there weren’t any killer viruses taking people out by the thousands. I almost hoped the ride wouldn’t end. But it does end- albeit, not before Hammer gets involved with another sensuous dame, Nancy Williams (Whitney Blake) and some exotic heavies. I won’t reveal any more of the plot. It doesn’t matter anyway. Plots are not what private eye stories are all about. They’re about the confrontations between one incorruptible man and a world of complicity.

The actors do a fairly good job in their roles. Bray fills up the scenery adequately with his size and broad shoulders, although there isn’t much fire in his performance. Mike Hammer in the novels is a primal force. He galvanizes the books with his anger and hatred for punks, rats, and commies. Bray and Whitney Blake (best remembered for playing the Mom on the “Hazel” TV series), just seem to coast through the film on roller skates. Still there’s enough tension in the plot to hold your interest and co-directors Victor Saville as Phil Victor) and George White make good use of the LA locales. Harry Newman’s noir photography makes the movie visually interesting, especially the climax filmed at night on the docks at Long Beach.

Kino Lorber has done a nice job transferring “My Gun Is Quick” to Blu-ray in a brand new 2K transfer with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Picture and mono sound are excellent. One of the surprising treats is checking out the jazz background score provided by Marlin Skiles, which features a combo of unnamed west coast players. They do a little tune called “The Blue Bells,” which is played during Gina Core’s strip number and reprised in several other scenes. It’s a dumb little tune, but once you hear it, you can’t get it out of your head. Kino has included the trailer for “My Gun Is Quick” on the disc. It shows a six-foot model of the paperback version of the book that opens, then has Whitney, Gina, and a couple of the other good-looking babes from the movie come crashing out through the pages. There are a half-dozen trailers for other crime films in KL’s vaults as well.

To sum it up “My Gun Is Quick” is not the best Mike Hammer film ever made (that would obviously be Robert Aldrich’s “Kiss Me Deadly”) but it’s cool watching Hammer driving that Fairlane on the mean streets of LA. Recommended.

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John M. Whalen is the author of "Tragon of Ramura". Click here to order from Amazon.

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The Evil Of Frankenstein [Collector's Edition] comes to Blu-ray™ on May 19 from Scream Factory. Customers ordering from ShoutFactory.com will receive an exclusive 18" X 24" rolled poster featuring our brand new artwork, available while supplies last. Horror great Peter Cushing stars in this fantastic tale as the monster's creator, Baron von Frankenstein, determined to bring the creature back to life. Long thought destroyed, Dr. Frankenstein's creation is discovered frozen alive and resurrected in his laboratory. Unfortunately, the creature's mind is dormant and, much to the Baron's horror, he finds that only a hypnotist can order the creature to do his unfathomable bidding now. The Evil Of Frankenstein [Collector's Edition] Special Features: NEW 4K scan of the interpositive NEW Audio Commentary with filmmaker/film historian Constantine Nasr NEW The Men Who Made Hammer: Freddie Francis NEW an interview with assistant director William P. Cartlidge NEW an interview with actress Katy Wild TV version of THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN (from the best available 16mm print) The Making of THE EVIL OF FRANKENSTEIN – Narrated by Edward de Souza and featuring interviews with Wayne Kinsey, Caron Gardner, Hugh Harlow, Pauline Harlow, Peter Cushing and Don Mingay A moment with actress Caron Gardner TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN TV Pilot Theatrical Trailer Still Gallery