Peeping Tom (1960)

 "Whenever I photograph, I always lose..."

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This film, by Powell not Pressburger, was apparently considered so shocking back in 1960 that Michael Powell's reputation never really recovered, but in more recent decades it's been recognised as a superbly conceived and shot examination of the psyche of a murderous voyeur... and that it certainly is.

The direction is utterly superb from the start, full of tension and playfully, visually, using the concepts of cameras and points of view. I can think of no film for which the phrase "male gaze" is more apt. All the murders of the women are superb pieces of drama.

Yet the characterisation and performances are also on point. Karlheinz Bohn, despite his accent often slipping (he was German), is very good as Mark, our creepy protagonist. Yet Maxine Audley is also superb as Mrs Stephens, blind, depressed, self-medicating on whisky, who ironically almost sees through Mark. Yet the character of Mark is well-observed. We see just enough of the childhood abuse he endured, and some to understand this twisted and damaged individual.

This is also a film unusually filled with granular detail of everyday life in the UK in 1960, a fascinating little time capsule in that sense. Most of all, though, it's a real triumph both visually and conceptually.

Carry On Constable (1960)

 "A dog! That's a sign of Pluto, the darkest, most evil planet of all!"

Ok, this is no one's favourite Carry On film. The best years lie ahead. And yet... these films have an early format. Kenneth Connor has a type of character. Kenneth Williams is less camp, playing pretenbtious gits... yet the scene where he and Charles Hawtrey dress as old women is gloriously gay for 1960. Such nuances fascinate.

Leslie Phillips is absolutely a fixture in these early films, and both he and Kenneth Connor get contrasting love plots. That's an intrinsic part of the plot at this point. Although the pairing of Hattie Jacques and Sid Jameas- in a surpreisingly straight yet superb role- dominates here.

The cimedy is amusing but, like the previous film, not great. That is no condemnation, heaven forbid: the film should be judged on its own terms, those of a time where the sixties show no signs, yet, of swinging.

It's a fascinating glimpse of policing, and indeed life. sixty-three years ago. Policing is very military: police officers march in the morning and leave upon reaching their beats. "Phrenology" is not dismissed as a pseudoscience by self-declared intellectuals. 

This film isn't great. But it's perfectly good, and fascinating. Also... wasn't Hattie Jacques lovely?

The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)

 "Is there anywhere a man who simply takes?"

This is an unorthodox adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novella- with the action for some reason moved from Edinburgh to a London with a dark underbelly- but it works. This is, incredibly, the first film adaptation of this that 've blogged, but it's a bloody good one.

Paul Massey is, of course, magnificent in his dual role, but it's extraordinary that the film should have Hyde be young and handsome- a cad and a seducer- while Jekyll should be aged and bearded with make-up. It's a mystery that Massey's career should be so relatively sparse on the evidence of this.

Yet just as interesting is the very Hammer treatment of Jekyll, who is a scientific obsessive on the way towards obsession himself- a character who owes as much to Hammer's Frankenstein as the novella. His early dialogue on the duality of man sounds positively Nietzchean, and I'm sure this is intentional.

Indeed, Jekyll is a neglectful husband, whose wife is having an affair with the spendidly unscrupulous Paul, played with superb loucheness by Christopher Lee, who absolutely nails a role which is completely against type.

This is ultimately a gripping and fresh version of the tale which dares to give us something new. It's another early Hammer triumph, whatever the critics may have said at the time.

Sink the Bismarck! (1960)

 "I don't care how you do it. You MUST sink the Bismarck."

This is not the kind of war film I was expected, with a surprising amount of focus on strategic planning and reactions in the Admiralty as opposed to action. Yet, while this is perhaps not one of the very best war films, its focus on the backroom planning aspects is certainly a strength. This is a nicely structured- and, within reason, historically accurate-account of both the damage done by the Bismarck and the pursuit of it by the Royal Navy in that anxious spring of 1941.

Admittedly, my own experience of the stock footage, opening the film, of Hitler launching the Bismarck was shaped by some rather hilarious automatic English subtitles of the German dialogue, but this was the only laughable moment. Every other moment was gripping and tension-filled as the full might of the Royal Navy- including the Home Fleet- wrestled with the difficult gambles and ten dimensional chess-playing that was necessary to sink the premier asset of the German navy.

Using Ed Morrow as a kind of chorus was clever; he's an identification figure for any Americans watching as well as being a handy means of exposition. It's also a solid decision to base the film around two fictionalised figures- the cold Captain Shepard who is secretly covering up emotional vulnerability and the coolly competent yet emotionally inteligent Anne Davies- as well as a more cartoonish Nazi in Lutyens than was perhaps the case historically. Those who served as officers for Nazi Germany were enemies of humanity, and attempts to protect Jewish people under their command do not change this. He and those like him thught to defend evil. 

This may not be a great film, but is an impressive one, and both Kenneth More and Dana Winter deserve a great deal of credit.

Circus of Horrors (1960)

"Quick, get her to a doctor. And send the clowns in."

This is a mildly obscure but well regarded non-Hammer horror film, one with no supernatural elements and more tension than scares, although the sheer body horror of the opening scene with Evelyn’s face after her plastic surgery disaster, along with her hysterical laughter, is one of the most disturbing scenes I’ve ever seen.

Anton Diffring is rather good as our plastic surgeon anti-hero, improbably fleeing to the continent and setting up as a circus after reshaping the face of poor little Nicole and the untimely death of her father who, bizarrely, is Donald Pleasance with a French accent. And so a situation evolves where a circus is set up starring wanted and highly blackmailable criminals whose faces have been reshaped, but dastardly Rossiter has all the details. I’m not sure how such a circus should have become successful from its poor beginnings, but let’s roll with it. Let us also roll with the fact that circuses in 1960 were rather cruel places, with lions, bears, elephants, horses and gorillas cruelly whipped and forced to perform to a clapping and unbothered crowd. People in 1960 also seemed to Thing that clowns were funny and not terrifying at all. Weird.

Of course, every now and then a glamorous female artists threatens to leave the circus, and coincidentally ends up suffering a freak fatal accident in her final performance, something which has not gone unnoticed by the authorities. Amusingly, several times we see said artistes declaring that they will leave or reveal something after the final performance, which they always approach without any fear whatsoever. But this means plenty of tension, and in spite of the awkward questions about the plot this is a rather compelling film and a cut above most of its ilk.

Psycho (1960)

"We all go a little mad sometimes..."

Wow. This film is a bit good, innit?

I suppose what strikes me, aside from the sheer power of the shower scene and the suddenly artier camerawork with  Marion’s corpse, something which is profoundly effective- and brave, doing something so arty in a film pitched at such a mainstream audience.

But the genius of the film isn’t limited to individual scenes or shots, or indeed to the gloriously radical decision of killing off what we’re implicitly told is the main protagonist halfway through. No; it’s the masterful code-switching between parts of the film which feel like ordinary drama and parts which ramp up the tension and unease- and the sheer mastery of switching between them.

This is a Hitchcock film, of course; you expect tension. Janet Leigh is superb, and carries the film, in thosezearly scenes where she’s on the run and evading the ever-present police. But once we reach the Bates Motel, the mood changes- or rather, it doesn’t, at least not immediately. The excellent Anthony Perkins comes across as lonely, weak, a little dorky perhaps, but he feels normal at first, and we (and Marion) feel at ease.

And then we don’t.

The sudden switch where Marion says the wrong thing to Norman- about putting his mother away- is deeply effective, and that’s certainly down to the performance but also down to the direction; suddenly the entire visual grammar of the film changes and the way the camera is used- the very thing that controls our sense of reality- suddenly becomes uncomfortable, unnerving. And stats that way whenever Hitchcock wants it to.

What lingers, though, is that extraordinary final shot of Bates looking as scary, through sheer acting, as anything in all of cinema. Superb.

Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960)

"I absolutely forbid it!"

Oh dear, this just isn't any good, is it? The script is for kids in the worst possible way, casually tossed out in the belief that, if it's for kids, it doesn't need to be any good. Richard Greene is crap, hammy and over the top, possibly suitable for live telly in the '50s, but not for the big screen. And Peter Cushing, while he's hardly phoning it in, is wasted on a part that asks very little of him.

Nigel Green's casting as Little John is almost as ridiculous as, well... Nigel Green's casting as Hercules in Jason and the Argonauts. It says a lot that a young Oliver Reed is the best thing in the film, and he's bloody dubbed. Still, at least we get a speaking cameo from a pre-Q Desmond Llewelyn.

There's not a lot else to say though: perhaps Hammer should have stuck to horror.

The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

"I didn't mean it!"

Ah, I love me a good old low budget piece of retro fun. I only actually watched this as preparation for the musical remake, which is coming next, but there are much worse ways of spending late afternoon on a Friday. It may not be The Godfather, there's no real depth or subtext to it, and it looks as though it cost about $4.40, but it's bloody funny. And filming in black and white can paper over a multitude of budgetary sins, most of the time.

The film is a black comedy, with increasing amounts of farce. The customer who starts munching on carnations in the first few minutes tells us that this is going to be a very silly film indeed. It's gloriously camp; all the characters are grotesques, and all of them have delightfully silly names that the film just revels in. Seymour's hypochondriac mother and the mad, scary dentist (is this the birth of a trope?)  are both personal favourites of mine, but the best of them has to be Jack Nicholson's unforgettable cameo as Wilbur force, a man with a massive, masochistic craving for dental torture. He spends a most enjoyable afternoon, which I suppose makes Seymour some kind of dominatrix. Hmm.

Seymour's accidental murders get increasingly silly, with the last one positively revelling in its silliness; Seymour doesn't have a coin so he flips a rock. And accidentally kills the poor gorgeous lady trying to seduce him by missing the ground and throwing it clumsily at her head. it's funny because you can see it coming. And what's this about all these women throwing themselves at Seymour? I want some of his irresistible sexual magnetism, dammit.

There's a good reason why this film is thought of so fondly. As always, it's the script and the performances. If those two things are bloody good, as they are here, then any faults elsewhere don't matter so much. It's interesting to compare this with, say, Plan 9 from Outer Space. Both are cheap. Both are hilarious viewing. But one of them is actually good and the other one… isn't.

One slight oddity, mind. I know I'm British, but surely the dialogue indicates that the film is set in LA, and a lot of characters seem to have New York accents?

The Fall of the House of Usher (1960)

“…And with every evil rooted in its stones…”

Yes, I know. Five film reviews, and all of them horror films. The next one will be different, I promise, and this time I mean it. Honest.

The opening scenes of the lands belonging to House of Usher, the eerie and claustrophobic setting within which the whole film is to be set, are great. There’s no attempt at realism, of course; this is a heightened reality of smoky mists, gnarled, dead trees and eternal dusk. It looks more like a theatre set than anything you’d see in real life, but so it should. These scenes not only set the tone but signal to us that we’ve entered a heightened version of reality.

It’s a heightened version of reality we see indoors, too. Not only is the house itself an increasingly sinister presence, but the claustrophobic mood is enhanced by the fact that the entire film has a cast of four. You don’t get more American Gothic than Poe, of course, but I think there’s something distinctly American about the eerie mood of this film, especially to this British viewer. For a start, there’s a real sense of isolation. The comforting normality and life represented by Boston, representing “our” world, are a long, long way. The wide, open spaces of America (yes, even New England, from a European perspective) are used here to emphasise the isolation, a trope often and successfully used in American horror films of all kinds. And the existence of aristocratic families such as the Ushers and the (real life) Winthrops, with their grand homes and butlers and inherited wealth, looks particularly decadent and decayed in the context of this young republic (Poe wrote the short story in 1839, and the costumes indicate a similar date for the film. The United States was sixty-three years old).

The isolation and alienation of the setting is carried much further than in the original; Poe has his short story narrated by an old friend of the narrator, which adds a certain touch of cosiness. The writer here (Richard Matheson, no less) gives us a protagonist, in Philip Winthrop, who is in a position to be as unsettled by his surroundings as we are, being a stranger to the house. He’s the fiancé of Madeleine Usher, with whom he fell in love in the happier surroundings of Boston, but a stranger to Roderick, and the house. We first meet him traversing the bleak lands of the house, approaching the large, intimidating doors, and using one of those big, iron ring-like knockers which always appear in films like this. He’s accosted by a sinister butler, Bristol- there’s another horror trope- and warned that his employer will not accept visitors. It isn’t long, though, before we meet Roderick Usher- Vincent Price is sublime in the part- and the beautiful yet doomed Madeleine.

We begin slowly as the mystery is gradually and unsettlingly established. We know that Roderick Usher, and the his sister, are unable to bear any strong sensation with any of their senses- which indicates that Madeleine would probably not make the best of sexual partners for Philip! This kind of medical condition is also, of course, the sort of thing which affects those with money and leisure suspiciously more that those who need to work for a living…

We learn that the sinister Roderick is unwilling to allow either himself or his sister to leave the house or, worse, beget children. For the moment, the sense of dread is dialled down. But it isn’t long before two incidents- a falling chandelier and an unsteady railing on the stairs- make it clear that there’s something very unnatural and eerie about this house.

We get hints early on- an Usher family history of madness, ensuing superhuman strength, a dark family history meaning the family line should not be perpetuated- but the opening scenes centre on a to- and fro between Philip and Roderick over the doomed Madeleine. But things ratchet up after Madeleine shows Philip the family tomb, with places for herself and her brother. This horrifies Philip, who is by this point explicitly having a parallel experience of the film to the viewer.

At last Philip confronts Roderick and gets an explanation. The speech is poetic and so wonderfully delivered by Vincent Price, whose performance is simply astonishing. Not only does the family have a history of moral dodginess (although not all of the ancestors described by Roderick, and painted in that strange Goya-cum-Graham Sutherland style, are all that irredeemable, surely?), but it seems the house, and its grounds, are a metaphor made literal; the grounds have become tainted and infertile, while the house is rocky, unstable and, Roderick believes, actively trying to kill Philip! This echoes the earlier references to the “settling of the house” by Bristol, a butler of sixty years who appears to essentially be an integral part of the house himself.

Of course, Philip is appalled by such superstitious nonsense, and immediately convinces Madeleine to come away with him. She starts packing immediately but, alas, seems to die while arguing with Roderick. A disconsolate Philip helps her brother to bury her in the crypt. He’s about to leave until Bristol’s casual mention of “catalepsies” brings him to a horrible realisation. It’s evident that the Americans of the early nineteenth century had a much wider medical vocabulary than the British of the early twenty-first!

Madeleine has been buried alive! Horrified, Philip rushes to her coffin and finds that it’s empty. He confronts Roderick, who glumly confesses that he deliberately buried his own sister alive, but refuses to tell where he left her coffin. Tiring himself after searching for hours, Philip settles to sleep. Roger Corman’s directorship has been superlative up to this point, but the ensuing dream sequence is inspired and extraordinary. It’s an abstract, tinted, sepia dreamworld, evoking the imagery of silent film and the surroundings of 1920s German Expressionist film in particular, with some extraordinary out-of-focus shots of various ghostly Ushers, who look like something Lon Chaney could have portrayed during the 1920s. This sequence raises the dramatic stakes; as Philip wakes, we know this is the climax.

An initially calm Roderick confesses to Philip that he has heard every scream and every scratch of Madeleine’s bloody fingernails as he listens to her slow and horrible death. Finally, Madeleine appears, mad, and strong enough to have ripped the coffin lid from its hinges. The house begins to fall apart as Madeleine strangles her brother. Both of them are crushed by burning masonry as Philip barely escapes the house which crumbles around him.

Extraordinary; the script, the direction, the set design and the central performance from Vincent Price are all of the very first class. This is one of the best horror films I’ve ever seen and certainly the best I’ve watched for this blog so far.