Torture Garden (1967)

 "Did you know that there are ways to raise the dead...?"

This is, I believe, the only one of the Amicus horror anthologies that I still had to blog until now- do let me know if I'm wrong. The format is much as we'd come to expect, though- four lurid tales of grand guignol with an overarching narrative.

What separates this film from the norm is its more than usually transatlantic cast, with Burgess Meredith chewing the scenery in the best possible way as the delightfully devilish(!) Dr Diabolo. Even the opening titles, with the background of a creepy old amusement park at night, set the scenes superbly, and the framing device does its job to perfection.

Not all the tales are equally good, but all are entertaining. The third, in which a lady's pursuit of a desirable man leads to her death at the, er, hands(?) of a jealous piano, is hilarious. The first two, concerning a black cat and the secret reason why Hollywood stars never seem to age, are nicely and evilly gothic and lurid.

Yet it's the final story, with the unusual pairing of Jack Palance and Peter Cushing, that lingers in the mind, as two men bond over a shared enthusiasm for Edgar Allan Poe. This is a delightfully effective warning of the dangers of the more toxic sides of fandom,with deliciously absurd revelations leading to a perfectly melodramatic ending.

This is grand guignol at its best.

The Gorgon (1964)

 "It never ceases to amaze me that the most noble work of God, the human brain, is the most revolting to the human eye.

It's been a while since I've blogged a Hammer horror- partly, I admit, because a lot of the remaining ones are sequels that have to be acquired and seen in the right order, but partly because, well, there are only so many left. 

Still, this is one of the more well-known ones that I hadn't hitherto seen, and it has a stellar cast, from Christopher Lee as the intellectual hero with, er interesting hair to Patrick Troughton as a Prussian policeinspector complete with spiked helmet. But the realstand-out performance is from Barbara Shelley who, despite the many charismatic figures on screen, carries this film.

There's a very nice twist towards the end, and a nicely done red herring. The effects for the Gorgon herself are... well, a bit pants, which is a shame, because the plot is clever and the conclusion highly effective and satisfying aside from that... although surely Professor Meisner ends the film about to be arrested for the apparent murders of Carla and Paul?

It's a melodrama, of course, with all that implies... but that's Hammer for you. With the one excaption of the gorgon itself the film looks superb, the script is captivating and clever, and the cast is one of true Hammer royalty. This is truly one of the highlight's of Hammer's most fertile period in the mid-'60s. Hugely enjoyable.

The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)

 "It should have been perfect!"

It's been a while since I've blogged a Hammer Horror film, not least because there are relatively few of them left. But, incredibly, I've yet to see or blog any of the sequels to The Curse of Frankenstein, so here goes. 

This is,let's face it, Hammer horror by numbers. It's ninety minutes of Peter Cushing dominating the screen as the deliciously obsessive and amoral Baron Frankenstein. The good Baron may speak of "revenge", but after cheating death in such a gloriously improbably way he wishes only to consider his experiments. I'm not sure how, even back in Bismarck's Prussia, one could practise medicine under a pseudonym as surely qualifications would have sort of mattered. I'm a little surprised, too, at how friendly the good Baron can be when blackmailed. but let us think not of such things, and just enjoy ourselves. 

This time Frankenstein has a willing volunteer, a disabled man who wants his brain to be transported into a new, perfect body. It's just that he didn't bother to clarigfy before the operation that Frankenstein intends him to be a public spectacle, which he's less than keen on. Oops. It's also made hilariously clear, with a bit of foreshadowing with a chimp given the brain of an orang-utan, that transplanting Karl's brain into the new body will probably turn him into a crazed, cannibalistic killer. How lovely. How very Hammer. The scenes where the inevitable happens and Karl goes made are a delight.

And if all that isn't fun enough, we get the perfect ending. And any film about brains in jars just has to be adored. So yes, Hammer by numbers... but Hammer by numbers isa very good thing indeed.

The Devil's Men (1976)

 "I beliewve the Devil has taken possession of this village!"

There was, around 1976-ish, a sudden craze for movies about robed devil worshippers sacrificing groovy youngsters in stone crypts, of which this is one. It's of it's time; the youngsters of 1976 may have considered themselves as hip and groovy, but punk was coming along to give them a good slap. 1976 was forty-seven years ago, as 1919 was to them. In some ways they were modern, yes, but the women shopped and cooked, and were slapped when, ahem, hysterical. It was a long time ago. It was the year I was conceived.

This is, I suppose, a silly B movie by a Greek director shot on sumptuous location saturated with visual culture, with Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasance imported for star power. The critics, it seems dislike it. Yet, accepting the fiulm for what it is, it's an enjoyable romp, full of lots of little cultural nuggets that become apparent, even in a B movie, after so many decades.

This is an X rated movie. There are boobs. There is Satanism. There is Kensington gore. Yet the hero is a friendly, likeable, boozy Catholic priest- played by a Donald Pleasance who will never be square jawed but is a hero more than one might expect- who gets to save the day with exorcism. The Pope would almost like this film. If not for, you know, the naked ladies and the fornication.

This film is a load of old tosh in the best possible way. It's on Netflix. Watch it. I advise a bottle of wine.

Shock Waves (1977)

 "Why, some say they're more afraid of the water than little old ladies are of the dark..."

This is, let us be clear, a B movie. It glories in being so. It is also, I think, the progenitor of the Nazi zombie genre. It is what it is, but in both categories this movie is actually bloody good. And Peter Cushing is simply superb, despite his limited screen time for a top billed star villain.

And I'm disappointed. I wanted a so-bad-it's-good bit of silliness thart would be fun to blog. Instead I get an excellent, tautly directed thriller that plays it straight and, wisely, relires on suspense, so much cheaper than spectacle.

it's a tautly plotted, quietly good film here. And... may I say something? We Birits, with our population of 60 million, have a fairly limited number of character actors, whom we love to spot in production after production. The USA, all things being equal with its much larger population of 300 million, will have six times as many character actors, but, alas, these actors will never achieve the relative fame that they would in relatively smaller countries.

Let us just say here that the entire cast is unusually magnificent, as is the direction, treating a B movie with respect. They deserve to be knoewn, if not as stars, as resprected character actors.

Incidentally, Nazi zombies emerging from the sea in the wake of a rotting ship... non-Doctor Who fans, please indulge me. But could Ian Briggs have seen this prior to writing The Curse of Fenric?

Hamlet (1948)

 "This is thevtragedy of a man who could not make up his mind.

Said quote is the popular opinion of the play. It has truth to it. Yet, as always with Shakespeare, there is nuance.

This play is a deconstructioin of the late 16th century revenge tragedy. Hamlet is, yes, hesitant. He is inytrospective, introverted. Naturally he hesaitates. Right?

Yet the ghost of his father gives him clear information. we can't excuse his procrastination. And he is not the student, intoverted, poetic hero. His reaction to his father's ghost is not revenge but a crying-for-help version of suicidal thoughts- see that soliloquy- and misogyny. His treatment of ophelia, and his mother, is unforgivable.He is not a likeable charactor. Here, that is a brave and right decision by Sir Laurence Olivier, whise charisma ois beyond all.

Contrasted to Hamlet is Laertes, an extrovert, who just gets on with his revenge. Good on him. Hamlet loses our sympathy when he kills Polonius, perhaps. After failing to kill the unshriven Polonius in the church. One could construct an argument that he does, in fact, kill Claudius as soon as reason and circumstance permit. I mean, I did this play at both A Level and University. The question persists- does Hamlet procrastinate? There's an argument to say not. His father's ghost interrupts only to rebuke him for being nasty to his mother.

Olivier is superb here.The soliloquys are exquisite. The play, long and bloated though it is, remains a piece of art up there with the best. That Warwickshire boy could certainluy pack a sentence with meaning.

The Uncanny (1977)

 "I thought I saw a pussy cat? I did! I did!"

This is a film, a portmanteau horror produced by Milton Subotsky of the sort that had become somewhat unfashionable in the UK by 1977 and so produced in a late 1970s Montreal which can't help feeling a bit David Cronenberg, about how cats are evil. Cat lovers, like myself (we are owned by four, and they are indeed our rulers), may not quite agree that cats are evil- we love them and they love us; they are not so aloof as popular myth dictates, they're just introverts- but, well, they can be little bastards at times.

This film may be full of animatronic cats and dated effects, and it may be the very epitome of the '70s; it may, indeed, suffer from too much a focus on cats as its means of horrifying the audience... but, damn, it does so bloody effectively. Peter Cushing is superb in the framing sequence, but the portmanteau structure allows for a pleasing mix of British character actors in period roles and canadian actors in the modern day. Donald Pleasence hams it up disgracefully, one is forced to admit, but this doesn't fail to add to this little film's considerable charms.

This could, I suppose, be seen as a tired and lesser version ogf the earlier Amicus portmanteau horror films, especially with its restrictive theme. It seems to have flopped at the box office, a fact which I attribute to fashion as much as anything. But the cast, the Canadian element in the late '70s when David Cronenberg was making Anglo Quebec a nucleus of cinematic horror genius. This film may be a relic from a sligfhtly earlier era, but it surfs that wave with aplomb.

Hammer House of Horror: The Silent Scream

 "Prisons without walls, cages without bars..."

This is an interesting episode- clever, imaginative, ingenious, with a strong central concept, and anchored superbly with performances from Brian Cox and none other than Peter Cushing himself, however cheap it must have been to film: this is quite blatantly the season cheapie. Either that or Cushing's slary took half the budget.

It's 1980. The wine is awful. A concentration camp guard could be of an age to be running a pet shop. Fairy liquid bottles look different. And attitudes to keeping big cats captive, forty years before Tiger King, are somewhat different. There's also an element of "this entire building is surrounded by film" in the stock footage sequences. Yet all this period charm, as well as the presence of Cushing and the bizarrely young presence of Cox, keeps us watching.

It's not a bad piece of telly. It certainly holds the attention and is both intriguing and well made. Yet it doesn't manage to be scary, and comes across more as a weird thriller than anything to do with horror. It doesn't quite work, yet it doesn't quite fail. It is, regardless, interesting.

The Creeping Flesh (1973)

 "That is why I shall have to employ someone for whom eythics have no significance..."

This is (SPOILERS, even if I remain vague) a film which relies entirely on a last minute twist, upon which all relies and about which I;m not going to be able to say much. I'm not generally strict on spoilers but this is literally a last minute revelation which raises a poor to average film, based on seemingly silly concepts, to a film based on a script which actually has some merit.

Not that the production can be much faulted: Freddie Francis directs and Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee star in a horror film, not actually by either Hammer nor Amicus, yet which evokes both. The question is not whether or not the film is well made; it's about to what extent the last minute twist redeems what has until then been a ho-hum film.

There, I suppose, feminist subtexts here, about how feminine expressions of sexuality are seen, in quite horrifying scenes involving mother and daughter, about how expressions of female sexuality are seen firstly as invitations to rape and, upon resistance, as insanity.

The poster decives in that the skeleton, while impressive-looking, is not seen moving until a brief, dramatic scene at the end of the film. Yet there is an interesting feminist subtext here in a script which takes its time to reveal what is really going on while appering really quite silly for most of its length. It's alsoa film in which awidowed Cushing is made to mourn his late wife.

This is an interesting curiosity, perhaps. But the last minute twist does not save it from mediocrity.

Biggles: Adventures in Time (1986)

 "I you can fly a Sopwith Camel... you can fly anything..."

This is, let us make no bones about it, a B movie with inexplicably high production values. This is no bad thing.

Let us be equally clear that this an utterly bonkers concept. I remember naff all now, but I read two or three of the '50s publications of the W.E. Johns novels inherited from my dad in my childhood. That someone decided to make a cinematic tribute to Biggles by doing all this sci-fi stuff about a sonic weapon and, indeed, random and unexplained time travel, is enough to restore one's faith in human eccentricity. This film is both silly and wonderful. It knows damn well that ir's a B movie, as all the best B movies do.

Alex Hyde-White is superb. So is Cushing, who nevertheless looks much older than 72. So is the direction, from an old Hammer veteran. The opening titles and, in particular, the music, are both magnificent and from no other conceivable year than 1986. This so splendidly of its time. There's even a moment where Biggles gets to see a load of proper 1980s punk rockers and declare them "inconceivable"

This is wonderful. I don't care how silly it is. I don't care that airmen are inexplicably doing missions best suited to ground troops. I'm not going to criticise a B movie for this or that moment of implausibility. Just watch this film.

Twins of Evil (1971)

 "They have crosses? And stakes? And axes?"

I've seen a fair few Hammer horrors in my time, and some of them are very good indeed, while others are less so. This one is easily the best I've seen thus far, and by some distance.

On the surface it's an obvious crowd pleaser. There are the two rather attractive twins themselves to offer a bit of soft porn with titties briefly on display. Both actresses are decent, but mainly there for their sexiness, which is considerable. Mmm. But it's also a bloody well made and splendidly scripted horror film, gripping throughout, and with possibly Peter Cushing's best and most nuanced performance.

And yet, while pushing all the buttons to appeal as a bit of top notch early '70s vaguely titillating horror fun, it's acrually a lot cleverer than that under the surface. The twins Maria and Frieda are good and evil  respectively, yet the society they live in is less clear cut. There are two equally evil villains. The first, Count Karnstein, is an obvious baddie, a bored and decadent aristocrat who becomes a vampire (from a fanous ancestor we recognise from the prequel!) for fun. Damien Thomas, an actor so often underused, makes a superb villain.

Yet no less evil is Gustav Veil, a man who leads a gang of witch hunters who persecute any woman who shows and degree of independence and burns her alive without due process and the maximum of cant. They perform at being religious, and no doubt believe themselves to be so, but their religiosity is shallow, authoritarian and  no less evil in its murderous fanaticism. This is made clear in the opening scene, and the fact that the opening titles run over the sight of a woman being burned alive. Yet Cushing plays him superbly, as a villain driven to evl by his fanatcism and reaising to his horror that he is not the good man he believes himself to be but an unwitting servant of Satan.

It is therefore appropriate that Veil should die fighting the Count and that the baddie should die instead at the hands of Anton, a decent, questioning sceptic who is not blinded by fanaticism- a moderate, a liberal, a centrist dad. Good man. 

Karnstein and Veil would probably vote Tory this coming Thursday if they happened to live in Leicestershire. I'm sure Anton would vote Lib Dem. Be like Anton.

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.

The Blood Beast Terror (1968)

 "They'll never believe this at the Yard!"

There were many non-Hammer, non-Amicus little horror films starring Peter Cushing in the late '60s, essentially because he needed the money to go private with the pressng mecical needs of his very ill wife, who was unfortunately to die a couple of years later. This is a fairly anonymous example and, objectively, you can't exactly say it's particularly good. But you can't help but enjoy it.

The plot is a mess, of course. It's not entirely clear why the professor's daughter ends up as a man-eating moth, why he so suddenly turns against her or, indeed, whether he's a professor or a doctor. Also, the moth costume is rubbish, but Vernon Sewell at least has the sense to only show it in glimpses.

Yet the Victorian sets are glorious- including a wonderful chemistry set. There's a play within the film, loosely based on Frankenstein, which lasts for quite a while and is gloriously bonkers. Peter Cushing, although clearly phoning it in, is incapable of being less than excellent. We have Kevin Stoney as a sinister butler, and a couple of splendid comic cameos from a shockingly young Roy Hudd as a cheerful morgue attendant..

And Victorian tropes and references abound. Cushing's daughter has her blood sucked and is mesmerised to remain under the baddies' control- all very Dracula. There's a colonial scene featuring a pith helmet. The police are splendidly Victorian, and the sergeant has a truly magnificent moustache. This may be a very silly film, and not intentionally so, but it's eminently watchable and rather good fun.

Asylum (1972)

"Never turn your back on a patient..."

I've seen a far few Amicus portmanteau horrors by now; I know the score: three or so flashback segments, each a suitably camp little horror story before the framing sequence becomes a story in its own right, with a twist at the end.

This film fits the template exactly and, while there are better examples among the other Amicus anthologies I've seen, this film doesn't disappoint in following the template to perfection while giving us some enjoyably camp body horror and some gleefully insentitive attitudes to mental heath, the camera lingering early on over some lurid old James Gilray cartoons set in a Georgian asylum.

The first sequence, starring a delightfully gruff Richard Todd, is splendidly bonkers, with body parts wrapped up in parcels attacking an adulterous couple in order to exact revenge. The whole concept starts out serious and sinister but soon dissolves superbly into farce in the best way possible.

The second story is a bizarre tale involving a tailor, Jewish stereotypes, and a great deal of fairytale logic. This one is genuinely creepy and arguably the best tale of the lot, with the dark fairytale quality and the presence of Peter Cushing elevating it somewhat, although it is of course as camp as a row of tents.

The third sequence, with Britt Ekland and Charlotte Rampling, perhaps drags a little and is slightly lacking in camp, although Rampling's evil laugh is a thing of magnificence. But the fourth sequence, with its little murdering doll, is just pure weirdness, but you have to admire the decision to actually proceed with something so stark raving bonkers. This is where the framing sequence comes into its own, with a strong performance from Robert Powell and a superb one from Geoffrey Bayldon.

Not every sequence is brilliant. But the whole film is enormous fun throughout.
 

Sherlock Holmes: The Masks of Death (1984 TV Film)

 "Madam, I would not be surprised to learn you were a suffragette!"

This is a very rarely seen 1984 TV movie, not released on any digital format in the UK, starring Peter Cushing as Holmes asnd John Mills as Watson. It also boasts Anne Baxter, in her final role, as Anne Baxter, and even Gordon Jackson as Inspector MacDonald, a surprisingly famous actor for such a part. You may already be thinking that the star wattage is overly bright, And the principle stars are somewhat older than tradition would dictate.

Even the second stringers tend to be very busy character actors like Susan Penhaligon and James Cossins. Yes, there's the distinct feel throughout that the casting was done too much on the basis of star wattage rather than suitability. And it shows. John Mills is fine, though too old as Watson.  But Cushing... well, his technique is excellent as ever but- I say this never having seen his late '60s telly Holmes- he doesn't find the character. He plays certain sorts of parts, but to play a good Holmes one needs an appreciation of humour that the characer lacks to show the appropriate depths: see the line at the top. While Cushing was doing this TV film, Jeremy Brett was doing Holmes sublimely on ITV. This performance is good geneic actng but the very frail-looking Cushing, in one of his rare post- Star Wars appearances- no longer quite convinces as Holmes, much as we all love the man. At least Anne Baxter- in her final role- is a superb Irene Adler.

The script is good, though, judged as a whodunit, although the gas masks are surreal and the title is a total spoiler. And, while the fruity dialogue and voiceover from Watson evokes Conan Doyle and sneakily speeds along the pace, it doesn't feel quite like Sherlock Holmes. That's in spite of the fanwank- after all, both Irene Adler (who eventually does very little) and Inspector Mac are featured. And Roy Ward Baker directs the whole thing as though it was a '70s Amicus horror anthology- lots of shocking moments but ill-judged for a script that wants to be serious.

Having said that, this is flawed but still quite good overall. Its flaws are fascinating from the viewpoint of 2021. And this cast is always worth watching.

Island of Terror (1966)

“Some peculiar goings-on going on on this island...”

This is a surprisingly good little film, an average script elevated into something superior by the presence of Peter Cushing and the excellent direction of Terence Fisher, who turns what could have been a fairly by-the-numbest science fiction B movie with a science experiment gone wrong as the baddie into something strangely Cthulhuesque.

The whole thing feels curiously like a period Doctor Who story, with its “base under siege” plot and its slightly rubbish monsters- very rubber little bags with silly rubber tentacles- which nonetheless manage to somehow made to be an effective threat through good direction, music, sound effects and effective acting- not least from Edward Judd and the never less than convincing Cushing. Even the radiation suits looking like condoms can’t ruin this film, nor can the fact that the plot resolution consists of... making cows radioactive. And none of the farmers objecting.

I enjoyed this a lot- a science fiction film, strictly speaking a B movie, but that doesn’t so much feel like one as it has the visual grammar, story beats, structure and feel of a horror film. Highly recommended.

The House That Dripped Blood (1971)

"The one with Be;a Lugosi, of course. Not this new Fellow.

Time for another of Amicus' splendid portmanteau films, I think, and a haunted house theme can't go wrong. Indeed it doesn't and, while this is perhaps not up there with the finest of Amicus' stuff, it is nevertheless a highly enjoyable film with a magnificent cast of British character actors.

A framing device having been devised with an inspector investigating the bizarre disappearance of the house's latest tenant, we jump into the first segment, and perhaps the best, as Denholm Elliott excels as a horror seemingly becoming obsessed with his latest murderous creation, seeing him anywhere. The twist is clever, and the mood effective.

We then have Peter Cushing and the ever-affable Joss Ackland in a less effective segment about a creepy waxworks, elevated by the extraordinary haunted performance of the recently bereaved Cushing. But what follows, with Nyree Dawn Porter and the great Christopher Lee, is a highly effective example of the trope of the creepily evil child.

The final segment stars Jon Pertwee, showing a delightful disinclination to vary the performance he was giving each week at the time in Doctor Who, but is enjoyably charismatic as the old school horror star who buys a cursed vampire cloak from the truly awesome Geoffrey Bayldon. Ingrid Pitt as an actual vampire just adds to the fun.

Nom not all the segments are equally good. But, like all of its ilk, this Amicus portmanteau horror is massively fun to watch.

Scream and Scream Again! (1970)

“That bloody chicken wasn’t killed- it died of old age!”

 This is an odd film, not at all what the marketing, title and poster lead us to expect, but unexpectedly a rather good one.

The film's selling point is, of course, that it can boast the holy horror trinity of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in the same horror film. But instead we get an utterly bonkers science fiction conspiracy thriller in which Cushing has but a brief cameo and the other two are not exactly in starring roles.

This is a gritty, realistic police procedural with slickly gritty direction, naturalistic acting and a basis in the more down-to-Earth end of science fiction. The plot may be utterly mad but pays off well, with the two apparently unrelated subplots- people being kidnapped and having their limbs surgically removed, while a sinister man with apparent superpowers commits a series of murders to climb up the greasy pole in a dodgy, unnamed, military dictatorship.

This all works rather well, as does the "A" plot of the pursuit of a serial killer with vampire-like attributes who kills girls whom he meets in nightclubs, which takes up an awful lot of the film. The film is, I suppose, rather disjointed, but it doesn't feel like it and is all drawn together in an effective climax. The overall effect is of a film which defies expectations in hat type of film it turns out to be, but in fact turns out to be surprisingly good.

The Ghoul (1975)

”She never came out. None of them ever do.”

This is the second film I’ve blogged by Tyburn Films, an abortive successor to Hammer which uses much the same crew to make similar types of films but sadly didn’t last long. This film, alas, is rather perfunctory and forgettable, in spite of being shot well and a fine performance from Cushing as a man who, like himself, had lost his wife and missed her terribly. It’s chiefly of interest as a novelty, for Cushing’s performance, for a young John Hurt being excellent as a lecherous henchman, and for looking very suspiciously as though a certain Doctor Who story owes a lot to it.

Non-Who fans, please indulge the next couple of sentences, but Black Orchid, I’m looking at you. 1920s setting? Yep. Big country house? Yep. Son kept locked up in a room, having been turned into a crazed killer while in an exotic faraway place? Yep. There’s even a policeman. And a fairly big role for Professor Cliff from The Green Death.

There’s a lot of promise here, especially with the setting of a country house surrounded by mist and marshland, but the plot is clumsy and loses momentum as soon as the major character gets killed halfway through. The film never quite recovers from this and feels somewhat disjointed. Ultimately the problem is the script, and more specifically the awkward plotting, which feels at times like a first draft. There are also some opinions expressed about the Hindu religion, presented as a dark pagan cult, which certainly raise eyebrows. But ultimately it’s a shame that such splendid acting and direction are wasted on a half-hearted script like this.

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)

“An unfortunate misnomer for I am the mildest of men...”

This is the first of the Amicus portmanteau horror films from Freddie Francis and Milton Subotsky, and the pieces are already in place- a number of vignettes of varying quality, An overarching framework that looks gradually more sinister as the film progresses, a troupe of British character a tor’s including some quirky choices, and of course the ever-splendid Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

The overarching framework is that Dr “Schrek” (Nosferatu reference alert) uses Tarot cards to predict the bleak future of each of the very male occupants of a railway compartments. Yes, compartments and, indeed, a steam train; 1965 feels so very long ago sometimes. It’s an odd structure plot-wise, as each character is told their ghastly tale of what awaits them only for none of that to happen and all of them to die in a train crash, but it’s a suitably atmospheric framework and Cushing is superb.

The first vignette, a Gothic take of a werewolf in the Hebrides, is probably the weakest. But the second, where a vine takes over the world(!) features a rare acting role by none other than future Radio 1 DJ Alan Freeman. Not ‘alf, pop pickers. And we get the interesting sight of him interacting with Bernard “M” Lee as a vine threatens to kill them all.

The third tale, with Roy Castle as a jazz trumpeter, is much stronger, as musician Biff steals the time of a Voodoo god that he finds in the Caribbean, with ominous consequences. But the absolute highlight is Lee’s snobbish and conceited art critic who gets his revenge from being humiliated by an artist he dislikes by running him over so his right hand is lost, only to be pursued by the disembodied stop motion hand until, poetically, he loses his hand in a car crash. I suspect an influence on Evil Dead 2 here, but Lee’s very real performance hopes the main thing work. The silly last vignette, with a young Donald Sutherland and  a very Bram Stoker take on vampires and an interesting effect of a bar, can’t follow this but nicely rounds things off.

The vignettes are variable but the Roy Castle and Christopher Lee segments are particularly superb, and the whole thing is atmospheric, fun and entertaining in equal measure in spite of the plot holes and the variable quality of the vignettes. Worth a look.