Hammer House of Horror: The Thirteenth Reunion

 "I don't know why we have a women's page. We don't have a men's page!"

Last episode was the fun and silly sort of Hammer Horror. This second episode could not be more dissimilar. Superbly and inteligentlly scripted and shot, it is a masterpiece of suspense that starts with a macabre mystery and ends with a truly nightmarish shot.

The opening scenes seem to promise, despite the witty and likeable nature of protagonist Ruth (the excellent Julia Foster), little more than an unusually brutal weight loss regimen presided over by Renton's dad from Trainspotting.Yet when Kevin Stoney appears we know that something's up and, by the time we meet the gang including Von Smallhausen from 'Allo 'Allo, the script is cleverly feeding us the morsels we need to work out exactly what it is that is happening and why, in a masterly use of the art of plotting.

This is subtle, intelligent, gripping horror and the best thing I've seen from Hammer since The Devil Rides Out. I have absolutely no idea what to expect next.

Outlaw King (2018)

“I’m done with running and I’m sick of hiding!”

Time for a good, proper historical epic, I thought; it’s been a bit of a while. And what better, I thought, than this recent Netflix offering? Well, I’m certainly glad I watched this spiritual follow-up to Braveheart that deserves to be known for far more than its famous sex scenes.

As a historical epic the film works well- complex events over many years are successfully collapsed into a suitably dramatic narrative. The film looks convincingly like mediaeval Scotland as it would have been, with no tartan in sight. And Chris Pine is a charismatic and convincingly Scottish star. We get a suitably moustache twirling Edward I and a surprisingly a rather large role for the future Edward II, wisely not dwelling on his sexual orientation.

This is a superb subject for a film and it’s surprising it hasn’t been filmed more often- the extreme reversal of fortune shown by Robert the Bruce is intrinsically very dramatic indeed. The slow courtship between Robert and the devoted but fierce Elizabeth is wonderful and rings true, although the sex scene when they finally do it is startlingly realistic. You are certainly left in no doubt of the moment where he climaxes. Whether it was equally satisfying for her is, it seems, lost to history.

There are some moments that make one raise an eyebrow- would Edward I really have had access to the jealously guarded secret that was “Greek Fire”? It’s also strictly inaccurate to have the English royals and nobility speaking English, unlike the Anglophone Scottish nobles, but I think we can overlook that. What we have here is a truly impressive version of events which really, really needed to be made into a film. Highly recommended.

Braveheart (1995)

“The trouble with Scotland is it's full of Scots...”

I’ve seen this film a fair few times but not for many years, and certainly not since, well, Mel Gibson gained a reputation for ultra-conservative religious beliefs and films to match, and somewhat unfortunate comments about Jewish people. So it seems rather pointless for this Englishman to complain about this film being “anti-English”- given the subject matter, which is broadly true even if the chronology is somewhat compressed and William Wallace seems to be both suspiciously older and less upper class than he would have been. But these days it’s far more notable just how pious all the good guys are here.

Still, the film isn’t a bad melodrama and Gibson himself is rather good, and gets some equally good performance out of a cast without a huge amount of star wattage, although I’m kicking myself for not recognising Patrick McGoohan as King Edward I until now. The whole thing looks good and the battle scenes, so often dull and hard to follow, are genuinely dramatic and gripping.

It may play a few tricks with history- Edward I did not die at the same time as William Wallace was hung, drawn and quartered, and Robert the Bruce didn’t have much success until years later- but Braveheart is an entertaining and fun, if rather violent, Hollywood treatment of a somewhat neglected historical saga. Still watchable after all these years.