The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)

 "Times are hard. People just aren't dying off so quick..."

This isn't the first time I've seen this film, but it's probably pushing two decades since I last saw this, and it's lost none of its power. It's a shame the film, apparently, flopped at the box office; the script, direction and Ralph Bates are all superb, and even Kate O'Mara's inexplicable mittel-European Irish accent strangely works.

The Curse of Frankenstein introduced Hammer Horror films properly, telling the familiat story with a focus on Frankenstein himself as an amoral and obsessive villain rather than a tragic figure. This film absolutely doubles down on that, with Bates' Victor Frankenstein being a cynical, manipulative, cold bastard who not only kills for his work but demands sex from his housekeeper and cruelly refuses to marry Elizabeth, who is besotted with him, but cruelly exploits her financial troubles to make her his housekeeper. This Frankenstein is a deliciously nasty piece of work, and Bates carries this film in an absolute tour de force of a performance, although Dennis Price is absolutely wonderful as the splendidly camp grave robber,.

The monster turns up fairly late on in the film, but that doesn't matter. It's all about Frankenstein himself as the antihero we love to hate. Best of all, he survives unharmed at the end, unlike all of those who have crossed or even annoyed him. This is peak, confident Hammer, and t's superb, box office be damned.

Hammer House of Horror: Witching Time

 "You want me to burn!"

This is the first of thirteen episodes made in 1980, a few years after Hammer stopped making films, and all of which I shall be blogging. Superficially, given the age of the production and both the directorial style and the period's signature switching between videotape and film for location sequences (as Monty Python said, "This building is entirely surrounded by film"), this feels a bit like those '70s BBC M.R. James adaptations, a couple of which I've blogged.

Except this is Hammer, and things are not taken anywhere near as seriously. This is how you do it: with that nicely ambiguous gap between high and low camp that the later Hammer films did so well.

So we have an affluent, upper class couple working in the media, probably in the Home Counties, alng with a tawdry yet rather ho-hum affair of a very middle class kind. And into this we throw the magnificent Patricia Quinn to ham it up gloriously as the out-of-time seventeenth century witch Lucinda. There ensues some highly enjoyable set pieces, from poltergeist-type stuff to a pyre to a vicar played by Grandad from Only Fools and Horses talking about exorcism.

Looking forward to the rest of these...

The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes: The Mazarin Stone

 "You know my methods...

What a very odd episode, which I uppose we could dub "Holmes-lite", given that Jeremy Brett hardly appears in his penultimate episode- was this perhaps forced upon the prosuction team by Brett's health?

It's also odd that this is a mash-up of two diparate Conan Doyle short stories- the less than classic The Mazarin Stone and the far more intriguing The Three Garridebs- with one allocated to Watson and the other allocated to a Mycroft Holmes who is drifting further and further from his Diogenes Club personality. It's good to see Charles Gray again, of course, but this simply doesn't work, especially as both stories are tied together at the end. This sort of thing is a far cry from the original mission statement of adapting all the stories.

There's also that syndrome again of directorial touches that are in practice meaningless and simply don't fit into an ITV detective show. This is an episode which simply fails. Without Brett, they should simply have made one less episode.

I really hope the final episode is a good one.

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

 "They were all evil, and remain evil after death."

I've seen and blogged a previous adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla in the form of Crypt of the Vampire but this, Hammer's version, is fascinatingly different, and not only in the fact that it stars, sort of, Peter Cushing as opposed to Christopher Lee. 

This film, like its predecessor, is a fairly faithful adaptation. yet it is fascinatingly different, and not only because of the greater emphasis on the lesbian attraction between Carmilla and Emma which looms large over the entire film. To begin with, there is no red herring, or at least not for the audience; the characters may suspect Kate O'Mara's governess, but we know Carnilla is a vampire from an early stage as we are made aware of an earlier victim. This is far less of a straight character drama and far more of a sensationalist horror grand guignol with sex and violence as the selling points... and it works. This is a significantly better film.

It helps that the cast is so superb. Ingrid Pitt and Cushing excel as ever, but they are ably supported by a very young Kate O'Mara ad an almost unrecognisable George Cole. The direction and production similarly recreate the familiar Mittel-European setting (this time rural Austra in the 1780s) with real aplomb.And yes, of course there's a tavern full of suspicious locals.

Yes, this is the start of '70s Hammer horror, using sex and sensation to sell in a way they'd never so explicitly done before. It has to be said, though, that it bloody well works.