Hammer House of Horror: Guardian of the Abyss

 "Don't you know the power of positive evil?"

This episode is one of the finest yet. Written by David Fisher, who had written some impressive episodes of Doctor Who over the preceding two years, this is essentially a Dennis Wheatley pastiche, played very straight. It reminded me very much of Hammer's The Devil Rides Out (although To the Devil a Daughter is much underrated) in its structure- a devil worshipping cult, scrying glasses, cows, invetrd crosses and all the iconography, all playing out over a landscape of posh country houses and deceased decadent aristocrats.

Yet it's more than that. The John Dee connection is clever. The use of voodo dolls is creepy. John Carson is a superb villain. Paul Darrow is great fun as a creepy cultist. And the twist at the end is excellent, the perfect capstone to a fine script, very much foreshadowed and earned. I can forgive the driving with no seatbelts (hey, it's 1980) and the amusing sex scene where Mike and Alison start doing foreplay while still wearing clothes over their naughty bits in the time-honoured television fashion.

This may ebe the best yet. Not many episodes left to beat it...

The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

 "Made by grapes trampled by the feet of a peasant..."

Another Hammer. Why not? 

This isn't a well-known film, particularly. It has no stars, and makes do with Edward de Souza as leading man. It is essentially a collection of set pieces based around predictable horror film tropes which gradually reveas itself as a neighbourhood which exists to trap visting couples into surrendering the female of the pair, as a kind of droit de seigneur siruation, to the local lord, who happens to be a sexually magnetic vampire in the mould of Dracula- an aspect many films miss.

The tropes come thick and fast- the coupe, in their charming Edwardian roadster, break down in a sinister rutal area where the only buildings are sinister-looking edifices. The only local hoteliers are extremely sinister and mysterious. A bearded figure warns them to leave the area and ask no questions. This is a great film for horror film tropes bingo.

The twist is clever, though; the whole set-up is a cuning trap, and I love the scene where Gerald is gaslighted into believing, or nearly believing, that there never was a fancy dress ball (another trope), and that he came alone, without his wife. Gerald, an Englishman finding his wife seduced by some dastardly Mittel European foreigner, is fortunate to find that the bearded bloke is a kind of Van Helsing archetype, so they're able to defeat the vampire lord and his comical cult- with a chalk circle and vampire bats, naturally.

This film is delightfully bonkers.

Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1966)

"When I go to confession I don't offer God small sins, petty squabbles, jealousies... I offer him sins worth forgiving!"

This is the kind of film that you know is going to be enormous fun before you’ve even seen a frame; Christopher Lee as Rasputin is a prospect that is certain to get bums on seats. Some films are purely about seeing how a certain actor handles a certain part, and this is certainly one of them.

Lee does not disappoint; his Rasputin is raucous, charismatic, larger than life, magnetic. Just, apparently, like the man himself. Not that we should expect historical accuracy from Hammer, of course; they don’t stand for anything so po-faced and serious as that. But it’s fascinating to see a film from mid-period, peak Hammer which is in their usual horror style but not really a traditional horror; the only monster here is Lee himself, and the only supernatural elements are nicely ambiguous.

Barbara Shelley is equally gripping as the tragic Sonya, and there’s a classy performance from Renee Asherson as the czarina- quite rightly, Nicky is kept out of this.

The only disappointment, perhaps, is that the ending- Rasputin’s dramatic and much-mythologised death- is both a little rushed and not particularly well choreographed, but this doesn’t spoil what is a hundred minutes of seeing Christopher Lee doing his splendid stuff.  All this and a nice little role for the great Cyril Shaps. This may be no one’s favourite film, but if you don’t enjoy this then there’s no hope for you...