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Thursday, June 19, 2008Pirates of Blood River Release Year: 1962Country: England Starring: Kerwin Mathews, Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir, Glenn Corbett, Marla Landi, Michael Ripper, Peter Arne, Oliver Reed, Jack Stewart, Marie Devereux, Desmond Llewelyn. Writer: Jimmy Sangster Director: John Gilling Cinematographer: Arthur Grant Music: Gary Hughes Producer: Anthony Nelson Keys Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us After taking several years off, the 1950s saw the return of the pirate movie, thanks largely to the efforts of Walt Disney. In 1950, Disney produced a colorful, fast-paced, and smartly written adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic adventure tale, Treasure Island. Two non-Disney sequels -- the directly related Long John Silver and the dubiously connected Return to Treasure Island -- followed in 1954, and a TV series came out in 1955. Plus, it seemed like every other episode of "The Wonderful World of Disney" featured either pirates or kids in coonskin caps solving a mystery in a spot called Pirate's Cove. Along similar lines, Disney released a classic version of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and in 1958, the first of the Sinbad films featuring special effects by Ray Harryhausen showed up. While these last two weren't pirate movies per se, they still had the air of old fashioned high seas adventure and swashbuckling about them. So someone at England's Hammer Studios, possibly Anthony Nelson Keys or Michael Carreras, walks up to screenwriter Jimmy Sangster and says to him, "Jimmy, old boy, we want to make a pirate film, and we want you to write it." Sangster, fresh off the astounding success of his scripts for Hammer's most famous films -- Horror of Dracula, The Mummy, and Curse of Frankenstein, among others, excitedly agrees. It'll be fun to bring the Hammer style into the realm of swashbuckling pirate movies. Sangster's mind is undoubtedly already formulating a story when Keys and/or Carreras adds, "Only here's the thing: we don't have any money for a boat, so don't write a script that features a pirate ship."
A pirate movie without a pirate ship? Sangster, by his own admission, was somewhat baffled by the whole idea. Of course, pretty much every pirate movie sets a good deal of its action on land. Errol Flynn's Captain Blood spends at least as much time on land as he does standing in heroic poses at the wheel of a ship, yelling "avast" and "me hearties." But he does spend time standing in heroic poses at the wheel of a ship, yelling "avast" and "me hearties." And his films feature plenty of ship-to-ship action, raids, and cannon fire. Ditto the Disney films. Plenty of on-land action, but also plenty of ship-to-ship shenanigans. It's hard to believe that even the tiny budgets within which the average Hammer Studio film had to operate couldn't be stretched in some way to come up with a pirate ship for their pirate movie, since hard to believe that anyone would make a pirate movie without a ship. But no. Sangster's task remained the same: write a pirate movie without a pirate ship. By 1962, Hammer had become synonymous with horror films, even though the studio's output before the release of the above-mentioned "big three" delved into pretty much every genre, as most studios would. But once Dracula, the Mummy, and Frankenstein were released, it was all about Hammer horror. Any other type of production was pushed to the back burner, both by the studio itself and by the public, who proved in those early days to have a near insatiable appetite for the lurid, colorful style of sex and blood Hammer routinely used to outrage critics and members of the decency police. But the desire remained, however flickering, to make sure Hammer didn't become just a horror factory, and doing a period piece pirate film seemed like a nice fit. They could recycle most of the props and costumes from their other films. And although they weren't horror films, pirates lent themselves to easy adaptation to horror film tropes, what with all the skulls and creeping about and stabbing each other that went on in them. They just couldn't have a boat, although they were afforded a few seconds of stock footage of someone else's boat to show during the credits.
In some ways, perhaps, this rather large restriction ended up helping Sangster, because the end result is a cracking good adventure story in which you barely even notice that the pirates never set foot onto a ship. Onto a raft, yes, but never a ship. I'd expect no less from Sangster, who is, in my opinion,easily one of the best screenwriters who ever entered the business. Unable to fall back on pirate movie standards like the cannon battle and a scene of guys with swords clenched in their teeth swinging from one ship to another, the harried screenwriter delivers instead a landlocked pirate film that, in many ways, plays out like an American western, albeit one with far more men adorned with a variety of colorful silk scarves. American Kerwin Mathews -- Sinbad in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad -- stars as fiery young Jonathon Standing, the member of a Huguenots settlement on a remote island somewhere that I don't think is ever clearly defined. The Huguenots were basically the early Protestants, frequently at odds with Catholic kings and churches and prone to being persecuted and going to war with dominant Catholics throughout the 1500s, well into the 1600s. The island settlement, then, is one of relative secrecy, and it is lorded over by a council of religious elders who dole out law based on strict Protestant interpretations of the The Bible. This apparently worked well for many years, but by the time Jonathon Standing comes around to make out with buxom Hammer glamour regular Marie Devareaux, the council has become largely corrupt, creating tension throughout the townsfolk, who feel that the elders have given in to petty power obsessions and greed rather than dictating the word of God. Jonathan's own father is the head of the council, but even if some vestige of an honest and noble man still exists within old Jason Standing (Andrew Kier, actually the same age as Kerwin Mathews), he is too weak-willed against the other members of the council for it to matter. In fact, when Jonathan himself violates the rules of the town by comforting the abused wife of one of the council members, Jason condemns the popular young man to hard labor in the colony's prison -- a virtual death sentence, we learn. The conviction of Jonathan only serves to make the crowds angrier, but like most angry crowds, there is much muttering beneath the breath and complaining, but no one is quite ready yet to take up the torches and pitchforks.
In prison, Jonathan fares poorly, as his popularity with hoi polloi makes him a target of the sadistic guards. So it isn't long after his clothes have been reduced to prison regulation tatters that he escapes, leading his captors on a wild chase through the island's swamps before coming face to face with Count Dracula! Well, with venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee, here playing French pirate captain LaRoche and sporting a deformed hand and an eyepatch. LaRoche makes about as nice as a ruthless, cold-hearted pirate can and cuts a deal with Jonathan. In exchange for the Huguenots not telling anyone LaRoche and his crew use the cove as a rest stop, LaRoche will...actually, I sort of forgot what his end of the bargain was. It doesn't really matter, because as soon as Jonathan leads them toward the settlement, the pirates start killing and making demands about a treasure they claim is hidden within the town. Jonathan knows they are mad, that there is no treasure, but that doesn't stop the motley band of cutthroats from laying siege to the town. The townsfolk rally to their own defense and seem to be holding their own for a while, but their wooden walls were meant to defend against wild animals and jungle critters, not well-armed pirates. LaRoche and his gang soon capture the town, promising to hang people until the elders give up the treasure. It's up to Jonathan and his young friends to wage a guerrilla style war against the occupiers, culminating in a fairly unsurprising revelation about the alleged treasure and the giant statue of the town founder and a fairly exciting duel between Jonathan and LaRoche.
Despite the lack of a pirate ship, Pirates of Blood River has a tremendous amount going for it. Chief among its many assets is the cast, buoyed by a likable Kerwin Mathews and an exceptional venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee, who gets to stretch his acting chops a little more than usual in the role of LaRoche. Lee was a big star by 1962, but two of his biggest roles had been entirely speechless, and one afforded him like three lines and five minutes of screen time. He was known, therefore, far more for the characters he played than he was as venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee the actor. Pirates of Blood River lets him come out from behind the bandages, scar make-up, and fangs and, in their place, wear an eye patch and speak with a French accent. LaRoche is a good character, one that interests viewers because it's obvious that there is much more to the him than we are ever allowed to discover. How did he lose his eye? What happened to his hand? How did he become a pirate? Why is he so haunted and determined? None of these questions are ever answered, and that allowed LaRoche to be interesting without being over-exposed. We are teased with his mysterious past, but it's never demystified for us. Free from the fetters of playing a creature, venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee seems to really be giving it his all, channeling perhaps Basil Rathbone's backstabbing French pirate from Captain Blood. He also handles the swordplay well. The duel between he and Mathews is excellent, and even though he is tall and lanky and playing a guy with one eye and a gnarled arm, you never really doubt that venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee could whup you if he wanted to.
Propping up the pirate end of things are some of Hammer's most reliable supporting players, including Michael Ripper in a rare non-innkeeper role. Here he is LaRoche's supposed best friend, though it's obvious LaRoche doesn't consider anyone a friend. Ripper really gets to ham it up, speaking with a bombastic uber-pirate style that would make Long John Silver himself proud. Also int he cast of scalawags is a young Oliver Reed, though he's not really around terribly long. The entire crew tears into their roles with joyous abandon, as merry and drunk as they are threatening and violent. On the other side of the fence is another set of villains: the town elders. Just as ruthless, just as greedy, only far more devious about it. Caught in between these two forces are Jonathan and the townspeople who respect him as a voice of reason and proponent of liberty. It's very much a "freaks versus the squares" cultural battle and not unlike what we would see a few years later in Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik: hip young people caught between two opposing yet similar monoliths of status quo society. For Diabolik, it was a corrupt government and organized crime; for Jonathan, it is a corrupt theocracy and a bunch of pirates. In the end, neither side appeals to our free spirits, and they chose to reject them both. Hammer often found itself in trouble with religious authorities because of the content of their films. They usually weaseled their way out of it at the last second by having Peter Cushing clutch a Bible or something, thus proving that the film was good and moral. In the case of The Pirates of Blood River, despite the absence of a Frankenstein monster, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster really gets to lash out against religious intolerance and hypocrisy. The elders start out kind of jerky, and then you think maybe Jonathan's father will have some sort of a change of heart at some point. But he only gets worse, and he is willing to see every single person in the town butchered rather than give up the treasure about which only he knows. In the end, he gets his just desserts, as does the dastardly LaRoche, leaving Jonathan to start society anew.
Although this was a decidedly non-horror adventure film, there are still horrific elements in the movie, as there would be in other of Hammer's subsequent pirate movies. The opening sequence, in which Jonathan is discovered making out with a married woman, is probably the film's most horrific scene. Pursued through the swamp by vengeful town elders, the poor woman stumbles into the titular Blood River, which happens to be infested with piranhas. As originally filmed, the poor girl screams and thrashes about as blood bubbles up all around her. The piranhas themselves are wonderfully realized by nothing more than having rapidly moving ripples spread out across the water. Hammer wanted the film to receive a much more family friendly rating, in the spirit of increased returns and inspired no doubt by the exciting but family-friendly Disney pirate films. The scene was eventually cut down to remove the blood, and then restored years later for the film's long-awaited debut on DVD. It's a chilling scene, and director John Gilling plays it wise by letting the imagination do most of the work. The screaming and the blood is graphic enough. He doesn't undercut the power of the moment by cutting to a shot of a rubber piranha. I do regret, however, that they don't cap the scene with a shot of a perfectly intact, bleach white plastic skeleton bobbing to the surface. That's always classy. But I guess Hammer was saving all their skeleton-related pirate hijinks for Night Creatures. I don't know what other cuts Hammer made to the film that have since been restored. The sword wounds are all pretty bloody. Not Lone Wolf and Cub geyser of blood bloody, but when a guy gets impaled, the sword on which he was impaled comes back all covered in grue. Still, I suppose that's about as family friendly as Hammer was capable of being, and it's family friendly enough for me. i don't come from the school of thought that maintains all children's fare must be bloodless, harmless, and never ever scare the wee ones. I'd much rather take my family to see Pirates of Blood River than a movie where a sass-talking CGI animal learns a skill that helps him win a contest while referencing pop culture.
That does bring us to another of the film's sundry assets: director John Gilling. By all accounts, Gilling was difficult to work with even under the best circumstances. In the case of Pirates of Blood River, it seems he was nearly intolerable. Gilling wasn't meant to be the director originally, but the man they'd assigned to the job had been in a spot of trouble with the American Un-Activities Committee, that embarrassment of a Congressional organization that spent so much time and money trying to ferret out commies and liberals int he motion picture industry. Kerwin Mathews was nervous about working with such a man, fearing that the long arm of stupidity would reach him even in England and ruin his career back home. Not that, by 1962, Mathews had much of a career. But it was enough that the supposedly bankable American was uncomfortable, so the director was replaced by an unenthusiastic John Gilling. As a director, coming into a production for which there is already a script, a cast, a crew, and sets is usually thought to be rather an unenviable situation, and Gilling wasn't shy about letting his displeasure be known. Still, however big a jerk he might have been on set, the end results were usually fantastic. That was certainly the case in 1966, when he directed one of my favorite Hammer horror films, Plague of the Zombies. And it's the case with this film as well. Pirates of Blood River, even without a ship, is a fast-paced, well-made adventure tale. As cranky as Gilling may have been, there's no doubt that he still put himself into making the best possible movie he could. Released in 1962, it'd be a little disingenuous to claim that the movie was influenced by something like Vietnam, even though there is a definite counter-culture air about the story. More than likely, and as I alluded to earlier, the film was influenced both by previous pirate films and by Westerns. The Huguenot settlement, with it's rough-hewn wooden walls, has the look of a pioneer fort. And the pirates laying siege to it is reminiscent of Western movie Indians doing the same. However, at some point in the film, the roles are reversed, and the pirates become the victims of hit and run warfare waged by Jonathan and his band of fighters who, despite being outmanned and outgunned, use their intimate knowledge of the jungle around them to pick the pirates off a few at a time, leaving the brigands harried, demoralized, and eventually, mutinous. That the pirates are French only supplies another link to the emerging conflict in Vietnam, but as Sangster has never mentioned this in an interview, I think it's more a case of coincidence and hindsight equipping us with the ability to infuse the film with influences and meanings that aren't there. Still, it's kind of fun, and it keeps film studies professors in business and away from actual film work, where they would do untold amounts of damage with their crackpot experimental videos.
So make a pirate movie, they told Jimmy Sangster, one in which the only time the pirates are in the water is when they board a poorly made raft that sinks shortly after being launched. Whatever the challenges may have been, he pulled it off. And Hammer pulled it off. The Pirates of Blood River was well received by audiences, and in true Hammer fashion, that meant they would do their best to milk the popularity for as long as they could. Over the next couple of years, Hammer produced several more pirate films, usually with the same cast. They even sprang for a mock ship for one of the films, and they intended to recycle it for other pirate films until it caught on fire. Captain Clegg, also known as Night Creatures, was released in 1962 as well and continued the Hammer style of making pirate movies set entirely on land. In 1963 came The Scarlet Blade (the only Hammer pirate film that, as of this writing, remains unavailable on DVD). And in 1964, with The Devil Ship Pirates, they finally sprang for that mock-up of a ship, even though that film, like the others, takes place largely on land and sets. But that was about it for Hammer pirate movies. The ship accidentally caught on fire and thus couldn't be reused (though the burning was incorporated into the film). As if that accident signified something more, production of Hammer swashbucklers more or less came to a close with that film as the studio focused itself almost entirely on horror films. So while it may not have the panache of an Errol Flynn movie or the budget of a Disney live action film,and while it may not have a pirate ship in it, The Pirates of Blood River is still a solid adventure tale, with plenty of action, a dependable cast, and a look that fools you into thinking this is a much higher budget film than it actually is. It's nice to see these old Hammer swashbucklers getting some attention. Now if someone would only get around to releasing the rest of their caveman adventure movies and Moon Zero Two, I'd be a happy lad.  Labels: Action: Adventure, Pirates, Series: Oceans Against Us, Stars: Christopher Lee, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1962 posted by Keith at 5:41 AM | 4 Comments Friday, April 04, 2008Arabian Adventure Release Year: 1979Country: England Starring: Puneet Sira, Oliver Tobias, Christopher Lee, Milo O'Shea, Emma Samms, Peter Cushing, Capucine, Mickey Rooney, John Wyman, John Ratzenberger, Milton Reid. Writer: Brian Hayle Director: Kevin Conner Cinematographer: Alan Hume Music: Ken Thorne Producer: John Dark Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us In my review of The Phantom of Soho, I talked about a few of the over-arching themes that run throughout everything we do here at Teleport City. I'd like to mention, for this review, another of the many themes that define what we do here: the idea that my level of intelligence and sophistication has evolved very little since I was ten years old. The years 1976 to 1986, roughly spanning ages four to fourteen for me, seem to be when I discovered the bulk of what I would end up liking for the rest of my life. At the time, my enthusiasm for entertainment that was sometimes, to be charitable, of dubious merit, could be chalked up to simple naivety -- the juvenile tastes of a juvenile. Perfectly acceptable, even if it did mean that I was prone to celebrating things like Treasure of the Four Crowns and Gymkata. However, years -- nay, decades -- later, I find that when I go back and revisit these films so beloved in my youth, rather than having a quiet chuckle at how silly I was back then, I actually enjoy them just as much. And sometimes even more. Time after time, I've sat down to be disillusioned, or to wonder how I could have liked such lowbrow fare when I could have spent my time brushing up on classic works of literature, only to find myself hooting with glee and running about the room in unabashed glee as I witnessed some fantastical orgy of ninja gore or oiled-up barbarians. Think of it as my childlike sense of wonder, if you are feeling generous, or shake your head in sorrow as you realize that I did indeed completely stop growing mentally at age fourteen. Still, one must assume that even I have my limits, and there must be a film at there that I loved as a kid and would not still love as an adult. I was told countless times by many people I trust that the 1979 fantasy film Arabian Adventure would be that film. Because make no mistake about it -- I loved this film when I was it in the theaters. Looking back on it, I could remember very little. I don't think I ever saw it again after that first time. All I could recall about the film was a genie, something about Mickey Rooney inside a giant golden clockwork robot, and magic carpet dogfights. Heck, I didn't even remember that it starred venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee. I have no idea why I didn't remember him but did remember Mickey Rooney. I don't think I was a big Mickey Rooney fan in my youth. In fact, I think I've only ever seen two Mickey Rooney films in my entire life.
Anyway, for years I snooped around, hoping to discover that Arabian Adventure had suddenly appeared on home video in some format that wouldn't require me to shell out $30 for someone's crappy VHS bootleg with a label hand-written in pencil. But for one reason or another, it always seemed to be MIA, and so I was left celebrating the merits of the film while all those around me who had seen it more recently made with the ominous proclamations of, "You're going to be disappointed with that one, chief." Impossible! I mean -- seriously: magic carpet dog fights! Finally, after years of waiting outside a temple, seated in the lotus position and refusing both food and water, ignoring the rain, the snow, the scorching heat, the jackals, the police telling me to move along, after all of that, one day I performed my hopeful little search on Netflix, and low and behold, there it was. Arabian Adventure! Needless to say, I had to bump certain classics, like Kickboxer IV (oh, the things I'll do for Michelle Krasnoo...the things I'd let her do to me...), a little lower on the list, but it was worth it to move this long-awaited gem from my youth to the top of the queue. Finally, the moment of truth had arrived. Would Arabian Adventure prove to be, as has been predicted by soothsayers and friends with my best interests at heart, a massive disappointment, forcing me to call into question everything I've ever held dear, permanently casting a gloomy shadow of resentment and melancholy over my childhood? Or would my seemingly indefatigable ability to pleased by damn near anything triumph, reinforcing the idea that I see the world through the rose-colored lenses of a child and also have the brain of a seven-year-old?
Well, I've rewatched the movie now, and let me say this: magic carpet dogfights. Yes, it's true; my bottomless lack of taste (I'm watching Navy SEALS as I write this) and sound judgment wins again! I enjoyed Arabian Adventure to no end, reveled in every clunky special effect, thrilled to scenes of guys gliding around on magic carpets suspended by wires, and looked with the kind eyes of an old friend upon the visage of Mickey Rooney running around inside not one, but three giant golden clockwork robots. And then there's venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee as the evil caliph Alquazar, doing his usual shtick and sporting a big ol' mustache. And then there's a kid with a monkey, a beautiful princess, a dashing prince, a scheming fat guy, some chick who lives inside a sapphire, Peter Cushing as the world's least convincing Arab, and did I mention that this movie has magic carpet dogfights? Yes, I did. And what makes my adoration of this film all the more shameful is that it has all these things, but doesn't do anything particularly interesting with them. The prince and princess are boring. Mickey Rooney is irritating and seems to have been bitten by a radioactive community theater performer and thus been imbued with all the proportional over-acting and hamming abilities that come with such a position in life. The special effects,while ambitious, are rarely any good. The entire movie plays like a fan-made "greatest hits of the Arabian Nights" highlight reel. And none of that seems to matter to me.
So here's the deal. The film begins with young Majeed (Puneet Sira) and his pet monkey arriving in a matte painting of the ancient Arabian city of Jhador, populated primarily by second unit stock footage of camels and guys sitting around in doorways. Majeed has arrived in the middle of sweeping events. People are plotting the overthrow of the ruthless Caliph Dracula (venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee), while Caliph Dracula himself is plotting to recover the mystical Rose of Elil, a sacred artifact that will, in some vague way, grant him the ultimate power to rule over the world, or something to that effect. Artifacts that grant you the power to rule the world are rarely clear on exactly how they plan to go about it. They are, in that way, very much like your modern politician -- all full of promises and rhetoric, but when it comes down to the nuts and bolts, the promises tend to fall apart. But that's small potatoes to worry about for a guy who has somehow managed to imprison his own soul in a fire pit and spends his free time taunting it. For its part, the soul spends most of its time being sort of petulant and whiny and generally making you understand why Caliph Dracula imprisoned it in the first place. Unable to retrieve the rose himself, for it must be plucked by a pure and righteous hand, Caliph Dracula enlists the aid of dashin' Prince Hasan (Oliver Tobias), who has fallen in love with Princess Zuliera (Emma Samms) despite having never actually seen or met her, and who seems completely oblivious to the fact that Caliph Dracula is evil and enjoys crushing his subjects beneath the iron fist of his mad tyranny. But he looks damn good in his swashbuckling Arabian prince outfit. Majeed ends up in possession of a magic gem that contains a trapped sorceress (Capucine) who, grateful for him releasing her, grants Majeed three life-saving wishes. Through typical movie convolution, this results in Majeed suddenly appearing on the back of a magic carpet piloted by dashin' Prince Hasan and Khasim (Milo O'Shea), a spy assigned by Caliph Dracula to accompany dashin' Prince Hasan and stab him in the back (literally) once he has the rose. Needless to say, Khasim is vexed that this half-naked young rascal has suddenly appeared out of nowhere on their magic carpet, and so he spends the bulk of their flight trying to knock him off.
Their quest for the magic rose leads them on a variety of adventures that involve a murderous genie (big Milton Reid, sporting weird googly eyes), a trio of fire-breathing monsters that end up being controlled by Mickey Rooney, and a lake of guys who try to grab your legs. As far as trials go, I have to admit, I've seen more challenging. I mean, Hercules had to clean stables that hadn't been cleaned in dozens of years, and dashin' Prince Hasan has to defeat Mickey Rooney? That hardly seems fair -- especially when Majeed does all the work. I mean, maybe the psychotic laughing genie would have posed a threat if he had been able to hit the broadside of a mosque with his magic firebolts, but he proves incapable of hitting a squirming fat guy all of five feet away -- and then he gets defeated when dashin' Prince Hasan tips over a bottle! That's Scooby Doo quality adventure right there. The quests get more challenging when Khasim pulls his power play. Before too long, dashin' Prince Hasan and Majeed find themselves leading a revolution, rescuing a princess, fighting with Caliph Dracula in a lake of fire, and engaging in magic carpet dogfights with Caliph Dracula's all-carpet air force of guy's who primary skill seems to be to wave their swords awkwardly at dashin' Prince Hasan, while he waves his sword awkwardly at them, causing hem to fall off their magic carpets. Someone should look into seat belts or something for those things. Lyz at And You Call Yourself a Scientist -- one of my absolute favorite movie sites on the web -- said of Arabian Adventure, "It is hard to imagine any but the least discriminating of viewers -- of any age -- really enjoying this film." And I can't really debate her on this matter. Instead, about all I can do is admit that it has been my goal to live the sort of life and put forth the sort of opinions that would result in my eventual tombstone reading, "America's Least Discerning Viewer." My other choice for an epitaph was, "It Took a Dozen Texas Marshals to Finally Bring Him Down." Anyway, I freely admit that pretty much all of the criticisms that someone could lay at the feet of Arabian Adventure stick with the tenacity of an extra-gooey Wacky Wall Walker fresh out of the gum machine capsule. None of these should come as any shock if you are familiar with the writer-director team who brought you this movie. Because the last couple of movies they brought you were were just as bad or even worse (and yeah -- I liked them, too).
Director Kevin Conner and screenwriter Brian Hayles are responsible for a trio of Edgar Rice Burroughs inspired fantasy adventure films: At the Earth's Core, starring Doug McClure, Caroline Munro, and Peter Cushing (and featuring one of the single greatest lines and deliveries in movie history: "You cannot mesmerize me! I'm British!"), and the one-two punch of The Land that Time Forgot and The People that Time Forgot, both starring just Doug McClure. Hayles and Conner (they toured with Seals and Croft, I think) also made Warlords of Atlantis, which stars Doug McClure but is not based on an Edgar Rice Burroughs story . It does often get me confused when I think it's War Gods of the Deep, which featured Vincent Price and Tab Hunter -- and buddy, Tab Hunter is no Doug McClure. Oliver Tobias, also, is no Doug McClure. Anyway, the films of Conner and Hayles are almost universally reviled by everyone except, apparently, me. And I have loved every last one of them. Even The People that Time Forgot. Even Arabian Adventure, though it could have really used some Doug McClure. In fact, given that the wooden dullness of our prince and princess is one of Arabian Adventure's greatest weaknesses, the film could have been improved immensely if dashin' Prince Hasan had been played by Doug McClure and Princess Zuleira played by Caroline Munro. But I guess Doug McClure was too rugged and Joe Don Baker-esque to play a dashing prince (since he specialized in playing cool Americans in British films), and Caroline Munro had already been an Arabian princess in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. Still, man that would have been awesome, or at least more awesome than Oliver Tobias and Emma Samms -- both of whom look the part but offer very little in the way of charisma.
As bad as Conner and Hayles' previous movies may have been, at least each of them had something that could keep people from being totally cranky about watching them. Land that Time Forgot enjoyed the services of Doug McClure and features WWI German U-boat guys fighting dinosaurs, and that's enough for me. People that Time Forgot enjoys the services of Doug McClure with a caveman beard and Sarah Douglas in expedition jodhpurs. And At the Earth's Core? My Lord! It's got Doug McClure fighting night immobile paper mache monsters, Caroline Munro in a loin cloth waving a knife around, and Peter Cushing in one of the most hilarious "absent minded professor" roles ever. Plus, it has the line "You cannot mesmerize me! I'm British!" -- which is bested only by Cushing's line in Horror Express where, indignant at the suggestion that he could have been possessed by the monster stalking the train, exclaims, "Monsters?!?! We're British!" Arabian Adventure does not have the benefit of charismatic players like Munro, McClure, or Peter Cushing -- which is an odd thing to say, since it features Peter Cushing. Cushing is one of a handful of "special guest stars," which is a nice way of saying that they owed Conner some sort of a favor or something. Cushing appears in a bit role as a holy man imprisoned in Caliph Dracula's dungeon, and as an Arab holy man, Peter Cushing is a very convincing 19th century British scientist. The other guest stars -- Mickey Rooney and Milo O'Shea -- have larger parts and even pass themselves off fairly believably as Arabs (by the standards of fat Irish guys pretending to be Arabs), but each one seems intent on outdoing the other in the field of hammy over-acting. I suppose that's good, because no one else seemed all that interested in putting any effort into their parts. Actually, that's not true. I firmly believe that Oliver Tobias tried really hard. But he's the film's Keanu Reeves. He's earnest, good looking,and really wants to do a good job; he just can't. But at least the script gives him some chances to shine, even if he fails as an actor to rise tot he occasion. He gets to have badly executed sword fights, fly around on magic carpets, jump over stuff, and tip over a genie bottle. Poor Emma Samms is saddled with a character so thinly written that the poor actress was doomed to be boring before the first frame was ever shot. Her princess is a sheltered woman who has never left the confines of Caliph Dracula's palace. She has nothing to do but walk from room to room, and eventually sit around and listen to Caliph Dracula's imprisoned soul complain about being imprisoned. Eventually, dashin' Prince Hasan rescues her. Or really, Majeed rescues her and dashin' Prince Hasan happens to be int he same general area and of legal age, so what are you gonna do?
Speaking of which, although I apparently didn't mind them as a kid, as an adult I usually hate movies starring children. I don't care for children in general, so watching a movie about one just seems pointless to me. But young Indian actor Puneet Sira seems possessed of all the charisma and charm that is lacking in Samms and Tobias. It's hard not to compare him to Sabu, the young Indian star of films like Arabian Nights and Thief of Baghdad. So let me compare him to Sabu. As a Sabu stand-in, he's exceptional, and we should be thankful that Conner at least took the time to find a likable and talented child instead of just casting Sabu, then in his...oh. Umm, then in his grave. OK, backing away from whatever Old Man Sabu joke I was hoping to make... Which leaves us with venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee. Although his character is called Alquazar in this film, I prefer to refer to him as Caliph Dracula for two reasons. First, I know doing stuff like that irritates venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee (who I'm sure reads this site all the time) to no end, and any chance I have to irritate venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee is a chance I can't let pass me by. Second, he basically gives the exact same performance he gave in Satanic Rites of Dracula, and Dracula AD 1972, and the Fu Manchu movies (they apparently let him keep the mustache from those films, because he has it on here), and honestly -- most of the movies he's ever been in. Don't get me wrong -- he does it very well most of the time, but it does tend to get a tad familiar. His character here is given very little to do other than wait around in his lair while his minion does all the hard work (a la Dracula AD 1972), so venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee doesn't really seem to be giving it his all.
Eventually, he gets in a really clumsy battle with dashin' Prince Hasan, then chases Majeed up a rock, but that's about it. Oh, and he turns a fat guy into a frog. But he doesn't seem to be enjoying it very much, and once again, I can't help but think how much better this film would have been if they'd cast someone else -- Vincent Price, for example. Oh, now there's a movie! Vincent Price, Doug McClure, and Caroline Munro! If I had myself a magic sapphire genie, that would be my first wish. My second wish would be that venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee wrote me an email about how my jokes hurt his feelings, and then he ends the email with a sad face emoticon. Of course, my third wish would be that George Clooney was my friend. We're both Kentucky boys, after all. Since Doug McClure is, sadly, no longer with us, I'd let Clooney be in my remake of Arabian Adventure. I don't know who I'd get for Alquazar. Luckily, Caroline Munro, now nearly 60, is every bit as hot and talented as she was in her 20s. Maybe I could cast Alec Baldwin as Alquazar. Or venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee! So you may be asking yourself how I can spend the bulk of a review talking about how crappy a film is, then use that as criteria for concluding that I love the movie. Hey, this is Teleport City, baby, and the scientific method simply does not apply. And yeah, Arabian Adventure fails on a lot of levels for a lot of people. But not for me, because I had as much fun watching it today as I had watching nigh those many years ago. The lack of charisma in the leads doesn't bug me. The fact that venerated horror film icon is giving a "just collecting a paycheck until I can go on to better films like Howling II and An Eye For An Eye" performance doesn't bother me. The weak effects don't bother me. The film is childish and clunky, and I love it. I love the magic carpet dogfights. I love the crummy sword fights. I love all the opulent but obvious matte painting backgrounds.
Speaking of obviously painted backgrounds, now is as good a time as any to breach the subject of the special effects. In 1977, as you may have heard, Star Wars was released upon the unsuspecting masses, and whatever its merits as a film (and I'm not trying to seem edgy by being a Star Wars hater -- I loved it then and I love it still today), there's no real credible way to deny the profound impact it had on special effects. It represented a quantum leap forward, and while you can say that nothing was ever the same after that, the fact is that there were a few stragglers that came in post-Star Wars but with very pre-Star Wars effects. Sometimes this had to do with the effects supervisor. Sometimes it had to do with the budget. In the case of Arabian Adventure, I'm pretty sure it was both. Like most sci-fi and fantasy films that came in the wake of Star Wars, Arabian Adventure billed itself as a Star Wars like special effects extravaganza. If Star Wars was like watching Harry Houdini make an elephant vanish, Arabian Adventure was like watching a clumsy kid try to pull off a trick from his Blackstone the Magician illusion set. It's cute, even charming in its way, but also sort of awkward and embarrassing. Special effects supervisor George Gibbs shoots for the moon and ends up a fair distance from his target. He was early in his career, having worked previously with director Kevin Conner on Warlords of Atlantis, and then doing some model work on Richard Donner's Superman before moving on to this film. Hamstrung by a small budget and limited resources, I think he intended to rely heavily on the gee whiz quaintness of his approach and on the untrained eyes of young children. The most ambitious effects are the magic carpets, realized through a combination of rear-screen projection, hoisting guys around on wires, and then letting little plastic guys tear around scale models of the city. None of these work terribly well, but there is a charm to watching little action figures on flying carpets wobble about in between scale model minarets. The other big effects are the genie -- which is simple superimposition and animation, and sahib Rooney's giant monsters, which are miniatures that rely on forced perspective shots that are sometimes effective and sometimes make Majeed look like a giant.
Still, I always appreciate a crude effect, and Arabian Adventure is endearing in it's unwillingness to live within its means. This film certainly didn't kill Gibbs' career, and he went on to create all sorts of wildly uneven visual or effects for everything from 1980's Flash Gordon to Conan the Barbarian. Obviously, the got got really good at his craft pretty quickly, and he went on to work on films like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Brazil, Alien 3, and more recently, From Hell and Doom. His work in Arabian Adventure is without a doubt a throwback to effects that probably weren't even considered all that good in 1969, let alone 1979, but like I said -- they're sort of cute. In fact, pretty much everyone who worked on the effects for this film went on to very successful, and in some cases award-winning, careers. It goes without saying that none of those awards were for Arabian Adventure. I have a tremendous weakness (one of many) for fantastic romanticized visions of ancient Arabia, and as pedestrian as some may find it, Arabian Adventure manages to satisfy the kid in me. I mean, don't misunderstand -- this film is nowhere near the caliber of the old Arabian Nights film, or either the Douglas Fairbanks or Sabu versions of The Thief of Badhdad. And it's not in the league of the 1960s Sinbad movies with effects by Ray Harryhausen. But as dumb Saturday matinee fare, I still enjoy Arabian Adventure despite the sundry flaws. It would make a perfect double bill with Sinbad of the Seven Seas starring Lou Ferrigno. Labels: Action: Adventure, Director: Kevin Conner, Fantasy, Netflix Diary, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Peter Cushing, Year: 1979 posted by Keith at 4:46 PM | 4 Comments Thursday, October 11, 2007Satanic Rites of Dracula Release Year: 1974Country: England Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Coles, Joanna Lumley, William Franklyn, Freddie Jones, Richard Vernon, Barbara Yu Ling, Patrick Barr, Richard Mathews. Writer: Don Houghton Director: Alan Gibson Cinematographer: Brian Probyn Music: John Cacavas Producer: Roy Skeggs Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us What a long, strange trip it's been for Hammer Studio's lord of the undead, the prince of darkness, the king of vampires, Count Dracula. When first we met him back in 1958, he was a snarling beast, a barely contained force of nature that ripped into his prey with lusty abandon and was explained by his arch-nemesis Dr. Van Helsing in purely rational, scientific terms. Dracula, and vampirism in general (as expounded upon by Van Helsing in Brides of Dracula), was nothing more than a disease, like any other disease, and what we regarded as "supernatural" was really nothing more than an explainable part of the rational world that humanity had simply not yet learned how to explain. As Hammer's Dracula series progressed, however, Van Helsing faded from the picture and was replaced by a procession of forgettable guys named Paul, usually in league with some sort of religious authority figure. In Dracula, Prince of Darkness, we have a monsignor who seems to have some degree of faith in faith's ability to defeat Dracula, but he's far more reliant on his trusty bolt-action rifle than he is on the Lord Almighty. With the next film after that, however, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Van Helsing's assertion that Dracula could be defeated by reason and science was beginning to fade. Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is a transitional film, one in which an atheist who would seem to share Van Helsing's belief that vampirism is a virus and not a function of the supernatural, begins to doubt his faith in science just as he begins to doubt his doubt of Christianity. When Dracula is felled by a bolt of lightning, we are left to wonder: is this science -- a metal lightning rod, an explainable weather phenomenon -- or an act of God -- lightning strikes being the most common weather-related act of God, after the rain of frogs. After that film, however, there is no doubt as to Dracula's nature. In Taste the Blood of Dracula, he is recast as a satanic demon, summoned by black mass rituals. This trend of "religionizing" Dracula continued in Dracula AD 1972 despite the return of a Van Helsing to the scene. Where as the Lawrence Van Helsing of Horror of Dracula and Brides of Dracula regarded vampirism as a scientific issue, his descendant Lorimar Van Helsing sees it as a mystical issue of the occult, like witchcraft or devil worship. Dracula is once again summoned by occult rituals (not to mention Caroline Munro's half-clothed writhing), and where you might think that placing the Victorian vampire in a modern setting alongside a modern Van Helsing, would prove an opportunity to revive the concept of Dracula as scientific problem and biological oddity, it never really happens. I think there is one token utterance of, "Vampires? But surely you must be joking, man! This is the 20th century!" but that is quickly dismissed as everyone from Van Helsing to the police are quick to accept the supernatural and rattle on endlessly about the occult. At this point, Dracula is less a vampire and more a full-fledged demon, perhaps even the embodiment of Satan himself.
One would assume, then, that with a title like The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the sequel would follow in the footsteps of turning Dracula into a religious anti-icon. But then, honestly, what more can be done to make him Lucifer incarnate than having him summoned by rituals and pentagrams and strange runes? Are they going to make him don a silky red Danskin and gad about with a pitchfork? Dracula AD 1972 was already a rehash of Taste the Blood of Dracula, and while Hammer's Dracula films have never shied away from rehash, it seemed like the evolution of the count was complete. What was left to do? The correct answer is, "Nothing." Just don't make another Dracula film. Make Christopher Lee happy, and just lower the curtain on the series. It had a good run. A few missteps here and there, sure, but all in all, Hammer's Dracula films were a pretty solid lot, even at their worst. Dracula AD 1972 had been a somewhat desperate attempt to modernize the franchise, and it was met with mixed reactions, at best. So just let the sleeping corpse lie, this time. Christopher Lee was already printing up his leaflets to be dropped from a plane over London, explaining to any who found them that he was never going to play Dracula again, ever. Save the guy some effort, people said, and maybe he'll start talking about something else besides how everyone just talks to him about Dracula, instead of mentioning some of his other classic work, like Circus of Fear. Come on -- Chris Lee and Klaus Kinski? That's a power duo, my friends. But Hammer had nowhere else to go. They couldn't get new stars or new franchises launched. The entire British film industry was in a tailspin, and Hammer was even worse off than most. Not knowing what else to do, they commissioned Dracula AD 1972 writer Don Houghton and director Alan Gibson to make yet another Dracula movie, causing Christopher Lee's eyes to turn blood red as he launched into a furious string of interviews about how awful the Dracula movies were and he sure as hell wouldn't...look, seriously. By this point, you know how this ends, right?
So with "nowhere" no longer being a viable answer to the question of where Dracula goes from AD 1972, what would Houghton do? Could they serve up the same old, same old one more time and get away with it? Unlikely. In fact, it was unlikely they could get away with anything they served up. Dracula was DOA at the box office no matter what they did. This last movie was just going to be a post-mortem nervous twitch. So what the hell? Why not bring the whole thing to its oddly logical extreme, the only place left for Dracula to go? And so, despite the occult title meant no doubt to cash in on the sudden popularity of devil worshiper films (working titles for the film included Dracula and his Vampire Brides and Dracula is Dead and Well and Living in London), Satanic Rites of Dracula takes the persistently undead vampire from satanic bogeyman and propels him into the realm of the James Bond villain or, perhaps more appropriately given the quality of the final film and the return of Christopher Lee to the role of Dracula, Fu Manchu. No longer is Dracula a savage beast. No longer is he a biological mutation. No longer is he a ghoul lurking in the overgrown corners of shadowy gothic buildings. No longer is he a demon. With Satanic Rites of Dracula, he becomes a super-villain, complete with a secret lair, henchmen, kidnapped scientists, and dreams of global conquest. That the film really does contain satanic rites is superficial. This movie begins, like Dracula A.D. 1972, with the action already in progress. A determined Professor Lorrimer Van Helsing (Peter Cushing, once again) chases the murderous vampire Count Dracula into a swanky London nightclub jammed wall to wall with zoned-out teens dancing to some nondescript psych-funk like you were wont to find in films from the 1970s that couldn't afford to license songs from established artists. In an attempt to blend in with the youthful revelers and shake his pursuer, Dracula dons a big, bulbous pair of sunglasses and a paisley print cap. Finding himself hemmed in by the revelers, Van Helsing discovers that the only possibility he has of making his way across the dance floor to Dracula is by dancing his way across. And so we get the now immortal scene of Peter Cushing, still dressed more or less like a guy from the Victorian era even though this is the 1970s, doing the Watusi across the crowded nightclub, while dazed ravers look on in admiration and even begin mimicking Cushing's spastic moves.
OK, maybe not, That is not a scene from The Satanic Rites of Dracula. It's actually from a different movie, called Dracula Goes Mad in Chelsea, but since prints of that movie are almost impossible to find, we won't speak any more about it (even Christopher Lee himself has admitted to be unable to find a copy on any format for his personal library). However, given the unintentional camp value of Hammer's Dracula A.D. 1972, one could half expect that, when Hammer announced a sequel film also set in the 1970s, we would get scenes as corny as Dracula in mod sunglasses and an exasperated Peter Cushing doing the mashed potato with some cute young chick as he tries to explain the importance of leaving the dance floor to continue his pursuit of his arch-nemesis. When it was further announced that the writing-directing team of Don Houghton and Alan Gibson would be returning for the sequel, such scenes seemed almost inevitable. It was not the case, however, leaving the scenes of Van Helsing cutting the rug and Dracula smoking a bong to appear in the obscure (and by obscure, I mean "entirely made up") Dracula Goes Mad in Chelsea, which some people refer to mistakenly though not inappropriately as Dracula Goes Mod in Chelsea. No, this film actually begins with a satanic rite, some gratuitous nudity to let us know this is the 1970s, and then an action sequence in which some guy who looks like a cross between Burt Reynolds and Saddam Hussein escapes from a building guarded by bikers with droopy Louis Tiant mustaches and sheepskin vests. They totally look like something out of Marvel's Tomb of Dracula comic book, and in fact much of what happens in this movie seems far more at home in the pages of Tomb of Dracula than it does in a Hammer Dracula movie -- which I guess is the trick. When you keep making Hammer vampire movies, everyone complains about it being just another stodgy old Hammer vampire film. When you switch it up and do something new, everyone complains that it's not enough like a stodgy old Hammer vampire film. Although my initial assumption was that this escaping guy was some horrific experiment concocted by Dracula (possibly with the help of Frankenstein) to combine the iron will and ruthlessness of Saddam with the down home sex appeal and amusing laugh of Burt Reynolds, thus creating the ultimate world conqueror (sort of like Serpentor, but with a big mustache). It turns out that this guy is actually an undercover agent sent in to investigate the mysterious Pelham House rituals, which seem to include a group of the richest, most powerful men in England. The problem is that the head of the group investigating Pelham House also happens to be one of the guys attending the Pelham House rites, thus making an official investigation impossible. So they call in Inspector Murray from the last film, reprised by Michael Coles. Coles, in turn, hears the agent's crazy ranting about rituals and blood sacrifice and devil cloaks and immediately places a call to Van Helsing, played once again by Peter Cushing, who smokes his cigarettes with more intensity than ever. Cushing sure knew how to smoke a cigarette on screen, but he didn't just smoke a cigarette; he smoked the hell out of a cigarette, with lots of clenching and staring at it in quiet contemplation. I think the biggest problem with Star Wars is that they didn't let Peter Cushing smoke on the Death Star. Honestly, you could make a whole movie of nothing but Peter Cushing smoking cigarettes and flipping through books and peering through a magnifying glass, and I'd probably think it was pretty good since he did those things with such conviction and more gusto than most actors would put into an action scene.
While Van Helsing investigates an old colleague who is among the Pelham House acolytes, Murray and Jessica Van Helsing (being played this movie by Joanna Lumley of New Avengers and Absolutely Fabulous fame) go to investigate Pelham House itself. Van Helsing discovers that his old friend has created a super-plague for someone at Pelham House. Murray discovers that the basement of Pelham House is full of half naked vampire chicks. Jessica screams. And of course, we eventually discover that the shadowy billionaire recluse behind the Pelham House plot is Dracula! It seems that even Dracula is getting tired of being revived and has decided that the only way he can end his existence is to end all life on earth. That way he will have no one feed on, and he won't have to worry about cocky mods or Chinese women summoning back up through goofy rituals. Dracula has used his powers of persuasion to control the aforementioned most powerful men in England, and he intends to use them to spread the plague throughout the world and finally put an end to everything. But despite his Fu Manchu aspirations and new corporate benevolent society, Dracula can't entirely let go of the past. Pelham House is an uncomfortable mix of 70s sci-fi stuff and Victorian frilliness, and he still wants to piss off Van Helsing by turning Jessica into Dracula's vampire bride. At least Dracula's final solution is a super-virulent strain of bubonic plague. As far as super-villain super-weapons go, that's a pretty good one. Plus, it's a vampire distributing the plague, and not just some bald guy in a fancy jacket, as is usually the case. It's much better than if Dracula had scheduled a meeting with Van Helsing at the office (which does happen, by the way) and unveiled a new super laser that can blow airliners out of the sky! But still, all this plague talk is far, far away from the expected Dracula territory. He surrounds himself with the trappings of previous Dracula hobbies: the vampire brides in the basement, for example, and floral print wallpaper of questionable tastefulness, but his heart hardly seems in it this time. And yeah, he throws the cape on and appears in backlit mist to scare someone, but he doesn't stick with it throughout the movie. Even his plan to irk Van Helsing by marrying Jessica seems more like something he feels like he has to do than something he wants to do. Just another item on his corporate CEO to-do list.
In a way, I suppose this plays in with the plot of the movie, that Dracula is sick of it all, maybe even sicker of it all than audiences watching his movies, and despite Van Helsing's best efforts, people just keep bringing Dracula back. His resurrection in Satanic Rites of Dracula takes place well before the film begins, but one can almost assume that when it happened, Dracula looked at himself and just thought, "Seriously? I mean, seriously?" There are almost as many ways to bring this guy back as there are to kill him in the first place, and Dracula seems positively suicidal this time around, scattering his house with bits of old wood and such. But ultimately, he knows a stake in the heart will probably just kill him for a little while, so all of mankind must be destroyed so the lord of the dead can get some fucking sleep. Even the final showdown between Van Helsing and Dracula seems suicidal. Dracula is lured into some Hawthorne bushes, which being the thorns that were used to make Christ's crown of thorns, are deadly to a vampire. And Dracula gets caught in the bush basically because Van Helsing stands on the other side and yells, "Hey, come get me!" Surely Dracula knows about the bush. I mean, Van Helsing knows all sorts of ways to kill Dracula, so you'd think that Dracula himself would have researched the subject, although I will admit that every time he dies in a new way, he seems surprised, sort of like, "Are you kidding me? This, too? I can be killed by this, too?" Whatever the case, Dracula plunged headlong into the thorns, which is something most people wouldn't do even if they weren't' prone to turning into a time-lapsed decaying corpse as a result. Despite the fact that Satanic Rites of Dracula was written and directed by the same crew and has largely the same cast of adults, it bears little resemblance to AD 1972 or any of the previous Dracula films. Not just because of the Fu Manchu plot, but also because it entirely eschews the colorful nature of past films and opts instead for an oppressively bleak atmosphere populated by washed out skies, overcast days, and tired looking men in drab flared suits. Like Dracula, like the audience, everyone just seems worn out. Not that they aren't game for another go-round, mind you. This is a solid British cast, after all, and no one is going to do anything but their best. Cushing is as he always is; Lee is the same; Michael Coles is a welcome familiar face from the last film, someone to whom we can relate, and while Joanna Lumley is fine as Jessica, she really has little to do beyond scream and warn people about vampires too late. So I guess it's not so much a tiredness as it is a...let's say world-weariness. I don't want to read more into the film than there is, but it really does give off a sense of the meta, that the threadbare worn-out nature of the series is reflected in the characters.
As a Dracula film, I can't call it a success. Dracula has always been a supporting player his own movies, but here he's less like Dracula than ever before, taking on instead the role of Howard Hughes meets Blofeld (or, alternately, Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever). As a whacked out sort of spy film, it almost works. It's a bit too boring and far too serious to really capture the spirit of that genre, though. Instead, we have a beast that is neither fish nor foul, and not very good at doing much of anything. There are embers of a good movie here, meaning that I can't entirely dismiss it, but you have to blow on those embers pretty furiously to generate any sort of warmth. The initial idea, that of turning Dracula into a tired man whose sole final option is to destroy everything in order to destroy himself, is worth exploring, but where Don Houghton come sup with a great premise, he can't really deliver a great script. It plods along, and there are even more holes and contrivances than usual. I feel like, had this movie been written by someone like Brian Clemens (who wrote Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter, and because of his experience working on The Avengers, would have been more at home with the loopier aspect of Dracula-as-Blofeld), it would have had a much better chance for success. At the very least, had it been a bit less heavy-handed and plodding, it could have gotten by on the quirkiness of the premise, maybe even been something like Scream and Scream Again, a film (featuring Lee and Cushing, no less) that mixes espionage thrills, science fiction, horror, and general weirdness far better than Satanic Rites of Dracula. Instead, Houghton's no-nonsense but not well written script doesn't do the high concept justice. If there is a highlight to the film, other than Peter Cushing's emphatic smoking of cigarettes, it's the theme song and ensuing score, which have far more life in them than the movie itself. Following the lead of Dracula AD 1972, John Cacavas contributes a theme song that is even cooler and funkier than the last one. It deserves to be played over a scene where Dracula -- still in his cape and black suit, of course -- fights a gang of drug dealers in slow motion a la Superfly. The rest of the score is variations on this theme, and it's pretty good stuff. Cacavas also wrote the score for Horror Express, one of my very favorite horror-meets-scifi films, also starring Cushing and Lee and released around the same time as Satanic Rites of Dracula, which could have really used Telly Savalas in a big Cossack coat swaggering onscreen and punching out those dudes in the sheepskin vests. Perhaps the most disappointing thing about Satanic Rites of Dracula is that it lacks a sense of finality. Given the plot, given Dracula's admittedly effective monologue about wanting to die and watch the whole world burn with him, the final act is sorely lacking. When the end comes, it's pretty much a blase, "Oh, so it's a Hawthorne bush this time then, is it?" It's no different than any of Dracula's other many deaths. I don't expect that Dracula would be allowed to succeed in some way with his mad scheme -- though that sort of cynical conclusion wouldn't have been out of step at all with the current trend in horror films, where the bad guys very often won -- but after all the apocalyptic talk, after the world-weary feeling permeating the film, at the very least what I wanted from the end was something that said, once and for all, it really was over this time. As it stands, Satanic Rites of Dracula ends in a way where Dracula could be getting resurrected yet again a week later, same as always.
For Lee, this really was the end, but it's hard to claim he finally made good on his boasts. More than likely, had Hammer made another Dracula film, he would have shown up, under protest no doubt but present never the less. Instead, Hammer went out of business after allowing Satanic Rites of Dracula in 1974 and To the Devil...A Daughter in 1976 to effectively kill the company off. Like Dracula, they deserved better at the end, but if they'd had better, it probably wouldn't have been the end, so what can you do? Cushing reprised the role of Van Helsing one more time, returning to the Victorian era but this time to China for the completely nonsensical but still fun Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires. That film does feature Dracula, but since he transforms into a Chinese guy at the beginning of the film, and since the film itself doesn't really jibe with the continuity of the previous film, it's not really part of the Dracula series and instead plays out like an alternate universe take, similar to The Evil of Frankenstein. Both Cushing and Lee would go on to make much better horror films than this one, as well as few that were much worse. It's not a great way to end a series that gave us so many wonderful films. With the relatively poor performance of Dracula AD 1972 at the box office, distributors suddenly weren't interested in Satanic Rites of Dracula. It took years before it found its way to American screens. Where as a Dracula film starring Cushing and Lee would have been a simple sell even a few years earlier, by 1974 it was all over, and the quality of Satanic Rites of Dracula is a perfect example of why. It's too bad the series couldn't muster a better send-off, because while the concept isn't bad and the idea was good, the final execution simply lacked the sophistication, energy, and magic that the film deserved.  Labels: Horror: Creepy Cults, Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Series: Vampires in the 70s, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Peter Cushing, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1974 posted by Keith at 3:38 PM | 19 Comments Monday, October 08, 2007Dracula A.D. 1972 Release Year: 1972Country: England Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Stephanie Beacham, Christopher Neame, Caroline Munro, Marhsa Hunt, Michael Coles. Writer: Don Houghton Director: Alan Gibson Cinematographer: Dick Bush Music: Michael Vickers Producer: Josephine Douglas Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us And so we enter the dire straights of Hammer Films in the final throes of a long, drawn-out death much like those experienced by Dracula himself. As has been detailed elsewhere and will be summarized here, by the 1970s, England's Hammer Studios -- the studio that pretty much defined and dominated the horror market through the 50s and 60s -- had fallen on hard times. The old guard had largely retired or died, and the new blood was flailing about, desperately trying to find the direction that would right the once mighty production house. The problem was that everyone felt like they needed to update their image, but no one actually knew how. In retrospect, though they may have seemed painfully antiquated at the time of their release, many of Hammer's releases during the 70s were quite good and often experimental (by Hammer standards, anyway). This movie isn't really one of them, but it's still pretty enjoyable in a completely ludicrous way. Unfortunately, even Hammer's good films in the 1970s simply weren't in step with contemporary trends in horror films. No one wanted to see a gothic horror anymore, not in this new era of slasher movies and stuff where devil worshipers listlessly chant about Satan and then hassle Warren Oates and Hot Lips Houlihan.
Hammer tried to launch several new properties that were variations on their old themes, and several of these showed considerable promise. Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter was a spectacular horror-adventure film that mixed classic Hammer atmosphere with a more playful, swashbuckling tone. Although Twins of Evil is best remembered for the prominent assets of its two Playboy Playmate co-stars, underneath the cheesecake nudity is another very good film. And Vampire Circus was one of Hammer's most experimental vampire films, integrating a hallucinogenic, dreamlike state into Hammer's formerly all-business approach. But these films either didn't perform well at the box office, or studio executives didn't have any faith in them. In the end, Hammer decided to return to the same-old, same-old, and audiences got new Dracula, Frankenstein, and mummy movies. With each of these, Hammer tried something different. The mummy movie, 1971's Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, was adapted from a Bram Stoker novel and deals with a mummy's curse but contains no actual mummies. 1974's Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell was roundly lambasted for its ridiculous monster make-up (a hairy caveman design featuring a face mask where the lips don't move when the actor talks), but if one can get past that, it's an exceptionally well thought-out final entry for the series, completing Baron Frankenstein's journey from slightly cold man of science on the verge of a miraculous breakthrough to completely disconnected butcher engaged in pointless, crude retreads of his old experiments. And then there was Dracula. Hammer's Dracula series started out with a promising entry, 1970's Taste the Blood of Dracula. The original idea behind that movie had been to, as with Brides of Dracula so many years before, make movie in which Dracula is an ever-present force and invoked name but not an actual on-screen character. Distributors balked at the idea of a Dracula-free Dracula movie, especially when there was no name star onto which they could hook their wagon as an alternate. Brides may not have featured Christopher Lee as Dracula, but at least it had Peter Cushing reprising his role as Van Helsing. Taste the Blood, on the other hand, revolves around young Ralph Bates, an actor Hammer had hopes of turning into their next big thing, though it never really happened. And so Hammer somehow convinced Christopher Lee to sign on yet again for one absolutely final appearance as the count. The result is a great entry in the Dracula series, and sensing that there was still some gas left in the tank, Hammer decided to give it another go. Scars of Dracula is a pretty bad movie, a major step backward after a good movie, showcasing Hammer filmmaking at its most profit driven, but it also stands out as the only film where Dracula is a major character, with lots of screentime and lines. It was enough to do the trick at the box office, and so to the well once again -- but this time, Dracula was gonna get funky!
In 1970, American International Pictures -- a studio that built a franchise of horror films based loosely on the writing of Edgar Allen Poe by copying Hammer's gothic horror films -- released a movie called Count Yorga, Vampire. It was an attempt by AIP to transfer the feel of their gothic Poe films into a modern setting, and a vampire -- given its longevity provided it can stay away from Peter Cushing -- was the perfect creature for the experiment. You could still deck his pad out in all sorts of frilly Victorian hoo ha, but you had a reasonable explanation for why he was still hanging around in 1970, listening to his old Edison Cylindrical Phonograph device and complaining about how modern music was crappy and modern fashion was ridiculous. Count Yorga also had the good sense to turn poke subtle fun at the idea of this out-of-touch Victorian style character dropped wholesale and unchanged into what was then modern time, as if the intervening hundred years or so hadn't caused the vampire to change in the slightest. But what do I know. I'm writing this review win 2007, and I'm listening to the same music I listened to in 1987. What's another eighty years? Yorga, no doubt with some help from Hammer's early 70s vampire output, sparked a bit of a vampire revival that really came to a boil in 1972. Marvel Comics released their outlandishly ridiculous but imminently enjoyable Tomb of Dracula comic book, in which modern-day descendants of Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker, and Dracula himself team up to battle a revived Count who would explain his entire life history every time he got a word bubble to himself. Only Doctor Strange showcased the potential to ramble on and spew as much purple prose. The comic book was a whirlwind of bell bottoms, tweed blazers, and jumpers, not to mention vampire hunter Blade's bizarre combo of lab goggles, a raincoat, and some swashbuckler boots. When they updated him for the movies, it's a shame they didn't keep the original outfit and afro. And if Dracula's flowery long-windedness, punctuated as it often was by the phrase, "Foolish humans!" and "I, Dracula..." was a little much to swallow, wait until you get a load of Blade running around calling the count a jive turkey and "baby."
In the same year, AIP released Blacula, a blaxploitation twist on the Count Yorga theme which, despite the jokey title, turned out to be a remarkably good and thoughtful film that managed to deliver vampire thrills and make comments on race relations, ghettos, and drug abuse without it coming across as overly heavy-handed. Plus the character of Mamuwalde (Blacula, to you) was an exceptionally complex villain/hero inhabited by a great actor in William Marshall. Once again, a movie got to play with the idea of a Victorian era character revived in the modern era -- with plenty of light jokes about fashion. Lucky for the vampires, the early 70s were such a jumbled mish-mash of outrageous fashion trends that even a guy running around in a vest and opera cape didn't really stand out, though he could often be mistaken for a pimp. In a classic example of "student becomes the master" flip-flopping, Hammer looked to AIP for inspiration and released their own "vampire in modern times" movie in 1972. The idea was hatched that Hammer, too, should make a modern day vampire tale, one that would easily lend itself to integrating modern settings with classic the Hammer gothic trappings. And since Hammer already had Count Dracula hanging around in the shadows, he was the most obvious choice. Of course, there remained one problem: Christopher Lee was absolutely, positively, entirely unwilling to do another Dracula movie for Hammer, not when he was having so much fun making high quality films for Jess Franco, like Eugenie... the Story of Her Journey Into Perversion, all those Fu Manchu films, and...oh hey! What do you know! Jess Franco's Dracula. I doubt anyone at Hammer was actually worried that they wouldn't be able to get Lee to reprise his role as Dracula. After all, he announced after every single Dracula movie that they were awful and he'd never make another one in a million years. And then a few years later, there he is again, donning the cape and red contact lenses for another go round which, upon completion of principal photography, he would run to the press and complain about, announcing that he would never do another shitty Dracula film again. Blah, blah, blah, Chris. And you know what? He still complains about it. Dude, no one thinks you're Dracula anymore. The only people who bring it up are a few cult movie fans and you. Everyone else thinks your Saruman or whatever the hell your name was in those awful Star Wars films. I've theorized in past reviews of Hammer Dracula films and Lee's whining that the entire thing was a ruse devised by Hammer and Lee to drum up controversy and business. After all, if your star is out there bad-mouthing his own film and saying stuff like, "Well, the last one may have been gory and tasteless, but this one is so much worse that I can't stand it!" is going to do wonders for getting folks interested in seeing the movie.
The other option is that Christopher Lee is just pompous and annoying. And I say that as a guy who enjoys Christopher Lee's work. But while I may love many of the films in which he's been in, there's no denying that his filmography has considerably more "worst film ever made" candidates and parts in it than anyone short of Michael Caine. But, like Caine, Lee gets the British Actor's Golden Pass -- that coveted ticket that allows a British actor to emerge unscathed from a career of mostly utter garbage and still have people think they are incredible. I mean, Tom Cruise has one flop, and his career is pronounced over. But Michael Caine? He gets to be in Jaws IV, Blame it on Rio, Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, and The Swarm, and he comes through like he's coated in Teflon. Similarly, while Christopher Lee was busy bitching about the lack of class in his Dracula movies, he found time to make The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism, The Castle of Fu Manchu, Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, To the Devil...A Daughter, and Chuck Norris' An Eye for an Eye, yet he remains one of the most revered actors of our time. Not even Vincent Price, who was far more talented and made just as many great films (and just as many crummy ones) commands the respect that Lee gets. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it. What I'm saying is, Chris -- shut the hell up about Dracula. You made a lot of really awful films to go with your good ones, so quit picking on Dracula, the character that made your career. You should be more like Michael Caine. He shows up, does his job, and then moves on without running to the press to bitch about the last job he had or how everyone only things of Carter or Harry Palmer or ol' Peachy or whoever Michael Caine is typecast as. I think he's actually typecast as Michael Caine. All of Christopher Lee's complaining, still going on to this day, coupled with the fact that no matter what he said, he always went back and did another Dracula film, means that, if this wasn't a clever marketing ploy by Hammer and Lee, then Lee is just sort of a...you know. If I ever meet him, I'm going to call him Dracula non-stop. Great. You know, among my goals when I started Teleport City, I never counted "talk shit about Christopher Lee" to be among them.
So whatever the case, after swearing he'd never do another one, Christopher Lee was never the less coaxed back into the series, perhaps because of the promise that, for the first time since 1958's Horror of Dracula, he and Cushing would be teamed up as Dracula and Van Helsing. Also, I'm sure they threw some money at him, and a couple rare editions of Shakespeare books or whatever the hell Christopher Lee likes more than making Dracula movies. There are, of course, sundry other problems facing Dracula A.D. 1972, but we shall address each of those as we come to them in the course or this article. The pre-credit opening sees us joining the finale of a film that was never made, but looks like it was pretty good. Dracula (Lee) and Van Helsing (Cushing) are locked in mortal combat atop a carriage that is careening out of control across London's Hyde Park. Remember that Cushing and Lee hadn't been paired together as Van Helsing and Dracula since the very first film back in the late 1950s, so seeing them together again should have been a big deal, at least bigger than a pre-credit sequence that feels like, "We now join our regularly scheduled vampire fight already in progress." But we'll let that slide, because it really is a fantastic opening, and one that can fool you into thinking Hammer's Dracula is back with a vengeance. After both Dracula and Van Helsing keep over dead, a mysterious third man rides up and scoops some of Dracula's ashes into a little glass vial and takes Drac's signet ring. Then, at Van Helsing's funeral, the guy dumps some of Dracula's ashes into a little hole in some far-off corner of the graveyard, and plunges the stake that killed Dracula into the ground. The combination of seeing Van Helsing and Dracula together again after so many years and the high-energy action of the scene is really fun, and like I said, perhaps they should have just made this movie instead. Given that Taste the Blood of Dracula sees the Count transported for the first time to London, a movie in which Van Helsing and the ace bloodsucker tangle with one another one last time on Hammer's home turf would have been a movie to get excited about. And I guess technically, that is what Dracula A.D. 1972 is, in a weird, convoluted way. After Van Helsing dispatches Dracula and keels over dead himself, we get the funky Dracula A.D. 1972 theme song by Michael Vickers. And here is where Hammer lost a good many of the remaining traditionalists that were hobbling on their walkers out to the theaters, no doubt trailing their colostomy bags behind them, to see Hammer productions. Up until this point, every Hammer Dracula theme song had been written by James Bernard, the man who defined the Hammer score the same way Hammer itself defined the gothic horror film. Bernard's scores were bombastic and powerful, with the conductor explaining that in every song you could hear the syllables of the movie's title (and it's true). But with Dracula A.D. 1972, Hammer was trying to create an amalgamation of their past glory with something new. With Lee and Cushing serving as the links to the past, Bernard's theme writing services were not tapped. Instead, Michael Vickers turns in an attempt to blend classic Hammer horror music with a more modern film theme sound, something more along the lines of Lalo Schifren or Roy Budd. The dramatic shift from the thoroughly old-fashioned Hammer opening to this theme song full of horns and wah-wah guitars jarred many people, though they are lucky I didn't make the movie because I would have accompanied this completely bad-ass theme song with shots of Christopher Lee -- wearing a black flared-leg suit and platform shoes (and his cape, of course) high steppin' down the street with a magic cane, using it to turn fat women thin and bring dead people back to life in front of grieving relatives. That's right, people. You should be thankful Hammer's movie is what it is, because if I had my way, it would have been...well, it would have been Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law, but with Dracula. Which just makes me think that we really should have had a movie where Dracula is revived, hisses out his token line, "Who dares disturb the sanctity of Dracula?" only to have Rudy Ray Moore step in with a Thompson machine gun and say, "Dolemite, mother fucker!"
After our funky theme song, the action jumps a hundred years to the groovy, mod setting of London in the swingin' sixties. Except, you know, it's 1972 and all. A bunch of groovy young mop tops are skulking about London, holding "freak outs" and the most tame "horribly out of control" parties I've ever seen -- and I've been to some really tame parties. Leading this merry band of pranksters is one Johnny Alucard, trotting out the Alucard "puzzle" for the millionth time. We get it! Who, by this time, doesn't get the Alucard thing? Imagine if Frankenstein had tried that instead of just cleverly calling himself Dr. Frank or Dr. Stein whilst incognito. Actually, I guess Nietsneknarf isn't any worse than many actual German words. Johnny happens to be the owner of Dracula's ring and some of his ashes, passed on we assume from his nefarious ancestor from the beginning of the film. And one of his friends happens to be the grand-daughter of the latest Dr. Van Helsing. And if you think they're all going to end up in an abandoned churchyard summoning up Dracula, then you don't really earn yourself a prize. Actually, Johnny Alucard is less a reincarnation of Dracula than he is a cheap knock-off of Malcom McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. In fact, many of the sets and situations in this movie feel cribbed from Kubrick's film, which is only fitting, I suppose, considering the outfits Malcom McDowell wore in A Clockwork Orange. So OK, now my movie has a jive walkin' Christopher Lee as Dracula (with a magic cane, remember...and a big floppy pimp hat) battling Dolemite and trying to possess Alex from A Clockwork Orange. Seriously, why does no one ever give me development deals? How does Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave get funding, but my Dracula/Dolemite/Malcom McDowell movie languishes in limbo, alongside my ideas for Cobra-Shark vs. Croco-lion and Great White Squid, a movie about Wings Hauser fighting a genetically engineered giant squid that has great white sharks for tentacles. Somewhere, my friends who bother to read this site are going, "Oh God, is he on about the Croco-Lion thing again?" Johnny (Christopher Neame) convinces the gang that what would really be fun would be to hold a black mass. Having nothing better to do, the gang agrees, in some cases reluctantly so. It is at this point we learn that one of the groovy gang is Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham), great grand-daughter of Lawrence Van Helsing, slayer of Dracula, and current grand-daughter of Professor Van Helsing -- played by Peter Cushing, because in movies no one thinks it's weird when you look 100% identical to one of your distant relatives. Genetics tells me that I should look less and less like my relatives the further removed from them I get, but in movies, people are always the spitting image of some great grandfather or third aunt or whatever, and no one ever thinks that is weird. Hell, the mummy built his entire career of resurrections on randomly stumbling across women who looked exactly like their ancestor from thousand of years ago. No surprises here when Johnny summons up Dracula during their black mass ritual -- which takes place in a desanctified church that happens to be the same place Lawrence Van Helsing and Dracula were buried. You'd think that, given that the current Professor Van Helsing has a portrait of his grandfather in his study, collected all the man's books, and remains himself an expert on the occult, that he would know where his idol and close relative was buried. But whatever. All that's important is Dracula is back and he's going to...well, he's going to hang around the church and send Johnny out to kidnap Jessica Van Helsing, because Dracula knows how to hold a grudge. Meanwhile, as members of the gang disappear -- including the lovely Caroline Munro (Captain Kronos, Starcrash) and the equally lovely Marsha Hunt (you may recall her hairy werewolf boobs from Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, also starring Dracula) -- the police become increasingly convinced by Van Helsing's tendency to blame the murders on a vampire. There are a few things people tend to harp on when criticizing this film. The first, most obvious, and dumbest argument is that the film is dated. I think I may have said before that "it looks dated" is one of my most hated complaints about any movie. It's cheap, ignorant, and shallow, and it has no merit as an observation. That a film is a reflection of the time in which it was made hardly strikes me as anything inherently negative, and I utterly detest whenever someone trots out that hoary old cliche and expects us to have any respect for their opinion. Oh, so Dracula AD 1972 contains slang and crazy fashion. Big deal. I look at those things as assets more than as detriments. So if your complaint is that the movie is dated looking, well we may still be friends, but I'm certainly going to regard your opinion on any film from here on out with a tremendous degree of suspicion. The second most common complaint is that Dracula is hardly in the movie at all, and when he is, he does nothing. I can understand this complaint a little bit more, but honestly, if at this point in the series, you are mad that Dracula isn't on screen and doesn't do very much when he is, then you haven't watched any of the previous films in the series, except perhaps Scars of Dracula, which is the only film where he has anything approaching substantial screentime or more than two lines. Not to say that it isn't disappointing. One can't help but want scenes of Dracula cutting lose in modern London, even if those scenes don't involve him dancing down the street with a magic cane or fighting machine0gun toting kungfu pimps. Still, it would have been nice if he did a little something more than stand around in the desanctified church. Dracula's confinement to the church is representative of Hammer's difficulty with updating their image. They want to figure out a way to enter the modern era, but in the end, they imprison their title character in a Victorian set and don't ever figure out exactly how to bring him out.
Previous Dacula films have always relied on the rest of the cast, with Dracula looming in the background as everyone's motivating factor. Unfortunately for Dracula AD 1972, it's a pretty weak supporting cast, comprised primarily of inexperienced young actors who aren't bad but don't really contribute much that is memorable. They spend most of their time either sitting around being bored, or sitting around talking about how they are concerned, then most of them head off to a party and are never heard from again. Stephanie Beacham as Jessica Van Helsing obviously has a more substantial role, but only if you consider substantial to be screaming, then being put into a trance. As the menacing Johnny Alucard, Christopher Neame is all right -- equal parts spooky and pathetic -- but he's basically playing Malcom McDowell, as I said. Dracula AD 1972 is more or less a remake of Taste the Blood of Dracula, complete with the bored circle dabbling in the black arts, the mysterious outsider spurring them on and summoning Dracula, the vial of Dracula remains, the kidnapped woman, and so on. But Ralph Bates was a much more charismatic actor, and Taste the Blood of Dracula had a much more compelling cast of older character actors to propel it forward in between scenes of Dracula showing that he can count to four or five. Dracula AD 1972 lacks that, and although the young cast is perfectly acceptable, the characters they inhabit just aren't interesting. Plus the jackass who wears the monk's cowl around the whole time was intensely annoying and yet escaped death. Shame on you, Dracula! Shame on you for not killing the odious comic relief. Caroline Munro has a small but memorable part as one of the gang of youths seduced by Johnny Alucard's ability to mimic what he's seen in A Clockwork Orange, but she would quickly become one of the most beloved cult film actresses of all time. She got her start on the horror scene playing Vincent price's dead wife in the Dr. Phibes films, though I'm not sure lying there dead for every one of your scenes earns you a whole lot other than other parts where you do nothing but lie there. She at least gets to talk, writhe, show off heaving breasts, and get blood dumped all over her in this film. Her career took off shortly thereafter, and she has a much more substantial role in Hammer's superior Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter, as well as major roles in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, At the Earth's Core, the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, and of course the infamous classic Starcrash, featuring what was no doubt her most memorable outfit. She was still working, albeit only occasionally, up until 2006, and if you've seen her lately, in her late fifties, then you know she's still ridiculously gorgeous and awesome. A shame she doesn't have more to do in this film, but even a little Caroline Munro is worth watching. As the current Van Helsing, it's great to see Peter Cushing back in action, and naturally he goes at the role with absolute conviction. Unfortunately, the character is written as Van Helsing Lite, and most of his scenes are pretty dull. He spends a lot of time tracking down clues to the one thing he already knows. Everyone knows where Dracula's base of operation is, and yet Van Helsing spends half the movie trying to track down clues to the location of Dracula's hide-out, which he already knows! And once again, he decides to go fight Dracula at night, instead of swinging by and staking the bloodsucker when Dracula is asleep in his coffin. Why oh why are vampire hunters always waiting until dark to go fight vampires? I guess a movie where vampire hunters swing by during the day, stake Dracula, then head down to the pub to celebrate wouldn't be as long, but it'd be a nice change of pace. Other than that, Cushing is always Cushing. He comes in and does his job well, or as well as he can with what he's given. The final common criticism of this movie, then, is that it's not very good, and I guess that's a fair assessment. The script needed more work. You can tell the hip young lingo was written by old men who didn't really know what they were doing. The plot is a bit of a letdown, especially considering that it's the first time Van Helsing and Dracula have been on screen together since the first movie. And despite all that, I really quite like Dracula AD 1972. I like the young cast. I like the awkward attempt at being hip. I like the outlandish counter-culture fashions. I like the attempts at freak-out cinematography. I think the movie is fun regardless of its faults, though I recognize that I may be in the minority here. By no means is this the film to save Hammer, and by no means is it as good as the previous film it rips off, Taste the Blood of Dracula. But it's not an entirely bad effort and has much to recommend in it, at least for me.
Screenwriter Don Houghton didn't have a terribly deep resume at this point in his career, his primary credit at the time of this movie being a stint as a writer for Doctor Who. And in fact, he had very little in the way of a career after Dracula AD 1972. He went on to write The Satanic Rites of Dracula, and two of Hammer's co-productions with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers studio -- the crummy Shatter and the pretty good if sloppily written Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, in which Peter Cushing reprised his Van Helsing character one more time, this time on a trip to China to stop Dracula from raising an undead army. Despite the appearance of Dracula in the movie, Christopher Lee did not sign on, possibly because he was to busy making the James Bond film Man with the Golden Gun. Or The Satanic Rites of Dracula. Houghton was in his early forties when he wrote the screenplay for Dracula AD 1972, and while that's not really all that old, it is a little too old to be trying to write hip teen lingo. I'm only thirty-five right now, but I wouldn't consider myself adept at writing slang-heavy dialog based on modern teens. They say...what? Like, "sweet" and "cuckoo,man, real cuckoo" right? Despite the faults, Dracula AD 1972 managed to turn a profit, which meant that Hammer was going to make another one, even though Christopher Lee swore this was the worst movie ever and he would never play Dracula again. That follow-up, another film set in the 1970s, was The Satanic Rites of Dracula, and if you want to see a genuinely awful film, that is the one you should be watching.  Labels: Horror: Creepy Cults, Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Series: Vampires in the 70s, Stars: Caroline Munro, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Peter Cushing, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1972 posted by Keith at 6:16 AM | 7 Comments Monday, March 05, 2007Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf
DIGG THIS ARTICLE. 1985, United States/some Eastern European country. Starring Christopher Lee, Annie McEnroe, Reb Brown, Marsha Hunt, Sybil Danning, Judd Omen. Directed by Phillipe Mora. Written by Gary Brandner and Robert Sarno. Buy it from Amazon
 . There are those among us who, in a moment of moral weakness, find themselves unwilling or unable to turn away from a grisly situation. As to the psychological motivations behind this tendency, they are legion and vary from person to person. Perhaps it is a desire to affirm that someone is worse off than you, that even though your rent is overdue and your daughter is hopped up on the goofballs, at least you're not a corpse being yanked out of some twisted, smoldering wreckage along the interstate. Perhaps, instead, it is little more than a reflex reaction symptomatic of the seemingly insatiable human hunger for spectacle, however grim it may be. Perhaps, in some, it is a genuine perversity, a wicked satisfaction gleaned from witnessing the suffering of others. And finally, it may be that some of us look out of guilt -- that we are torn between not making a gawking spectacle of suffering and ignoring suffering. Whatever the case may be, the urge is there, commonplace, and hardly solely the purview of the misanthropic. It manifests itself in a variety of forms, everything from slowing down to stare at a traffic accident to gathering on the street corner to gawk at a crime scene to greedily devouring the sensationalist news about the sordid downfall of a celebrity. Or, in my own peculiar case, it manifests itself in a complete inability to not watch Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf every single time I run across it on television.
I have no reasonable explanation for my addiction. At least heroin makes you feel good for a little while. I garner no pleasure from my addiction to Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf. There is no benefit to me in staying up until three in the morning yet again just because Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf happens to be on. And yet there I am, never the less, Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf on the television, a tumbler of bourbon in my hand to help dull the pain, and a deep-seated loathing of myself gnawing away at my very soul as I catch myself tapping my foot in time with that horrid pseudo new wave band that appears in the opening scene. But as much as my hate myself in the morning, as much as my addiction may cripple me socially and bankrupt me morally, I can still go to bed at night with a single dab of salve to soothe my troubled conscience: at least I wasn't in the movie, which is more than venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee can say.
In 1981, up and coming horror film luminary Joe Dante (who would give the world one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time in 1984, and had already given the world Piranha) teamed up with writers Terence Winkless and John Sayles (of all people!) to direct The Howling, an updated werewolf tale released at roughly the same time as John Landis' An American Werewolf in London. It was a good year to be a werewolf (better than the year in which Van Helsing was released, anyway), because both films were greeted with enthusiasm by fans and praise from a number of hot shot critics. Sequels were in order, but while Landis' film had to wait roughly sixteen years to get its first godawful sequel, Dante's own werewolf film wasted no time. Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, also known as Stirba: Werewolf Bitch, was released in 1985 and quickly went down in history (and flames) as one of the worst goddamned movies anyone had ever seen. I'm not really one to argue -- almost nothing about this film resembles anything remotely close to competence. The script by Robert Sarno and Gary Brandner (who's never written anything but Howling scripts) is dreadful. Direction by Phillipe Mora is passable, but there's a reason he didn't go on from here to direct movies that weren't Pterodactyl Woman from Beverly Hills. The acting is almost uniformly awful, anchored as it is by none other than our good friend Reb Brown, last seen on Teleport City back when we reviewed Yor, The Hunter from the Future, and an embarrassed venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee, who must have been thinking that all those Dracula roles he bitched about his whole career were looking pretty good now that he had appear in movies like this or the one where he fights Chuck Norris. Oh, there's also Sybil Danning as the alternate title titular werewolf queen (or bitch), Stirba. And some chick named Annie McEnroe who was in Warlords of the 21st Century.
And yet, as undeniably bad as it all is, there I am, every time it's on television. And what makes it worse is that I own the DVD! I own the goddamn DVD, and still I watch it whenever it's on television. Let this be a lesson to anyone who ever takes my advice on anything; if you ever find yourself faced with a difficult decision and ask yourself, "What would Keith from Teleport City do?" then your immediate next thought should be, "Who cares? That guy watches Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf all the time." Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf is one of those early movies, alongside classics such as Beastmaster and Revenge of the Ninja that I got to see thanks to a friend with cable television (I couldn't just have him tape them for me though, because while he had a newfangled VHS machine, my family went Betamax). But even nostalgia can't excuse my adoration of this truly unwatchable film. Things start out OK. Venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee shows up to harass Ben (Reb Brown), who is supposed to be the brother of one of the chicks who turned into a werewolf in the first movie. Ben and and his girlfriend Jenny Templeton (Annie McEnroe) don't take too kindly to this nine-foot-tall guy lurking around the cemetery during the sister's funeral, constantly walking up to them and, in gravest tone imaginable, delivering the line, "Your sister is a werewolf," over and over. When, during the next full moon, the sister does spring forth from her tomb and make with the lycanthropy, they are more disposed toward believing venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee, whose character is named Stefan Crosscoe (oh good grief -- did a spooky high schooler come up with that name? At least it wasn't Chris I. Fixtion or something).
Somehow through a series of events I don't care about, they all end up going to Transylvania together, because it is the heart of werewolf power. But they don't do that before venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee gets to go to the punky club and put on a pair of those plastic wrap-around new wave sunglasses. If any scene justifies watching this movie, this is it. But when, "venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee dons amusing new wave sunglasses" is the high point of your movie, you know you're in trouble. Actually, pretty much everyone agrees that if there is a high point in this movie, it's "werewolf orgy," but we haven't gotten to that part yet, and honestly, it's not as good as " venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee dons amusing new wave sunglasses." When "werewolf orgy" isn't as good as "venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee dons amusing new wave sunglasses," you're in ever deeper trouble than you were when it was just " venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee dons amusing new wave sunglasses."
So next we're in one of those secret warehouse clubs where the usual assortment of movie punks/new wavers/dominatrixes/neon freaks are hanging out listening to a crummy band called Babel -- and by "crummy," I mean, yes, I did search around for mp3s. I couldn't help myself. While the band goes through their wolfy song about howling (what a coincidence!), a hot chick named Mariana picks up a couple of typical goofball movie punks who I'm sure had names like Razor and Chainlink and Puke. She shows them her boobs (quite nice of her), then turns into...I guess it's a werewolf. It looks more like one of those monkey men from 2001 though. Anyway, she gets all hairy and toothy and rips them apart. When The Rolling Stones wrote the song "Brown Sugar," it was about Marsha Hunt, the actress who plays Mariana. I bet they didn't envision her turning into a hairy monkey-woman werewolf, but then, maybe they did. I mean, it is the Stones, after all. Whatever, she's still dead sexy, had a huge 'fro in the 1970s, and we all saw her die in Dracula A.D. 1972, though I doubt she and venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee looked upon Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf as a grade-A reunion. It turns out that Stirba, the queen bitch of the werewolves, lives in a castle in Transylvania, which in this movie is a country rather than a region or town, and the seat of werewolfery (which I prefer over lycanthropy) rather than the seat of vampirism -- but whatever, man. Any chance to needle venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee about the Dracula movies is worth taking. Venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee, Ben, and Jenny must unite to destroy Stirba and her werewolf legion, which includes Brown Sugar and Mickey the escaped con who hung out with Pee Wee Herman. That actor's name is Judd Omen. Seriously, man, if they had named one of the characters Judd Omen I would have complained about that, but then it turns out there's really a guy named Judd Omen. I hope he hung out at some point with Thurl Ravenscroft. When Stirba and her minions aren't messing around with punker dudes at new wave clubs in Los Angeles, they're busy having werewolf orgies where they all grow lots of hair but don't quite turn into werewolves, then writhe about on the big ornate bed in Stirba's antechamber. It's sort of like watching a bunch of hirsute hippies makin' out, except with more growling.
While this is going on, our trio of half-assed vampire killers, err, werewolf hunters, show up and, in one of the movie's most nonsensical scenes, stumble upon a car wreck out in the middle of nowhere. While all the colorful, toothless local peasants vanish into thin air, Jenny, Ben, and venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee are attacked by werewolves. In broad daylight. And after venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee battles the murderous locals, he sort of just randomly wanders off and says, "We'll meet back in the village." But aren't they all going to the village right now? Why the hell does venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee wander off at random, except to go weep quietly behind a nearby tree? Sure enough, as soon as he's gone, one of the dead daylight werewolf things springs back to life to menace our remaining heroes for a little while. When we finally get to the town, it's one of those typical bad Eastern European movie towns where everyone is a medieval peasant clad in a colorful array of rags and potato sacks and ill-fitting wool suits, and they all spend every waking hour cackling insanely and making "crazy eyes." We spend a lot of time watching people wander around the town square or chase midgets in disturbing Punchinello masks. I'd say it's pointless, but this movie pretty much lost any point it might have had right after venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee took off those sunglasses. So basically, after some random town nonsense, some lame werewolf ambushes, and that werewolf orgy seemingly playing on loop, we discover that Stirba and venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee are brother and sister (oh SNAP Stefan Crisco or whatever your name is -- your sister is a werewolf, too!), and it is his destiny to put an end to her reign of terror, which seems to consist largely of killing jerks at new wave clubs and inconveniencing the local fall festival or whatever it was that was going on in that town. Eastern European towns are always having some sort of festival in the town square, complete with medieval era puppet shows instead of discotheques and David Hasselhoff concerts like actual Eastern Europeans like. No matter what year it is, they're always watching medieval puppet shows, and no matter what time of year it is, they're having a festival. It's sort of how any film that has a chase scene through a Chinatown will run into a lion dance or dragon parade or something, no matter what time of year it is, like they have those things every day in Chinatown.
Oh folks, it's just terrible. And when I sit down and try to write about this film, it becomes even more evident just how bad it really is. And when the true depths to which this film plummets become thusly crystal clear, my fondness for it is only amplified. In fact, right now, I'm sitting here, writing this, and thinking to myself, "Man, this movie really is horrible. I wish I was watching it right now." This week, I will have the choice to either go out and get a lapdance from a cute Cuban chick or stay home and watch Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, and right now I can't decide!!! I guess we should go step by step, and start with the acting. I don't think I really need to even comment on Reb Brown. I'm pretty sure the big lug might not even know he ever had a film career. He goes through pretty much every film with the same dazed look of confusion on his face, and he doesn't stretch his acting chops here. Man, I wish someone had put him, Sam Jones, and Miles O'Keefe in the same movie. That would have been a classic. And as for Annie McEnroe -- really, do you even care? She looks like Jamie Lee Curtis' little sister, and neither she nor Reb serve any real purpose than to spout lines like, "What's going on?" and "Stefan!" Similarly, Brown Sugar and Mickey from Pee Wee's Big Adventure are mostly there to wear a leather catsuit (what self-respecting canine would wear a catsuit???) and a jaunty circus knife-thrower gypsy outfit respectively. Sybil Danning is in the film primarily to preside over her werewolf court, then rip her bodice open. Oh, and she wears possibly one of the worst outfits ever made -- the pointy-hipped baggy leather catsuit covered in angular mirrors. What in the the hell???
Sybil Danning has never really done it for me. From all I hear, she's a spectacularly friendly and charming person, and I would love to hang out with her for hours on end and listen to ridiculous stories about the making of Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf or Panther Squad. But I'd like to do that with David F. Freidman, too, and I certainly don't think of him as a sex symbol. But as a sex object to fawn over, I think I was turned off by her frizzy blonde 80s hair. No matter how nice the boobs and legs may be -- and on Sybil, they are both spectacular -- frizzy blonde 80s hair will kill it for me. I'm sure Sybil Danning stayed up crying late into the night because some twelve-year-old kid thought to himself, "No, I would rather jerk off to Marsha Hunt." But still, the makers of Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf must have known that Sybil's boobs were a much bigger potential attraction than her flashy animated laser beam showdown with venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee, because her bodice-ripping scene (or whatever you call a leather halter top plastered with giant mirrors) is repeated over and over in the movie -- twice during the end credits alone. I guess they paid her for a boob flash, and this was their way of getting their money's worth out of that couple of seconds of upper nudity. And if it seems like I'm base and degrading because I'm talking about Sybil's boobs instead of her acting in this movie -- trust me. I am doing her a favor. And then there's venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee, who intones every single line with -- well, honestly, it's pretty much the same acting job he always does. No more, but no less, even though the material isn't just below him -- it's also below Reb Brown. "Material not worthy of Reb Brown" is really something, but venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee still gives it the ol' college try and treats every single line, no matter how ludicrous, as if it was the single most important line of dialogue ever uttered. That said, venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee's acting style is not well-suited to making this movie more tolerable, and here in lies the big difference between him and fellow venerated horror film icon Vincent Price. Price would have had a field day with this movie. Lee is way too solemn, which is my polite "I respect venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee" way of saying he's boring. In the right role, his booming voice and towering presence is extremely effective. But it's pretty much the only trick he has. He lacks the versatility of Price, or even of fellow Hammer horror alumnus and venerated horror film icon Peter Cushing.
Not to say that it isn't amusing to watch venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee go about the role of Stefan with the same approach, method, and gravitas as he did that of Sauruman in The Lord of the Rings. And I will always appreciate that whenever I watch one of those pompous interviews where Lee drones on and on about literary tradition and the craft of acting, or about the tragedy of being typecast as Dracula, I can always let out some of the hot air by remembering fondly his time spent getting kicked in the face by Chuck Norris or shooting glowing beams at Sybil Danning, who is wearing a suit of leather and mirrors. Lee's acting actually works well with the movie's overall tone. Where Joe Dante's original was fused with his usual tongue-in-cheek humor, Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf plays it completely straight. As far as Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf is concerned, this is nothing short of the greatest story ever told, and it goes about the whole nutty affair with a seriousness and complete lack of humor generally only found in adaptations of the various books of the Bible (of which, this might be one, as the whole film opens with venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee solemnly reading from a giant leather-bound tome while he and that skeleton from the old House on Haunted Hill float around in space).
As goofy as the acting may be, the sets and special effects are even worse. The Howling was famous for its revolutionary (within the world of special effects, anyway) werewolf transformation scenes, which may have been overshadowed by the same in An American Werewolf in London but remain impressive never the less. Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf achieves its transformation scenes by showing Sybil Danning making "growly face," then cutting to someone else making growly face, then cutting back to Sybil, only this time they've pasted some mangy hair to her chest. There's almost no effort put into making any of these werewolves look like werewolves. They mostly look like humans with some fake hair pasted to them. The town/country/region of Transylvania is realized via a painting of some hills and a castle, then one street carnival set. An annoying guy does get his eyes gouged out, but other than that, we're in pretty shoddy special effects territory this time out. And the werewolf lore is almost as jumbled and hodge-podge as Underworld, which may or may not be a worse film than Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf. It's really a toss-up. Silver bullets, it turns out, are not what kills werewolves. No, you have to use titanium bullets. Isn't titanium an alloy? I'm no metallurgist, but isn't it not a naturally occurring material? How can a werewolf's fatal weakness be something that didn't even exist prior to whenever the hell some guy mixed some stuff together and said, "Hey! Titanium!" But no fear, because if the grubby peasants of yore had no titanium bullets with which to dispatch the werewolves, they could always use the trusty old wooden stakes. I guess a wooden stake will kill pretty much anything in Transylvania. Oh yeah -- garlic wards off all evil, too. And there's apparently a full moon every night. As bad as all this may be, at least the werewolves just go out and see crappy bands that only have two songs in their entire set, then they go have hairball orgies. I'll take that any day over yet another scene of Larry Talbot looking dejected and moaning about his terrible curse.
As bad as Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf is, it's also strangely compelling. Lots of people try to make films this flaky and weird on purpose, and it never works. Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf is one of those rare occurrences where a tremendous lack of care, talent, and sanity combined to make a completely warped and absolutely awful movie that never the less has immense entertainment value, provided werewolf orgies and midgets getting thrown out of windows are what you consider entertaining (and why wouldn't you?). Mora pads out his film with inexplicable cut-aways to puppets, people in masks, fake werewolf heads, owls, some complex grim reaper clockwork scene, and whatever the hell else he found lying around the place. It gives the film a completely bonkers sense of surrealism, though I will bet good money it was less an artistic decision and more an "I really don't give a crap" decision. Whatever the case, the end result is an off-kilter weirdness I find endearing. Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf isn't the worst movie ever made, but it's pretty bad. Still, I really enjoy it. I know I try to cover for the fact by pretending that it is in some way painful for me to watch Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, but that's not true. I lied. I experience no pain. Partially, this is because I died inside a long time ago. But also it's because I just like Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf despite its being a truly odious example of filmmaking. And I like that as bad and as goofy as it is, this isn't the worst movie in Sybil Danning's filmography. Hell, it's not even the worst movie in venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee's filmography. And yes -- as much as I have insulted the film, as much as I have poked fun at it and told you how awful it is, rest assured the next time I'm flipping through my DirecTV programming guide and see that Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf is on, I will be on that channel, bourbon in hand, giddy with the anticipation of seeing werewolf orgies, mirror-plate jodhpurs, and venerated horror film icon Christopher Lee in plastic wrap-around new wave sunglasses. Labels: B-Masters Roundtable, Horror: Creepy Cults, Horror: Just Plain Weird, Horror: Werewolves, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Reb Brown, Stars: Sybil Danning, Year: 1985 posted by Keith at 3:56 PM | 11 Comments Sunday, December 03, 2006Face of Fu Manchu
Digg this article. 1965, England/Germany. Starring Christopher Lee, Nigel Greene, Joachim Fuchsberger, Karin Dor, James Robertson Justice, Howard Marion-Crawford, Tsai Chin, Walter Rilla, Harry Brogan, Poulet Tu, Eric Young. Directed by Don Sharp. Written by Harry Allen Towers.
It seems fitting that my first post-thanksgiving review should be of a film this goofy. Thanksgiving back home in Kentucky was grand, as it included a visit to Churchill Downs where I raked in a small fortune in winnings (and by small, I mean small, like fifty bucks), bourbon drinking, fried chicken and fried biscuits at Joe Huber's Orchard, Winery, and Family Restaurant, a visit to the Bass Pro Shop where I got to go on a light gun safari (end conclusion -- you don't want to hire me as your crack shot assassin -- the only thing I could consistently hit was the turtle, and that was by accident), and a late-night conversation with my sister, my best friend from high school, as well as another friend newly met, about cadaver dissection in East St. Louis, machine gun battles in Guyana, and watching sub-dermal parasitic worms from the Amazon crawl around beneath the skin of your ankle. It also included the traditional Thanksgiving dinner culminating in the company of my uncle and his five children, almost all of whom were sick. As a result, predictably enough, I have contracted a bit of the sore throat, which means I rely once again on my sweet and sour colored medicine of choice, DayQuil, which tastes like rotting hippie foot but takes care of the pain and makes my head feel light and magical. It also means that, when I sit down to write a review of a film like The Face of Fu Manchu, the review, like the movie, is going to be a little goofier than usual. I should write all my reviews while high on cold medicine. It would be good for my readership and give this site that unique hook it's been missing. I've always assumed that my writing would be better if only I was more whacked out or drunker.
And whacked out or drunk is a pretty good state to be in when you venture into the murky waters of Fu Manchu. In case you need one, the brief history of the name goes a little bit like this. Back in the second decade of the 20th century, there was a British pulp writer by the name of Sax Rohmer, whose specialty -- speciality if you're British like Sax -- was tales revolving around Chinatown and its many shady inhabitants. Much of the imagery Western culture has regarding Chinatown and the Chinese can be traced directly to the fantastical works of Rohmer, who envisioned Chinatown as an impenetrable tangle of secret passages, opium dens, brothels, trap doors, and long-fingernailed assassins wielding ancient ceremonial daggers lurking in the shadows. The Chinese themselves in Rohmer's world were frequently described as cunning, deceitful, and perhaps most pervasive of all, inscrutable. Rohmer was tapping into the Caucasian fear of what became known as the "Yellow Peril." For much of the 19th century, several Western powers, most notably among them Great Britain, maintained substantial control over key ports and cities in China, and managed to wrangle some small manner of control (though to a far lesser extent) over areas of Japan. It was an arrangement that wasn't going to last forever, though, and rightfully so if you were one of the natives, who often found themselves second-class citizens, if indeed they were considered citizens at all, in their own countries. The Boxer Rebellion got the ball rolling, even though the rebellion itself was crushed, but things really came to a head during the Russo-Japanese War, which was fought primarily in China and for control of what would logically be considered Chinese territory. The Japanese had seen the writing on the wall and began an extremely diligent and rapid campaign to modernize their system of government as well as their military to more closely reflect and take advantage of advances that had occurred in the West. Most famously, this included the abolition of the samurai class and the sword and armor in favor of a national army trained and equipped with rifles, Western military structure, and lighter, Western-style uniforms. In contrast, China had sort of piddled about with similar modernization here and there, but they never really took it seriously, and no substantial progress was ever really made.
So China found itself remaining a largely untrained and almost medieval country caught in between the powers of the West and an increasingly ambitious Japan, who was identifying herself far more with Western nations than with her Asian neighbors. With no real standing national army and no navy to speak of, especially when compared to the modern navies of Japan, Great Britain, and the United States, China -- despite its size and population -- was a ripe plum waiting to be plucked. Its most important city and port, Shanghai, already belonged by default to a consortium of Western powers. It's other most important port, the island-city of Hong Kong, had been British territory since the Opium Wars. Japan, now modernized and ready to rumble, wanted to expand its own influence in China, and their initial dreams of manifest destiny brought them in direct conflict with the vast and mighty empire of Czarist Russia. Well, vast and mighty by reputation, anyway. In reality, Czarist Russia was a creaking, feeble dinosaur on the verge of total collapse. Although it boasted the biggest army in the world, the majority of Russian soldiers were poorly equipped and poorly trained, often charging into battle armed with little more than bladed farm tools. The officers, more times than not, attained their position through political maneuvering or nepotism and were, by and large, ill suited for the actual demands of being a military officer. Russia assumed, for the most part, that the sheer threat of Russia was enough to keep them from conflict, and so the machine fell apart without anyone noticing. Anyone but Japan, that is. Either because they were giddy with their newfound weapons and training, or because they sensed the core incompetence rotting away the Russian military machine, Japan decided to pick a fight. Now excuse me here, because that wicked combination of DayQuil and an obsession with military history is going to kick in and result in a long-winded and ultimately unnecessary look at all this stuff, when in fact, all I really need to do is say, "by the turn of the century, lots of Asians didn't like the West, and lots of Westerners didn't like Asians, and that resulted in the 'inscrutable Oriental' becoming a major villain in Western pulp fiction." But you know how I am. I like to hear myself ramble, especially when I'm light-headed and have had nothing to consume all day but caffeine and cold medicine.
So China and Japan had already gone to war over who got to control Korea. In what became known as the Sino-Japanese War, China was soundly trounced by her better trained and more modern island neighbor. This resulted in Japan gaining dominance in Korea, as well as picking up control over Taiwan and a little place called Port Arthur. Port Arthur isn't the sort of place lost of people hear about and go, "Oh yes, dear, dear Port Arthur! What a fine place!" But if you were Russian at the end of the 19th century, Port Arthur was a big deal, because it was that empire's only warm-water port in the Pacific. They had signed a lengthy lease on the port with China and were none too pleased to see their tenancy voided once Japan won control. So troops were deployed to defend Russian interests in Port Arthur. Additionally, Japan was grappling with maintaining control of Korea, with whom the Russians had signed a mutual protection pact -- presumably for the sole purpose of sparking conflict with someone else, since it was unlikely Russia was going to ever see Korea galloping to their defense against some European country (it was just this sort of tangled network of mutual protection pacts that pulled most of the world into World War I). As a result of the pact, Russia further deployed troops throughout Manchuria and the northern reaches of the Korean peninsula. Needless to say, diplomacy failed and war broke out in the early months of 1904. The long and short of it is that by September of 1905, Russia had been beaten into submission, and a cold, hard slap to the face had been delivered to the empire that had previously assumed that, even with poorly trained and equipped soldiers, they would be able to crush any enemy by sheer force of numbers. Japan felt cheated by the peace treaty brokered by Teddy Roosevelt, feeling that they were robbed of both territory and reparations they deserved, as well as feeling that the West was refusing to give them the respect due to a country that had just proven itself a major global power (there must have been similar feelings about the rapid ascension of the United States back in the day). Additionally, the rest of the Western World received a similar wake-up call. Here was an upstart country of Asians, barely out of their feudal era, and they'd just delivered a crippling defeat to what was supposed to be one of the preeminent powers in the world. Anger and fear resulted, and such paranoia about these devious Orientals was bound to enter into the psyche of the mainstream by way of its popular culture -- which, at the time, would have been manifest primarily in pulp magazines. At the same time, other Asian countries suffering under the yoke of Western "influence" -- and by other I mean China -- were emboldened by the Japanese victory and so decided it was just about time for people to get discontent and uppity with colonial masters who were showing the first signs of losing the grip they had on their territories in the East. And all this brings us to Sax Rohmer.
Born in 1883, Rohmer would have grown up between the era that included the post-Opium war domination of China by Great Britain and the gradual erosion of power and influence that came in the wake of the Russo-Japanese War. He would have been hit by the full force of growing Yellow Peril paranoia at a very impressionable age, and it would seem that the fears, apprehension, and racial condescension that came from growing up in an empire and are often amplified to desperate levels when that empire seems to be slipping, took firm root in the mind of young Rohmer. In 1912, after publishing a few stories and working as a skit writer for comedic stage performers, Sax Rohmer published the serialized adventure The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, featuring the "Oriental" criminal mastermind who would become the embodiment of all the West's fears about Asia getting all uppity and in-their-faces. Rohmer was sort of the quintessential pulp writer: he really wasn't especially good, but he dreamed up some outlandish ideas and knew how to keep you excited and reading regardless, sort of like the precursor of all those people who write airport bookstore spy and thriller novels. Rohmer was writing Fu Manchu stories well into the 1950s, long after the Yellow Peril had overstayed its welcome, and the stories made him phenomenally rich. With such popularity, it was only a matter of time before Rohmer's signature villain found his way onto both stage and screen. The early Fu Manchu films were serials, featuring bad acting, cheap sets, and clumsy writing, but also packed with all that dark, shadowy Chinatown exoticism that made the original stories such hits. Fu was played by a variety of actors, all of them Caucasians in fake eyelid make-up, of course, and the most famous of which was Warner Oland. He wasn't famous at the time, mind you, but he would soon be going on to play another famous "Oriental," albeit a decidedly more heroic one in the form of Charlie Chan. During the 1930s and 40s, as tensions between the West and Japan escalated (never mind that Fu Manchu wasn't Japanese), the character got more impressive screen treatments, being played by none other than Boris Karloff in a relatively lavish adventure. By the end of the war, however, though there was no end of Caucasian actors in Asian make-up hamming it up in Poverty Row potboilers, Fu Manchu and his trademark moustache (which he is never described as having in the stories) pretty much faded from the scene. Until 1965.
By that year, the concept of the Yellow Peril had pretty much vanished, replaced as it was by the Red Scare (as a people, we are terrified of the colors that come together to make McDonalds). The British Empire was finished, Japan was our friend, and though Communist China was a major concern to the powers of the West, Russia and other Communist countries were of equal or greater concern. So the Chinese had to share the duties of playing the boogeyman of the West with other Communist nations. There were still plenty of tensions even between the West and friendly Asian nations. The United States was still grappling with an Asian immigration boom, and there was a bit of nastiness brewing in a little country known to most in the West as French Indochina. But for the most part, things were far more relaxed than they had been in the past hundred years. Which is why dusting off the hoary old visage of Fu Manchu for a new series of films seemed like rather a daft idea. And it would have remained so, had The Face of Fu Manchu not been clever enough to recognize the inherent goofiness of its own premise and arch-villain. Unlike the Yellow Peril serials and stories of the past, this was Fu Manchu for a new, swinging society -- one that had started going nuts over the globe-trotting, smirking espionage adventures of the newly launched James Bond franchise. It was to these films, rather than the Fu Manchu films of the past, that writer-producer Harry Allen Towers and director Don Sharp were looking, and as a result, The Face of Fu Manchu bursts with energy and a sort of good-natured awareness of it's own campiness -- a self-awareness it never lets develop into farce or parody. Towers and Sharp knew that the entire concept of a Fu Manchu film in 1965 ("Not the Yellow Peril again!" one character exclaims in exasperation when the hero of the film mentions Fu Manchu) was joke enough, and the best way to satirize the entire concept of Fu Manchu and the Yellow Peril was to play the film straight and let the concept itself be the joke. It was important that a Caucasian actor be cast. In the past, this had been done either because: 1) while there was no shortage of Asian actors in Hollywood during the 30s and 40s, there was a dearth of Asian actors who could speak precise and clear enough English to make the jump from silent films to talkies, or 2) Hollywood was just racist and didn't really want to work with actual Asian actors. The truth is likely some combination of the two, as is so often the case. By 1965, however, there were plenty of American, Canadian, and British born Asian actors who spoke fluent English (often as their native language), but Towers and Sharp decided that in the case of Fu Manchu, the character should be played by a Caucasian because, in a way, the character was a Caucasian. There was no Asian like Fu Manchu. He was purely the creation of feverish Caucasian imaginations, and so it made thematic sense -- as well as satirical sense -- to cast a white actor in the part. And when that actor is Christopher Lee (last seen in fake eyelids in the early Hammer adventure film Terror of the Tongs when he was a relative unknown), who was by 1965 recognizable and internationally known as Christopher Lee, then it should have been obvious that there was a bit of a joke going on. No one could possibly look up at the screen and think they were watching anyone but Christopher Lee. There was no attempt at all to ever really pass Fu Manchu off as an Asian, or they would have gotten someone less well-known or layered more make-up on (his henchman are even worse, as they slap on some eye shadow and call that "Asian").
The rest of the cast is comprised of well-known British character actors, and the quality of everyone involved should go a long way in telling you that, while they may all be out on a bit of a lark, this is still a big-time production. Set in the era of Sax Rohmer's original stories, British acting stalwart Nigel Greene plays Sir Nayland Smith, the intrepid defender of all things white and British who has spent his life chasing Fu Manchu around the globe and now finally stands, during the credit sequence of this film, present at Fu Manchu's capture and beheading at the hands of the most Caucasian looking Chinese government ever to preside over the Middle Kingdom. But something in the back of Nayland's mind keeps him thinking that, although he's seen Fu Manchu's head roll, the evil criminal mastermind has somehow pulled a fast one and remains alive, in hiding, and plotting his next devastating attack on the white race. This seems to pan out when a famed scientist goes missing. Nayland ends up working with the scientist's daughter, Maria (played by Karin Dor, an experienced vet of European gothic horror films who would go on to become a mainstay in Eurospy films, as well as playing a major roll in the 1967 James Bond adventure You Only Live Twice, featuring Sean Connery as the one white actor in the world even less convincing as an Asian than Christopher Lee), to track down her father and prove that Fu Manchu is indeed alive and behind the kidnapping. Although the Fu Manchu character often results in this film being instantly discarded onto the rubbish heap of racist misfires, that sort of pre-judgment is unfair to The Face of Fu Manchu, which freely acknowledges its own absurdity and pokes a subtle fun at it that may, at times, be too subtle for modern audiences, bred as they are on broad farce and wacky obviousness. Not that I have any problem (sometimes) with farce or wackiness, but The Face of Fu Manchu comes from the school of thinking that holds that the best form of satire is one that doesn't beat you over the head with the fact that it's satire. Instead, it plays it straight, strives to be a damn good example of the type of film it satirizes, and lets the premise be the gag -- in other words, the thought of having Christopher Lee play a towering Chinese guy is silly enough without heaping extra silliness on top of it. Now whether or not you accept The Face of Fu Manchu as satire, successful or otherwise, will have a lot to do with coloring exactly how you react to it. Because if you don't see the joke the makers of the film see, then the movie is going to come across as old-fashioned and racist. But if you do accept that The Face of Fu Manchu is, at its core, poking fun at itself, then you can sit back and enjoy what turns out to be a completely absurd and thoroughly enjoyable blend of comic book super-villainy and sixties style espionage capers wrapped up in a turn-of-the-century cloak. The Face of Fu Manchu is briskly paced, full of action, and packed with all the secret passages, trap doors, and horrible tortures one expects from such a film. It also boasts some great performances, though you wouldn't expect anything less from such a solid bunch of pros. Lee is hilariously pitch perfect in the lead role, adopting all the stereotypical mannerisms and appearances that Sax Rohmer wrongly envisioned the Asians to have. Matching him squarely is Nigel Greene as the stick-up-his-ass defender of the white race. Dor is wonderful as well, and my only complaint about the cast is that Tsai Chin, who plays Fu's equally evil daughter (and would go on to appear in a few Eurospy films, before appearing in You Only Live Twice as the girl Bond is in bed with when he gets "killed" during the pre-credit sequence), isn't given a chance to shine. She's a good actress, and the character of Lin Tang is just as -- perhaps even more -- open to ripe satirization than Fu Manchu himself.
The setting of the film is occasionally problematic, and if you're the sort who gets bent out of shape over anachronistic costumes, weapons, and cars in a sixties pulp action movie about an eight-foot-tall Chinese criminal mastermind with a penchant for kidnapping scientists, then The Face of Fu Manchu might give you pause. The makers of the film play pretty fast and loose with authenticity, but considering the subject matter and the fact that Sax Rohmer's original stories were practically warped fantasy lands unto themselves, I'm not going to get too concerned about guns that don't belong in the era. There are also some plot holes here and there, including the small one of how Fu Manchu escapes his own execution. A double is obviously employed by Fu, apparently because eight-foot-tall Chinese guys are a dime a dozen, and the Chinese government apparently verifies the identity of the greatest villain in the history of the world before Hitler using the method of, "Now you promise you are the real Fu Manchu?" If Harry Allen Towers was writing reality instead of Fu Manchu movies, then we'd be seeing Saddam Hussein hijacking our broadcast airwaves to taunt us with news that we had only hanged his double, and even as we speak, the real Saddam is plotting to hold the world ransom by kidnapping the top scientist in Sweden to force him to invent a lipstick that would kill the leaders of the world when they kissed their mistresses. Not scary to George W. Bush, maybe, but imagine the bullet Bill Clinton dodged! Oh wait...Saddam did use a lot of doubles, didn't he? And the moustache...great Scott, man! SADDAM HUSSEIN IS FU MANCHU!!! Don Sharp (who had recently directed Hammer Studio's superb Kiss of the Vampire), working with cinematographer Ernest Steward (who would go on from this film to work as a cinematographer on the exceptionally enjoyable Deadlier than the Male, as well becoming a regular cinematographer for The Avengers television series), paints a gorgeous picture, full of nice sets and vivid colors. The action (if not the actual location shooting) wanders from China to London, and finally to Tibet for the explosive showdown between Nayland and his army of good guy Asians (played by actual Asians) against Fu Manchu and his evil Asians. Producer Harry Allen Towers also wrote the screenplay, which is clever and enjoyable without ever becoming annoyingly jokey. Towers was still early in his career both as a writer and a producer, but this film helped springboard him to fame and fortune, enabling him to produce a whole slew of Fu Manchu movies, European sexploitation films, and those Gor films, among countless others. His films may not be respectable, but frankly, if you're a regular Teleport City reader, chances are you've not only seen a Harry Allen Towers films; you've probably also claimed it to be one of the greatest movies ever, at some point. I wouldn't call The Face of Fu Manchu the greatest movie ever, but it is a damn good film. If you don't accept it as satire, then yeah, the racial implications may be a little hard to swallow. At the same time, it's awful hard for me to imagine anyone sitting down to watch something this utterly daft and coming out of it with a newfound paranoia regarding sinister eight-foot-tall Chinese dudes. Satirical or not, what I definitely find The Face of Fu Manchu to be is a rollicking good adventure yarn, full of fist fights, car chases, exploding monasteries, underwater lairs, and fiendish traps. A good-natured sense of humor permeates everything, even though the actors themselves play it dead serious, and the overarching feeling of amiability and excitement is as infectious as the snappy Gert Wilden soundtrack. The film was a big success, and that meant more would follow. Some of those retained the lavish look, knowing wink, and sense of fun and adventure that make The Face of Fu Manchu such a delightful films. Others in the series, however, were directed by Jess Franco, and we shall come to those in due time. Labels: Espionage, Eurospies, Series: Fu Manchu, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Karen Dor, Stars: Nigel Greene, Year: 1965 posted by Keith at 10:47 PM | 1 Comments Saturday, January 15, 2005Scars of Dracula Release Year: 1970Country: England Starring: Christopher Lee, Patrick Troughton, Dennis Waterman, Jenny Hanley, Michael Ripper, Michael Gwynn, Christopher Matthews. Writer: Anthony Hinds Director: Roy Ward Baker Cinematographer: Moray Grant Music: James Bernard Producer: Aida Young Availability: Buy it from Amazon  Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us And we were doing so well! Most movie studios can't sustain the quality of a film series beyond two films -- and quite a few have problems even getting that far. It was no small feat, then, that Hammer managed to produce not one, but two consistently good series. Their Dracula and Frankenstein films set the benchmark for quality horror during the late fifties and throughout the 1960s. And you know, they almost made it to the finish lines with both of them. The Frankenstein series featuring Peter Cushing as the titular mad doctor lasted six films, with only the third film being a misfire - and not a very bad misfire at that. By the time Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell was released, it was clear that the series was at its end, both creatively and financially. Still, it managed to go out with a dash of class, and the final film features the second worst monster in the series (the honor of worst, in my opinion, goes to Kiwi Kingston's shrieking slapdash Karloff wannabe from Evil of Frankenstein) but one of the best stories and finest performances from Cushing. Even if the final film was not a financial success, everyone involved could hold their heads up high and be proud of all six movies. And then there was the Dracula series starring Christopher Lee.
Like Frankenstein, Dracula started strong and managed to maintain the course for five films. Had they stopped with Taste the Blood of Dracula, it too would have retired a successful and respectable series. It was clear, in fact, by the fourth film that no one had much of an idea left regarding what to do with the character of Dracula. Another film in which a group of travelers end up at Dracula's castle and are preyed upon for the remainder of the film just wouldn't cut it. With Taste the Blood, Hammer tried to go in a different direction and make a movie where Dracula was a presence without being an actual character. American distributors, however, refused to buy a Dracula movie that didn't have Christopher Lee skulking about in an opera cape, and so the Count was forced into the story in a rather awkward fashion that gave him very little to do beyond stand in the shadows and count. And that's not what his title is supposed to mean. Still, Taste the Blood was quite a good film even if Dracula's physical presence has little to do with the plot. Like I said, had they wrapped it up with this one, everything would have ended on a positive note. But where as the financial failure of Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell sealed its fate as the final film in the Frankenstein series, Dracula had the artistic misfortune of scoring yet another box office hit with Taste the Blood. And so it was that a sixth Dracula film was to be made, regardless of whether or not anyone had anything interesting to put forward. Scars of Dracula isn't an abominably bad entry into the series (they'd save that for the final two films). It's just completely derivative and pointless, falling back onto the tiresome "doomed souls visiting Castle Dracula" and trying to set itself apart by giving Christopher Lee's vampire count more lines in this one movie than he'd had in all the others combined. They don't fool anyone, though, and while Scars boasts some memorable moments, the gestalt experience is one best forgotten. We have yet another Paul in this film, as well as another Klove (Patrick Troughton, best known to sci-fi fans as the second Dr. Who, or the hobo Doctor as I call him). I think that's two Kloves to four Pauls, and add them to the three or four Hans's from the Frankenstein movies. Okay, two Kloves is one thing, but what's the deal with Paul? Didn't someone look back and realize they'd named the last three stiffs (you can hardly call any of them heroes) Paul, and thus they should go for a different name this time out, like Steven perhaps, or Beauregard? Well, by the time this series is over, a preponderance of Pauls will be the least of our concerns.
The movie wastes no time in letting us know we're in for a bumpy ride as we go immediately to the lamest Dracula reincarnation yet. Now, if you recall the final film, Dracula was transported to London, then disintegrates in an old church, leaving nothing but his trademark little pile of dust. When this film begins, however, Dracula is lying in his coffin back at Castle Dracula. A floppy giant rubber bat wobbles awkwardly into the room on visible wires and proceeds to drool a little of blood onto Dracula's dust. Voila! The prince of darkness rises again! Now you know, even ignoring the horrid continuity between this and the previous films (which went to great lengths to connect itself logically to the end of Dracula has Risen from the Grave), there's no way to ignore that the ragged-looking bat prop is one of the single worst special effects in the history of Hammer horror. Someone wanted lots of bats in this movie; the least they could have done is check to see if anyone at Hammer could create them in a remotely believable manner. No hyperbole here - this thing would be embarrassing in a teenage goth's shot-on-video horror short. How it managed to flop and wiggle it's way into an actual professional production is a mystery to me. Maybe if they'd stopped at one bat, things wouldn't be so bad. But we're going to get lots of them, and each one will somehow manage to be more pathetic looking than the last. Astoundingly, the scene manages to get even worse as Dracula (Christopher Lee, undoubtedly doing the film under protest yet again, as he would so frequently remind people) sits up and the bat begins squeaking at him while Dracula nods his head and listens intently. I expect this sort of thing in a Lassie movie, maybe even in a tender scene shared between Godzilla and Anguilas, but Dracula? "What's that, lad? You say a busty wench is down in the churchyard? Let's go!" I mean, yeah, they stop short of having Dracula jump up, yell "Alakazam!" then shrink down to action-figure size so he can ride the bat around, but I'm sure if it had occurred to them, that would have happened too. Well, Dracula gets his busty wench kill in for the day, but this angries up the blood of the local peasants, and for once they don't just sit around in the tavern staring ominously at each other. In fact, one almost has hope when Michael Ripper, appearing as "Angry Barkeep" for the nine thousandth time, decides they should round up a good old-fashioned torch-wielding mob and kill Dracula off once and for all for the fifth time. Now, this is all right! A torch-wielding mob of peasants within the first ten minutes of a film? That's something I can live with. Unfortunately, they prove to be the most incompetent torch-wielding mob of peasants in the history of horror films, as they proceed to storm angrily up to Castle Dracula and knock on the door. I mean, they do it firmly and with stern looks on their faces, but if you're going up the mountain to kill a murderous vampire and burn his castle to the ground, stopping to politely knock on the door sort of undercuts your entire message. It gets even worse when, despite the fact that they must be aware that Dracula and/or his hairy servant Klove noticed the huge mob of torch-wielding peasants coming up the road, Michael Ripper knocks again and says, "Open up! I'm quite alone!" Since Dracula is asleep, I assume this all takes place in the day time, so really, brandishing the torches angrily in the air probably lost some of its effect as well, but when you're the kind of mob that can be stymied in the rage by a butler who refuses to open the door, torches in the day time are the least of your concern, though you should probably be concerned regarding the efficacy of trying to burn down a stone structure. When they do gain access to the castle (I can't remember if Ripper pulled the old "Okay, I guess I'll leave then," and made fake footsteps like he was walking away so that Klove would let down his guard and open the door), Klove doesn't seem especially upset. He may be a hairy hunchbacked servant, but even he knows that trying to burn down a stone castle with torches may damage a few tapestries, but that's about it. Still, the mob seems to consider it a job well done even though both Klove and Dracula survive. And, umm, the castle is still standing, too. Bravo, gents! Now let's all go down to the tavern for a pint!
When they return from their glorious triumph of getting a few walls slightly sooty (Klove will be scrubbing them for days to get the clean again), they discover that Dracula took the opportunity to send more floppy fake bats down to the town to massacre every last woman and child. This sort of puts a damper on their gaiety for the evening, and one has to wonder how a trio of floppy bats managed to massacre so many people and pull out so many eyeballs. The story then shifts to another town, where the movie solidifies its place in the pantheon of bad films by featuring a wacky comedy sequence in which the philandering Paul (Christopher Matthews) gets chased around by the angry burgomaster after being caught in bed with the burgomaster's daughter. Thankfully, the film stops short of piping in Benny Hill music, but then maybe this entire painful sequence would have been better if they'd thrown in a little "Yakkity Sax," sped the whole thing up, and allowed Paul to pause for a second to pat an old man on the head. The Scooby-Doo style chase eventually leads to the birthday party of young Sarah (Jenny Hanley), who loves that rascally Paul even though his far nicer, less whorish brother Simon (Dennis Waterman) loves her. Eventually, Paul ends up at Castle Dracula, and yes, we realize we're going to get another one of those "Whatever you do, don't go to the castle" movies where everyone goes to the castle. And that's just the first third of the film. It doesn't get any better from there despite the fact that Christopher Lee gets so much more screen time than usual. He hisses and seethes and screams and snarls his way through a series of unmemorable lines as he engages in all manner of brutality, including branding Klove with a hot poker, stabbing someone with a sword, impaling people on pointy light fixtures, and going nuts with the whip (once again on Klove). In fact, this is the first Dracula film where you expect the Count is more likely to just haul off and punch someone in the face than flash his mesmerizing red eyes at them and bite them on the neck. He seems to forget for most of the movie that he actually has vampire powers, and instead acts like a schoolyard bully, albeit a schoolyard bully with a tendency to wear a big cape for no discernible reason. This means Scars of Dracula has more gory action in it than any of the previous films, but none of it has much of an impact. Where's the fun of watching Dracula slap Dr. Who around? Okay, maybe that sounds a little fun, but it's really not. Dracula also stabs a female vampire with a dagger. For some reason, this kills her. At this point, though, I don't even care. I guess if Dracula isn't going to bite people like a normal vampire should, then other vampires can be killed with daggers and so forth. I guess some vampires fear a wooden stake, and others fear a wiggling rubber dagger. On the hero front, what can you say? This film gives you a milquetoast lead in Simon, and a standard issue cowardly priest (Michael Gwynn, who played the "monster" in the far superior Revenge of Frankenstein). You keep waiting for the priest to rise to the occasion and stop collapsing in his pew aisles and weeping, but that's about all he ever does. The Dracula series had been following an interesting trajectory, starting with Van Helsing's explaining Dracula in purely rational terms as a social disease to an increasingly supernatural demon to be combated not with science and reason, but with faith. Here, however, even that is chucked out the window in favor of having Dracula be nothing more than some asshole who happens to command a fleet of shaky rubber bats.
Simon sort of drifts from one scene to the next until he eventually finds himself standing on the roof with Dracula, about to be killed until a bolt of lightning shows up to do his dirty work for him. Boy oh boy, we're a long way from Van Helsing, aren't we? Patrick Troughton's Klove is every bit as over-the-top as Lee's Dracula, and both of them are more laughable than they are sinister. I did say that this film had some memorable moments, didn't I? I mean, memorable because they're good, not because they're so unbelievably awful. I guess what I meant to say is there's the one scene worth remembering. One of the most notable sequences from the Bram Stoker novel involves Jonathan Harker observing Count Dracula entering and exiting the tower of Castle Dracula by crawling up and down the wall like a spider. For one reason or another, this scene had never been included in any theatrical version of the story, so scriptwriter Anthony Hinds and director Roy Ward Baker figured now would be as good a time as any. It does show, if nothing else, Dracula has learned the benefits of putting his crypt in an impenetrable tower with no entrance or exit save for the one window way up high that only a guy with spider climbing abilities can get to. It certainly makes more sense than keeping it on the ground floor with an unlocked door, as was his practice in previous films. Of course, once Christopher Lee went crawling up and down walls, there was no stopping Dracula. Frank Langela did it in hazy slow motion with billowing cape and romantic string music playing. Gary Oldman did it all herky jerky while wearing a big red robe. It just goes to show you that a scene of Dracula scurrying around don the wall may be cool, but it can't save the whole movie. Even the trademark Hammer look isn't on display here, as cheap budgets make for cheap sets. Fire damage explains away the spartan appearance of Dracula's castle, but that doesn't make it interesting to look at. More than ever, the people who made fun of horror movies with cardboard characters and cardboard sets had plenty of ammo for their attacks. It can be fun, but you never once forget you're watching a dreadful movie. There's a reason this emerged as the goriest of all Dracula films, and one of the goriest Hammer films, period: they had to cover up the threadbare production with something. Scars of Dracula isn't quite a disaster, but it's everything bad about Hammer films, and everything that critics unjustly accused Hammer films of being - only this time, there was no defending the product. Hammy acting, clumsy comedy, wretched special effects, weak characters - heaving bosoms is about all this one has going for it, and you can get those in any Hammer film, even the good ones. 1970 was simply not a good year for Hammer, with this, the awful Horror of Frankenstein (not part of the actual Frankenstein series, and not starring Peter Cushing), Creatures the World Forgot, and Lust for a Vampire overshadowing the studio's two good films from that year: the wonderful Vampire Lovers and the acceptable Lady Bathory exploitation film, Countess Dracula. Scars of Dracula ends up being a highlight reel for anyone who ever wanted to showcase the lowest common denominator Hammer film. Hinds was a good scriptwriter, and Baker was a more than competent director. So what went wrong? It can only be that, in the end, no one but the accountants gave a damn about making another Dracula movie. Unfortunately, it didn't stop there. Scars of Dracula once again made money, which meant that, impossible though it may be, yet another Dracula film would inevitably be made. Fans grew hopeful when they heard Peter Cushing was back in the game as Van Helsing. They grew suspicious when they found out Dracula would be visiting the year 1972. Their suspicions, it would turn out, were well founded. Dracula, A.D. 1972 would show everyone who thought Scars of Dracula was the worst Dracula movie Hammer had made that they hadn't seen anything yet.  Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Stars: Christopher Lee, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1970 posted by Keith at 4:04 PM | 0 Comments Tuesday, December 14, 2004Taste the Blood of Dracula
1970, England, Starring Christopher Lee, Ralph Bates, Geoffrey Keene, Linda Hayden, Michael Ripper, Peter Salas, Ilsa Blair, John Carson, Martin Jarvis. Directed by Peter Sasdy. Available on DVD (Amazon).
Last time we saw the prince of the undead, he was impaled on a cross and turned into that pink sawdust bus drivers sprinkle on the floor when kids throw up. For just about anyone, even the common vampire, that would signal the end, once and for all. But this is Dracula we're talking about, and if Dracula Has Risen from the Grave proved to be a financial success for England's Hammer Studio, then you could bet good money on the fact that they'd find yet another way to bring the Count back from the dead, even if he'd been impaled on a cross and even if series star Christopher Lee was back out on the streets again telling anyone and everyone who would listen that the Dracula movies were awful and he would absolutely, positively, under no circumstances ever play Count Dracula again. Anyone who knows the cycle knows that means that the next film in the cycle, Taste the Blood of Dracula, stars Christopher Lee as the titular count, and that in turns means we'd have to read even more quotes from Lee about how he was practically forced to do this film, but that he'd sure as heck never do another one. There are two common paths of thought regarding Lee's frequent and increasingly irritating complaints about Hammer's Dracula movies. The first is that, well, Christopher Lee is just whiny and annoying. The second is that he made these statements with the full blessing of Hammer and with every intention, despite what he was saying, of reprising the role so long as the movies proved profitable. Having the star of a film out there talking about how horrible it all is and how he never wants to do another one is a surefire way to get people curious. Certainly Hammer seemed to have suspiciously peculiar luck with convincing Christopher Lee to go back on his bold proclamations. So either Lee is an obnoxious talker who never lives up to his own assertions, or he's just a cog in a clever Hammer marketing ploy, or Hammer has some bundle of pictures or other bunch of material that they use to regularly blackmail Lee.
In fact, Taste the Blood of Dracula was originally scripted by Anthony Hinds on the assumption that Lee would make good on his boasts and refuse to appear. Much like Brides of Dracula before it, Taste the Blood of Dracula was going to employ the threat of Dracula and his disciples without actually featuring the bloodsucker himself. As originally written Taste the Blood was going to be a showcase for Hammer's great young hope, Ralph Bates, the man they hoped would serve as the banner star for a new era of revitalized Hammer output. It seems like a good idea. Christopher Lee was becoming more difficult by the day, and one has to assume that despite the man's marquee value, Hammer would be happy to just move on without him for a spell. And Ralph Bates was certainly an able man around which to structure the faltering studio. Where as Cushing and Lee and the previous generation of Hammer actors had represented an older, more distinguished presence, Bates was young and handsome and would appeal, Hammer hoped, to the younger kids who were fast becoming the bread and butter of the movie industry. Bates was one of the studio's first attempts at a matinee idol (Oliver Reed could probably be considered their first). As the studio entered the 1970s, they were beginning to feel the weight of a faltering British film industry, a dearth of ideas for new movies that would keep Hammer fresh, and most of all, the feeling that Hammer films were simply outdated and old-fashioned. Behind the scenes, Hammer was rudderless and without any real leadership or idea of where the studio was going. As a result, Hammer's output during the 1970s was notoriously uneven, though several high points managed to rise above the widening pool of substandard Hammer fare. One of the keys to Hammer succeeding in the 1970s involved a serious update of the stodgy and old-fashioned reputation. This meant, among other things, more daring scripts, less naïve looks at life, and above all, some new blood in the acting department that would appeal to existing horror fans as well as those shaggy-haired hippies and burn-outs with their bell bottoms and their Sergeant Pepper albums. Unfortunately Warner Brothers, who distributed the films in the important US market, wasn't going to buy any of this. They didn't know who Ralph Bates was, and more importantly, they didn't care. If Hammer wanted their Dracula film distributed in the United States, then it damn well better have Dracula in it. American audiences wouldn't put up with a bait and switch, and if Warner couldn't have Christopher Lee in the film, then the film couldn't have distribution in the United States, at least not from Warner Brothers. Hammer scrambled to appease Lee in the same way but for much less money than the producers of the James Bond films begged and bought Sean Connery back into the Bond series (at roughly the same time. Diamonds Are Forever came out in 1971, but given the speed with which Hammer films were made versus the more liberal schedule of a Bond film, it's likely this sort of desperate buying back of established stars was happening at around the same time). With Lee on board again, under protest as he couldn't stop reminding people, a hasty rewrite of the script was in order so that Dracula could actually appear in the film to see who it was that going around tasting his blood. Taste the Blood begins with a clever intro that signals the film's intention to put more work than usual into the process of reviving Dracula. A merchant traveling via coach with a couple of your standard issue gruff, superstitious villagers is bragging about the rare wares he has acquired during his recent antiquing sojourn through the Carpathian hills. While he may be proud of his knick-knacks, the villagers aren't as impressed, and when the merchant mentions a certain village, they just haul off and kick him out of the coach. Stranded in the woods at night, the merchant begins to hear the standard "stranded in the woods at night" sound effects. Owls, scurrying, and a howl that may or may not be Oliver Reed from Curse of the Werewolf. When a blood-curdling shriek fills the air, the merchant realizes that some seriously foul things are afoot in this cursed forest. By and by he falls off a ledge and comes face to face with the thrilling climax of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave. Once that movie finishes up, the merchant twists up his courage and sneaks down to collect the remaining artifacts, which include, as the title suggests, the blood of Dracula, or at least the powdered "just add water" variety we're used to seeing once Dracula finishes dying. Some time later, we meet three upstanding citizens of Queen Victoria's England, and as you can guess, all three of them aren't nearly as pious as they pretend. Ring leader William Hargood (Geoffrey Keene, who appeared in Cromwell every James Bond films beginning with The Spy Who Loved Me in 1977 and concluding with The Living Daylights) is the most despicable of the bunch as he beats and berates his daughter for smiling at a boy and engaging in other acts of harlotry while, the very same night, gathering his cronies together for a night of exotic pleasures at the local brothel. Hargood and his fellows form sort of a mini Hellfire Club, though their indulgences in the forbidden pleasures of the world consist almost entirely of going to same brother every month under the guise of "charity work" and then sitting in a room, drinking liquor, and watching foreign women dance naked. I'm not saying that isn't a fine night out on the town, but as far as experiences the taboos from the farthest reaches of the globe go, it's pretty unimaginative, pedestrian stuff. Hargood seems to realize this, and their boredom with their panty-waist sin leads them to seek out eccentric dandy Lord Courtley (Ralph Bates), who is one of those broke counts who gads about town in the finest high society frippery, scamming free meals from expensive restaurants and mooching off exquisite looking women of loose morals and poor judgment as he twirls his walking stick, doffs his top hat, and snaps his hankie about. In other words, a perfectly fine role model. Courtley is rumored to have dabbled in the black arts of Satanism or voodoo or something sinister, and so the three upstanding gentlemen seek out his company, though they never stop insulting him - which seems to me a poor way to treat the madcap young fop you're asking to initiate you into the next level of debauchery. Courtley sees in the gentlemen the perfect opportunity to get enough money to do something he's always wanted to do: namely, visit that merchant from the pre-credit sequence, buy Dracula's stuff, and mount a ritual to return the count to life. Reason? For the hell of it, it seems, which is as good a reason as any, I suppose.
As one would imagine, the ritual goes awry when Hargood's friends balk at actually guzzling down the thick, foaming blood of Dracula milkshake with which Courtley presents them. The ensuing argument results in Courtley's murder as he thrashes and writhes about after drinking the blood himself. Hargood and Co. high tail it out of the ruined old building in which the fun was taking place, and Courtley, not surprisingly proves to be just the vessel Dracula needs to return from the dead once again to wreak his unholy vengeance upon those who murdered his assistant, which doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense when you remember that Dracula has no idea who Courtley is, and that Courtley's death was necessary for Dracula to return to the land of the living. But what do you want when the script gets rewritten at the last minute? The remainder of the film sees Dracula (Christopher Lee) gaining control over the sons and daughters of the three men against whom he bears this grudge, so that he can have them murder their own parents, which frees Dracula up to stand nearby in the shadows and count down the number of people against whom he has successfully extracted his revenge. Considering there's only three of them, it's not much of a countdown. One of the things that sets this film apart from previous Dracula films is that Dracula, like Godzilla, is arguably the hero of the film. Though we still have to see him destroyed in the end, there's little doubt that he's no more vile than the men he's hunting. When he manipulates Hargood's battered daughter Alice (Linda Hayden, Blood on Satan's Claw) into smashing her wretched father's head in with a shovel, one almost feels like cheering, especially since this comes after a grotesque scene in which a drunk and leering Hargood viciously beats his daughter and looks on the verge of flat out raping her. Previous Dracula films have had gray characters - the self-righteous blowhard Monsignor from the last film springs immediately to mind - but those characters always had redeeming qualities. Hargood possesses no such qualities. He is despicable from beginning to end, and the audience has no problem feeling that he got what he deserved. The only thing wrong with his death, as I see it, is that it's the first, leaving the other two far less revolting characters to carry the plot when, if you ask me, Hargood's death should have been the climax of the story. Instead, we get Dracula hunting down the remainder of Hargood's cabal while milquetoast Paul (yet another Paul - nearly as many of these in Dracula films as there are Kloves, or Hans's in the Frankenstein movie) tries to save the soul of his beloved Alice Hargood and, in the process, send Dracula back from whence he came. Taste the Blood represents a more savage critique of Victorian society than any previous Dracula film. There has always been an undercurrent in the films of the ongoing struggle between enforced morals and repression and the wild animalistic abandon represented by Dracula. But in previous films, the scripts always came down on the side of society, preferring its ordered repression to the lust and passion of Dracula. Here, however, the tables are turned and if Dracula's lifestyle isn't exactly championed, it's at least shown as being no worse than the hypocrisy and deceit of modern society. The point is made in rather a heavy handed fashion, but so it goes. Although a more counter-culture, youth-friendly message about freedom triumphing over repression was nothing new in 1970, Hammer was still a relative neophyte studio when it came to tapping into the anti-authoritarian trends that had defined and all but escaped Hammer during the 1960s. With Taste the Blood, they're attempting to play a bit of catch-up, so one can forgive the ham-handed way in which they deliver the message. Dracula is, once again, little more than a supporting player, a sort of shadowy puppet master with very little screen time who does precious little more than lurk in the shadows rattling off the body count like the Count from Sesame Street. But then at the same, time, he doesn't have any less screen time or involvement in things than he did in most of the previous films. What Taste the Blood does is the same thing that Horror of Dracula and Prince of Darkness attempted to do, which is to keep Dracula constantly present as a threat, an ominous atmosphere of dread, even when Christopher Lee himself is nowhere to be seen. Only in the finale, which is admittedly half-baked, does Lee get to do his crazed thrashing about, though one has to wonder if the lord of the undead couldn't think of a better way to fight off a weak opponent like Paul than standing on a balcony and throwing garbage at him. It's just one step away from having Dracula swoop down and whack Paul on the head, then flutter up into the rafters to taunt him. The rest of the cast is spectacular. Paul (Anthony Higgins, Vampire Circus as well as a small part in Raiders of the Lost Ark) is more boring than the previous Paul, but no more boring than any of the other straights we've had on parade. Linda Hayden is one of the most attractive women Hammer ever put on display, and she acquits herself well as the other half of the boring romantic couple. The real strength of the cast lies in everyone else, an impressive assembly of solid character actors that perform above and beyond the call of duty, with Geoffrey Keen and Ralph Bates in the lead. For the couple scenes where he's allowed to spring to life, Christopher Lee is as good as he always is. Michael Ripper, who seems to have appeared in just about every movie Hammer ever made, gets promoted from the role of "suspicious barkeep" to "lackadaisical inspector." It's probably one of the best casts ever assembled for a Dracula film, and although it's common to bemoan the lack of Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, there's really no place for him thematically in this film, where the humans are generally so contemptible. Van Helsing's compassionate authority figure would have stood out like a sore thumb.
Taste the Blood continues to take Dracula further and further away from Van Helsing's theory that Dracula is is a perfectly explainable creature well within and soundly defeated by the powers of human reason. In fact, by Taste the Blood, Dracula is hardly even a vampire any more so much as he is some kind of supernatural demonic force. If ever he was the human made monster, you wouldn't know it at this point. The more secular means of dispatching a vampire -- garlic, running water, so on and so forth -- that were previously employed have, by this movie, been dispatched almost entirely in favor of religious iconography. Although Taste the Blood is as steeped in religious imagery as Dracula has Risen from the Grave, it doesn't have any particular comment to direct toward religion the way that previous film did. Religion is simply a matter of necessity as Dracula has become less the prince of darkness and more the Antichrist himself. Or wait, are those the same? Whatever the case, Taste the Blood again presents us with a monster which, unlike Dracula as we knew him in the first couple of films, exists entirely within a religious -- or sacreligious -- realm where bravery and reason have less to do with destroying him than do faith and Christ. Despite the weak ending, Taste the Blood is an exceptional entry into Hammer's Dracula oeuvre. Director Peter Sasdy eschews the ultra-vivid palette that characterized the Terence Fisher films and goes for a more subdued hue to the film, something more akin to reality and less stylized. Buildings and street are dark rather than brightly lit, and there is a palpable sense of decay in everything. Even Christopher Lee grudgingly admits that it turned out to be a good film, though to this day he won't stop going on about how corny the title is - and at least on this, one kind of has to agree with him, though I'd pay good money to see something under the same title debut on the Food Network. Being the final Hammer Dracula film, it was nice to see the series go out on such a respectable note. I'm kidding of course. Taste the Blood would prove successful, and thus there would have to be another Dracula film. We can only wish that Hammer stopped with Taste the Blood, because from here on out it's not so much downhill as it is straight off a cliff and into the abyss. Labels: Horror: Creepy Cults, Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Stars: Christopher Lee, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1970 posted by Keith at 1:17 PM | 0 Comments Saturday, October 09, 2004Horror Express
1973, Spain/UK. Starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Alberto de Mendoza, Silvia Tortosa, Julio Peña, Georges Rigaud, Ángel del Pozo, Víctor Israel, Helga Liné, Alice Reinheart, Juan Olaguivel. Directed by Eugenio Martín. Available on DVD from Amazon
It didn't take long for the genres of horror and science fiction to start mingling. It's a natural marriage, after all, and the two often blend seamlessly, the best and among the earliest example likely being the first two Universal "Frankenstein" movies. Throughout the 1950s, horror and science fiction were frequent bedfellows as atomic terrors ran amok across assorted landscapes. Increasingly, however, it was the science fiction element of the films that was in the forefront, with the horror placed in the background unless one was genuinely terrified of superimposed grasshoppers. By the middle of the 1950s, science fiction was still enjoying the occasional big budget celebration a la This Island Earth (1955) and Forbidden Planet (1956) while horror films were becoming increasingly cheap, b-movie quickie affairs. Not that that means there weren't plenty of gems in the mix, but compared to science fiction, horror was lagging. It was in this setting, however, that England's Hammer Studio decided to mix the two together once again in what they hoped to be a high-class concoction, first as a television series and then as the film The Quatermass Experiment. Although horror was often regarded as a dying genre, Hammer proved that handled properly and with respect, fans were still ready to turn out for a good horror-scifi half-breed. Two more Quatermass films were made, the latest being 1967's superb Quatermass and the Pit, which sees the good doctor and investigator of all things extraterrestrial and paranormal grappling with an alien carcass discovered beneath London and possessed, seemingly, of a Satanic nature as well. Which brings us nicely, if rather half-assedly, to Horror Express, a film that seems to draw from both the feel of a Hammer film as well as that of a ripping HG Wells story without actually being from either source. The idea of gods, angels, and devils as space aliens is no longer especially new and novel, though few serious (or even comical) studies of the notion exist in film. It's a favorite of conspiracy theorists and UFOlogists, however, with the best-known proponents of the idea being those who believe that "ancient astronauts" visited Earth thousands of years ago and helped with everything from the erection of the Egyptian pyramids to the construction of Incan, Mayan, and Aztec pyramids to the carving and raising of the ominous heads on Easter Island. Apart from the notion that aliens were jetting through the cosmos showing off their masonry and stone-carving skills is the theory that so-called holy beings, your Jesus and your various angels and maybe even a Greek god or two, were beings from another planet whose miraculous powers were rather run-of-the-mill back home but really something here on Earth where we didn't have the ability to turn water into wine. Thus these creatures would be perceived as gods and angels, and the naughty ones as demons and devils, by us backward shepherds here on planet Earth. It's not a completely daft idea, as far as such theories go, at least no more so than Jesus being the son of a supreme being who created everything out of nothing and, with the entire universe at his disposal, whiled away the centuries picking on Job and pulling stunts like, "Abraham, sacrifice your son! No just joking! Dude, I can't believe you were really going to sacrifice your son." The idea that these angels, that perhaps even Jesus himself were aliens isn't entirely insane, especially when you take into consideration the power of Jesus to appear as a blond-haired, glowing white guy despite his Jewish-Arabic origins. Horror Express is not a Hammer film, it could easily pass for one thanks to its quick pace, period setting, and the presence of Hammer's two biggest stars, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, and while it doesn't present us with the scenario of our deities being space travelers, it does rely heavily on the notion that beings from other worlds have visited this planet long before the presence of mankind in our current form, and that if said beings were perhaps trapped in the body of a monkey for two million years only to find themselves awakened on a train going through Siberia, they'd be annoyed. Lee stars as Professor Saxton, an intrepid scientist-adventurer the likes of which we simply do not see enough of these days. On an expedition to the far north of china, his team uncovers the remarkably well-preserved mummy of an humanlike ape Saxton assumes to be the missing link, not to mention being one of the greatest anthropological or archaeological discoveries of all time. Hey, consider that some people think of a particularly nice chunk of pot shard to be one of the greatest discoveries of all time, and you can understand why Saxton is so excited about his Peking Man. Sexton immediately returns to the city with his find and books passage to Europe on board the Trans-Siberian Express, only to discover that much to his chagrin his number one scientific and one-liner rival, Dr. Wells (Peter Cushing), is also along for the trip and keeps bugging Saxton about seeing what's in that padlocked box. A Chinese thief at the station doesn't see fit to badger Saxton and, assuming the crate is full of jewels or fine women's lingerie, goes about taking a peek. When the police find him, he's dropped dead with blood pouring from his sockets and his eyes turned completely white. Saxton, being a fine, condescending British scientist, doesn't think much of the incident. The guy was a thief, after all. A mad Russian monk with wild unkempt hair and beard (is there any other kind of Russian monk), however, sees the entire affair as a sign that whatever is contained within the crate must surely be the work of Satan. To prove his point, he attempts to draw a cross on the box, only to discover that being the wooden container of all things Luicferian, the cross will not show up. Whether or not something less holy, like perhaps, "Springsteen 4 Ever!" would have showed up is one of the mysteries that shall remain forever unanswered. Although the cross incident impresses the locals, Saxton dismisses it as a simple parlor trick, and points out that the guy is bugging his eyes out and ranting and raving about Satan. So all aboard the horror express, including Saxton, Wells, the crazy monk Pujardov (Alberto de Mendoza, who acted in Fulci's Lizard in a Woman's Skin and One on Top of the Other, among many European cult films), a suspicious Russian police inspector named Mirov (Euro-cult veteran Julio Pena, who also starred in films like Horror Rises from the Tomb, Werewolf Versus the Vampire Women, A Pistol for a Hundred Coffins and Sergio Corbucci's The Mercenary), a mysterious female spy, two Russian nobles, and a whole host of other people whose only job is to fill up the dining cart. In other words, it's a regular Agatha Christie gathering, the kind you always get on these old trains but rarely, if ever, on modern trains. See, therein lies the problem with modern rail travel: not nearly enough intrigue. Used to be that for the price of a ticket, you'd get spies menacing one another with stilettos, upper-class society types embroiled in murder mysteries, and alien-possessed monkey-men throwing things at Peter Cushing. No more. Maybe instead of offering the usual "first class, second class, et cetera" nonsense they should offer something like, "first class, second class, and turn-of-the-century intrigue class." Needless to say, it isn't long before the ape-man claims another victim, this time a porter whom Wells had bribed to take a peek into the box and report back to him. Then the ape-man picks the lock and disappears, much to Saxton's annoyance. Faced with no other reasonable possibility, Inspector Mirov and the two British scientists are forced to assume that a two-million year old ape man has somehow been revived, learned to pick modern locks, and is currently at large and turning people's eyes white. An autopsy on the baggage handler also reveals that the brain is as smooth as a baby's bottom, disregarding then the obvious statistically rare and dismissible occurrence of an ugly, pockmarked baby bottom. It's clear that this is no ordinary two-million year-old missing link. As the list of victims grows, Wells, Saxton, and Mirov join forces to uncover the mystery at the heart of the creature's rampage. Things only get harder when they realize that the creature itself is not the ape-man, but an entity inside the ape-man which is able to leap from one body to another when the need arises. This revelation prompts the best line in the entire movie, in which Mirov turns accusingly to Saxton and Wells and proclaims, "Even one of you could be the monster!" to which Cushing's Wells replies indignantly, "Impossible! We're British, man!" Eventually, it is discovered that the entity is a space alien, marooned on the planet millions of years ago and really keen on getting the hell out of here. The creature's trump card in attempting to get Wells and Saxton not to kill it is that it's seen millions of years of earthly history prior to being frozen and can provide them with knowledge immeasurable. It's a tempting Faustian deal, but one the stolid British researchers resist, though the crazed monk, fearing that this beast is Satan himself, decides to cast his lot with the side whose physical manifestation is running amok on the train. AN impromptu stop at a remote Siberian outpost allows Cossack soldier Telly Savalas to board the train with his troops and either get to the bottom of things in a quick and efficient manner or provide more corpse fodder for the creature, who also reveals an ability to revive the bodies of its victims and send them, zombie-like, shambling through the claustrophobic train cars in a final horrific onslaught against the living. You guess which eventuality comes to pass. Horror Express is a ripping good yarn with a fast pace and a snappy wit. Cushing and Lee are superb in one of their countless pairings, and each horror veteran crackles with energy as they dig deep into their characters and revel in the story around them. Though there are a couple tongue-in-cheek touches to the film, the film itself is never completely tongue-in-cheek. Rather, it simply relies on clever twists and a wicked sense of humor to carry the admittedly zany plot. There is plenty of ammunition on hand for those who wish to pick apart the logic of a film about an ancient alien consciousness riding the rails with Telly Savalas, but the spirit of the film is so high and the performances so winning that one scarcely has time or cause to pause and think about the absurdity of the blood from the eye of the creature acting as sort a microscopic slideshow. That the creature's memory is contained in the fluid of the eye is in itself not a bad idea, but the fact that Lee and Cushing can extract a drop of blood and look at it under a microscope to enjoy various pictures of dinosaurs and the earth from outer space is, well, you know, as outlandish as the fact that people are only mildly surprised when a two-million year-old monkey mummy springs back to life and starts killing. There are also a series of coincidences that the alien must have been eternally thankful for - such as the fact that it needs to figure out how to get out of the locked box, only to be able to absorb the skills of a Chinese thief. And it needs to learn some way of building a rocket capable of escaping earth's atmosphere only to be put on a train alongside a female spy stealing a sample of an indestructible metal to be used in the construction of, perhaps, rockets. And that the creator of the metal, the formula of which is so secret that only he himself knows it, is also on board. But honestly, none of this matters, because what Horror Express wants to be is a faced-paced, fun horror-scifi thriller, and that's exactly what it is. Cushing's Wells is hilariously pompous yet thoroughly likable, and Christopher Lee gets to play yet another stern but heroic man of reason, something he proved considerably adroit at in The Devil Rides Out. The supporting cast is comprised of Eurocult veterans, largely from Spain, all of whom have extensive experience in horror, historical adventures, and spaghetti westerns, among others. And then there's Telly. Although a big enough name thanks to turns as Kojak on television and as Blofeld in On Her Majesty's Secret Service so that he's never been identified as a horror film icon, there's no denying that when Savalas made a rare appearance in such a film, it was usually going to be pretty good, not to mention pretty weird. In the same year as Horror Express, Savalas appeared in Mario Bava's superb mindwarp of a horror film, Lisa and the Devil. He goes pretty far over the top here as a sadistic Cossack soldier, but his performance, while bordering on camp, works within the context of such a playful film. I only wish he'd shown up earlier, but I guess too big a dose of his character would have ruined the performance. Part of the reason Horror Express got made was that the producer purchased the model train that was used in the bigger budget historical epic Nicholas and Alexandra and figured, heck, if he owned this really keen train set, he might as well make a crazed scifi-horror film around it. Exteriors are appropriately bleak and hopeless looking, bringing to mind when combined with the mind-stealing alien life form the sci-fi classic Thing from Another Planet, remade in the 1980s by John Carpenter simply as The Thing. Horror Express shares quite a bit with Thing from Another Planet, in fact. From the icy setting to the alien to the claustrophobic interiors and growing sense of paranoia that infects the passengers. Much of the film is beautifully shot, with exquisite sets and decoration, and some of the scenes are genuinely eerie, the most prominent being the horde of white-eyed ghouls shambling through the darkened train cars as the remaining passengers scramble for safety. Cinematographer Alejandro Ulloa has a ton of horror, science fiction, and spaghetti westerns to his credits, and he works wonders within the confined spaces of the train. Coupled with a superb score, the film has a nearly overwhelming sense of dread that is tempered only by the spriteful performances of Lee and Cushing. The monkey man make-up is neither dazzling nor awful, and though we probably get too clear a look at it too often for its own good, it's hardly of a quality that would destroy a film, especially one so heavy with wit and stand-out performances. There are some fairly gory special effects, but nothing out of the ordinary for what other studios, including Hammer, were doing at the time. Some bleeding eye violence, some gratuitous brain surgery, that sort of thing. If you miss the days when horror and science fiction, while not exactly being intelligent, were at least willing to play with lofty ideas and theories and mix them together with charm and drollness, then by all means hop on board the Horror Express and please forgive me for statements like that. I hadn't sent he film until I sat down to watch it for this review, and the only reason I don't regret having missed out for so long is that it gave me the chance to have such a wonderful, rollicking good time at the horror films to discover. Labels: Horror, Netflix Diary, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Peter Cushing posted by Keith at 4:47 PM | 0 Comments Sunday, September 12, 2004Dracula Has Risen from the Grave
1968, England. Starring Christopher Lee, Rupert Davies, Veronica Carlson, Barbara Ewing, Barry Andrews, Ewan Hooper, Marion Mathie, Michael Ripper. Directed by Freddie Francis. Available on DVD (Amazon).
When a creature is so vile, so evil, so much an affront to the nature of the world and of God himself as is the vampire Count Dracula, there is no easy way to destroy him and keep him down. So it is that in every episode of man's struggle against this infernal prince of darkness, we mortals seem to succeed in wholly destroying this spawn of Satan only to see him find some way to cheat death yet again, as he has for so many centuries now, so that he may once again rise up and cast his long shadow of terror and bloodshed across the countryside. It seems this notorious bloodsucker has any number of ways he can reverse the effects of his apparent destruction, but the most powerful one by far is making certain that his movie provide bushel baskets full of money for the producers. With the power to produce so much green, it was a given that Hammer Studio's Dracula would find a way to resurrect himself after being trapped under the ice at the end of Dracula, Prince of Darkness. Death by running water seemed a more easily circumvented fate than actor Christopher Lee's emphatic statements regarding his unwillingness to portray the caped one again. Lee made a big name for himself with his turn as the undead ghoul in Hammer's ground-breaking Horror of Dracula, but he was determined that the name he made wouldn't be Dracula. So he bowed out of the sequel, Brides of Dracula, and didn't return to the role until he was comfortable that he'd established himself as something more than the vampire count. But 1967's Dracula, Prince of Darkness proved that audiences were still bloodthirsty not just for Dracula, but for Christopher Lee as Dracula. That people were so quick to revert to identifying him solely with Dracula made Lee squeamish about reprising the role yet again, though the outstanding success of Prince of Darkness meant that Hammer could hardly pass on making another film. So would begin a long and sometimes irritating cycle of Christopher Lee making a Dracula movie for Hammer, complaining about what crap the film was and how he would absolutely never, ever do it again, then appearing in Hammer's next Dracula film a year later. Although Lee did have his viable points for being dissatisfied with the role - chief among them that it grew increasingly unlike anything portrayed in the original Bram Stoker novel - in the end his continuous complaining coupled with the fact that he'd always show up to do another one "under protest" kind of makes you want to tell Christopher Lee to shut the hell up. Hey, I like me the Christopher Lee, but it's not like the man built for himself some legacy of impeccable artistic integrity. He did show up in Chuck Norris films and other things far worse than even the least of his Hammer Dracula films. But that's Christopher Lee for you. Sometimes he's just a bit of a blowhard, but that doesn't make his turn in these films any less enjoyable. So obviously, despite Lee's public bellyaching, Hammer managed to sign him on for a sequel to Prince of Darkness. There was really no reason to tinker with a winning formula, and so they figured they might as well bring back Terence Fisher to direct and Jimmy Sangster to do the screenplay. Things didn't quite work out that way though, and when Fisher was injured in an auto accident, Hammer turned to Freddie Francis to fulfill the directorial duties. Additionally, Anthony Hinds ended up writing the screenplay (under his frequent pseudonym of John Elder). As good as the Sangster-Fisher team was, there was nothing to mourn in having Francis and Hinds working on the picture. Both were solid company men with a lot of good work to their credit. In fact, Freddie Francis' tendency to experiment more with dreamlike, experimental set-ups would be a nice change from Fisher's meticulous concentration on realism and detail. The film lets you know right away that it isn't going to mess around, although this warning turns out to be a bit of a fib since the movie does end up messing around a bit. But we begin with one of the finest opening sequences Hammer would devise for a Dracula movie, as a young boy goes to fulfill his duty as the local church's bell ringer only to find the corpse of a young woman - drained completely of blood - dangling inside the bell. It's a fantastic image in a film whose main strength is going to be in its imagery. This all occurs, we are lead to understand, sometime during the events depicted in Prince of Darkness. The film then picks up some months after that one ends, with the local priest a hopeless drunk and the church abandoned. When a loudmouth, obnoxious monsignor rides into town, he berates everyone for still being afraid of Dracula even though he was indisputably destroyed by that rifle-toting monk in Prince of Darkness. To prove his point, the Monsignor insists on dragging the parish priest up to Dracula's now-vacant castle to exorcise the grounds and scatter assorted religious iconography about the place. Unfortunately, while he's doing this, the drunken depressed priest takes a tumble off a ledge and cracks open his head right on top of the ice beneath which lies the perfectly preserved corpse of Dracula. As blood from the priest's head trickles through cracks in the ice, it touches Dracula's lips and, well, there you go. Instant vampire resurrection. This process of reviving the count seems a little, you know, unimaginative. Last time, someone had to be strung above his ashes and completely gutted before Dracula was revived, but this time it just takes a couple drops of blood and a convenient ignoring of the fact that, blood of a disillusioned priest or not, Dracula was still trapped beneath running water and should have just died again instead of being able to burst forth from his icy tomb to wreak terrible vengeance upon the world. This method of bringing Dracula back would, however, look positively inspired by the time the series got to Scars of Dracula, where the count is brought back to un-life when a random rubber bat flies into his crypt and drools some blood on him without any sort of build-up at all. The first thing one notices about this whole opening, which is really one of the best procession of images in any Dracula film, is the pervasiveness of religious imagery. Well, I guess the first thing you might notice is how the drunk priest's head is gushing blood in one shot and is entirely healed mere seconds later in another shot. But the religious imagery is strong, too, and indeed Risen from the Grave will emerge as one of the most potently religious of the films, continuing the progression of the series from the relatively secular adventures of Van Helsing (he pays lip service to God, but his primary faith is in science and reason, and he sees vampirism in terms of being a disease) to the "I'm religious but I'll trust my gun to do the Lord's work' view of Father Sandor in Prince of Darkness, and now into the realm of Dracula not as a plague, but as a supernatural force that exists apart from and in defiance of the laws of a rational universe. The Van Helsing-esque voice of the enlightened man of reason comes, somewhat more pathetically than with Van Helsing, from the character of Paul, a student and avowed atheist who is in love with the Monsignor's niece, though the Monsignor is none too thrilled to have a Godless screwball courting a member of his family. The battle between the forces of secularism and religion is almost more prominent than the battle against Dracula, who eventually discovers that the Monsignor has stuck a big golden cross on the castle door and thus seeks ruthless revenge on the Christian defiler by enslaving the weak priest and moving into the basement of the inn where Paul works. If you're thinking this is kind of a lame ultimate revenge against all mankind, then you'd pretty much be right. But Dracula also enslaves a buxom bar wench, so it's not a total wash-out. Dracula plans to eventually get around to making a vampire out of the monsignor's niece, but he doesn't seem to be in any big hurry, which means that while he gets to spend a lot of time hanging around in the cellar being illuminated by eerie green lights, we have to spend a lot of time watching him hang around the cellar being illuminated by eerie green lights. It does indeed make for some frighteningly effective imagery, which seems to be the entire point of this film, but a procession of eerie images doesn't necessarily assemble into a completely enthralling or entirely coherent film. Things do drag a bit in the middle as we watch Dracula push around the wench and the priest while Paul and his love engage in late-night rendezvous' on the rooftop. We know that eventually Dracula is going to kidnap her and there will be a scene of horses wildly pulling a carriage toward Castle Dracula. We just wish there wasn't so much dead time before that happens. This movie does contain one of the scenes that really set Christopher Lee off to ranting about how awful all the films are. Paul manages to drive a stake - and quite a large one at that - through Dracula's heart, which Dracula proceeds to yank out and throw at Paul. Turns out you have to stake the vampire, yeah, but it's meaningless unless you also pray while you are doing it. Paul, being an atheist or perhaps somewhat versed in vampiric lore, refuses to pray. Who's heard of such a thing? You just slam the stake in, cut the head off, and then you're done for the day. This particular scene drove Lee nuts. He still brings it up even today. Everyone knows that once you drive a stake into a vampire's heart, he's done for, prayer or no. Gaffs like that aside, this is really rather a better entry in the series than Christopher Lee would have you believe. The story, though uneven, benefits from greater depth than usual, with the battle between secularism and Christianity adding some real meat to the non-Dracula bits. Of course, any attempt to extract some sort of final message from the film is bound to be confusing. It's religion's fault that Dracula gets resurrected. If the Monsignor had listened to the superstitious peasants, none of this would have happened. And it's Paul, the atheist, who must come in and save the day when Christianity fails to get the job done. But Paul also wind sup perhaps more open to belief in Christ by the end of the film, which is full of redemption and vampires getting impaled on big golden crucifixes. So I guess the overall religious message of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is, "don't be an asshole." Don't be intolerant or a zealot, because then you just open the door for Christopher Lee to go stand on your roof while enveloped in purple mist. And while it may be cool to have Christopher Lee on your roof for a while, eventually he's going to start asking about eating some of your chips and stuff like that. Appearnace-wise, Risen from the Grave is the best looking of all the Dracula films to date, and really one of the best looking films Hammer ever produced. The atmosphere in the film seems to be heavily influenced by the more phantasmagoric look of Mario Bava's films, and the result is a Dracula film awash in otherworldly colors and swirling camera filters. It gives the movie a more dreamlike, hallucinogenic mood, which is perfectly fitting to mark the series' move toward more supernatural, less "man of reason" fare. The next in the series, Taste the Blood of Dracula (it's salty!), would contain even more overt references to Dracula not as some sort of social disease that can be explained with and combated by science, but as a creature straight from Hell imbued with the powers of Satan himself and able to be both resurrected and defeated through a series of religious or sacrilegious rituals. Lee's appearance, likewise, is even more ghoulish than previous incarnations. Each film sees him get more pallid and cadaverous, while his eyes get more bloodshot. He's in snarling animal mode here, throwing people around wildly and smashing windows. He gets a few lines this time around. It was watching this movie that I finally had my little epiphany about Dracula's behavior. I'm slow, so you'll have to forgive me if this was obvious to everyone else long ago. I was always a bit annoyed by the fact that although he is four or five times stronger than a regular man, Dracula's answer to a fight is to turn tail and run. I mean, Paul isn't exactly an imposing figure. Then it hit me, and well, all I can say is "duh." Dracula is a vicious beast, but a beast never the less, and even the most vicious beast in nature is more likely to turn around and run away than fight. It's a simple animal reaction to being challenged. Unless he's really hungry, Dracula would rather take off. Not that I'd recommend combating all vampires by waving your arms in the air and yelling, "shoo!" but it seems to work sometimes. Dracula is only fierce-acting around people he already knows are weaker than him. So there you go. I'm not especially clever, but it's a cleverly profound way to portray the count. Dracula has Risen from the Grave is a nice gothic horror despite some slow spots. It's got a decent cast, though as always Peter Cushing is sorely missed. It has a tremendous look, smart direction, the usual great James Bernard score, and a script that shoots for more meaning than usual. Lee is less of a presence here than in the last film, and his shadow doesn't seem to loom as powerfully over everything when he's not present as it did in Prince of Darkness. But when he does show up, he looks exquisite. Although Lee himself runs down these later films in the series, it's actually quite good, and the next one would be even better. Sadly, it was all downhill after that. Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Netflix Diary, Stars: Christopher Lee, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1968 posted by Keith at 2:10 AM | 0 Comments Thursday, September 09, 2004The Devil Rides Out
1968, Great Britain. Starring Christopher Lee, Charles Gray, Nike Arrighi, Leon Greene, Patrick Mower, Sarah Lawson, Paul Eddington, Rosalyn Landor. Directed by Terence Fisher. Available on DVD from Amazon.
His names are legion. His name is Legion. But maybe you know him as Scratch, or Ol' Gooseberry. The Devil himself, if you will. He's one of the most compelling literary figures of all time, despite, I imagine, the original intentions of the writers of the Old Testament. Milton turned the Devil into a brash anti-hero, and for many intellectuals who see religious fundamentalism as stifling to the pursuit of knowledge. He's remained in his cool cat corner with lots of stories being written about him. Something about Lucifer lends to storytelling. It's his unpredictability. You never know if you're getting the wretched evil Devil or the suave rebellious one. Or the witty one. With Jesus, you pretty much know what you're going to get, and his story is pretty well documented and confined by the completeness of the New Testament and actual historical events. It's not that there's anything wrong with Jesus - Christian or not, you have to admire some crazy dude from Nazareth who took on both the Romans and the religious establishment, told people not to submit to a corrupt priesthood, and then said you shouldn't always be bashing each others' heads in. But where do you go from there? That's why the only people who ever tried to write the further adventures of Christ were the Mormons. Satan, however, is a wide-open playing field with a mythology and character that has outgrown its Christian origins. In fact, most of what is considered common knowledge about Satan comes not from The Bible, but from Milton and Paradise Lost. With Satan, we're free to fill in his back-story and make up adventures for him. With Jesus, you can only tell the story of Jesus. But with Satan - well for Old Nick you can pretty much make up any damn thing you want. You can even have him fight Santa Claus and Merlin. Certainly there is a legion of films about Satan, and some of them are even good. I know I still have a few readers who haven't taken my pleas to heart and have yet to delve into the rich history of "old" films, so to them a movie about Satan and Satanism is most likely something about a serial killer or something about a vengeful teenager or that thing where Arnold Schwarzenegger punches Satan in the face. That all started to happen in the 1980s. In the 1970s, movies about Satan usually involved boring people in robes stomping about in a circle and droning, "Hail Satan" in a listless monotonous style. But in the 1960s movies about The Devil usually featured Satanists who were part of high society, global elites who had reached the limits of human knowledge and were now seeking the expand their intelligence into more arcane and sometimes diabolical spheres. Not being a Christian myself, but always keen on learning more about arcane and esoteric tidbits, I've often entertained fantasies about becoming a member of one of these well-heeled groups of Satanic intellectuals. Unfortunately, my position as a Plebe means I'm forever doomed to keep running into Slayer fans or groups of people who all wear those goofy Anton LaVey devil horns. Still, a fella can dream, and one day I'll make a movie about a young blue-collar gentleman's struggle to climb the Satanic social ladder. Although it seems like The Exorcist and, to a lesser degree, The Omen are about the only Satanism movies anyone can remember, the best two for my money are Rosemary's Baby and Hammer's superb The Devil Rides Out, which frankly sounds like the title to a spaghetti western. The Devil Rides Out is another one of those Hammer title's I'd not seen until now, though I'd frequently read about it and how fantastic it was. Generally, very few movies are as fantastic as they're made out to be, but if The Devil Rides Out isn't fantastic, it's only because it's something slightly better than fantastic. Released in 1968, The Devil Rides Out populates that time in Hammer's history when they were really beginning to lose their footing. Revolutions in filmmaking and changes in what was permitted to be shown on screen seemed to have passed the studio by, and their once cutting edge Gothic horror shows now seemed anachronistic and even quaint. By the late 1960s, the studio was floundering, and by the 1970s it had all but collapsed. But from this late era, a few gems - indeed a few of Hammer's very best productions - were made. The Devil Rides Out is definitely among them, a classic not just of late-era Hammer but of all Hammer; and not just of Hammer horror, but horror in general. In a rare twist of fate, king of the studio Christopher Lee gets to be a good guy, though he's something of an ambiguously "good" good guy. He stars as the Duc de Richleau, an upper class British gentleman who is meeting up with two old friends for their annual reunion. When one of them, the young Simon (Patrick Mower, later to appear in AIP's Vincent Price vehicle, Cry of the Banshee), fails to show up, de Richleau and Rex (Leon Greene, who starred as Little John in Hammer's A Challenge for Robin Hood) pay him a visit at his stately country manor. There they find Simon is having a dinner party with his new astronomy club, though de Richleau is instantly suspicious of the gathering when he learns there are thirteen members. Queer behavior from Simon and a quick examination of his observatory reveal the truth: this is a Satanic gathering, and Simon is to be the newest member. de Richleau spirits Simon away - it's difficult to say whether or not he rescues or kidnaps the young man, since we're unsure whether or not Simon was dabbling in the black arts of his own free will or because he was under the spell of local occult bigwig Mocata (Charles Gray, probably most recognizable as the narrator from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which itself owes a great deal to Hammer's Frankenstein movies). Eventually, the film leans toward "under the spell," but the whole thing seems very fuzzy, which allows the viewer to interpret the movie either as a straightforward "good versus evil" tale or a more subversive look at the subjugation of free will and intellectual curiosity at the hands of the ruling elite. The latter reading may sound a tad over the top, another one of those "reading meaning into the meaningless" things in which critics so often indulge, except that Hammer's previous record of anti-authority, anti-elitist themes (most notable in the Frankenstein movies) make it harder to dismiss, and so we can spend the entire movie wondering if de Richleau's denial of Simon's free will is any better than Mocata's taking advantage of the young lad. Complicating this even further is the fact that, though they are ostensibly supposed to be evil, most of the Satanists seem rather polite and friendly and only interested in the pursuit of knowledge deemed "forbidden" by some guy in a funny hat down in Rome. Well, later, one of the Satanists will be revealed as possessing horrible driving manners, but that's about the extent of their evilness. Mocata is annoyed that Rex and de Richleau have rescued his would-be apprentice - and taken the new girl with them, to boot. He's determined to use spooky eyes and the forces of evil to reclaim his prize, complete his coven, and summon Big Sugardaddy Lucifer for the Sabbath. There's plenty in The Devil Rides Out that could come across as outlandish were in not for the fact that the cast is so committed to the film - something that, by now, you should recognize as one of the great hallmarks of Hammer productions. Raised as we are today on a steady diet of tongue-in-cheek horror films that don't want to commit to being horror films, The Devil Rides Out is refreshingly free of irony. Richard Matheson's script, based on a novel by occult-thriller writer Dennis Wheatley, strives to maintain a high degree of accuracy in its presentation of occult rituals, and Christopher Lee, who was a close personal friend of Wheatley's, did extended research on the subject of Satanism and the occult and oversaw the entire project to make sure everything was presented as realistically as possible. The result is that even when bloody-eyed specters in loincloths are appearing, everything seems believable. Matheson also never panders to younger audiences. Where as today's horror films are made for teenagers - and fairly stupid teenagers at that - Hammer always liked to consider their films more adult fare. The Devil Rides Out frequently tosses around arcane terminology, much of it taken from the writings of Alistair Crowley or other more ancient texts (the Goat of Mendes and the goat-headed image of Satan was derived by Christianity from an Egyptian cult that worshipped a Bacchus-like goat god) without bothering to explain what they mean. You're either expected to already know, be smart enough to figure it out, or be smart enough to go to the library and look it up. The film' biggest asset is the cast. Allowed to be a hero for the first time, Christopher Lee shines as the complex de Richleau. He is doubtless the good guy, but there remains something sinister about his charisma. For a man who isn't a Satanist, he sure does know a lot about the rituals and doesn't hesitate to use black magic to fight black magic. Lee brings a stern but warm authority to the figure. Even though the film doesn't depict him as infallible, he's the kind of guy you would want watching over you if Satanists were in hot pursuit. On the flip side is Charles Gray, whose Mocata embodies the best of everything about being a villain. He's painfully polite and polished in his ways, but also possessed of a wicked streak a mile wide. His best scene comes when he visits de Richleau's friends in an attempt to regain control over Simon and the woman Tanith (Nike Arrighi). He is the very picture of a perfect English gentleman, but his act slowly transforms as he gives a rational and, frankly, convincing explanation of the goals of following the Left Hand Path, then uses his powers to try and control his host. When his attempts are interrupted, he has the film's best line when he simply says calmly and with composure, "I shall not be back, but something will. Tonight. Tonight, something will come for Simon and the girl." Both Gray and Lee are completely convincing in their roles. Lee, in particular, though known for Dracula, was born to play de Richleau. There was talk of continuing with a de Richleau series as he appears in several other Wheatley novels, but unfortunately nothing ever materialized and Christopher Lee was soon back to playing Dracula in a series of increasingly awful (but never the less enjoyable) films that finally sputtered and died with Satanic Rites of Dracula not too much before Hammer itself closed up shop in the latter half of the 1970s. The supporting cast performs with workmanlike competency, as they always do in a Hammer film. Nike Arrighi was unique in that she was not one of Hammer's typical big-bosomed blond damsels in distress. She doesn't fit the stereotype of a Hammer girl at all, though that wasn't for lack of the studio trying. But director Terence Fisher, who was Hammer's best director and responsible for the films that put them on the map, was apparently adamant that the role of Tanith be played by Arrighi. It was a wise position. Leon Greene is equally superb as the baffled friend who finds himself spending a couple nights of his life fighting Satan. His voice, it seems, was dubbed in and is actually that of Patrick Allen, who was also in Hammer's When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, among others. Whatever the reason, they make a good team. Fisher's direction is as stylish yet unobtrusive as fans had come to expect of the man who brought Hammer's visions of Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Mummy to the screen. Although there isn't a lot of action in the film, the pace is relentless, fueled by a growing sense of dread as the forces of evil close in on our heroes, until they are literally standing back to back in a magic circle surrounded by a whole array of creepiness. James Bernard's grand score only adds more drad to the creeping sense of terror. It is here, unfortunately, that the film's main - and really, only -- weakness shows itself. Hammer was never a studio that relied on special effects. At their most complex, they were usually dangling a fake bat from a wire. One Million Years B.C. and Moon Zero Two were the first big special effects films for Hammer. One Million Years B.C. had the services of Ray Harryhausen to carry it (not to mention Raquel Welch in a little fur bikini). Moon Zero Two was Hammer on their own, and it showed why the studio should have continued to shy away from complicated special effects shots. The finale of The Devil Rides Out begins with an assault on de Richleau and friends first by a giant tarantula, and then by the Angel of Death himself. The tarantula in particular is a wretched failure of special effects that lets the film down. The tension built by the plot is grand, and it gets the carpet pulled from under its feet by the sorry spider effect. The Angel of Death is more successful but shot in a way that also weakens its impact, especially the part where looped film has Death's horse doing a little dance. The rest of the movie is powerful enough to disregard these ill-advised attempts at special effects, but one can't help but wish they'd either been better executed or simply left out entirely. The weird red-eyed giant in a loincloth was far creepier and menacing than any of these later concoctions, and that was nothing but a big guy standing there with an evil grin while he wore Dracula's contact lenses. Similarly, the scene in which Mocata succeeds at summoning the Devil is effective because the effect is low-key. Satan - the Goat of Mendes - simply appears on a rock in the background, and the make-up effects are either quite good or never shown long enough for the flaws to be evident. It would have been nice, in this scene, if the British censors had allowed the wild debauched orgy of the Satanists to contain something more daring than fully-clothed actors sort of just jumping around and rubbing each other's faces. But it was enough that they were allowing Hammer to make a movie about Satanism, which had previously been a taboo subject not allowed by the BBFC. So we can forgive the fact that their occultists had to keep their robes on while AIP's occultists in films like 1970's Cry of the Banshee got to romp around in the nude. One would hope that a string of strong films like The Devil Rides Out and Frankenstein Must be Destroyed would signal that Hammer had found its footing again and would remain viable in the 1970s. Sadly, that wasn't the case. They struggled on a few more years, but films of a quality as high as The Devil Rides Out proved to be the exception rather than the rule. Hammer's final horror film was also based on a Dennis Wheatley novel, but 1976's To the Devil...A Daughter was a far cry from the sophisticated, brilliantly executed occult thrills and chills delivered by The Devil Rides Out. And though the future may have remained unsteady, Hammer should take pride in the fact that they crafted what is, in my opinion, the very best of all the Satanism movies and one of the best, most intelligent and sincere horror-thrillers of all time. Word on the street is that Christopher Lee is still interested in doing a sequel/remake and has been shopping the idea around. Whether or not his Sauruman powers can convince some studio executive to make a horror film that isn't aimed at dolts remains to be seen. Fighting off Satan is one thing, but as they say, "against stupidity, the Gods themselves contest in vain." Labels: Horror: Satan, Netflix Diary, Stars: Christopher Lee, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1968 posted by Keith at 7:01 PM | 0 Comments Monday, August 30, 2004Dracula, Prince of Darkness
1966, England. Starring Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley, Francis Matthews, Suzan Farmer, Charles Tingwell, Thorley Walters, Philip Latham. Directed by Terence Fisher. Available on DVD (Amazon).
For many, the first official sequel to Hammer's groundbreaking Horror of Dracula, an oft-neglected film called Brides of Dracula, was little more than a pit stop on the road to this film, the second sequel but first to feature the return of Christopher Lee in the title role of Count Dracula. Hoping to avoid being typecast as Dracula, Lee resisted doing the sequel, and it was another eight years or so before he agreed to don the opera cape once again and reprise the role that made him famous. In that time, he'd built up a pretty solid and diverse career that would ensure he would not become "nothing but Dracula" to the audience. Of course, in the end, he was best known as Dracula, but what can you do? He would, I assume, remain cranky about people calling him Dracula until, some decades later, everyone just started calling him Saruman. Christopher Lee's return to the role was much celebrated, though fans were a bit disappointed to hear that peter Cushing, who had appeared in the first two films, would not be returning in the role of Professor Van Helsing, dedicated thorn in the side of Satan's spawn. Cushing, in fact, would not return to face Dracula again until Hammer's vampire films started getting really weird with Dracula A.D. 1972. He's sorely missed since none of the other fearless vampire killers could ever hope to measure up to his standards, but I reckon Hammer decided to make the Dracula movies a Christopher Lee affair in much the same way the Frankenstein movies belonged to Peter Cushing. The big difference is that in the Frankenstein movies, Frankenstein is on the screen and running his mouth for much of the duration of the film. In the Dracula movies, Lee often appears only slightly more regularly than he appeared in Brides of Dracula, and he didn't appear in that at all. But Horror of Dracula seemed to prove that, with the count, less is more. He was hardly in that film at all but managed to make an everlasting impression on people with just a few minutes screen time and only a few lines. So if he could do that much with that little, well then heck, imagine how much more he could do with even less! Or so the thinking seems to have gone, because in Dracula, Prince of Darkness he may show up screen a few more minutes than when last we saw him, but he says even less. In fact, Dracula says nothing at all. Christopher Lee doesn't have a single line in the entire movie unless you count that animalistic, seething hiss he does every now and then. According to director Terence Fisher and scriptwriter Jimmy Sangster - both of whom served in the same roles for the previous two films - it was because they thought the strong, silent approach made Dracula even more menacing, even more like an animal. Christopher Lee maintains that the script was full of dialogue, but that it was so ripe that he flat out refused to perform it, and so Dracula became a silent role. Frankly, Lee comes off as something of a dick in this regard. It may be the case that he's telling the truth, but then, it's not like he wasn't uttering corny dialogue in other films. Hey, Chris, do I need to remind you that you'd already starred in Asian drag as Fu Manchu? And hell, it's his job to say the lines. I know Lee takes the character of Dracula very seriously as a literary figure, but really now! Since Sangster is a good scriptwriter, and since no one else's lines are bad, one has to assume that maybe Lee is taking a slight bit of liberty with the truth here, unless I'm mistaken and Sangster had Dracula popping up and saying things like, "Blah! Blah! I vant to suck your blood!" or "One, two, three! Three giant fake rubber bats! Ah ah ah ah!" or perhaps even, "Welcome to Castle Dracula. You must be weary after your long journey. May I offer you a bowl of Count Chocula? It is a fine source of iron. Iron enriches.your blood!" Short of that, I can't possibly imagine what could have been so bad that it would cause Christopher Lee to throw a fit and refuse to say his lines. I prefer to believe Sangster and Fisher. It reflects better on the movie and makes Lee sound like less of a big crybaby. So when last we saw Christopher Lee as the count, he was crumbling into dust after Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) gives him the double whammy of blasting him with a room full of sunlight and harassing him with a cross. It would seem that would be that for the evil aristocrat, but ten years later we find the small burg of Carlsbad still reeling from the lingering specter of vampirism. Just about anyone who dies gets a stake through the heart just in case, at least until a wandering monk named Father Sandor (Andrew Kier, who'd starred in a couple Hammer pirate movies and would later play Professor Quatermass in the wonderful Quatermass and the Pit) happens by and tells everyone to stop being such a bunch of barbarians. He wanders without fear through this valley of darkness, for he knows he travels with beneath the protective mercy of the Lord, the mercy of the Lord taking, in this particular case, the form of a high powered rifle. Sandor later encounters two couples from England who are away on a holiday, Why exactly they've come to the blood-drenched middle of nowhere, Transylvania, is beyond me, but I figure they were probably taken in by some flashy brochure. That or they felt that a vacation isn't a vacation unless you can eat in a tavern full of those dirty peasants who get silent and stare at you as soon as you walk in. Sandor pleads with the couples not to go to Carlsbad, but they seem determined to go take that cave tour. Well, Sandor says, if you must go to Carlsbad, then for God's sake don't go to the hellishly creepy old abandoned castle up on the hill. Hey, guess where they go? Once up at the castle they must under no circumstances even think about visiting, they encounter the groundskeeper, Klove (Philip Latham), who welcomes them with some food, beautiful old rooms, and the usual sort of ultra-creepy "butler of evil" behavior you expect from these sorts. Up until this point, the movie has been building a sense of dread in spectacular fashion, using all the requisite Gothic horror chestnuts: the menacing warnings and portents of doom, the superstitious locals who refuse to acknowledge the existence of Castle Dracula even though they can see it out the window, the misty woods, dark crossroads, stranded travelers, mysterious black coaches, and of course, the skulking butler in the abandoned castle. It all culminates in a blockbuster moment in which one of our weary travelers is strung up in a crypt by Klove and has his throat slit, allowing the blood to gush down into Dracula's open casket, where Klove has lovingly piled all the ashes of his dead master. The result: well, you can probably figure that one out. Unfortunately, the movie falters after this spectacularly gruesome scene and fails to maintain an even pace. There are plenty of stand-out moments in the second half of the film - particularly the transformation of Helen Kent (Barbara Shelley, Rasputin, the Mad Monk and Quatermass and the Pit) from an uptight ice queen into a wanton creature of the night (who utters one of Hammer's earliest and most overt lesbian lines when she suggests to her female friend that they don't need the men to have a good time together). Helen's transformation from sensible, repressed Victorian woman to lustful libertine vampire is representative of the film's underlying theme of Victorian-era primness giving way to a more modern, "continental" attitude about sex. When Helen is finally captured by Sandor and his brotherhood of monks, the dispassionate way in which they dispatch Helen, who writhes and hisses as if in mid-orgasm before getting the ol' stake through the heart, is Hammer's most potent sexual image, at least until Ingrid Pitt started making out with other nubile ladies in The Vampire Lovers. The surviving travelers hole up in Sandor's monastery, but Dracula is intent on making Diana (Suzan Farmer. Rasputin, The Mad Monk) his next victim, and as you know, once Dracula sets his mind on a girl, there's just no stopping him. He sure is lucky that all the wayward maidens who stumble into his castle are big-breasted bombshell beauties. What are the chances? I'd imagine Dracula would be less persistent if Janet Reno showed up at his castle. Despite being a monastery full of religious icons, it doesn't prove an entirely foolproof haven from the power of Dracula, especially when he is aided from the inside by a feeble-minded madman who falls under the count's spell (Thorley Walters in a role that is obviously supposed to recall the fly-gobbling Renfield character from the original book). We are left, then, with the usual race against time to the castle so our heroes can rescue the maiden in distress and put an end to Dracula's reign of terror once and for all and for the second time. As seems to always be the case, Sandor and Alan Kent (Francis Matthews, who like lots of other people in this film, appeared the same year in Rasputin, the Mad Monk) end up confronting Dracula right at dusk. Now look, fighting a vampire is not easy, but there are certain things you can do that will make the task much simpler to accomplish. Chief among these would be to not try and fight him at sunset. Dracula, Prince of Darkness at least goes to some lengths to give the film a plausible excuse for having Sandor and Alan facing down the prince of darkness as night is falling and allowing him a chance to spring up out of his coffin and toss Alan around. In plenty of other films, however, vampire killers seem to dawdle around al day and never get to actually trying to stake the evil one until it's dark. It's as if I was the one trying to kill the vampire. I know if it was me, I'd set my alarm for seven in the morning. That way, I could get up, have a good breakfast of Count Chocula, then get on with the killing of the vampire and be back home and finished with the whole sordid affair by lunchtime. But then, you know, seven in the morning rolls around, and I hit the snooze button, figuring Dracula can't even get up until after, what? Seven at night? So I have like twelve hours to kill before the killing. By the time I roll out of bed, it's already noon, and well, I might as well wait for the mail to come at 12:30, then grab some lunch and run a few errands. Then, before anyone realizes it, it's three or four in the afternoon, and Dracula's castle is a good two hours from here, not even figuring in for traffic or murderous gypsies along the way. So I can see how vampire hunters would always end up fighting Dracula at night if they were like me, but they're supposed to be better at this than I am. They should be able to time this stuff out. Still, like I said, at least Dracula, Prince of Darkness takes pains to explain why we're facing off with the lord of the undead at sundown, which is more satisfying than something like in the first film where Jonathan Harker sneaks down to Dracula's crypt just before dark and decides to stake the far less menacing female vampire before dispatching with the most powerful undead creature ever to befoul the earth with his presence. This is another typically strong Hammer film that manages to get over the rough spots simply by having Christopher Lee show up. His portrayal of the count here, completely without words as I said, accounts for the most savage vampire we've seen on screen up until that point, and indeed for some time afterward. In fact, I don't know that it's ever been topped. Lee's Dracula in the later Scars of Dracula is certainly more sadistic, but he's never as menacing or terrifying on such a primal level. Lee manages to do quite a lot without dialogue, though I do think his character is undermined to some degree by the silence. A few lines here and there, as in the first film, would have lent more gravity to Dracula. However, even without uttering a word, Lee manages to outshine the entire cast except for Andrew Keir. Keir was one of the strongest performers Hammer had, and while he's no Peter Cushing, that fits the character since Sandor is no Van Helsing. Although he shares similar traits with Van Helsing - a respect for reason and common sense, an acceptance of unusual things not as the supernatural, but as ugly parts of the rational world, and a basic sense of compassion - he's also very different from Van Helsing. Sandor is possessed of a certain self-righteous bombast that comes from the power of his religion. Where Van Helsing was soft-spoken but determined, Sandor possesses a bellowing voice and a big gun. Keir is perfect for the role. He's not nearly as comforting as Van Helsing, nor as competent at killing vampires, but you could do worse when it comes to protectors. But then, he does manage to let the girl get stolen from right beneath his nose while in his own monastery, so maybe you could only do a little worse. Compared to Keir and Lee, the rest of the cast hardly registers. Klove has a moment or two, and Barbara Shelley has her wonderful moment in the sun, but everyone else is imminently forgettable though the acting is uniformly solid. Dracula, Prince of Darkness was filmed back-to-back with the historical horror film Rasputin, the Mad Monk, and many of the sets and members of the cast appear in both film - including Christopher Lee, who also appears as the raving Russian holy man. Terence Fisher's direction is as strong as ever and lends a sense of continuity to the three films despite the absence of Lee/Dracula from the second film and Cushing/Van Helsing from the third. Sets and costumes are, as usual, gorgeous, and the gore quotient is racheted up another couple notches, especially during the scene in which Klove does his throat-slitting. Unfortunately, Sangster's script stumbles between that scene and the finale on an ice-covered river. The film meanders from here to there after a tightly woven and smartly twisting first half, with too much time being spent doing too little in Sandor's monastery. The final showdown between the forces of good and evil is compelling, though nowhere in the league of the finale from the first or second film. There's just something about watching spry old Peter Cushing leap all over the set that adds that extra element of excitement to a battle with the undead. The showdown on the ice is also undermined by a horrible special effect which went unnoticeable in previous pan and scan versions of the movie. But seeing it for the first time in widescreen, the bit where the ice cracks beneath Dracula's feet, sending him plunging to an icy death since vampires will drown if submerged in running water, features an obvious tilting platform where you can even see the mechanism pivoting it upward. Then the ice swings closed again as if on, well, some sort of hinge, which it is. Shoddy special effect there, but Hammer movies have never been about the special effects - and for some reason, that effect bugged me though I seem perfectly at ease with giant rubber bats flopping about on bits of string. The rough patches aren't enough to ruin what is an otherwise enjoyable film. Although it lacks the pace and excitement of the first two films, Dracula, Prince of Darkness is still a pretty rollicking good time. It's great to see Christopher Lee back in action again as the count, and really, that alone is enough to make this film enjoyable. Lee swore this would be the final time he'd play Dracula for Hammer. He was, naturally, back again as the count very shortly there after, and several more times after that, each time griping more and more about the fact that he was playing Dracula. But we'll come to those bumps in the road when we cross them. For now, we can lie back and enjoy Dracula, Prince of Darkness -- an imperfect, uneven but never the less thoroughly enjoyable foray back into the world of Hammer horror. Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Stars: Christopher Lee, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1966 posted by Keith at 2:04 AM | 0 Comments Friday, August 06, 2004The Mummy Release Year: 1959Country: England Starring: Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Yvonne Furneaux, Eddie Byrne, Felix Aylmer, Raymond Huntley, George Pastell, Michael Ripper. Writer: Jimmy Sangster Director: Terence Fisher Cinematographer: Jack Asher Music: Franz Reizenstein Producer: Michael Carreras Alternate Title: Terror of the Mummy Availability: Buy it from Amazon  .Ahh, Sangster and Fisher. If you want my opinion, and you must or else you'd go read a much better website that this, that screenwriter-director team is as integral to the success of the Hammer horror films as the Cushing-Lee acting team. When you make a list of the best films Hammer produced, the Fisher-Sangster duo comes up quite frequently. The whole quartet is at it again with this, Hammer's third reimagining of a classic Universal Pictures horror icon. By now, there was no real gamble involved in the Hammer formula. Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula had proven the effort, and Hammer's only challenge now lie in maintaining the high standards set by those two films. With two Universal legends left, those being the mummy and the Wolfman, Hammer decided to go all old Egypt and bring the bandaged avenger of desecrated tombs into the Technicolor world of Hammer horror. The first two gothic horror films established a successful order to things, and Hammer saw no reason to tinker with it. Fisher directs, Sangster writes, Cushing takes the lead as a scientist, and Christopher Lee must again command the monster role without speaking a word, or at least very many words. And once again, it all works out wonderfully, though as much as I like this film, I like it less than the Frankenstein and Dracula films that preceded it. Actually, no. Scratch that. I like it less than Curse of Frankenstein and about the same as Horror of Dracula. The script is as smart as ever, and Cushing owns the film once again, but some of the ancient Egyptian sets leave a little to be desired. But we'll get to all that in due time.
The story is pretty much the same as the story in every mummy movie that has ever been made. Archaeologists disturb the tomb of a Egyptian princess, which awakens her mummy guardian (and invariably, her former doomed lover and high priest) to seek revenge on the desecraters while a guy in a fez makes ominous predictions about the fate of those who defile the tombs of the ancient ones. Yeah, that old chestnut. With these movies, it's not the newness of the story but the freshness with which you present it, and Hammer's approach is as fresh as you can get with a guy who's been dead and stuck in the wall for a thousand years. The movie takes a while to get going, but once it does get going, there's no stopping it. Sangster's dialogue is again top notch, and Cushing and crew manage to deliver it in a way that makes even the most ludicrous monster movie statements seem serious and believable. As would be the case with all of their early gothic horror films, it would have been easy to allow them to sink into the level of camp or winking self-parody. And as with the other films, Hammer refuses to indulge in what modern filmmakers can't seem to get enough of. The Mummy remains serious and seriously delivered, which makes it believable and convincing no matter how outlandish the action on screen becomes. Everything is delivered with such faith and conviction that it pulls you in, which is why these films work even when there is a lot of talking involved. In fact, the film's best scene is an exchange between Cushing's Dr. Banning and George Pastell as Mehemet, the controller of the mummy, in which they debate the merits of digging up ancient tombs, with Mehemet trying to make an impassioned argument that it's nothing more than grave robbing while Cushing attempts to egg him on in hopes that he'll get frustrated and reveal something sinister about the mummy that's been killing everyone involved with the old expedition. When the action does come, it comes fast and bloody, as Hammer has established it would. Christopher Lee's mummy may be a little stiff in the joints, but he's no lumbering slowpoke. He can move at a fair clip, smash through windows, and kick down doors. Once again, Lee is wonderful at acting in a part where not only does he not get to speak, but he is also covered up in pasty-face make-up and bandages. He does get to utter some lines in a flashback to ancient times scene, but they're little more than incantations delivered in typical ancient incantation tone. His primary tools as the mummy are his eyes, which he uses wonderfully, and his height, which allows him to tower menacingly over everyone else in the cast. Peter Cushing once again shoulders the burden of carrying the film and does so as admirably as he had in the previous two Hammer horror outings. This movie has a lot of talking in it, but Cushing is the kind of actor that can make you want to listen as he goes on about ancient curses and burial rites. It's a pretty physical role for him as well, featuring lots of mummy fighting and being flung about. Although Christopher Lee has emerged over time as the number one icon of these horror films, watching them makes you realize that Cushing, the eternal 45-year-old (he was actually 45 when made this one), was the real foundation upon which the Hammer house was built.
The supporting cast of character actors perform as they always did and generally always would. Yvonne Furneuax is great as Isobel, Doctor Banning's wife and, inevitably, the spitting image of the priestess Christopher Lee's mummy was in love with so long ago. How is it that every mummy manages to be awakened from its eternal slumber by someone who just happens to know a woman who is the spitting image of the mummy's old flame? I guess those past life regressionists are correct. I always thought it was odd that in their previous lives, everyone was an Egyptian princess or some other lofty figure instead of being just some serf or the village idiot. But given the number of times mummies come back from the dead to extract horrible revenge on tomb desecraters only to run into a double of their ancient Egyptian love, I guess there are a lot of latter-day reincarnations of princesses walking around. It's a lucky thing, too, otherwise we'd have nothing with which to distract the mummies. As the requisite "mad Arab," George Powell acquits himself well. It's a tricky role, especially by modern standards where cultural stereotyping is a more sensitive subject. However, you can't help but sympathize with Mehemet, who sees British archaeology as nothing more than pompous, condescending white men stealing the bodies and art of another culture for their own amusement. Cushing's Banning argues that it is through such acts that we learn of the past and fill in the gaps, but Mehemet remains convincing in his argument that it is more about prestige and low opinions of "the natives" than it is about filling in the gaps of history. Sympathetic though he is, when it comes time to solve the problem, he has no qualms about sending his mummy out to choke people and ruin their expensive bay windows. On a final cast note, I was almost convinced by the voice of Eddie Byrne, who plays Inspector "I deal in facts" Mulroony that it was a young Fred "Herman Munster" Gwynn. He even looks a little like Gwynn, but the voice similarities are uncanny.
Sets are, for the most part, typically top notch, though the Egyptian settings are pretty unconvincing. The tomb walls look light as cardboard, even when characters are pretending they weigh a lot, and everything is spotless clean and looks like it just came from the prop department. When recreating Victorian England, Hammer was unmatched, but they're out of their element and/or budgetary constraints with their Egyptian sets. Still, they're at least pretty, and the rest of the movie is good enough to make it not matter all that much. As is the case with both Horror of Dracula and Curse of Frankenstein, one can't help but compare it to the old Universal film. I'm a big fan of Karloff's The Mummy, and I'm a big fan of this one. I think they're different movies for different times, and I don't really see any point in trying to figure out which one is "better." Just enjoy the fact that they're both available to you on DVD. Hammer's mummy film is as brash, daring, and energetic as their previous two efforts, and as with them, it's a real treat. The studio's fate was sealed after the release of this film and it was all horror, all the time from there on out. Not a bad thing, though I'd be interested in seeing some of the studio's pre-Quatermass war films. As with Dracula and Frankenstein, several sequels followed in the footsteps of The Mummy, though none were as good as some of the Frankenstein or Dracula sequels. Hammer would also go one to try their hand at the final Universal monster, resulting in the superb Curse of the Werewolf, which because it didn't star Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing, gets less attention than the other three films, though it is no less a picture even though Oliver Reed's Wolfman is spectacularly ugly. Mummy sequels included Mummy's Shroud and Blood from the Mummy's Tomb, but none featured the Fisher/Sangster/Lee/Cushing crew again. Labels: Horror: Mummies, Netflix Diary, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Peter Cushing, Studio: Hammer posted by Keith at 5:52 PM | 0 Comments Curse of Frankenstein
1957, Great Britain. Starring Peter Cushing, Hazel Court, Robert Urquhart, Christopher Lee, Melvyn Hayes, Valerie Gaunt, Paul Hardtmuth, Noel Hood, Fred Johnson, Claude Kingston, Alex Gallier. Directed by Terence Fisher. Available on DVD from Amazon.
Technically, this should have been the first Hammer horror film I reviewed, if for no other reason than the sake of some chronological order running through this ongoing journal. This is the one that started it all. Well, no, technically I guess Quatermass Xperiment started it all, but this is the one that really made "all" all that much more. But in our zeal to watch a good vampire movie, we skipped ahead a bit and went for Horror of Dracula first. A faux pas, perhaps, but thanks to the miracle of hyperlinks and the web, you can always read this one first then skip on back to the other one. Or you can do what most people are probably doing anyway, and just not worry about it. 1955's Quatermass clued the folks at Hammer in to the fact that maybe they had something on their hands with this horror and sci-fi business. They rushed out two more horror-scifi amalgamations, then in 1956 went to work on what was to be their first in a series of films that were, depending on who you are, either adaptations of classic works of British gothic horror, or remakes of old Universal Pictures horror films. The four biggest films in the Universal pantheon of horror were Frankenstein starring Boris Karloff, Dracula with Bela Lugosi, The Mummy again with Karloff, and The Wolfman with Lon Chaney Jr. For their first crack at the legends, Hammer went with Curse of Frankenstein. It was a bit of a gamble, what with the Karloff film being one of the great iconic films not just of horror, but of movies in general. Hammer was going to have to figure out a way to do something just as good but totally innovative, something that would at once hearken back to and be largely different from its legendary predecessor. To start things off they assigned studio director Terence Fisher to the project, then furnished him with well-known television star Peter Cushing to portray Frankenstein. A good start, but if the Karloff film had taught anyone anything, it was that whoever plays the Monster will be the focal point of everyone's attention. Hammer had a long series of auditions for a variety of big, hulking men before finally deciding on a tall but relatively lean actor by the name of Christopher Lee. Lee already had a decently long filmography under his belt, but most were small parts in small films, so he was more or less an unknown at the time. So an unknown director directs two seasoned but obscure character actors in a film based on a character that had more or less been made into a parody by the time Universal was finished with it, all at a time when interest in old gothic horror was at an all-time low in favor of whiz-bang science fiction adventures. No problem. There were other hurdles to clear. Universal was none too happy about someone making a new Frankenstein film. Although they didn't create the character, they reasonably argued that when the average moviegoer heard the name Frankenstein, they didn't think of Mary Shelley's novel; they thought of the Universal movie. Hammer could have argued back that nothing they were going to do could have been any worse than some of those Frankenstein sequels that Universal pumped out during the 1940s. But that would have been rude to bring up. Universal threatened to sue Hammer if their monster came out looking anything remotely like the Karloff Monster, so Hammer went about stitching together, if you will, an entirely new look for Frankenstein's frightening creation. Hammer also decided that, rather than focus on the tragic tale of the Monster and "tampering in God's domain," they'd focus, like the book, on the title character and his obsession with research. The gambles paid off in spades. Christopher Lee's monster, while never the icon that Karloff's was, looked hideous and creepy because, for the most part, it looked so real, like a ghoulish, pallid man who had been created out of sundry body parts from other corpses. And the focus on Frankenstein himself allows Peter Cushing to shine and give audiences a doctor who is as memorable as the creature was in the original film. At the center of the film is Frankenstein's own mania regarding research. As one character points out in the film, minutes before being pushed to his death by Frankenstein so the mad doctor can have a fresh, genius brain, some scientists have trouble with becoming obsessed with research then quickly growing bored with the outcome. Cushing's Frankenstein is obsessed with research to the point that he really doesn't care about the outcome. When he and his assistant Paul revive a dead dog, thereby making the single greatest achievement in the history of science, all Frankenstein is concerned with is taking the research to the next level. And when that next level is achieved, when he has created a man from the parts of dead men, all Frankenstein is interested in is yet more research, further pushing the boundaries of what he's doing all day and night locked up in that lab. Cushing's portrayal is brilliant. He plays the doctor not as a mad scientist who turns remorseful and attempts to atone for his transgression, as was done by Colin Clive in the original, but instead as a man so engrossed by his research that he completely lacks any concept of the notion of good or evil. He doesn't willingly violate taboos; he simply doesn't comprehend that they even exist. Everything he sees is either an aide to or obstacle in his research. He is utterly amoral, but never evil. Cushing strikes the proper blend of British reserve and over-the-top histrionics. A role of this nature requires one to go over the top at certain moments, but there are a lot of different grades of over the top. Lesser actors simply ham it up and look ridiculous. Cushing, however, pushes it to exactly where it needs to be. The story revolves around him, and he's more than up to the task of carrying its weight. He's surrounded by a superb supporting cast. Robert Urquhart is wonderful as Paul, first Frankenstein's mentor and later his colleague, a man torn between a sense of decency and morality and a sense of curiosity about just what this brilliant madman can achieve. He suffers the car wreck syndrome, wanting to turn away but unable, too enticed by the doctor's bizarre experiments just as he is repulsed by them. Hazel Court, who would go on to star in a handful of the Edgar Allen Poe adaptations that came from AIP and Roger Corman, is featured as Elizabeth, Frankenstein's hapless bride-to-be who finds herself loyal to the baron even as he ignores her utterly in favor of his research. And then there's Christopher Lee, charged with turning in a world-class performance as the monster without uttering a line of dialogue beyond "Arrhhh!" Karloff was able to do it in 1931, and Lee repeats the feat by giving us a monster that is not nearly as gentle and innocent as the Karloff creature but still plenty pathetic and tragic. His make-up and outfit are truly ghoulish and eerie. I remember seeing a picture of him long before I'd ever seen the movie, back when I was in the second or third grade and bought a set of monster movie books through that Troll Book Order thing that made us so happy at the end of every month. There were four books in the set: Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, and then a general one about space monsters. I don't recall there being one about mummies, but I could be forgetting, though everything else about the books remains vivid. I was already a huge monster movie fan by that time and had devoured the old Universal movies and Godzilla, but these books opened up a world I'd never seen. I was particularly impressed by the woodcut print of Vlad Tepes with all those impaled guys around him - you know the one. It shows up in any and every book or documentary about Dracula. But the thing that really scared the heck out of me was the full-page picture of Christopher Lee as Frankenstein's Monster, in that black coat with the ragged skin and the misty eye. Freaked me out, and I still think it's the most effective Frankenstein make-up there's been. Man, I sure wish I still had those books. I remember they had black covers with a picture of the signature monster on them. There was this picture in the space monster volume of some guy in a weird black spacesuit kneeling over another guy in a black spacesuit who has been reduced to a skeleton. I've looked for years for that movie, but I have no recollection of the title, and that one photo isn't much to go on. The appearance of the creature is, of course, of thematic importance and always has been. Frankenstein goes on about how he will create man from scratch, perfect in every way, with the hands of an artist, the body of a hero, and the brain of a genius. And in every adaptation, this one included, the best he can do is a shambling flesh mound with homicidal tendencies. For Curse of Frankenstein it's a symbol of the fact that the doctor doesn't care about the ends so much as he does the means. All he wants to do is build and research. He's created life, after all, and he's blind to the eventual repercussions or its position as something of an abomination. The attention to set dressing is wonderful as well. The film looks gorgeous and would set the high standard that would become one of the trademarks of Hammer films. If it's not historically accurate down to the very last detail, it's at least suitable convincing and complex. Frankenstein's lab is, naturally, filled with all manner of scientific gadgetry, including a spinning turbine that makes that "mad scientist lair" whir, though I can't help but think his experiment might have ended up better if he'd had a Jacob's Ladder on hand. Fisher's shot composition is wonderful as well. The scenes of Lee's monster ambling through bleak, yellow-and-brown fall forests is still incredibly creepy, as the scene in which Paul takes aim and blows off a goodly portion of the monster's head remains shocking. The script by Jimmy Sangster is wonderful, literary feeling without being slow, and with several nods to the Shelley source material, though like all adaptations of both that and Bram Stoker's Dracula, it plays it pretty loosely with what was in the book versus what goes up on screen. Curse of Frankenstein manages to be suitably bombastic with subtle touches, and because like subsequent Hammer gothic horrors it takes itself so darn seriously, it never devolves into the arena of camp. This is, after all, a film based on a famous work of literature, and so it is lent the proper weight and respect. The film never lagged for me or got boring, and this is a testament to Cushing's command of the screen and the sharpness of the dialogue and pacing. It's a film that realized you don't have to pack in a generic "thrill a minute" to keep audiences interested so long as what you are saying is reasonably intelligent and engrossing. Curse of Frankenstein was a smash success. Audiences went wild for the film's brazen mixture of gothic horror, vivid Eastmancolor, and gore. It opened the door to several sequels and established Hammer as the preeminent name in horror the world over. It revived the entire concept of the gothic horror movie, paving the way for such coming innovators and history makers as Mario Bava and Corman's Poe films with Vincent Price. It launched the careers of both Lee and Cushing into the stratosphere, though it would be several more movies before Christopher was allowed to really use that theatrical, booming voice of his on more than a few lines. The success of Curse of Frankenstein also convinced Hammer to try their hand at reinventing a couple more classic Universal monsters thought flogged to death during the '30s and '40s. And once that started, everything else at the studio was put on hold as they became the Hammer House of Horrors, so to speak. Their resurrection of Dracula, previously covered here on July 25th, was another smash. To complete their cycle, they would then turn once again to the team of Fisher, Cushing, and Lee and give the world The Mummy. Labels: Director: Terence Fisher, Horror: Frankenstein, Netflix Diary, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Peter Cushing, Studio: Hammer, Year: 1957 posted by Keith at 5:49 PM | 0 Comments Sunday, July 25, 2004Horror of Dracula
1958, Great Britain. Starring Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Michael Gough, Melissa Stribling, Carol Marsh, Olga Dickie, John Van Eyssen, Valerie Gaunt, Janina Faye, Barbara Archer, Charles Lloyd Pack. Directed by Terence Fisher. Available on DVD from Amazon.
Embrace the Darkness II rears its ugly head of comparisons (huh?) once more. Maybe for the last time? We can only hope. But I can't help but bring it up at least this one last time since it was one of the worse vampire films ever made (and most vampire films are among the worst vampire films ever made) and Hammer Studio's Horror of Dracula is, without a doubt (at least in my mind), the absolute best vampire film ever made, and quite simply one of the finest examples of proper Gothic horror that's ever been filmed. It was a busy couple of years for Britain's Hammer Studio. In 1955, their sci-fi/horror thriller Quatermass and the Pit became a smash hit, and the studio soon learned it was because audiences were hungry for shocking, boundary-pushing films of the fantastic and horrible that still handled themselves with a degree of wit, intelligence, and dignity as would befit a rousing British tale of terror. Inspired by that film's success, execs turned to studio director Terence Fisher to rework Mary Shelley's classic tale of gothic horror, Frankenstein. It was a risky move for any number of obvious reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Universal's Boris Karloff version of the monster was practically a global icon. Hammer had to come up with a completely new approach to the monster's appearance, since the Universal version was copyrighted, and they figured that while doing so, they might as well ratchet up the sex and violence and see just how much they'd be able to get away with in a horror movie. Well, we'll cover all the details of that film shortly, since it's on the block for next week, but the short of it is that the film was a huge hit for the growing British studio. It turned TV-star Peter Cushing and relative unknown Christopher Lee into bona fide sensations, and it inspired Hammer Studio to try its hand at another gothic masterpiece turned Universal Pictures horror film, Count Dracula. Even with the initial ground broken by Frankenstein, Dracula would be no less of a challenge, and Bela Lugosi's performance as the blood-sucking count was no less iconic and cherished than Karloff's as The Monster. Fisher was once again the director, and Lee and Cushing were signed again as the stars. Hammer basically repeated the same formula with a different monster, turning up the blood and sex as much as an X rating would allow them, and then seeing if they couldn't turn it up just a little more. Critics were aghast at the results, and many condemned the film as perverse, disgusting, vile, and any number of the usual adjectives applied to such a film. A few critics responded more favorably, thanks largely to the wonderful sets, direction, and acting, but ultimately, none of the critics opinions amounted to a hill o' beans. Audiences turned out for the film in droves, perhaps even encouraged by the reviews that didn't so much say the film was bad as much as they just vilified it for being so bloody and dangerous and evil. Nothing drives patrons to the theater quite like the promise of shattered taboos. Years after the fact, as taboos have been pushed far further than Hammer could have done in 1958, the film is easier to evaluate on its merits as a film than as a sensation. Chrsitopher Lee stars as Dracula, Eastern European count, dweller in a big creepy castle, and as you should well know by now. Once again, as with Macbeth, I implore you to get out and grab a copy of the book is you haven't already read it. I assume that Teleport City visitors are avid readers (you're reading this, after all). Stoker's Dracula was the first book I ever read that flat-out terrified me. I must have been nine or ten when I first cracked it open, and it kept me up late at night even long after I'd finished reading it by flashlight underneath the covers. As a late-night addict to Louisville's "Memories of Monsters" show on Saturday nights at midnight, I was also a huge fan of Bela Lugosi's film. It wasn't until years later, when I was in high school, that I saw the Hammer version for the first time. It fully blew me away at the time, and revisiting it again as a grown man has seen it lose none of the visceral impact it held that first night I saw it and realized this was an altogether different sort of bloodsucker than Bela's reserved, debonair aristocrat. Christopher Lee's interpretation of the count, based as fast and loose on the book as every other cinematic adaptation, has an air of sophistication about him, but it is quick to dissolve as Dracula acts more on his animalistic impulses. Here he is a monster, through and through, ferocious and terrifying. He does not woo the women; he simply takes them. He does not dazzle salon audiences with his wit and intelligence. He is a beast, a stalker, a predator without remorse or pity. In short, he's the Dracula you thoroughly believe will kick your ass. My number one complaint about vampires, besides the fact that modern tales of vampires so often give them silly names, is that they're generally played up as lonely, tortured souls given to self-indulgent whining about the sad state of their damnation. They're not as likely to overpower and kill you as they are likely to bore you to tears with their moping and reading of bad teen angst poetry. Blame it on a couple generations of Anne Rice fed goth rockers who play up the sappily romantic and "erotic" side of the vampire while forgetting everything else. End result? Tom Cruise in a Renaissance festival shirt. But here is a vampire who, for my tastes, does everything right. Christopher Lee isn't a man or a monster so much as he is a barely contained forced that overpowers anything with which it comes into contact. He is strong, towering, and above all, menacing. When Christopher Lee as Dracula shows up, you believe with every inch of your soul that's he going to put the serious hurt on you, not ask you to waltz or listen while he reads some verse to you. When this Dracula looks at you, he sees nothing but food. That Lee's performance is so mesmerizing, so memorable, is testament to how good it truly is - he is on screen a total of less than ten minutes, and only has a handful of lines at the very beginning. His foil in this tale is the actor who would appear alongside Lee in more films than a sane man would care to count, the man who made a career out of lines like, "But surely you can't be serious, man! I saw him die myself!" and finally the man who was born 45 years old, Peter Cushing. Cushing stars here as Van Helsing, fearless vampire killer and all-around enemy of the undead. Just as previous and later films enjoy giving us a Dracula who is suave and debonair and practically a Victorian era Rat Packer, these same films enjoy turning Van Helsing into a tortured soul, an alcoholic or drug addict. You know, a man who enjoys the occasional shot of absinthe. It's because we so often like to make our heroes into villains and our villains into heroes. But here, Cushing plays Van Helsing straight, a determined vampire hunter and caring doctor. Cushing sinks his teeth into the role (because it was far too easy to use that line about Christopher Lee) with the utmost conviction; you believe him when he says something, no matter how fantastical. In fact, the conviction with which Cushing goes about the business at hand is indicative of the entire feel of the movie. Part of the reason it's so good is that it never lets up. It never winks at you or makes a joke. It's impossible, it would seem these days, to make a movie without a comic foil or a bunch of so-called sly self-referential jokes. But everyone involved in Horror of Dracula is completely serious, and the film takes no time out for comic relief. Everyone treats the story as it should be: as a piece of literature. Lee in particular seemed very adamant about this, fan of classical literature that he is. Horror of Dracula does almost everything right, and its few missteps are forgivable if not unnoticeable. Most obvious of the foibles comes when Johnathan Harker confronts a slumbering Dracula and his bride. Harker has traveled far and risked much, including being bitten himself, to destroy Dracula. The day is waning. Completion of his task is within his grasp, so what does he do? Walk over and stake the woman first instead of doing what everyone else in the world would have done, which is take care of the six-foot four lord of the undead first, then worry about the lady. Sometimes I think horror movies do this sort of thing intentionally, just to get people worked up and shouting at the characters. The film's other misstep is debatable, and that would be how much screen time is devoted to Dracula. A fair number of people complain that he's so scarce in this film, show up mostly to either walk in on or choke Van Helsing. While I agree that I'd like to see him do a little more than just step through a doorway, then run off or run over and throw someone, I think Dracula's limited screen time keeps him as an ominous shadow looming over everything, present even when he's not actually onscreen, especially since almost everything that happens in the movie revolves around him or having conversations about him. He remains mysterious and savage and does not get overexposed. This leaves the pace of the film up to Peter Cushing's Van Helsing, and he is more than up to the task. Horror of Dracula is not a long film, and it rarely stops for a breath. Even during scenes in which there's nothing more going on than Van Helsing dictating notes to himself, the film doesn't slow down. It shows that you needn't jettison the plot or character development in order to have a briskly paced film. The success of this film cemented Hammer's position as the preeminent producer of quality horror for the next ten years. Considering that most American horror films at the time were bargain basement cheapies, the vivid color and lurid content and promise of a daring time set the country on fire and opened the way for Roger Corman and AIP to ape the style of Hammer in a series of horror films revolving around the tales of Edgar Allen Poe. But no one could match Hammer for the sheer force of atmosphere. Horror of Dracula crawls with Gothic eeriness. It clings to the film like a graveyard mist. Costumes and sets are rich and lavish even here at the relative beginning of the horror arc. They would grow more so as the films got bigger, and the look and style of a Hammer film would become as much a trademark as the blood, the buxom beauties bursting out of their bodices, and Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing chasing after one another and wearing those Victorian overcoats. Horror of Dracula was such a phenomenal success that Hammer was keen on rushing out a sequel. It happened eventually, in the form of 1960s Brides of Dracula, but without Dracula and without Christopher Lee. He and the infamous count wouldn't return until years later, with 1966's Dracula, Prince of Darkness. That movie, however, lacked Peter Cushing. No worries though, because the two would appear alongside one another in countless other Hammer horror classics, including their third re-invention of a classic Universal horror icon in 1959 with the release of The Mummy. But those are all movies for the coming weeks. Hammer films - we love them, and thankfully this Netflix project has given us the kick in the seat we needed to get some of them reviewed on this site. Labels: Horror: Dracula, Horror: Vampires, Netflix Diary, Stars: Christopher Lee, Stars: Peter Cushing, Studio: Hammer posted by Keith at 11:49 PM | 3 Comments |
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