TOP TEN DISCOVERIES: 2022 (Part # 1 of 2)

So, we’ll be doing this end-of-year thing a bit differently this time around. Frankly, those ‘best first-time watches’ lists I’ve put together in previous years were starting to get a bit unwieldy, especially when I don’t currently have much free time to write them. And besides, I’m sure no one really needs a few rushed paragraphs from me to inform them that films I happened to watch this year by Alfred Hitchcock or Ken Russell or Paul Thomas Anderson are good, right..?

Instead then, what I thought I’d do is put together a quick top ten, counting down the best NEW DISCOVERIES I’ve made within the field of film and TV during 2022 - covering things which I was previously unaware of, or which surprised me or surpassed my expectations, and which readers may have overlooked.

As it happens, the majority of my picks are available on shiny new blu-ray discs - reflecting both the unprecedented quantity of obscure and outrageous fare currently being repurposed in glorious HD, and the fact that I’ve not really had a chance to delve much deeper into the celluloid netherworld this year. So, where possible, I’ll include purchase / further info links here too - thus hopefully giving you enough time to ensure that all-important copy of ‘A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse’ is under the tree for a loved one by xmas eve.

 

10. The Unknown Man of Shandigor 

(Jean-Louis Roy, 1966)

A world away from the garish, over-saturated excess we tend associate with the ‘60s Euro-spy cycle, Swiss director Jean-Louis Roy’s convoluted tale of rival espionage agents battling to obtain the secrets held in the bonce of an unhinged, misanthropic scientist employs an austere, art-damaged aesthetic and a bone dry vein of surreal humour which may prove an acquired taste for some viewers. If you can hit it in the right, suitably continental, frame of mind though, it’s surely one of the most remarkable cult film excavation jobs of recent years.

Essentially coming on like Bergman getting side-tracked in Alphaville on the way to a Jess Franco set, the film’s extraordinary cast and quasi-futuristic framing of familiar French and Spanish locations often plays out like a fever dream a connoisseur of ‘60s European cinema might experience after an evening spent demolishing a particularly fecund cheese board. So, best put consideration of the film’s obscure symbolism and interminable exposition aside, and instead prepare to revel in the wealth of never-before-seen pop cultural wonders it offers.

The cadaverous Daniel Emilfork (best known to horror fans as that grim reaper guy from ‘The Devil’s Nightmare’) spitting spiteful abuse at the world’s press before eventually sacrificing himself to the (unseen) monster in his swimming pool; Howard Vernon leading Anna Karina lookalike Jacqueline Danno through a dizzying dance of love amid the dinosaur bones of the Paris Muséum National D’Histoire Naturelle (also featured in Chris Marker’s ‘La Jetée’); and, perhaps best of all, Serge Gainsbourg as the leader of a cabal of bald-headed, turtleneck-clad assassins, performing a characteristically crepuscular lament for a dead agent (‘Bye Bye, Mr Spy’) on the organ of a candle-lit gothic funeral parlour.

Frankly, why are you still reading this when you could be buying a copy of Deaf Crocodile’s Region A blu-ray release?

 

9. A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse 

[Kaibyo Toruko Buro] 

(Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, 1975)

Hair-raising stuff here and no mistake, as director Yamaguchi (who previously brought us Wolf Guy: Enraged Lycanthrope and ‘Sister Street Fighter’) attempts an audacious cross-pollination of Japan’s traditional Bakeneko / ghost cat sub-genre and a Roman Porno-styled roughie sexploitation flick, all in finest, deranged mid-‘70s Toei style. 

As you might well imagine, a bit of a ‘content warning’ is probably required here, as we need to advise that, in addition to assorted outbursts of vaguely consensual sleazoid sex, ‘A Haunted Turkish Bathhouse’ includes several rapes and one exceptionally unpleasant scene of sexualised violence… but, the jarring shifts in tone which result from this are nothing seasoned Pinky Violence viewers won’t be able to take in their stride, and, very much in the vein of the aforementioned Yamaguchi joints, the film’s wildly OTT pop / comic book aesthetic easily overcomes any lingering grimness, with frantic pacing, freaky gel lighting, and a totally zonked out psych-jazz score from Hiroshi Babauchi very much the order of the day.

In fact, for all its prurient excess, the first hour of ‘Haunted Turkish Bathhouse’ actually functions surprisingly well as a pulpy melodrama. Aided by a brace of wonderfully florid performances from Nikkatsu S&M queen Naomi Tani, regular Toei wardess/madam Tomoko Mayama and the ubiquitous Hideo Murota (going all out as the rascally, lip-smacking villain of the piece), it certainly feels less rushed and more skilfully put together than many of the scrappy, tossed off karate flicks which were filling Toei’s production slate by the mid-‘70s.

Indeed, prime Kaidan atmos and photography are in full effect throughout, and, when the astoundingly crazy bakeneko cat-monster (a close cousin of the one previously seen in Nobuo Nakagawa’s Ghost Cat Mansion (1958), I suspect) finally shows up and starts wreaking havoc in the final act, well…. hopefully fans of global cult cinema will get my meaning if I describe what happens next as Peak Mondo Macabro, delivering a heroic dose of pretty much everything that fine label stands for.

In fact, if the film has one failing, it's that at this point I pretty much forgot about the revenge narrative, turning off my brain and just enjoying the ride as blood sprayed, lightning crashed, cats howled, angles went dutch, fuzz guitar roared and freaky/primitive ‘Housu’-esque special effects did their thing. As fine an evening’s entertainment as could possibly be imagined for my money, but… perhaps one best enjoyed when your more faint-hearted co-habitants are out for the night?

Buy the Region A locked Mondo Macabro blu-ray here, if you dare.

 

8. The Changes 

(John Prowse, 1975)

A strange and rather beguiling ten part BBC drama series adapted by producer Anna Home from Peter Dickinson’s series of post-apocalyptic young adult novels, ‘The Changes’ begins the way any worthwhile bit of ‘70s Children’s TV SF rightfully should - with a series of inexplicable, terrifying events guaranteed to disturb any right-thinking child to the very core of their being.

Within minutes of the first episode’s opening credits, unnerving bursts of feedback are ringing out amid stock footage of fire and explosions, as the adult residents of a quiet Bristol suburb are consumed by a sudden madness, compelled by forces unknown to drag anything vaguely resembling a machine out into the street and savagely destroy it. Why is this happening? And what did those poor bicycles ever do to anybody..!?

Answers to these questions are clearly not going to be forthcoming any time soon, as docile teen Nicky (Victoria Williams) finds herself discombobulated by the same strange impulses afflicting her elders. Separated from her parents as they attempt to flee ‘the terror’ by boarding a ramshackle boat to France (first rule of British post-apocalyptic SF: things are never better in France), Nicky soon befriends a caravan of first generation Sikh immigrants, who, fleeing the ‘disease’ which apparently now blights the cities, march out into the countryside and there establish a liberal idyll of rural self-sufficiency, rising above the superstitious racism of tweedy, ale-swilling villagers and dispatching evil, black-clad ‘robbers’ in bouts of polite, Sealed Knot style combat.

Nicky’s subsequent adventures meanwhile find her put on trial as a witch by an aspiring Matthew Hopkins-type for the crime of getting too close to a tractor, enjoying a nice canal journey, contemplating the concept of ‘necromancer’s weather’, and, eventually, communing with a sentient, glowing monolith which may or may not contain the ancient magic of Merlin himself.

Running the gamut of pretty much everything which helped make British culture in the early 1970s so disquieting, thought-provoking and weirdly beautiful, Nicky’s travails are accompanied - almost inevitably - by an astoundingly good soundtrack from Radiophonic Workshop mainstay Paddy Kingsland, whose optimistic, world weary synth melodies, gentle hand percussion and questionable-though-well-intentioned use of tabla and sitar for the Sikh storyline zeroes in so perfectly (nigh, movingly) on what we’d now define as the ‘hauntology’ aesthetic that you’re inclined to wonder why the whole Ghostbox crew even bothered trying to compete.

Though seemingly out of print, the 2014 BFI DVD release of ‘The Changes’ is still easily obtainable for the price of a pub lunch, as is the 2018 Silva Screen vinyl release of the soundtrack, if you know where to look (hint: ask Norman).

 

7. Walking The Edge 

(Norbert Meisel, 1985)

Murky natural lighting and ‘stolen’ street corner locations initially lend a bit of an amateurish feel to this low budget L.A. revenge opus (word is, the film’s assigned cinematographer was a drunk, so they muddled through without him). Stick with it though, and it soon develops into one of the most rewarding and idiosyncratic American crime movies the ‘80s had to offer.

Chiefly, the film’s success rests on the shoulders of perpetually underrated leading man Robert Forster, who delivers a nigh-on career-best performance here as failed athlete / taxi driver / bagman Jason Walk (what, did ‘Jason Edge’ get vetoed by the producers or something?!), pouring enough heart, soul and down-at-heel charm into this sad sack character to draw in even the cagiest of viewers.

Plot crashes in as Walk gets mixed up with a woman (Nancy Kwan) seeking bloody revenge on the low-life thugs who killed her family, allowing him - through the tried and tested means of opportunistic romance and something-vaguely-resembling heroism - to regain some purpose in life. But, more often than not, ‘Walking the Edge’ basically just plays out like a hang-out movie for psychopaths, as Forster endlessly cruises the kind of seedy, non-descript locales rarely frequented by even the most adventurous film crews, exchanging semi-improvised patter with a murderer’s row of scene-stealing underworld oddballs.

With the supporting cast presumably pushed to excel themselves by Forster’s Oscar-worthy chops, the film begins to some extent to feel like some mutant step-child of a New Hollywood-era ‘actor’s movie’ (Scorsese on the skids, perhaps?), but this impulse sits uneasily next to the frequent outbursts of harrowing, gory violence which punctuate the chat - much of it perpetrated by the immortal Joe Spinell, bringing the same greasy, hobbling, almost sub-human vibe he perfected in Bill Lustig’s ‘Maniac’ (1980).

Simultaneously pathetic, terrifying and hilarious, Spinell and his mouth-breathing cronies inexplicably hang out at a punk club (well, more of a storefront bar really), in which a teenage band are constantly playing their shambolic first gig in front of their eight devoted fans. Less than impressed, Forster at one point grabs a character listed in the credits as ‘Punk Rock Bartender’ and tells him, “you can take this music of yours and shove it up your KAZOO!” - ironic given that our ‘hero’ has only just finished shoving a knife up the ‘kazoo’ of one of Spinell’s underlings in the men’s room; just one of many unforgettable moments in Meisel’s bizarrely heart-warming accidental masterpiece.

Rehabilitated on blu-ray in the U.S. by the ever reliable Fun City Editions, a UK release of ‘Walking the Edge’ is apparently on the cards for 2023 - an initiative which I feel should be wholeheartedly embraced.

 

6. Alligator 

(Lewis Teague, 1980)

Another dose of pure Robert Forster brilliance here, as he heads up the cast of what stands as by far the best ‘Jaws formula’ movie I’ve seen outside of the big originator itself. (Yes, even better than ‘The Car’.) 

“Proof that cheap doesn’t have to mean bad,” quoth the oft-cynical Michael Weldon in his hallowed Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, and it’s easy to see what he meant. A sharp, politically-engaged script from John Sayles (fresh off the similarly over-achieving ‘Piranha’) makes it a lot easier to take this tale of a 35-foot monster-gator seriously than than one might have imagined, and tense, tightly-wound direction from Lewis Teague seals the deal.

Great faces like Michael V. Gazzo, Dean Jagger, Mike Mazurki and the late Henry Silva (R.I.P.) fill out the supporting cast - the latter playing a memorable variation on the Quint archetype - whilst the special effects, mixing close up puppetry/suit work with cannily framed long shots of real gators traversing miniature sets, are - I kid you not - the most effective I have ever seen in a giant monster movie.

Not much more to say here really, except to suggest that, if you only watch one movie about a giant reptile wrecking havoc in your life… well, best make it Ishiro Honda’s ‘Godzilla’. If you’ve got room for two though, ‘Alligator’ is where it’s at.

(Oh, and, word to wise: avoid the 1991 sequel at all costs, it’s awful.) 

I watched this streaming on Shudder, but in terms of physical media, it’s most recently surfaced as a 4K UHD from Shout Factory. Worth every penny, I’m sure.

To be continued…

Pan’s People: The Case of the Velvet Claws by Erle Stanley Gardner (1960)

 

Finishing off our recent celebration of Pan’s late ‘50s / early ‘60s cover artwork, here’s another absolute banger from Sam ‘Peff’ Peffer.

I don’t have much else to say, as my interest in the work of Erle Stanley Gardner extends precisely as far as the cool cover design which sometimes graces his books [see previous examples: 1, 2, 3], so instead let’s just say: wow, look at that dissolving big city skyline and the faceless guy in the shadows… no doubt knocked out under a tight deadline in a matter of minutes, this is pulp craftsmanship at its finest.

Pan’s People: The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey (1958)

From looking at Glenn Steward’s striking cover artwork for Josephine Tey’s ‘The Man in the Queue’, I got the feeling it might be one of those mid-20th century explorations of frenzied, urban existentialism and modern man’s alienation from his surroundings and so forth…. but the rather more straight-forward back cover copy soon disavowed me of that idea.

If I haven’t said so previously by the way, huge props to Pan for being one of the only mid-century paperbacks imprints in the world to actually let cover artists clearly sign their work. It makes life so much easier all these years later.

Pan’s People: Two Edgars (1956/57)

Many of the cover illustrations used for Pan’s innumerable Edgar Wallace paperbacks are a bit dull, but these two are both absolutely terrific I think, highlighting the same lurid / fantastical aspect of Wallace’s work which was exploited so wonderfully by the German Krimi productions of the ‘50s and ‘60s.

This edition of ‘The India Rubber Men’ was published 1956 with art by Bruce C. Windo, whilst ‘The Ringer’ is 1957 (fifth printing), signed “Silk” (an artist whose full name and identity appears to be unknown, but as ever, please do drop me a line if you have any further info).

‘The Ringer’, of course, was the basis for Alfred Vohrer’s highly entertaining ‘Der Hexer’ (1964), which I reviewed here back in 2019.

Pan’s People: Two Wests (both 1958)

We continue our look at some recently acquired Pans with these two splendidly atmospheric covers by Pat Owen, both illustrating works by the insanely prolific John Creasey, whose 40+ Inspector West novels comprise a mere single figure fraction of his literary output.

Pan’s People: Moment of Danger by Donald MacKenzie (1959)

After all the excitement of October, I’m going to try to keep this blog afloat by turning to some scans of recent additions to my paperback collection - which is something I’ve not got around to for a while, so there’s plenty of stuff to work through; not least, plenty of newly acquired Pans.

As I’ve probably remarked before in these pages, Pan’s ‘50s-‘60s crime paperbacks remain such a ubiquitous and cheap presence on the second hand market here in the UK that it often feels as if I pick up a new one every time I leave the house. But, their artwork is so consistently beautiful that each one I pick up still feels like both a bargain and a treasured addition to my shelves… and this characteristically evocative number from our old friend Sam ‘Peff’ Peffer is a case in point.

As the back cover here makes abundantly clear, ‘Moment of Danger’ was adapted for the screen in 1959. Shot in Jess Franco’s future stomping ground of Malaga in Andalucía, the film was directed by Hungarian-born Hollywood exile Laslo Benedek, best known for ‘The Wild One’ (1953) and ‘Death of a Salesman’ (1951). 

Meanwhile, as Pan’s ever-busy copy editors also manage to inform us via the yellow-backed paragraph on the bottom right, author Donald MacKenzie also sounds like an interesting cat - but apparently not sufficiently so as to merit his own Wikipedia page, whilst google searches are complicated by the existence of multiple authors and academics of the same name.

From what I can gather beyond the fascinating tit-bits concerning MacKenzie’s history of incarceration provided here, he was born in 1908, and also penned the source novel for the Seth Holt-directed 1958 thriller ‘Nowhere to Go’, in addition to a series of sixteen ‘John Raven Mysteries’, published between 1976 and 1994 (the year of his death), amongst other things.

A capsule biography extracted from the website of publishing conglomerate Hachette UK (who currently offer MacKenzie’s entire catalogue for sale as e-books) repeats the quotes used by Pan on the back cover to ‘Moment of Danger’, but adds various other info, as follows:

Donald MacKenzie (1908-1994) was born in Ontario, Canada, and educated in England, Canada and Switzerland. For twenty-five years MacKenzie lived by crime in many countries. ‘I went to jail,’ he wrote, ‘if not with depressing regularity, too often for my liking.’ His last sentences were five years in the United States and three years in England, running consecutively. He began writing and selling stories when in American jail. ‘I try to do exactly as I like as often as possible and I don’t think I’m either psychopathic, a wayward boy, a problem of our time, a charming rogue. Or ever was.’ He had a wife, Estrela, and a daughter, and they divided their time between England, Portugal, Spain and Austria.

So there ya go.

Happy Halloween Everyone.

 Well, I certainly enjoyed that.

My records indicate that I managed to fit in 36 feature length horror films during October, which I think may be a personal record (although I can’t claim I managed to entirely stay awake through all of them).

I confess it proved a struggle to find the time to write about at least some of them here whilst also attending to a bare minimum of real life responsibilities, but I hope you enjoyed at least some of the stuff I came up with.

Thank you to everyone who posted a comment this month by the way, and huge apologies for the fact I didn’t get a chance to reply, but, well… deadlines for posting were pretty frantic. Your thoughts and kind words were hugely appreciated, anyway.

Now that this blog is finally back in action, I’ll do my best to keep in going… I might take a week or so off, and aim to get back in business with some book-related posts to start off with. Let’s see how it goes.

In the meantime though, here are a few links to some of the more substantial new reviews I’ve done this month, in case anyone missed them along the way:

Draguse ou le Manoir Infernal (1974)

The Beast With 1,000,000 Eyes (1955)

Love Brides of the Blood Mummy (1972)

Glorious (2022)

Murder Obsession (1981)

In The Earth (2021)

The Horrible Sexy Vampire (1971)

Anyway, enjoy whatever devilry you’ve got planned for the big night tonight, and we’ll catch up soon, I’m sure.

Horror Express / Gothic Originals: The Horrible Sexy Vampire [‘El Vampiro de la Autopista’] (José Luis Madrid, 1971)

Well, I've got to hand it to ‘em - his behaviour is horrible, he’s somewhat more sexy than most movie monsters, and he is, indisputably, a vampire… as well as an invisible man to boot!

Leaving aside its modest success in living up to its unforgettable English language title however, it saddens me to report that, in most other respects, José Luis Madrid’s film is unimaginative, amateurish and astoundingly dull.

Disappointingly short on action or what most viewers would define as ‘interest’, this hum-drum tale of an atavistic bloodsucker returning from the great beyond to (oddly) strangle a bunch of women in the countryside around Stuttgart instead relies heavily on extended, procedural dialogue/investigation scenes, many of which drag on for so long that listening to the long-suffering English dubbing team desperately trying to come up with enough mindless banter to fill all the dead air becomes more entertaining than anything being enacted on the screen.

Even the frequent scenes of female nudity, which have earned the film a certain notoriety over the years, and which must have been quite risqué for some markets at the time of release, now seem laughably quaint. 

Misogynistic to a fault, these diversions tend to centre around the inherently comic notion that the very first thing most women do upon returning home is take off all their clothes and look at their boobs in the mirror (just to check they’re still there, I suppose); thus making best use of those few, valuable seconds before the horrible, sexy invisible-vampire-man inevitably barges in and throttles them.

Why does the vampire become invisible, exactly? This seems to be a question whose answer is lost to the vagaries of time, but possible explanations include: a) to allow additional footage to be shot in the absence of star Waldemar Wohlfahrt, b) to assist in overcoming the technical challenges of shooting scenes in which Wohlfahrt, who also plays the great-grandson of the vampiric baron, needs to struggle with his undead forebear, or c) just for the sheer bloody-minded hell of it.

Although ‘The Horrible Sexy Vampire’ is not a film which could be honestly recommended to anyone on any conventional basis, it does at least present us with such a succession of oddities such as the one outlined above that it nonetheless makes for strangely compulsive viewing for… well, for me, at least. I can’t claim to speak for anyone else around here.

Not least among these eccentricities is the extraordinary presence of Wohlfahrt himself. 

Later known as Wal Davis (in which capacity he stared as an extremely unlikely Maciste in two of the strangest and most elusive films Jess Franco ever made, ‘Les Glutonnes’ and ‘Maciste Contre la Reine des Amazones’ (both 1972)), Wohlfahrt is a lanky weirdo with a shock of unkempt, peroxide blonde hair, who plays the film’s ‘present day’ protagonist, Count Obelnsky, as a kind of gloomy, self-serious aristocrat who wants nothing more out of life than to be left alone to spend his evenings indulging his passion for taxidermy and getting absolutely hammered on hard liquor.

This unusual characterisation becomes even stranger when one learns that ‘The Horrible Sexy Vampire’ was essentially a vanity project for Wohlfahrt, dreamt up to capitalise on the tabloid notoriety he’d gained after being falsely accused of a series of serial strangulation murders which took place on German highways during the 1960s. (Hence the film’s original Spanish release title, which translates as ‘Vampire of the Autobahn’.)

Although Wohlfahrt - who appears to have been some kind of roving playboy chiefly resident in the German tourist enclave of Benidorm - was acquitted of involvement in the crimes when it was proven beyond doubt that he was in Spain when several of the murders were committed, parallel charges brought against him for illegal possession of a firearm (also overturned), and pimping (for which he served a short prison sentence) suggest he was not exactly what you’d call a gentleman of good character - a suspicion borne out by his highly questionable attempts to use the publicity surrounding his arrest to launch a career in show business.

After a novelty pop single (released in Spain under the name ‘Waldemar El Vampiro’) failed to chart, Wohlfahrt appears to have turned to the film industry… which brings us to ‘The Horrible Sexy Vampire’.

Tastefully, the film was shot around Stuttgart, near to the locations of the real life crimes of which its star was accused, and its script is packed with references to the murders and to the details of Wohlfahrt’s highly publicised arrest… all of which proves a lot more interesting than anything which actually occurs on-screen in ‘The Horrible Sexy Vampire’, sad to say.

[Readers wishing to appraise themselves of the full details of this sordid affair are advised to consult either Ismael Fernandez’s booklet accompanying Mondo Macabro’s recent blu-ray release of the film, or David Flint & Adrian J. Martin’s audio commentary on the same disc.]

Meanwhile, another aspect of the film which helped to keep me engaged was its English dubbing, which is executed with a vibe of perfect, dead-pan absurdity which put me in mind of classics like ‘The Devil's Nightmare’ (1971).

This is perhaps best exemplified by the faux-British accent assigned to Count Oblensky (who has flown in from London to reclaim his ancestral seat), which has him preface every other remark with “I say..” or “Now look here..”, and also by the unfortunate decision to name the film’s vampire ‘Baron Winninger’ - invariably pronounced by the voice actors as ‘Baron Vinegar’.

Bonus points need to be awarded too for the bit where, having being asked a fairly reasonable question re: how come a coffin happens to be empty, a police detective responds, “there could be lots of reasons... why should I bother to explain? It's stupid!” A feeling keenly shared by everyone involved in the writing or translation of this film, I’m sure.

In a similar vein, I also liked Count Oblensky's weird insistence that, having taken possession of his family’s castle, he must act in strict adherence to the strange rules imposed in the will of his ancestor, who died in 1886. (I mean, who the hell does he think is going to take him to court to enforce them?)

As you’d hope, the wardrobe choices sported by both Wohlfahrt and leading lady Susan Carvasal (who, as the only female character who does anything other immediately stripping and dying, is introduced way after the film’s halfway point) are frequently jaw-dropping in their gaudy splendour, and, finally, I also really enjoyed the score, which contains several memorable cues composed by Spanish film music mainstay Angel Arteaga.

Most notable of these is an absolutely delightful, somewhat Morricone-esque piece for acoustic guitar, vibraphone and shrill female vocals which plays incessantly during the second half of the film, following Carvasal’s belated arrival. It’s a real ear worm, and I’d love to be able to obtain a copy on 7” or something. (“Love theme from The Horrible Sexy Vampire”, anyone?)

And…. that’s all I got. ‘The Horrible Sexy Vampire’, ladies and gents. You can meet him if you wish, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. (If nothing else, the disc will look good on the shelf.)

 

Hammer House of Horror: Charlie Boy (Robert Young, 1980)

Episode # 6! This one was very enjoyable.

After all the down at heel suburban atmos of the preceding episodes, we’ve finally got a big ol’ manor house on-screen right from the outset here (Hampden House in Bucks, for the record), furnished with an impressively opulent array of priceless antiques, and soon to be squabbled over by a clan of scheming toffs, when, during the pre-credits sequence, affable Lord of the Manor Sir Jack takes what I believe we’re obliged to call ‘the Rod Hull exit’, tumbling from the battlements as he fiddles with the TV aerial.

Were malign vibes emanating from an especially scary-looking fetish doll he had recently added to his collection of African art to blame? Well, we’re watching ‘Hammer House of Horror’ here, so what do you think?

In the aftermath of what seems to have been an unexpectedly contentious ‘reading of the will’, we join Sir Jack’s nephew, struggling aspirant movie producer Graham (Leigh Lawson), as he picks out a few favourites from the art collection he’s now inherited, whilst setting the rest aside to be flogged.

Much resentment is seemingly in the air, on account of the fact that Graham’s smug and entitled older brother Mark (Michael Culver) has been assigned the house and most of the dough, whilst Sir Jack’s loyal and long-serving housekeeper (and assumed romantic partner) Gwen (Frances Cuka) has been effectively disinherited - a situation exacerbated by the fact that Mark has cruelly decided to sack her with immediate effect for ‘getting ideas above her station’, thus cementing his reputation as a massive twat.

Whilst all this familial bother is brewing however, Graham’s girlfriend Sarah (Angela Bruce) finds herself unaccountably drawn to - yes - that same sinister fetish doll we saw the camera lurking around during the opening. Naming it “Charlie Boy”, she decides that the foul thing (which comes complete with the teeth of former victims hung around its neck and slits in its side for knives to be shoved into) is coming home with the couple to their swankily upholstered (yet comparatively modest) flat in Barnes.

Much could of course be made of the fact that writers Bernie Cooper & Francis Megahy decided that this week’s evil artefact from the darkest heart of the Congo should be latched onto by a black British character, but for better of for worse, this aspect of the story is never really explored.

To the episode’s credit - I suppose? - Sarah’s race is never exploited (or indeed even mentioned) by the script, and any suspicion of questionable intent is further undermined by Angela Bruce herself, who delivers a strong and engaging performance, her Geordie accent and no bullshit attitude clearly marking Sarah out as someone cut from a very different cloth to the sorry stereotypes of black characters generally featured in older British horror films (on the rare occasions on which they appeared at all).

Indeed, one of the key strengths of this episode is the fact that Sarah and Graham are such likeable and unconventional protagonists. For his part, Graham initially seems like a cardboard cut-out of the kind of ‘smarmy yuppie arsehole’ archetype which would become ubiquitous over the coming decade, but as we get to know him, he becomes a lot more sympathetic. He has turned away from a lucrative job in advertising to pursue a more satisfying (but far less profitable) career in the arts, and his choice of a black, working class life partner speaks for itself vis-à-vis his disenchantment with the expectations of his aristocratic family.

The same cannot be said however of brother Mark, who, in the grand tradition of Hammer horror’s own strange brand of Class War ideology, is a bullying, plummy-accented bastard who seems entirely fixated on breeding horses (never a good sign). And so, when he casually breaks off a handshake agreement he had previously made to provide funding for Graham’s dream of a new film studio, well… no prizes for guessing who’ll be first to get the chop.

Although ‘Charlie Boy’s “I inherited a voodoo doll” plotline is old as the hills, and the clumsy scripting necessitates some extraordinary leaps of logic on the part of the protagonists (“why, the doll must be killing people in the exact order in which they appear in this photograph”) - but, that aside, this episode’s execution is generally top notch.

In addition to the aforementioned cast of likeable/unusual characters, we’ve got some excellent production design (not least the fetish doll itself, which is quite a piece of work), plenty of satisfyingly bloody violence (Mark’s demise is an especially good ‘un, as you’d hope), and very strong, imaginative direction from Robert Young (which is perhaps no surprise, given that he had previously directed one of Hammer’s very best ‘70s films, ‘Vampire Circus’ (1972).)

For me, the highlight of the whole affair was probably the vaguely ‘Performance’-esque sequence in which a scar-faced East End villain who had previously menaced Graham & Sarah in a ‘road rage’ incident finds himself stabbed to death in a nightclub basement on ‘Charlie Boy’s behest. Bluntly intercut with footage of the lead couple making love, reflected in the glistening eyes of the fetish doll, his murder makes for a startling psychic juxtaposition of sex n’ violence which any theatrically released ‘70s/’80s horror film would have been proud of.



In short, best episode of HHoH thus far, I reckon.

Horror Express: In The Earth (Ben Wheatley, 2021)

Shot in a remarkable fourteen days during the summer of 2020, when such concerns must have still felt quite scary and new, Ben Wheatley’s most recent horror film begins by using the conventions of old school British post-apocalyptic SF to casually outline the parameters of a world in which a pandemic has progressed in a considerably worse direction than the one we've all been living with for the past few years.

Our protagonist Martin (Joel Fry) has just emerged from four months in isolation, and is met by staff in hazmat suits and subjected to extensive - if inconsistently applied - health and hygiene checks before being allowed to enter the ‘sterile area’ within a lodge on the outskirts of a national park. We soon learn that granulated coffee has become a rare and valued commodity, and there is grim speculation about families fleeing the city to camp out in the forest (“Bristol was hit very badly in the third wave..”).

This unsettling human background gradually fades in importance though once Martin and park ranger Alma (Ellora Torchia) set out on foot through an expanse of ‘old growth’ woodland, with the aim of reaching the remote camp where Martin's former colleague Dr Wendel (Hayley Squires) has been alone for some months, conducting research on the possibility of boosting crop yields through stimulation of the neural networks within plant roots, or somesuch.

(I need to break my plot synopsisin’ here to note that I’m not sure I quite buy the idea that there are still areas of forest of the west of England so dense and inaccessible that they can also be reached through several days solid hiking, especially given that, when we eventually reach it, the doctor’s set-up is kitted out with at least a lorry-load of specialist equipment… but never mind, let’s just go with it.)

Without giving too much away, it’s fair to say that the gruelling and terrifying events which Martin and Alma experience during their journey through the forest contain strong trace elements of a modern horror film, incorporating such checklist ticking essentials as axe-wielding psychos, forced incarceration, desperate fights for survival and an uncomfortable preoccupation with gruesome injury detail. 

Beyond that though, it’s easy to see why many viewers were disappointed with and/or perplexed by this film upon release (and the fact it was marketed by Univeral as a straight genre piece probably didn’t help).

What Wheatley has actually gone and done here, y’see, is to funnel a modest studio budget into making another totally zonked out, bad trip ‘head movie’, following a wafer-thin structure which at times put me in mind of ‘Heart of Darkness’, ‘Stalker’, ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ and Saul Bass's ‘Phase IV’, but that in essence can probably be traced all the way back to the grail myths or ancient Sumerian scriptures or whatever else.

Which is to say: Quest > confrontation/catharsis > revelation, basically. You know the score, I’m sure. (As a pattern for storytelling, it’s curiously compatible with the Marxists’ beloved “thesis / antithesis / synthesis” equation, isn’t it? But, that’s a big pile of navel-gazing for another day, I realise.)

What ‘In The Earth’ reminded me of more than anything though is Wheatley's own ‘A Field in England’ (2013). Indeed, it struck me that the core premise of both films is essentially the same; ie, a pair of innocents being coaxed into a fixed and inescapable rural space in which they are menaced and generally fucked with by a more-or-less insane practitioner of uncertain magickal arts, subjected to non-consensual drug experiences, forced to re-examine their conception of the laws which govern the universe, and at one point obliged to participate in a kind of supernatural tug of war.

Here though, that premise finds itself revisited and greatly expanded in a quasi-realistic contemporary setting, its impact amped up through the use of an extreme and confrontational cinematic aesthetic which basically seeks to replicate the textural & emotional experience of making multiple bad drug decisions at an experimental music festival (with added gory violence).

(In fact, seekers after an auteurist thread running through Wheatley’s work could even go further here, citing the fact that films as disparate as 2015’s ‘High Rise’ or 2017’s brilliant Free Fire also centre around the idea of a zero sum game of survival played out within a single, confined environment, in which characters gradually accumulate wounds and physical impairments as their determination to get out alive transmutes into a kind of despairing, entropic embrace of self-immolation.)

Thankfully though, the mere opportunity to crown Wheatley as the unwilling king of “closed environment injury movies” is pretty much the least interesting thing going on in ‘In The Earth’ - a film which, thematically-speaking, leaves all kinds of fascinating stuff floating around in the ether, just waiting to be plucked out by the critically engaged and/or stoned viewer.

In no particular order then, we’ve got: the nature of English identity and the malign/atavistic aspect of people’s connection to the land, the interplay of science, culture and ritual in understanding the natural environment, the fine line between learning from nature and being consumed by it, the unimaginable psychological impact of contact with non-human intelligence…. and probably a dozen other things besides.

Personally, I couldn’t help latching onto the fact that both of the ‘questers’ within the film are of mixed race / non-white ethnicity (and thus implicitly urban, as well as relatively young), whilst the two characters who have fully lost themselves to the atavistic forces stirred up within the the forest - dwelling within it and becoming at least somewhat crazed and dangerous as a result - are Anglo-Saxon, middle-aged, and recognisably middle class.

Filtering this through the dialectics currently in play within UK society, I couldn’t help but see this as some kind of exaggerated depiction of the underlying menace potentially experienced by bold young urbanites when (as they are want to do) they step out into the remoter depths of the countryside, perhaps seeking that uncanny frisson that comes from connection with the ancient, ancestral earth… only to find that, socially speaking, things have a tendency to get a bit weird, and not necessarily in a good way, as soon as they venture more than a few miles from the nearest train station.

I’m sure this was nowhere near the forefront of Wheatley’s mind when he was conceiving ‘In The Earth’, but, it’s definitely buried in there somewhere, waiting (if you’ll excuse the pun) to be unearthed. Indeed, quite what the film is trying to say about any of the stuff listed above remains nebulous and vague in the extreme; nothing is ever really unpacked or nailed down amid the onslaught of bloody forest mulch and editing room psychedelia.

In short then, it’s easy to see why so many people had such a negative reaction to this film. I appreciate that some viewers may find its style too emphatic and aggressive, or feel that its ideas are mixed up and under-developed to the point of being meaningless; and, they may have a point.

Likewise, Wheatley’s embrace of shop-soiled talismans of the ‘folk horror’ and ‘hauntology’ movements (cf: the film’s ‘Owl Service’ referencing standing stone, and the Julian House-styled faux-Penguin closing credits) may strike some as contrived and opportunistic, whilst the digital psychedelic freak-out effects which comprise much of the finale certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste (not least a few moments which throw caution to the wind and basically turn into a ‘90s new age / techno-pagan screensaver).

But, personally, none of these potential stumbling blocks bothered me. Hell, I enjoyed them! In fact, I got a lot out of the film on all levels. For my money, it’s arguably the most frightening, provocative and impactful film Wheatley has made to date. 

In the long run, I foresee it accumulating a more appreciative audience as the years go by, and in the short term, I imagine it will spend a long time lurking in the back of my mind, as the question of what it all “means” stews around in there, taking on new forms, drawing me to contemplate repeat viewings, in spite of the mild psychic trauma initiated by the first go-round.

Which is exactly what you’d expect of any good zonked out, bad trip ‘head movie’ really, isn't it?

Hammer House of Horror: The House That Bled To Death (Tom Clegg, 1980)

Episode # 5. Pretty cool title, eh? Could have made a good sequel to ‘The House That Dripped Blood’ in an alternate world. But anyway, yes - this is ‘the haunted house one’, much as you’d expect.

Director Tom Clegg’s sparse feature credits however include such hard-boiled items as ‘Sweeney 2’ (1978) and ‘McVicar’ (1980), so it’s perhaps not surprising that, in keeping with all preceding episode of ‘Hammer House of Horror’, he and writer David Lloyd entirely forgo gothic/period atmos here, instead telling the quotidian tale of a young family who have the misfortune to move into a pebble-dashed suburban semi previously occupied by an old codger who cut up his missus with a pair of Gurkha knives, which, after being eerily rediscovered by the new occupants, remain ominously nailed up on the kitchen wall.

When it came to this episode, I confess I mainly found myself enthralled by the ambient details and textures of lower middle class British life circa 1980 which fill almost every second of screen time. This is more-or-less where I came from, but my memories are sketchy, so I couldn’t help just drinking it all in, thinking about the life lived by my parents, and their neighbours and friends, around the time of my birth.

Of course, unlike husband/father Nicholas Ball here, my old man didn’t look and act like an attempt to genetically cross-breed Mel Gibson and David Hemmings; there’s something fishy about that guy right from the start I thought, although the double denim outfit he wears to the first day of his gig as a hospital porter is admittedly pretty spectacular.

(And just imagine, incidentally, a world in which it was a reasonable expectation for a bloke who works as a porter to have not only managed to buy his own family home, but to support his wife, who can comfortably stay home caring for the kid and doing the shopping. Outdated patriarchal assumptions aside, and bearing in mind that we probably shouldn’t regard an episode of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ as a barometer of social realism, it gives you an insight into how sorely the lot of the common (wo)man has declined over the years, doesn't it?)

BUT ANYWAY. Horror-wise, most of this episode is pretty excruciating and/or boring to be honest, as the family’s daughter is traumatised by the highly suspicious death of her beloved cat (who seems to have eviscerated himself on a broken window), and as her parents meanwhile develop a creepily intimate passive/aggressive relationship with their across-the-road neighbours (TV stalwarts Pat Maynard and Brian Croucher - the latter so shifty and pervy he makes Ball seem like a paragon of trust in comparison).

But, it’s difficult to resist the show-stopping chaos of the central children's party drenched in blood set-piece, and the story’s final act brings forth a splendidly cynical, self-reflexive twist which I really enjoyed (but won’t spoil), closing on a note of vengeful nastiness worthy of a Pete Walker movie.

Gothic Originals / Exploito All’Italiana: Murder Obsession (Riccardo Freda, 1981)

An odd duck within the canon of Italian genre/exploitation directors by any measure, Riccardo Freda can often be a difficult character to really get an angle on.

On the one hand, he turned in two of the pre-eminent classics of ‘60s Italian gothic horror (The Horrible Secret of Dr Hichcock (1962), ‘The Ghost’ (1963)), and his extensive background in swashbucklers and historical epics ensured that his films always carry a dramatic, painterly visual flair and a rich sense of atmosphere. (Born in 1909, he had already been directing for nearly twenty years when he instigated his nation’s gothic horror cycle with ‘I Vampiri’ in 1957.)

At the same time though, he was also a slap-dash, inconsistent and self-sabotaging filmmaker with a highly divisive personality, as is evidenced by both long periods of inactivity his later years and the multitude of productions he walked away from or left unfinished (famously passing some of them on to his friend/protégé Mario Bava).

From the mid-‘60s onward in fact, even the work he did complete and sign off on is characterised by a woozy, rather incoherent/unfinished quality which makes it difficult to fully engage with.

All of these contrasting traits can be seen in spades in Freda’s swan-song, ‘Murder Obsession’ [‘Follia Omicida’], an intriguing but chronically uneven melange of classical gothic, giallo, supernatural horror and even slasher DNA first unleashed to bamboozle Italian audiences in February 1981.

Allegedly set in the UK, our tale here concerns movie actor Michael (Stefano Patrizi) who, along with his girlfriend Debora (Silvia Dionisio), travels to Surrey’s finest shadow-haunted Italianate palazzo to reunite with his mother Glenda (giallo veteran Anita Strindberg, who scarcely looks much older than Patrizi to be honest, but never mind) after many years of separation.

As per gothic tradition, Michael’s family pile turns out to be a decrepit, dust-enshrouded stone edifice with an intermittent electricity supply, presided over by deeply sinister man-servant (Oliver, played John Richardson from ‘Black Sunday’) who is expected to saw logs, tinker with fuse boxes, cook and serve all the food and prepare guest bedrooms at a moment’s notice whilst still finding time to lurk around every corner looking menacing.

Far more worryingly though, it also soon becomes clear that this is Michael’s first visit home since he inexplicably murdered his father (a celebrated musician and conductor, referred to by all and sundry as ‘il maestro’) whilst still a child, leaving his mother heartbroken and intermittently bed-ridden. Awkward.

And as if that weren’t uncomfortable enough, Debora is also forced to pretend to be Michael’s ‘secretary’ and is instructed to sleep alone in a pokey attic room, whilst the moody and reclusive lady of the house meanwhile fawns over her returned son as if he were a lost lover, repeatedly noting how much he resembles his long dead father.

In view of all this, it’s safe to say that a fun weekend in the countryside is not really on the cards for anyone, although a note of relative normality is at least sounded when a carload of victi -- I mean, uh, Michael and Debora’s glamorous film-making friends -- arrives on the scene, amongst their number such welcome Euro-cult faces as Martine Brochard and Laura Gemser.

Sad to say though that, despite all this, ‘Murder Obsession’s opening act feels like a bit of a bust (and not the kind that Gemser and Dionisio are frequently called upon to thrust in the general direction of the camera in an attempt to keep the presumed hetero-male audience engaged, either).

On the plus side, the film certainly inherits some of the grand, aristocratic sweep of Freda’s earlier horror classics, successfully adapted here for a lower budget production shot primarily on location. Some of the photography (by Cristiano Pogany) is painstakingly gorgeous, whilst the atmospheric potential of the echoing footsteps, vast, empty spaces and flickering candlelight of the palazzo are all expertly utilised.

That aside though… sigh. The pacing is leaden, the gossamer-thin plotting is both vague and boring, and the acting (particularly from Patrizi) is stilted and disengaged.

Most dreary of all though is the musical score, credited to the usually reliable Franco Mannino, who had frequently worked with Freda during the ‘50s and ‘60s. Largely consisting of indifferently recorded renditions of Bach and Liszt solo piano pieces, it really got on my wick.

Of course, Freda had gone to solo piano route before, with 1969’s ‘Double Face’ [‘A Doppia Faccia’]. On that film though, he’d had a haunting theme and sympathetic playing from the great Nora Orlandi to help him out. Here by contrast, we have to put up with hearing some of the film’s wildest and most intense sequences accompanied by (as Jonathan Rigby notes in Euro Gothic) a school assembly-level recitation of ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’. Not to rag on J.S. Bach or anything, but it’s a drag, man.

A more propulsive, contemporary horror score could really have given this film a welcome shot in the arm, especially through the rather lugubrious first half, during which Freda seems entirely uninterested in furnishing his public with any of the exploitation goodies a horror crowd in the early 1980s might reasonably have expected.

But, fear not. ‘Murder Obsession’ does at least get a lot better - by which I mean crazier, basically - as it goes along.

Mirroring the unusual ‘massive halfway point freak-out’ structure utilised in Freda’s penultimate horror film ‘Tragic Ceremony’ (originally released as - deep breath - ‘Estratto Dagli Archivi Segreti della Polizia di Una Capitale Europea’ (phew) in 1972), we’re suddenly roused from our languor when - ironically - we’re plunged into Debora’s head as she recounts the mother of all nightmares to Michael in the cold light of morning.

The ensuing dream sequence constitutes a ten minute(!) explosion of absolutely all the bat-shit / brilliant horror imagery a Euro-horror fan could possibly wish for, and which ‘Murder Obsession’ has so conspicuously failed to provide to this point.

This includes (but is not limited to) a black-gloved killer, pus-drooling zombie cultists, a ridiculous ‘Bloody Pit of Horror’ style giant spider, a rubber bat attack, a wall of skulls with bleeding eye sockets, a lengthy sequence in which Dionisio runs through fog-drenched, swampy undergrowth with her breasts hanging out of her flimsy nightie, getting sliced up by loose branches, and, finally, a scene in which she is tied to one of those classic X-shaped wooden frames and forced to drink the blood of a black cockerel as part of a black mass.

Good grief! It’s as if Freda had made a list of every kind of clichéd horror situation he’d quite like to include in his film… and then just threw them all together randomly to get it all out of the way in one go. (In a nice nod to Italio-horror heritage, this sequence also features prominent usage of a variation on the Bava family’s patented ‘wobbly glass’.)

After this, the second half of ‘Murder Obsession’ is more liberally dosed with good ol’ fashioned Italio-horror delirium (and indeed, murder, and obsession), as we get to enjoy flashbacks to a number of ‘Rashomon’-like variations on the ‘Deep Red’-esque primal scene which may or may not have precipitated the death of Michael’s father, prompting Michael to start to lose his grip on reality, as the film’s assigned cannon fo -- I mean, uh, glamorous friends -- simultaneously begin to be meet their inevitable, gory demise.

Most memorably, Michael finds Laura Gemser slaughtered next to him when he awakens following an adulterous, lake-side tryst, whilst meanwhile, Oliver the handyman has taken to conspicuously lugging a chainsaw up and down the palazzo’s crumbling staircases, and we also need to deal with the belated revelation that Michael’s mother is in fact a freakin’ SATANIST.

In the context of all this irrational, oneiric goodness, ‘Murder Obsession’ totally abandons the glum, self-serious air which dragged down some of its early scenes, even allowing the film’s astonishing parade of continuity blunders and production design SNAFUs to become rather endearing, instead of merely infuriating.

Chief amongst these is probably Gemser’s role as the most egregious ‘breathing corpse’ in cinema history. Which is not just nit-picking on my part, I’d like to make clear; I mean, she is not just breathing a bit when she is supposed to be playing dead - it’s as if she’d just finishing running a couple of laps around the castle’s grounds when Freda commanded her to lie down and act still and lifeless!

Elsewhere, the traditional gothic horror reveal of a hidden portrait of Michael’s father is rather spoiled by the fact that it seems to consist of a xeroxed photo of Patrizi pasted onto a background of random colours, and you’d need to be a pretty tolerant viewer not to remark on the tendency of John Richardson’s costume to change from a formal white uniform to a flamboyant red shirt between shots as he serves dinner to the palazzo’s guests.

Clearly, these are the kind of clangers which no remotely committed director would ever send to the lab for printing - much less a filmmaker like Freda, who had spent nearly four decades behind the camera at this point. Which leads us to speculate on what the hell he was up to here. Was he sending a message to his producers, letting them know that he was done with this stupid film? Or, was he just signalling to his audience that nothing here was meant to be taken remotely seriously?

Either way, such moments of amateurishness clash markedly with other parts of the film, which were clearly crafted with great care and attention, not least Debora’s discovery of Martine Brochard’s character’s body, and her subsequent flight through a thunder storm, which recalls the vibrancy of Bava’s ‘Blood & Black Lace’, and the breathtaking tableau towards the end of the film wherein a shot of the prone Michael reclining across his mother’s knees is staged to recreate the majesty of Michelangelo’s sculpture of the Pietà (1498-99), an image enhanced here by almost Caravaggio-like use of subdued colours and shadow.

As with the film’s anachronistic musical score, could such classical allusions represent attempts on the part of an elderly filmmaker to smuggle elements of the culture he really loved and valued into an example of the popular genre cinema in which he’d make his name decades earlier, but which he had subsequently come to despise..?

If so, it was likely a doomed effort, given how thoroughly such gestures are overwhelmed by the film’s deranged smorgasbord of gratuitous nudity, bloody violence and jarring tonal and narrative inconsistencies.

Though hugely enjoyable for fans of the more eccentric and outlandish end of Italian horror, ‘Murder Obsession’ is ultimately a dishevelled and confused refugee, not just from the austere gothic horrors of the 1960s, but also from the ‘Erotic Castle Movie’ cycle of the ‘70s, finding itself staring down the barrel of a notably unsympathetic new decade with no plan in mind except panic, flight and desperate self-immolation.

In all likelihood, we’ll never know just what was going through Riccardo Freda’s mind as he called ‘action’ and ‘cut’ on his set for the final time in his long career. But then, he always was a bit of an odd duck… which I think is where we came in.