R.I.P. Herbert Lom

Czech-born actor Herbert Lom -- born Herbert Karel Angelo Kuchacevic ze Schluderpacheru and most famous for his role as Inspector Dreyfus in the Pink Panther movies as well as the title role in the 1962 Hammer Productions remake of The Phantom of the Opera -- cursed Clouseau for the final time today at age 95.

He will be missed.

Hey, I Don't Remember This Show: Hammer House of Horror

I don't remember this show ever coming to our side of the Atlantic. When you consider a lot of the British shows that did, that's amazing.

A Turn for the Curse

Time is not always kind to old movies and time has a tendency to be especially unkind to old horror movies. Perhaps this is because horror movie fans inevitably grow up and seek different thrills than the ones they experienced in youth. More often, it is because the things that scare one generation don't always scare the next to the same degree.

Thus I have always been amused by those rare horror movies that have actually managed to grow more respectable with age. The Hammer films, for example, were rarely popular with critics when they first came out and as recently as the 1970s, it was popular for old school horror critics to blame the House of Hammer for the decline and fall of the old-fashioned horror film. Yet judging from most film critics nowadays, one would never imagine there was a time when the Hammer films were less than respectable.

Of course, part of this might lie in the fact that Hammer Studios were among the last people -- apart from the good people at Roger Corman's American International -- to set horror in the past and make it work. There has been many cinematic attempts to create horror period pieces since Hammer quit making such films but unfortunately, few such films have been as successful as the early Hammer films and indeed, my mind winces at the thought of having to rewatch such works as Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula in a way that it doesn't wince at watching, say, Hammer's Horror of Dracula.

But as good as the 1958 Horror of Dracula is, it would have never come about were it not for the success of the 1957 flick The Curse of Frankenstein. Curse was Hammer's first attempt at remaking the old Universal classic and it was a doozy. It was not necessarily all that perfect on an artistic basis. For example, as much as I admire the way Hammer makeup artists created a look for Christopher Lee's creature which was as convincing as the makeup used for Universal's Frankenstein Monster, it is hard for me to pretend that Lee's portrayal was an improvement on the more sympathetic Boris Karloff version. Indeed, one of the failings of Curse is the way it doesn't even try to portray the Frankenstein Creature as a being worth caring about.

Then again the movie doesn't try to create any sympathy for the monster's creator, either. If the creature is bad, its creator -- Baron Victor Frankenstein (played by Peter Cushing, natch) -- is worse. In order to achieve his ends, the Baron is not above robbing graves, cheating on his own bride-to-be and even murdering innocent people. Even on his wedding night to his cousin Elizabeth (played by the always gorgeous Hazel Court), he can't bring himself to think of anyone else but himself and his creation.

In the end, the Baron finally succeeds in either killing or alienating everyone close to him. And ironically, his own creation comes closer to bringing him to justice than any mere human...

As you might guess, Curse doesn't even pretend to be faithful to the original Mary Shelley novel and given the legal necessity of avoiding any close similarity to the original Universal movie lest Hammer be sued for plagiarism, it's probably just as well. All the same, Curse manages to be more memorable than I expected as well as a fitting beginning to Peter Cushing's long career as a horror movie icon. Come to think of it, Christopher Lee's career since this film has not been too shabby, either.

The Werewolf of Madrid

There’s a great scene toward the end of the 1961 Hammer film The Curse of the Werewolf but unfortunately you have to wade through a lot of scenes of people doing cruel things to other people to get there.

Is it worth to get there?

Well, it depends. The Curse of the Werewolf gives us a young Oliver Reed, a likable narrator, a surprisingly benign Spanish cleric and a novel explanation for lycanthropy. The movie is loosely -- very loosely -- based on Guy Endore’s novel The Werewolf of Paris but unfortunately, the adaptation eschews almost every scene in The Werewolf of Paris worth reading and includes a few I would rather not have revisited.

Hammer deserves credit for attempting to do something more complex than the usual Lawrence Talbot routine but I can not honestly say that this is one of their better movies. The main problem with the plot is that Reed is sympathetic enough as cursed Spanish lycanthrope Leon Corledo that I can not help but wish a happy ending for his character yet an unhappy ending is all but a foregone conclusion. To be fair, the plot does hint at possible alternative endings. For example, Corledo attempts to elope with his girlfriend at one point, only to be stymied by the police. At another point, the cleric hints that Corledo could be sent to a monastery. (An odd solution given the Catholic Church’s traditional attitude towards the supernatural but in the wake of recent events, all too believable.) However, this plan ultimately fails as well.

So is Curse of the Werewolf worth seeing? Not really. Yet there is something about that final scene in which Corledo’s girlfriend, dressed in black, stands alone in a way which suggests Goya’s famous painting of the Black Duchess. Perhaps I am stretching things a bit but then again I do not often see scenes that remind me of Goya paintings in a movie, let alone a Hammer movie. I just wish this one scene had appeared in a better film.

R.I.P. Jimmy Sangster

Acclaimed Hammer film scribe Jimmy Sangster penned his last screamplay yesterday at age 83.

He will be missed.

R.I.P. Ingrid Pitt

Former Hammer Films star Ingrid Pitt, best known for such films as 1970's The Vampire Lovers and 1971's Countess Dracula, bared her last set of fangs yesterday at age 73. She will be missed.

Trailer of the Week: Horror of Dracula (1958)

This was not the first face-off between Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing -- that came in The Curse of Frankenstein, which I have not seen yet -- but it was definitely one of the most memorable. Peter Cushing may not be the definite Van Helsing to all you Edward Van Sloan fans out there but he is definitely much better than poor Hugh Jackman.

R.I.P. Roy Ward Baker

Noted English director Roy Ward Baker, best known for the 1958 film A Night to Remember but who also worked on various films for Hammer and Amicus Studios such as 1967's Quatermass and the Pit and 1972's Asylum as well as such TV shows as The Avengers and The Baron, finished his last cup of tea Tuesday at age 93.

He will be missed.

Trailer of the Week: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Cool! A Sherlock Holmes movie in color! What a concept! Why can't they make movies like this anymore?

All the Not-So-Classic Movies That I Have Seen

1. The Mutations (1974) aka The Freakmaker.



As you can tell from the above image, this film has one of the creepiest posters ever made. Indeed, that poster used to haunt my dreams whenever it appeared in the local newspaper. But unfortunately, the movie itself doesn’t quite live up to that poster.

It does showcase Tom Baker -- then most famous for his role as Rasputin in 1971’s Nicholas and Alexandra -- as Lynch, the freakish henchman of a mad scientist (played by Donald Pleasence). But it also features him doing a whole lot of shameful overacting. His wardrobe in this film seems close to that which he would later wear as the lead character in the Dr. Who series so that those who watch this movie have the odd chance to see Baker play a character who dresses like the Doctor but doesn’t in any way act like the Doctor. The movie is not all that well-known but I can't really pretend that that isn't a blessing in disguise.

Anyway, the plot -- what little there is of it -- involves the above-mentioned mad scientist hiring Lynch to kidnap various people in return for a vague promise of curing Lynch’s freakish condition. Lynch chooses to prey on a gang of local college students and the scientist uses these students in a series of experiments involving artificial mutation of the human body. Eventually one of the students' associates gets wise and tries to rescue the last victim before she gets experimented on. There is also a subplot which involves a local freak show that Lynch runs and where he displays the unsuccessful results of the doctor’s experiments.

The movie starts off in almost documentary fashion as if the filmmakers wanted the movie to be taken for a serious work of science fiction. But apart from one scene, the film is never as good as the presence of Baker and Pleasence would suggest. At least one actress in the cast seemed to have been cast more for her willingness to appear in various states of undress than any actual talent, and the plot itself all too often makes it seem to be little more than a Z-grade horror film with delusions of grandeur. Michael Dunn, who is most famous for his villainous roles on the TV series Wild Wild West, appears as a midget who is leader of the freaks that Lynch supervises, but he too seems trapped by the bad script.

As I noted above, there is one scene in the movie in which the movie showed signs of wanting to be a far better movie than it actually is. In this scene, Lynch seeks out a paid companion and reveals the depths to which he will stoop to gain even the semblance of affection from a so-called “normal” person -- depths that are even more pathetic when one considers that this scene follows one in which he is shown spurning an attempt at friendship made by the members of the freak show he runs.

But, alas, the film isn’t all that interested in the implications of that scene. Nor in its not-so-subtle attempt to contrast the monstrous actions of Lynch and the scientist with the comparatively normal actions of the “freaks.” Any similarities to Tod Browning’s classic Freaks are no doubt meant to be intentional but alas the film is nowhere close to being in the same league. What a pity.

2. Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971).

Given her resemblance to her male co-star Ralph Bates, Martine Beswick seems such an apt choice to play the female alter ego of Bates’s Dr. Jekyll character that it’s a shame we don’t see more of her in this movie. Unlike all too many actresses in the 1970s, Beswick manages to be as alluring with her clothes on as she does with them off. And of course, she looks absolutely ravishing in a red dress. Not to mention the fact that she plays a far more compelling villainess than one would expect. (And this from a guy who was bored stiff by Sharon Stone’s villainess in Basic Instinct.)

So what’s wrong? Well, for one thing, the movie tends to throw far too many different elements into its brief story -- not all of which work. Thus we don’t just get a classic variation on the Jekyll/Hyde story -- with Jekyll this time seeking immortality by way of female hormones (?!) -- we get a Burke and Hare movie, a Jack the Ripper movie and so on and so forth. Though Jekyll is initially shown as a sympathetic character who is genuinely interested in curing diseases, he crosses over to the dark side so fast he almost strains credibility. Nor does it help that the script never really explains whether his female alter ego (the Sister Hyde of the title) is naturally evil or trained to be evil when Jekyll finds it useful for his research. Or whether his inability to control her in the later half of the film is due to his own latent tendencies toward evil.

The Brian Clemens script is witty but not always as clever as a hardcore Avengers fan like myself would prefer. There’s even a romantic subplot of sorts that works better than I reckoned as well as hints of Victorian wrongdoing that only the British can do so well. But the film never gels as much as I’d like. And the trickier and more interesting moral questions of the plot are more hinted at than explored.

Oh, well. I’ve seen a more modern version of this movie when it was remade in the 1990s with Sean Young. That version was horrible.

This version at least is watchable even though I kept wanting it to be better than it was. For what it's worth, the film’s final image is just right. Even though it doesn’t involve Ms. Beswick.

3. Captain Kronos -- Vampire Hunter (1974).

Like many Hammer films of the early 1970s, this film was shot on a low budget and it shows. Nor is the storyline as consistent as it could be. And, of course, the title promises a more exciting movie than you actually get.

The love interest is played by actress Caroline Munro and the most merciful thing I can say about her performance is that she’s no threat to Jamie Lee Curtis or more recent scream queens. But then her character is given little to do but smile inanely and occasionally provide horizontal entertainment for the hero so it may be just as well.

However, the moodier scenes still work and there are actually a few good sword fights as well. Writer/director Brian Clemens -- yes, the same Clemens who wrote the previous film -- doesn't quite reinvent the vampire genre as well as he did the spy genre with The Avengers, but he makes a respectable showing in a genre in which far more respectable films all too often come across as laughable. It's a pity he couldn't have collaborated with Francis Ford Coppola on Coppola's vampire movie...

Halloween Song of the Week: “Hammer Horror”

Introducing a song by the one Bush I'd like to think we can all support this October: Kate Bush. The British singer most famous for “Running Up That Hill” and the original version of “Wuthering Heights.”

I'm probably the last person in this world to have heard of this tune but hey, better late than never.

I hope you enjoy it.