Hammer House of Horror: Growing Pains (Francis Megahy, 1980)

Fourth episode in the series, and I’ll bang through it quickly, as I think this was the weakest to date.

Gary Bond (the lead from ‘Wake in Fright’ (1971)) is a borderline mad scientist, busy creating artificial food stuffs to ease world hunger and testing them out on super-cute giant rabbits in his home laboratory. His wife (Barbara Kellerman from Norman J. Warren’s ‘Satan's Slave’ (1975)) is some kind of philanthropist raising funds for assorted charities.

Pre-credits, the couple’s young son wanders into his Dad’s lab, eats some random stuff from a jar, freaks out, dies. So, the grieving parents replace him by adopting a weird, affectless kid with a bad attitude from the nearest children’s home.

Their new son either has telekinetic powers, is possessed by the ghost of their dead son, or some combination of the two. (Simple though the plot is, I didn't quite get what was supposed to be going on here.)

The rather mean-spirited message here seems to be that, whilst these rich, do-gooding parents are off solving the world’s ills, they've forgotten to give either of their children the love and attention they need, so thus they must suffer (as if their first son dying wasn't punishment enough).

It’s all a rather glum business, leavened with dead rabbits and poisoned dogs (all fake, of course, but still not exactly my idea of top flight entertainment), which leaves a somewhat unpleasant taste in the mouth.

I fell asleep a bit towards the end, so I think I might have missed the gist of the surprise ending. I should go back and check before posting this really, but… is there really much to be gained?

Probably better just to move on to potentially more rewarding future episodes with exciting names like ‘The Carpathian Eagle’ and ‘The House that Bled to Death’...

Horror Express: Glorious (Rebekah McKendry, 2022)

This was my first time venturing into the blighted realm of ‘a Shudder original’, but Rebekah McKendry’s third feature as director got a rave from Denis at The Horror!? weblog, which was all it took to persuade me to dive in.

So essentially, ‘Glorious’ starts off as a rather pleasing high concept oddity; fleeing from a catastrophic break-up, a sad-sack, emotionally strung-out man named Wes (Ryan Kwanten) finds himself forcibly confined to the bathroom of a remote highway rest stop, with only a Lovecraftian Elder God in the adjoining cubicle for company.

The God is named something along the lines of GHATANOUTHUA (its explanation of how to correctly enunciate this provides one of the film’s comic highlights), and it speaks to Wes in deep, sonorous, ingratiating tones (courtesy of veteran character actor J.K. Simmons).

Ghat (as it will subsequently be known) won’t let Wes leave, because it needs something from him in order to complete a ritual which will prevent it being trapped in sanity-shatteringly horrible corporeal form, and thus avoid the ensuing annihilation of all life in the universe (that being the purpose for which Ghat was originally brought into being by the indifferent creator of our material realm).

Could the ‘something’ Ghat requires from his mortal prisoner possibly involve the glory hole in the side of the God’s cubicle...?

By and large, the cosmic horror stuff ‘Glorious’ is very well done, and the decision to illustrate mind-bogglingly vast, abstract concepts via ‘Watership Down’-esque animated animated devotional drawings and toilet stall graffiti proves effective, both greatly enhancing the movie’s visual / psychedelic appeal and helping communicate some pretty out-there metaphysical concepts to the audience with a minimum of fuss.

The film’s script (for which Todd Rigney, Joshua Hull and David Ian McKendry all share writing credit) seems to draw pretty heavily on August Derleth’s more orderly / gnostic reinterpretation of the Cthulhu Mythos, which I’m not generally a big fan of, but as this one is strictly ‘non-canon’ and exists within the context of its own cosmology, I’ll give it a pass.*

Indeed, it is the conflict between Lovecraft’s trademark cosmic nihilism and the idea of there being a kind of moral balance to the universe which eventually fuels much of the film’s drama - which may sound like heavy-going on paper, but again, is actually all unpacked quite casually, with a minimum of self-serious pretention, which I appreciated.

That said, this one does rather sag in the middle, despite an admirably concise 79 minute run-time, with the travails of one unhappy man speaking to a disembodied voice in a grubby location inevitably threatening to degenerate into some kind of self-exploratory / avant garde solo theatre piece from time to time.

Meanwhile, whilst avoiding spoilers, I also need to note that the film’s final act centres around a plot twist which I just plain could not buy, and which indeed seemed to me to undermine the essential points about human nature which the movie seems to be trying to articulate elsewhere. (Pure speculation on my part, but perhaps director McKendry felt similarly, as the revelation of said twist is handled in a fairly ambiguous / off-hand manner, as if the filmmakers' hearts weren't really in it..?)

But, regardless - ‘Glorious’ nonetheless remains a really interesting and thought-provoking low budget effort which never forgets to time time-out for a few good laughs and some crowd-pleasing gore amidst its high-falutin’ philosophical musings; well worth a watch, especially for my fellow Lovecraft nuts out there in blog-land.

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* For some quick background on the controversy surrounding Derleth’s take on the Mythos, try here?

Hammer House of Horror: Rude Awakening (Peter Sasdy, 1980)

Episode #3 of ‘Hammer House of Horror’, turns out to be another Peter Sasdy joint, and, if The Thirteenth Reunion proved a bit sub-par, this one is just, well… weird. Which is probably an improvement.

Basically, what we have here is a ‘dream within a dream’ / ‘unpeeling the layers of the onion’ type affair, wherein sleazy provincial estate agent Norman Shenley (Denholm Elliot, no less) wakes up to face the hatchet-faced harridan of a wife who refuses to grant him the luxury of an easy divorce (Pat Heywood), before he heads off to his high street office, there to be greeted by perky, fashion-forward secretary Lolly (Lucy Gutteridge), with whom he may or may not be having an affair.

Then, a saturnine man (James Laurenson) enters, invites Shenley to undertake a valuation on a remote, antique property, wherein a variety of scary and inexplicable things (eg, conversations with Edwardian ghosts, close encounters with a wrecking ball, etc) occur…. at which point, Norman awakens once again, realises he was still dreaming, and the whole cycle starts again with the details shifted round a bit. Meanwhile, the memory of him having murdered his wife at some point constantly looms somewhere in the background…

Although this one initially seems like more of a ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ type affair than a real horror tale, those expecting a concrete, ‘twist in the tale’ type explanation for Elliot’s descent through the annals of delirium will be disappointed.

Are these all guilt-addled hallucinations he’s experiencing in a padded cell, or whilst undergoing experimental brain surgery? Has he just plain gone nuts? Or, are the other characters conspiring to drive him crazy?

Each of these possibilities is implied at some point (the latter, intriguingly, when Lolly the secretary exchanges some potentially conspiratorial banter with a policeman and furtively pockets the diamond necklace the crazed Norman gifted her, after he is hauled away for his wife’s murder), but in the end, the precisely reasons for our protagonist’s immersion in a walking dream-state are allowed to remain ambiguous. We’re never really given any clear, cut-and-dried explanation of what’s been going here, or any reassurance that the ‘reality’ presented to us in this final scenes s really what it seems.

Some may be inclined to see this as mere lazy / undercooked scripting on the part of writer Gerald Savory, but really, this episode seems to have been intended less as a neatly resolved short story than as a very strange mood piece.

It is noteworthy, I think, that whilst all three episodes of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ we’ve viewed thus far have rejected the kind of gothic/period imagery one might have expected this series to embrace, at the same time they’ve been united by their determination to explore a variety of mid-20th century British suburban/commuter-town lifestyles and stereotypes, and ‘Rude Awakening’ in particular puts this element centre-stage - even though it’s chosen subjects seem to date from a somewhat older vintage than 1980.

In essence, this episode spends the bulk of its run-time repeatedly dissembling and re-contextualising a set of archetypes pulled straight from those one-panel cartoons which used to be so ubiquitous in men’s magazines, tabloids and the like: the lecherous small businessman, the sexy secretary, the vengeful, rolling pin-wielding wife.

All of these figures have long been left in the rear view mirror our 21st century culture (and probably rightly so), which makes it all the more curious to see them all resurrected here, lost in a cyclical, ever-changing fugue as they move from dream to dream like some low rent / low ambition variation on the cast from Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius stories.

In more practical terms, ‘Rude Awakening’ is at least very well put together, with snappy, colourful (perhaps deliberately cartoon-ish?) direction from Sasdy matched to a memorably sweaty, dithering central performance from Elliot, who plays up his character’s gradual descent into madness with just the right balance of simpering camp and hyper-ventilating hysteria.

Gutteridge too is great value as Lolly the secretary, clearly having a wail of a time in wardrobe & make-up as she adopts a different, equally eye-popping look for each of her boss’s ‘dreams’, dressing up at various points like a London ’76 style punkette, a Marilyn Monroe / Diana Dors type, a St Trinian’s schoolgirl and… well I’m not really sure what the scarlet silk two-piece and blonde afro wig get-up she’s got on through the episode’s longest sequence is supposed to be all about, but it looks pretty cool.

All in all then, a bit of a head-scratcher, but an intriguing and enjoyable one nonetheless.

Horror Express / Gothic Originals: Love Brides of the Blood Mummy (Ken Ruder, 1972)

Yes, folks - ‘Love Brides of the Blood Mummy’. If you thought I was going to turn down the opportunity to add this one to my shelves when Mondo Macabro put it up for pre-order earlier this year… well, you clearly don’t know me too well.

Irresistible as that title may be however, it’s worth noting that this obscure and rather mysterious Franco-Spanish co-production actually found itself travelling under a wide variety of other identities as it traversed the darker corners of the cinematic underworld in the early 1970s.

English-speaking territories primarily knew it as ‘Lips of Blood’ (thus causing confusion with the Jean Rollin film of the same name), whilst Spain got a shorter, sex-free cut featuring alternate ‘clothed’ takes, under the more chaste title of ‘El Secreto de la Momia Egipcia’.

As if to highlight the differences between film markets and censorship regimes in the two co-producing nations, the French distributors meanwhile went to the opposite extreme in their marketing, inviting the public to sample ‘Perversions Sexuelles’. (Well, yes, I suppose being molested by a four-thousand-year-old Egyptian mummy is pretty perverse, but beyond that it’s hard to believe the audience who turned out for that particular release got their money’s worth; blood-drinking aside, this Mummy’s tastes are pretty vanilla for the most past.)

But, it will always be ‘Love Brides of the Blood Mummy’ to me - a title the film first acquired upon its Canadian release under the auspices of David Cronenberg’s early sponsors Cinepix, and which, perhaps surprisingly, captures the spirit of thing more accurately than any of the alternative options listed above.

To get down to brass tacks then, what we essentially have here is a hoary and austere gothic horror framing narrative in which Spanish genre mainstay Frank Braña rides ‘cross the moors to meet his destiny at the sinister Dartmoor Castle. Therein, he meets Baron Dartmoor (George Rigaud), an amateur Egyptologist (and, it transpires, colonial grave robber), who proceeds to narrate in flashback a tale so absurd and offensive it could have been pulled straight from one of those crazy Italian porno-fumetti we all [know and love / grudgingly acknowledge the existence of / are about to google and probably lose our jobs as a result of – please delete as applicable].

So, one fateful day it seems, The Baron found himself unboxing the latest unearthed sarcophagus delivered straight to his gaff from the Valley of the Kings, only to discover that it contained not the usual papyrus-wrapped bag of bones, but the body of a perfectly preserved, eerily life-like young man (one ‘Michael Flynn’, in his only screen appearance).

Having established that his new acquisition is the body of “the depraved son of a priest, put to death for his crimes” (I wonder what the hieroglyphic character for ‘depraved’ looks like, incidentally), The Baron does what any self-respecting reclusive Victorian gentleman-scientist would do, dusting off his best Frankensteinian electrical clobber and setting out to bring the bugger back to life.

Once this small feat has been achieved with a minimum of bother though, we soon start to get an idea of why the Ancient Egyptians felt the need to get shot of this particular bastard ASAP.

Batting aside The Baron’s curious offer of a gravy-boat filled with milk, the Mummy instead hones in on a cut on the arm of Dartmoor’s man-servant John (Martin Trévières), making it clear that what he really needs to maintain his unholy existence is BLOOD, and plenty of it.

Again taking a leaf straight from the mad scientist playbook, The Baron pauses to consider the conflict between his humanitarian and scientific principles - spoiler, science wins! - and promptly sends John out to apprehend the first nubile virgin he can find wandering the blasted heathland which surrounds the castle. (The potential use of animal blood, or non-lethal transfusions from willing donors, is never considered here I note. Only the best for the Blood Mummy!)

As is the case with most of this film’s female cast, the actress who portrays the Mummy’s first victim is effectively uncredited (a list of anglicised pseudonyms on the opening credits is all we have to go on), but anyway - after guzzling down the proffered vessel of her fresh lady-blood, the Blood Mummy makes it clear that his appetites do not end there.

Rising from his slab and casually bashing John into unconsciousness, the Egyptian heads straight for the prone female captive, tears off her clothes, and, well… rapes her, to not put too fine a point on it, concluding his extended ravishment by bloodily chewing her throat out.

Using his hypnotic powers to take over John’s mind, the Mummy soon has The Baron locked behind bars in his own dungeon, forced to look on helplessly as his long-suffering man-servant is sent out again and again to find new girls, bludgeoning them into submission and carrying them back to the castle across his hunched shoulders, there to satisfy the relentless lusts of the Blood Mummy (who, monster fans will note, by this stage embodies traits usually associated with the mummy, the vampire and Frankenstein’s monster).

Bluntly staged by the filmmakers for the purposes of pure, gratuitous exploitation, these dungeon-based assaults - which comprise the bulk of the film’s middle half hour - soon prove as repetitive, joyless and robotic as the Mummy himself.

This creates an odd tonal disjuncture with the sombre and painstakingly atmospheric exterior sequences, during which reflections of twisted tree branches glimmer in icy lakes as horse gallop hither and yon, and as John (who rather resembles Paul Naschy in one his grotesque/simpleton roles) trudges out yet again across the freezing countryside, dragging captured women back to meet their doom across barren, coastal landscapes which resemble something Caspar David Friedrich might have come up with on a particularly bad day.

Once established, this grim pattern is broken only slightly when the Baron’s daughter unexpectedly arrives home from university accompanied by a friend (the latter played by Spanish horror regular Christine Gimpera). Dismounting and heading indoors, the pair are giggling like schoolgirls until - in a moment of pure, Bunuel-esque surrealism - they walk straight into a meet-cute with the Blood Mummy, leading to a surprisingly exciting horseback chase in which the malevolent Egyptian saddles up in pursuit of his prey.

After demonstrating such pluck, you might have expected the daughter (played by a very striking actress, who, again, sadly remains unidentified) to emerge as the heroine of a more, uh, ‘normal’ movie, but… nope. In fact, if there’s one thing I love about ‘Love Brides of the Blood Mummy’, it’s its sheer, bald-faced ruthlessness.

Just as a potential hero / hapless boyfriend character was earlier thoughtlessly dispatched when he took a step backwards and fell down a well (the Mummy did not give a fuck), the daughter is soon spread-eagled down in the dungeon, receiving the full Blood Mummy treatment whilst her horrified father looks on. The only girl to get out alive (simply because the Mummy is too busy to deal with her), Gimpera’s character meanwhile flees the scene in a state of mute insanity. Nice.

When it comes to trying to fathom the mystery of precisely how and why ‘Love Brides of the Blood Mummy’ came into existence, attempting to nail the film down geographically proves a good start.

Alongside exteriors shot primarily around the coast of Brittany, it also features interior/studio work carried out on subterranean sets which I’m pretty sure are the same ones used by another Franco-Spanish co-production, Jordi Gigó’s ‘Devil’s Kiss’ (1976). Meanwhile, the chateau featured in the film is the same one seen in Pierre Chevalier’s ‘Orloff Against The Invisible Man’ (‘La Vie Amoureuse de L'Homme Invisible’, 1970) - a film which often feels like the closest comparison to this one in terms of tone, visuals and weird/unhinged exploitation elements, and with which it was double-billed on at least one occasion [see the poster reproduced at the top of this post]. And, well… there’s a reason for that, which we’ll get on to shortly.

Though credited to a Frenchman (veteran Eurocine DP Raymond Heil), the film’s murky, autumnal photography strikes me as belonging very much in the Spanish horror tradition, heavy on the browns and greens, lending everything an antiquated, rusty/mouldy look similar to that often seen in the work of directors like Amando de Ossorio or León Klimovsky. This adds a melancholy, faintly despairing air to proceedings which is only intensified by the glacial, almost bloody-mindedly languid pacing.

The film’s music - which is fantastic - meanwhile feels very French, running the gamut from propulsive funk and weird loungey stuff to swelling, romantic strings and some creepy, avant garde electronic cues which lend an eerie, Blind Dead-esque quality to some of the Mummy’s antics.

Given the sheer variety of sounds and instrumentation featured, I had assumed whilst viewing that this soundtrack must be comprised of ‘needle-drops’ from pre-existing sources, but no - as part of his exhaustive research into the origins of this film, Mondo Macabro’s Pete Tombs has confirmed that ‘Love Brides..’ music credit - to composer/arranger and former pop singer Max Gazzola - is in fact genuine, and that the music featured here is (so far as we know) entirely original; which is pretty remarkable. (If any obscure reissue label moguls out there - I’m looking at you, Finders Keepers - feel like dredging up the tapes for a soundtrack LP, that would be just lovely, thanks.)

So - we’re definitely dealing here with that very particular liminal zone between Spanish and French ‘70s horror cinema, that’s for sure, with a few potential Eurocine connections swirling around in the mix… but beyond that, the question on every Euro-horror fan’s lips after first viewing this one will no doubt be: who exactly is the hilariously named ‘Ken Ruder’, the mysterious individual, referred to as an “underground American filmmaker” in some of the film’s original marketing materials, who ostensibly oversaw this baleful madness…?

When searching for an answer, it is probably instructive to consider the fact that - as noted above - ‘Love Brides..’ is a film which seems to be simultaneously pulling in two very different directions.

At times - primarily during the exterior scenes - someone definitely seems to have been attempting to make an artistically engaged, atmospheric horror film here, exhibiting an uncanny, almost ‘folk horror’-ish fixation with the natural world, including a lot of quality time spent with disorienting watery reflections, peat bogs, tree boughs, swathes of fog and a lengthy excursion through a field of glistening wheat sheaves.

Although the ‘look’ of the film’s photography remains consistent throughout, this all contrasts pretty sharply with what goes on once we get inside the castle, wherein we’re faced with the aforementioned succession of gruelling, dispiritingly quotidian mummy rape scenes - footage which, though not especially explicit, often veers toward the kind of fetishistic / quasi-pornographic realm in which the presentation of naked woman being tormented and molested becomes the central point of the exercise.

This all results in a confounding and unsettling viewing experience which often feels like a Eurocine sleaze movie directed by someone suffering from clinical depression; a prospect which very few modern viewers will be likely to even tolerate, let alone enjoy or try to understand.

Amid this entropic torpor though, ‘Love Brides..’ also incorporates frequent outbursts of pure, surrealistic strangeness, tailor-made to fascinate and perplex those of us who are likely to be more sympathetic to this kind of cinematic oddity.

When we first meet Baron Dartmoor for instance, he is thrashing a disembodied arm chained to his living room wall with a riding crop - a bizarre, rather Freudian image which remains unexplained until the film’s final act. Shortly thereafter, The Baron demonstrates his (otherwise unmentioned) magical prowess by presenting Frank Braña with a walking cane which he transforms into a writhing snake on the fireside rug - an effect realised through a totally unexpected application of genuine stop-motion animation.

This latter incident is a total non-sequitur, and is never referred to again during the film’s run time. (Given that the Baron is a collector of Egyptian antiquities, it occurred to me that perhaps he might have recovered Moses’ fabled magic staff, but if that was supposed to be the idea, it was completely overlooked in both the French and English dubbing.)

Elsewhere, more stop motion effects (presumably an expensive and time-consuming addition to a marginal production like this) are used to animate the Mummy’s disembodied hand during the film’s conclusion - which is pretty cool - whilst the incessant use of a primitive, in-camera ‘irising’ effect lends a peculiar silent movie feel to much of the footage in the film’s second half.

Combined with the mysteries surrounding the film’s creation, these inexplicable elements of weirdness seem to hint at a strange, hidden intelligence lurking behind the morbid and frequently rather dull events unfolding on-screen; an intelligence whose aims certainly seem to stretch beyond the brutish commercial concerns signalled by the film’s sexploitation content.

Indeed, if we fall back on the old saw that the best horror stories are those which emerge from genuinely disordered minds, then ‘..Blood Mummy’ ceases to be merely an ill-regarded Euro-trash obscurity and instead becomes something of an inscrutable, rather haunting quasi-classic - like a broadcast from some other cinematic universe entirely.

The punchline here though of course is that, thanks to ther aforementioned Mr Tombs’ tireless researches, we do actually now have a pretty good idea of who directed ‘Love Brides of the Blood Mummy’. In a sense, it would be nice to perpetuate the mystery by keeping everyone in the dark, but, given that the special edition version of the blu-ray containing Tombs’ comprehensive liner notes is now permanently sold out, it would seem churlish of me not to spread the good word.

So, long story short - surviving documentation from the film’s production suggests two potential suspects hiding behind the Ken Ruder pseudonym. The first is Alejandro Marti, a Barcelona-based producer and occasional director who got into political hot water in 1968 as a result of daring to make a film (the musical comedy ‘Elisabet’) in the Catalan language, and was thus presumably seeking alternative avenues for his talents at this point in time.

The second meanwhile is - wait for it - our old friend Pierre Chevalier, director of ‘Orloff Against The Invisible Man’, along with masses of largely forgotten softcore sex films, largely financed and distributed by (yep) Eurocine.

Whilst we have no way of ascertaining the nature or timeline of the collaboration (or lack thereof) between these two gentlemen, now that we have their names on paper, it’s naturally just a hop, skip and a jump toward speculating that Marti must have been responsible for the atmospheric / gothic exterior footage in ‘Love Brides..’, whilst Chevalier - an old hand at sexploitation, often with a fairly rape-y focus - must have been brought in to handle the more overtly sexual / gory stuff taking place down in the dungeons.

The continuity of photography, costumes and actors across the film suggests that these two directors may have worked in parallel (rather than it being a case of the sexy stuff being inserted later or some such), which is interesting, and also raises questions regarding the provenance of the alternate ‘clothed’ scenes included in the film’s Spanish cut… but anyway, not to worry! Basically, we now have a workable solution to the question of who was responsible for ‘Love Brides of the Blood Mummy’. When it comes to the why though, well… that’s a whole other kettle of fish.

Though for most viewers, Ken Ruder’s magnum opus will likely prove an unpalatable cocktail of leaden pacing, gothic misery and poorly-staged rape, for certain epicurean connoisseurs of strange cinema (hi guys, you’re probably both reading), it holds the potential to soothe, hypnotise and fascinate long after the final strains of Max Gazzola’s romantic closing theme have faded away.

As I write this, I know it is destined to be one of those films which will live on, like an itch I can’t quite scratch in the back of my mind, until the next time I’m drawn to pull the disc down from the shelf like some 21st century equivalent of a dusty, thrice-translated grimoire, in search once again of lost esoteric wisdom otherwise left buried in the remains of some condemned film lab in the French-Catalan border.

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Hammer House of Horror: The Thirteenth Reunion (Peter Sasdy, 1980)

When reviewing the first episode of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ earlier this week, I likened its tone to Peter Sasdy’s I Don’t Want to be Born/The Devil Within Her…. and what do you know, here we are with episode # 2 and look who’s at the helm - none other than Sasdy (whose Hammer credits of course included ‘Hands of the Ripper’ and the excellent ‘Taste the Blood od Dracula’) himself.

Unfortunately, ‘The Thirteenth Reunion’ turns out to be a rather less enjoyable prospect than Witching Time, but it’s not without its charms, so let’s crack on.

Right out of the gate, the episode opens with a nice nod toward the ghoulish tradition of British horror’s glory days, as a moody, low angle shot depicts a suitably sinister duo of crooked funeral directors (Norman Bird and George Innes), each tying on one of those inherently icky leather aprons traditionally utilised by cinematic undertakers over their black suits as they prepare to begin wielding a meat cleaver upon an unidentified corpse.

Thereafter however, we’re firmly back in hum-drum ‘80s reality, as we meet another walking cliché who could only have emerged from that sainted decade - Julia Foster as Ruth, a ditzy, pink cardigan-clad journalist working for the ‘women’s pages’ of a Fleet Street paper. Ruth dreams of overcoming the industry’s inherent sexism and breaking into proper investigative reportage (hint: ditching the cardigan might help), but for the time being, she’s struck with following up a story about a reportedly dodgy new weight loss programme operating out of a remote country clinic.

Foster provides quite a likeable performance here, but unfortunately most of her scenes (and indeed, most of the episode as a whole) are shot in fairly bland, work-a-day fashion, with dialogue delivered in semi-comic fashion - rather like a contemporary sit-com minus the gags.

Sasdy, it should be noted, had largely abandoned features and moved into TV work by this stage in career, but sadly, even the prospect of shooting on 35mm under the auspices of his former employers does not seem to have inspired him to put any great effort into trying to create an atmosphere here.

Things are briefly enlivened by the appearance of the always reliable Warren Clarke, who brings a touch of class to his brief but rather touching role as a would-be suitor Ruth meets at her weight loss classes. His dinner table chat-up line - “tell me something Ruth, is your coast clear… man-wise?”- is one for the books. (“My coast is so clear you can see right down to the sea bed,” she replies.)

Sadly however, Warren is soon dispatched, with his death providing the catalyst which leads Ruth to begin digging into the rather low rent skulduggery being perpetrated by the aforementioned funeral directors and the upper-crust proprietor of the clinic.

Initially at least, it must be said that this episode’s horror storyline seems pretty uninspired. As the medical correspondent Ruth consults at her paper concisely observes, we seem to be looking here at a “20th century Burke and Hare” kind of scenario, with the crooked undertakers staging car accidents and selling carcasses to the clinic for their shady medical experiments. Ho hum.

This rather unappealing storyline is not really helped by the fact that ‘The Thirteenth Reunion’ entirely lacks the pulpy / comic book feel I enjoyed so much in ‘Witching Time’. Instead, Jeremy Burnham’s script spends a great deal of time trudging through a load of painfully muddled and over-complicated plot exposition in exacting detail, whilst Sasdy seems reticent to indulge in any of the mild gore or borderline sleaze which enlivened the preceding episode.

Thankfully though, there is at least a rather nice twist in the tale here, which begins to reveal itself when Ruth follows the villians’ breadcrumb trail back to what I’m pretty sure is the same stately home and courtyard where Mocata’s followers park their motorcars mid-way through ‘The Devil Rides Out’ (1968).

Indeed, that film (or, perhaps, ‘Rosemary’s Baby’) is referenced almost immediately thereafter, as Ruth is welcomed inside to enjoy a variation on the traditional “meet the coven” scene, including nods of welcome from the usual elderly dowagers, eminent elders and racist stereotypes of Italian and Chinese people, present to demonstrate the organisation’s international reach, of course. (I particularly liked the notion that a wealthy Hong Kong businessman in 1980 would dress like a disciple of Fu Manchu...)

Crucially however, this mob is not actually a coven as such this time around, but…. well, I’ll refrain from revealing anything further so as to avoid spoiling the surprise for first-time viewers. Word to the wise though: think ‘Shriek of the Mutilated’.

Though I didn’t enjoy it half as much as the preceding episode, this final act helped ensure that ‘The Thirteenth Reunion’ holds up as a reasonably satisfying time-killer despite its shortcomings, seasoned with just enough weird nastiness to keep the teenagers and sundry ne’erdowells who no doubt tuned in back in 1980 hoping for more boobs and blood hanging on for next week’s instalment.

Horror Express: The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes (David Kramarsky / Roger Corman, 1955)

Over the past few years, I’ve got into the habit of tuning in to ‘50s American sci-fi/monster movies for a dose of comforting, mid-week escapism. Perhaps it’s just me, but somehow, that distinctive combination of remote desert town settings, flat, TV-style staging, woozy theremin music, reassuring techno-babble, clean-cut squaresville vibes and that distant patina of eerie, cold war paranoia… all of this just goes down perfectly with a whisky & soda after a hard day in the office (and the short run-times help, too).

Imagine my consternation then when 1955 ‘The Beast with a Million Eyes’ brutally overturned my expectations. Despite boasting Roger Corman as an executive producer (and uncredited director), the opening half hour of this extremely low budget, Palm Springs-shot outing feels a world away from the cheery hi-jinks of Not of This Earth or It Conquered the World. Instead, it presents us with a vignette of bleak, psychologically harrowing b-movie existentialism which Corman’s later collaborator Richard Matheson would have been proud of.

Our setting is an isolated, family-run ranch which has been steadily losing money for three years, or so husband/father Allan (Paul Birch) tells us in voiceover. He feels like a failure, having lost his family’s affections as a result of this financial turmoil, but is unable to find a way to reverse their sorry fate.

Allan’s shrewish wife Carol (Lorna Thayer) is meanwhile introduced to us as a seething vortex of negativity. Trapped in a kitchen she clearly hates with every ounce of her being, she spends her days labouring away at the Sisyphean task of trying to bake cakes, repeatedly burning them, and flying into a rage as a result.

So bitter is Carol that she won’t even allow the couple’s teenage daughter Sandy (Dona Cole) to leave to go to college. “Why should she get the chances I never got?”, she demands to know. Sandy in turn bitterly resents her mother for condemning her to a life of drudgery on the isolated ranch, all culminating in an atmosphere which at times feels as suffocating and inescapable as the pit in which the characters toil in Hiroshi Teshigahara’s existentialist classic ‘Woman of the Dunes’ (1964).

As if all this wasn’t bad enough meanwhile, the family’s problems are silently observed by a lumbering, mute simpleton (Leonard Tarver) who - for reasons that are not really made sufficiently clear until the film’s conclusion - lives in a shack adjoining their house.

Charmingly, this fellow is known to the family simply as “Him” (“he can’t tell us his name, assuming he ever had one,” Sandy sneers), and he seems to spend much of his time shivering on an unkempt mattress next to wall covered in girly pictures - when he’s not spying on the family members or lurking about with a wood axe, that is. Allan insists that “He” is harmless, but the women aren’t so sure, treating him with a mixture of fear and outright contempt.

At the heart of this tsunami of bad vibes, Allan himself remains an inert, helpless figure. Staring out into the desert, he meditates on the threat posed by the dry, lifeless expanse which stretches beyond the limits of his unhappy homestead. “Maybe the hate started out THERE…,” he muses, gazing at gleaming animal bones in the sand.

Already living in vision of the American Dream transfigured into a hermetically-sealed, loveless hellscape, it’s safe to say the last thing any of these folks need is the arrival of a Beast with a Million Eyes. Thoughtfully though, when the film’s allotted visitor from another world does eventually make an appearance, it does so in a manner which initially feels more annoying than actively apocalyptic.

The Beast’s ship (or meteorite, or whatever it is - the nature of the vessel is never really made clear) overshoots the ranch house, breaking all the windows, and shattering Carol’s beloved glassware. Her sense of futile, outraged frustration in the face of this inexplicable domestic calamity feels horribly palpable; as she gazes forlornly at the shards of a water jug, it honestly feels for a moment or two that she might be about to slash her wrists.

Long before it deigns to make any kind of physical appearance however, it becomes clear that The Beast’s modus operandi involves taking psychic control whatever ‘inferior’ intelligences happen to be hanging about in its general vicinity of its landing zone, dispatching them on malign and destructive missions on its behalf. (Herein lies the rationale for the creature’s purported “million eyes”, or so I’m assuming, as it sees through the optics of all the local insects and animals, etc etc.).

So, first a flock of suicidal birds attacks Allan’s station wagon, before the film reaches what is surely it’s nadir (in both emotional and cinematic terms) during a sequence in which the family’s beloved sheepdog Duke allegedly ‘turns bad’ under the influence of the alien entity and attempts to attack Carol whilst she is alone in the house.

I should clarify that, up to this point, ‘The Beast with a Million Eyes’ has been reasonably well made on its own low budget terms, but the problem here is that the production obviously had no means of creating the illusion that poor old Duke had gone crazy / become rabid. True, they manage to rustle up a few close-up insert shots of him growling and bearing his teeth, but in the long shots which comprise the majority of the scene, he just looks like a normal, happy doggie, making Carol’s decision to run screaming in fear and subsequently blast him with a shotgun seem entirely inexplicable in visual terms - as well as making us hate her even more in the process - even as we grudgingly acknowledge the idea the script is trying to convey.

Strangely, the catharsis caused by Duke’s death (along with the impact of the other low level disasters the family have suffered) somehow succeeds in bringing them back together, allowing them to escape the depressive fug in which they were previously trapped and reminding them of the familial bond they all share -- and it is here that the essential point of Tom Filer’s screenplay finally becomes clear.

It is soon noted, y’see, that the alien’s hypnotic powers only have an effect on people when they are alone. When we’re together, when we have LOVE, we’re safe! (Like all malign invaders/super-computers/killer robots etc, the Beast is flummoxed by by the concept of love, although its clumsy voiceover here at least acknowledges a distant, historical memory of such a thing once existing on its long-dead home planet.)

Corny as it may seem in retrospect, this grand theme is actually quite effectively unpacked by Filer’s script, aided by a set of characterisations which are more multi-faceted and psychologically realistic than those generally encountered in ‘50s monster movies. Crucially, the core idea that, beneath all the dysfunctions and resentments inherent in family life, we still share an unbreakable bond with our relatives and life partners, is allowed to develop naturally here, rather than just being preached in our general direction, as was more standard in this genre/era.

Unfortunately however, nobody thought to include poor old “Him” in the group hugs, so… you can probably guess how that whole plotline plays out, although there is at least quite an interesting, socio-political twist thrown in vis-à-vis the revelation of who the hell “He” actually is, which I won’t spoil for you here.

Thematically speaking, I found this story’s emphasis on the virtues of togetherness - and its implied rejection of individual agency - quite interesting, in view of the anti-communist / pro-‘freedom’ ideology which (in allegorical terms at least) was pretty much obligatory in American SF films of this era.

But then, if you look at it another way, I suppose the alien entity’s attempt to create a kind of invasive hive mind provides just as good a stand-in for the Reds as anything else, so ok - fair enough. Nothing to see here folks, just a bit of unusually thoughtful ambiguity on the part of the scriptwriter - let’s move on.

Of course, the philosophical resonance and character drama in ‘Beast with a Million Eyes’ could have soared to Shakespearean heights of achievement, and it still wouldn’t have saved the film from living in reviled infamy in the minds of the millions of ‘50s monster kids who presumably sat bored out their minds in matinee screenings, demanding to know: where in the fucking hell is the Beast with a Million Eyes?!

Legend has it that this was also the reaction of producer James H. Nicholson, whose American Releasing Corporation financed and distributed the film shortly before morphing into the legendary American International Pictures. True to form, they already had the movie pre-booked with title and poster artwork ready to go, so…. WTF are you trying to do to us here, Roger?

Having committed the cardinal sin of turning in a monster movie without a monster, ‘executive producer’ Corman was thus allegedly dispatched to make right on his mistake with a mere $200 in hand, hooking up with master monster sculptor Paul Blaisdell to produce… well, for the most part, they seem to have resorted to just using a kettle with some flashing lights on the top, to be honest.

Seen in insert shots earlier in the film, this object seems very small (like some kind of sensor or radio receiver or something?), so when we see the surviving characters approach it during the film’s final minutes and discovering that it is actually supposed to be big - like, a spaceship, with a monster in it - the effect is disorientating.

When the door on the side of thing finally opens, we belatedly get a 30 second glimpse of some kind of scary, brain-headed monster thing (with TWO eyes, for the record), somewhat reminiscent of the creatures from the same year’s ‘This Island Earth’. In an attempt to boost the impact of this revelation, these shots are super-imposed with the image of a big, throbbing eyeball, lending them a rather wild, proto-psychedelic quality which could, at a stretch, perhaps be seen as a very early indicator of the direction Corman’s directorial work would take during the 1960s.

All this is actually quite cool, and psychotronic as heck, but it’s likely audiences at the time merely saw it as a load of cheapjack crap - a pathetic, last minute attempt to try to justify the movie’s title and poster artwork, delivering far too little, far too late -forever condemning ‘Beast..’ to the lowest rungs of the monster movies canon.

Viewed with nearly 70 years-worth(!) of hindsight however, ‘Beast with a Million Eyes’ feels like a more-than-respectable addition to the Corman/AIP catalogue. Sure, it suffers more than usual from budgetary constraints, and the lack of a tight directorial hand on the reins allows some extremely clumsy elements (eg, the dog scene and the monster’s ridiculous voiceover) to make it into the final cut, but at the same time, the film’s strong writing and well-rounded characters nonetheless keep us engaged throughout.

As such, it to some extent helped establish a formula which Corman would re-visit again and again over the next few years, with increasing confidence and success each time around. In marking the start of this cycle, it deserves to be viewed sympathetically as a minor landmark in American genre cinema, as well as for its own not insignificant points of interest.

Hammer House of Horror: Witching Time (Don Leaver, 1980)

For reasons of pure cinephile snobbishness, I have never previously bothered to watch the thirteen episodes of the ‘Hammer House of Horror’ TV series first broadcast on ITV in 1980.

My feeling, I suppose, was that this series would almost certainly prove a tacky and opportunistic post-script to the great studio’s legacy, best avoided for fear of disappointment.

But, contemplating this decision few months back, it occurred to me that these episodes were shot on 35mm (meaning that they pretty much, almost, look like movies in the new blu-ray restorations). They did reunite at least some significant figures from Hammer’s golden era, and…. well, basically I love shoddy British horror anthologies and ‘70s TV, so what the hell is my problem, anyway?

As such, this autumn has presented the perfect opportunity for me to pause my ongoing attempt to watch the entire run of ‘The Sweeney’ and instead get stuck into the best stab at Hammer grandeur that the combined forces of Roy Skeggs, ITC and ITV could muster at the dark dawn of Thatcherism.

First stop: the awkwardly named ‘Witching Time’! (Do you think maybe they were going for ‘Witching Hour’, but then some smartarse pointed out that nothing in the script actually happens at midnight, so…?)

Anyway! After noting how uncharacteristically contemporary and cool James Bernard’s pop/library-influenced theme for ‘Hammer House of Horror’ sounds, my first thought here was: boy, Jon Finch had certainly taken a tumble since his glowering, Byronic glory days in Polanski’s ‘Macbeth’ and Robert Fuest’s ‘The Final Programme’ (not to mention ‘The Vampire Lovers’, which presumably helped to get him this gig).

Instead, we here find him sporting a ratty-looking proto-mullet with a horrendous, Ian Dury-style kiss curl, resplendent in a grubby green polo shirt for his role as cuckolded horror movie soundtrack composer David Winter. Little wonder that he has lost the affections of his wife Mary, a triumphant exemplar of horse-riding, champagne-quaffing, upwardly mobile ‘80s womanhood, played to perfection by the fittingly named Prunella Gee.

Mary is an actress (she appears in the horror movie David is busy scoring), and I suppose she must be a fairly successful one, because I don’t think anyone ever acquired a renovated 17th century farmhouse with a Ferrari in the garage off the back of recording synth music for ‘80s British horror films. Indeed, Mary’s social aspirations are made clear by the fact that, when we first meet her, she is in bed with the smug, tweed-clad local doctor, played by Ian McCulloch (the star of ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’ and ‘Contamination’, not the Echo & The Bunnymen bloke, obvs). Phwoar!

As David sits home alone, sipping Chivas Regal and trying out some primo elbows-on-the-keyboard drones as he ruminates on his marital failures, an unscheduled lightning storm and subsequent power failure heralds the arrival of Lucinda Jessup (Patricia Quinn from ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’), a 17th century witch who has escaped a grisly death at the stake by travelling through time, somehow arriving in the 20th century sporting an awful chemical-hued perm, looking rather like Saxana’s embarrassing backwoods auntie or something.

Clearly the weak link here in terms of acting, Quinn enunciates her lines in overstated, am-dram fashion with an affected West Country drawl, making her less the seductive, menacing supernatural presence the script presumably intended and more, just, well… really annoying. In fact, there are sections of ‘Witching Time’ in which Finch and Gee seem more as if they’re dealing with an especially irksome houseguest than the spirit of a malign, vengeful witch.

Having said that though, we can’t really blame Quinn for these failings, as evidently no one on either side of the camera was really taking this shit seriously. The cast seem to have been instructed to play it for pure camp, and are happy to oblige, with Gee in particular going for gold; her gurning and eye-rolling as she extracts nails from a voodoo doll modelled on herself must be seen to be believed.

Equally fruity, Lennard Pearce (Granddad from the early series’ of ‘Only Fools & Horses’, no less) pops up for a great cameo, distantly reminding me of Ernest Thesinger or Graham Crowden in the role of a helpful local rector who fills Mary in with the necessary dose of exposition re: historical witch trials and so forth.

Meanwhile, I also very much enjoyed McCulloch’s turn as one of those great movie doctors who speaks to his patients on a first name basis and is always happy to make house calls in the middle of the night on the vaguest of pretexts, whether to dispense handfuls of potentially hallucinogenic pills or to deal with time-travelling lunatics locked in the spare bedroom. (Not an NHS man then, I’m assuming.)

Somewhat more explicit than anything I would have expected to see on UK TV in 1980, ‘Witching Time’ also boasts brief yet utterly gratuitous nudity from both its female leads, along with more than respectable quotient of blood, thunder and general hullaballoo, along with spirited use of broadcast acceptable not-quite-swear words like “STRUMPET” and “WHORE” - both of which which scriptwriter Anthony Read seems to have enjoyed so much that they even get scrawled on the walls in lipstick by our errant witch.

Though not in any sense a good tale well told, ‘Witching Time’ is nonetheless an uproariously entertaining bit of pulp horror nonsense, snappily directed by TV veteran Don Leaver, who avoids both artistry and boredom in equal measure. Its absurdist vision of demonic domestic melodrama actually rather put me in mind of Peter Sasdy’s I Don’t Want To Be Born / The Devil Within Her - which, around here at least, stands as a compliment.

It would have been all too easy for ‘Hammer House of Horror’ to veer straight toward stodgy, respectable drawing room Victoriana, so I heartily commend the team behind this debut episode for steering things in completely the opposite direction, offering up a shamelessly prurient and cartoon-ish vision of 1980s Home Counties exploitation, guaranteed to disgust those fuddie-duddies at the Radio Times and leave the Mary Whitehouse brigade spitting feathers.

The fact that ‘Hammer House of Horror’ was broadcast just on the cusp of the Thatcherite resurgence of social conservatism, and several years before the “Video Nasties” furore, is hopefully instructive in this regard - but I suppose we’ll find out in due course whether future episodes in the series followed Leaver & Read’s lead and matched the kind of dizzying heights scaled / depths plumbed here. Watch this space!

Horror Express: The Climax (George Waggner, 1944)

Mild horror elements and the presence of Boris Karloff provide intermittent points of interest in this otherwise justifiably forgotten Universal Technicolor spectacular, which seems to have been conceived largely as a means to squeeze a bit more revenue out of the set dressing, costumes and female lead from the studio’s commercially successful 1943 version of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’.

It tells you something about the extent to which tastes change over the decades that, back in the ’40s, someone at Universal apparently emerged from a screening of the already notoriously watered down ‘Phantom..’ remake and thought, “you know what that needed? Less mystery, less of that guy in the mask - more singing and frilly dresses.”

Even by the standards of a frothy musical melodrama, the narrative here feels woefully half-hearted - a grab-bag of poverty row clichés and rehashed ‘Phantom..’ elements, devoid of any real suspense or surprise. As for the film’s frequent, and lengthy, musical numbers meanwhile…. christ almighty.

I mean, I’m certainly no opera buff, but even if I had ambitions in that direction, I’m pretty sure that a series of light comic librettos written by the director of ‘The Wolf Man’ would probably not be the best place to begin my education, especially when performed by Susanna Foster in glass-shatteringly shrill fashion.

Indeed, it’s pretty difficult to buy the idea that Karloff’s brooding, self-serious character would give a hoot about the performance of the kind of chintzy, insipid material which apparently comprises his opera house’s bread and butter.

(In case you were wondering, Karloff portrays a sinister doctor employed by the opera house to minster to its performers. Some years back, he throttled his one true love - a preternaturally gifted soprano - to death, and has subsequently led a furtive existence as a kind of love-lorn closet psychopath, determined to ensure no one performs her signature piece, ‘The Magic Voice’.)

On the plus side, the film’s Technicolor photography is pretty ravishing, and, even if the stage performances and backstage stuff is sometimes a bit eye-watering, the darker scenes in Karloff’s office / lair convey a hazy, mouldy kind of atmosphere which puts me in mind of Warner Bros’ early ‘30s colour horrors (cf: Doctor X).

It’s interesting too meanwhile to see '40s Universal horror’s specialist in *cough* ‘ethnic’ roles, Turhan Bey, cast here as the earnest romantic lead, in which capacity he proves quite likeable (certainly moreso than the bland, whitebread chumps who usually occupy such roles).

It’s also a nice surprise to see Karloff getting the chance to play a flat-out malevolent, Svengali-esque villain here, rather than the ‘sympathetic, bumbling scientist’ bit he usually ended up trotting out during periods in which horror was out of fashion. As with Claude Rains in the previous year’s ‘Phantom..’, his performance is actually pretty brilliant - a “worth the entry price alone” level plus point, assuming you can tune out all the rubbish that’s going on around him and concentrate instead upon his vengeful, soft-spoken glowering.

The wild, Vaseline-lensed opening flashback sequence, in which Karloff’s character viciously disposes of his aforementioned one-true-love, is likewise pretty damn great, with the OTT colours and lighting effects lending a bit of a ‘50s exotica kind of feel to proceedings, whilst the malicious doctor’s eventual downfall in the final reel also has a nice gothic kick to it, pre-empting the fiery denouements routinely inflicted upon Vincent Price in Corman’s Poe cycle a generation later.

Outside of that ten minutes-or-so of rewarding screentime however, I fear ‘The Climax’ stands as a cultural artefact whose relevance as an entertainment for humans has long since dried up and crumbled to dust. Here in our benighted 21st century, it’s a recommendation for Universal/Karloff completists who don't mind keeping a finger on the ‘fast forward’ button only, I suspect.

Horror Express: Draguse ou Le Manoir Infernal (Patrice Rhomm, 1974)

“Just my luck. Some people meet with Ursula Andress or Brigitte Bardot in their dreams. I always meet with some crazy woman who thinks she’s Nostradamus…” 

Also unleashed upon the Parisian public as ‘Perversiones Lubriques’, ‘Draguse ou Le Manoir Infernal’ is a horror-tinged French sex film directed by Patrice Rhomm, a filmmaker probably best known (relatively speaking) for contributing to the script for the thoroughly batzo Italio-Belgium trash classic ‘The Devil’s Nightmare’ (1972).

Armed with the knowledge, the opening ten minutes of ‘Draguse’ had me ready to declare Rhomm an unheralded pulp horror savant. Sadly, I fear things went a little awry as my viewing progressed, but… let’s kick off with the good stuff, shall we?

Enlivened by the strains of a delightfully spooky, propulsive library track, ‘Draguse’s opening credits give us skeletal trees under an overcast sky and brooding shots of one of those shabby / decrepit rural houses so believe of low budget French horror.

As a handheld camera proceeds to explore the house’s suitably rundown interior, silver-haired Eurocine mainstay Olivier Mathot begins to deliver a monologue in voiceover, explaining that he is being transported to this house in his dreams, wherein his spirit is imprisoned within a pentangle (nattily represented by a mirror with what looks like some cake icing daubed upon it) as he is forced to witness the lewd and perverse displays enacted for him by a witch named Draguse (Eurocine & Jess Franco regular Monica Swinn).

Soon, a flash of lightning turns the pink candles black (frankly neither colour is really suitable for the lighting needs of god-fearing citizens, I fear), a gnarly-looking skull and crossbones appears upon the frame of some kind of antique furnace-type thing, and Draguse baptises the skull with a trickle of deep red blood.

With these formalities out of the way, more rockin’ library music kicks in, as Swinn treats us to some lascivious dancing in a baby doll nightie, before spreading her legs across a nearby armchair and proceeding to pleasure herself (non-penetratively, I hasten to add) with a massive bone.

My god, what is this movie? It’s demented, and amazing. Total ‘70s witch-smut nirvana.

It is at this point however that Monsieur Mathot awakens with the standard issue “whaaa, where am I?!” comic flourish, and we discover that, like seemingly all people in ‘70s French movies, he actually lives in a cramped, high rise Parisian apartment with amazing wallpaper and flowery bed sheets, shared on this occasion with his perpetually naked and very much up-for-it wife (Martine Fléty, who also appeared in a number of Jess Franco films in the late ‘70s).

Much to Ms Fléty’s chagrin however, Mathot soon turns out to be essaying that most tedious of sex comedy clichés, the serious-minded, frigid academic who steadfastly ignores the parade of willing female flesh which is constantly paraded before him wherever he goes.

A historian by trade, Mathot’s character dreams of publishing his great historical monograph on The Queens of Scotland, but his publisher (played by director Rhomm) has other ideas - namely, inexplicably hiring this sexless stick in the mud to write a series of erotic novels for the paperback market.

Taking this new assignment rather more seriously than anyone presumably intended, Mathot declares that he will relocate to the countryside and rent the house seen during the opening, in order to gain the solitude he needs to compose his new literary masterworks. In a turn of events more far-fetched than any of the film’s supernatural elements, his publisher not only voices his approval for this idea, but even volunteers to cover the rent.

Before heading out to the sticks however, our hero begins his ‘research’ by conducting an in-depth survey of Paris’s adult entertainment industry - or, in other words, Rhomm’s camera goes on a lengthy, handheld ramble around the exteriors of various sex shops and porno cinemas, whilst Mathot contributes a witless, nattering voiceover over the top.

I’m assuming that the film’s original audience (who would have been more than familiar with such sights) must have found the inclusion of this time-killing filler material absolutely infuriating, but the passage of a few decades has ironically turned it into an absolute goldmine for 21st century smut historians, giving us a fleeting glimpse of all manner of funky, pop art-influenced décor and long-forgotten posters and cinema hoardings, not least some promo material for the Jess Franco sex comedy ‘Le Jouisseur’ (aka ‘Sexy Erotic Job’, aka ‘Roland, The Sexiest Man in the World’). So, count that as another point in ‘Draguse’s favour, if you are thus inclined.

When Mathot eventually arrives at his shabby rural hideaway (which, with typical porno logic, is still close enough to town for him to walk to the red light district to buy cigarettes), we might reasonably have expected the film’s horror quotient to pick up again, but sadly that’s not quite the way things pan out, despite a few spooky manifestations from the titular Draguse.

Instead, the movie veers off into a rather lackadaisical series of disconnected vignettes. First, Mathot picks up a prostitute (Sylvia Bourdon, who went on to appear the following year in the inserts shot by Jean Rollin for the bastardised porno version of his own ‘Lips of Blood’). Then, once that’s all over with, he dresses up like Count Yorga and visits a fun fair, somehow convincing an idle, hippy-ish bloke to return with him to the house to have sex with the (apparently now corporeal) Draguse, who subsequently kills him, leaving Mathot (who is apparently now dreaming this whole escapade) to dispose of the body.

After dawdling well past the half-way mark with this sort of thing, ‘Draguse..’ then makes a belated attempt to transform itself into a kind of Amicus-style anthology movie, as Swinn turns up in a second role, playing a sort of “real life” avatar of Draguse.

Ostensibly a secretary who has been dispatched by Mathot’s publisher to help him get his shit together, this lady begins telling him erotic / macabre tales ostensibly based on the house’s sordid history, each of which is dramatised as a stand-alone vignette featuring Mathot as the male protagonist.

So, first we enjoy the ‘tale’ (if it can indeed be termed as such) of a stuffy tutor trysting with a hotpants-clad nymphet (Danièle Nègre). Then, we bear witness to a Nazisploitation-themed light bondage threesome, in which a Hitler-fixated photographer (Mathot again) lures a model (Claudine Beccarie, who appeared in the original version of ‘Lips of Blood’) back to his lair for some jackbooted hi-jinks with a dominatrix (French porno regular Erika Cool).

I could make a point of noting that everyone present in this scene (plus Swinn to boot) reunited two years later for Eurocine’s epic disasterpiece ‘Train Spécial pour SS’ (aka ‘Special Train for Hitler’)… but to be honest, material like this was so ubiquitous in the lower depths of Western European exploitation cinema during this era that you’d almost be surprised if a film featuring Mathot and Swinn didn’t include somebody busting out the swastikas and riding crops at some point.

(A special mention should probably be made however of the fact that, once several Nazi marching songs have been aired on the gramophone, the reminder of the scene is soundtracked with what sounds like a recording of chugging train carriages. Tasteful.)

Anyway - by this point, any vestige of the witchy / horror aesthetic featured in ‘Draguse’s opening scenes is long gone, and sadly it never really returns. Towards the end of the film, there’s even a suggestion that the ‘real life’ Draguse (the secretary lady) may have been spiking Mathot’s drinks, causing him to hallucinate, thus conveniently nixing the film’s supernatural element altogether. (Given that secretary-Swinn doesn’t even turn up until two thirds of the way through the movie, this explanation …. well, hell, it makes about as much sense as anything else here I suppose…)

Whilst ‘Draguse’ is eventually a bit of a bust in terms of horror, it should be noted that it is equally unsatisfactory as a sex film, in spite of all the kinky shenanigans outlined above.

Attaining modest historical significance as the first domestic French production to be awarded the country’s ‘X’ certificate (meaning that it could be legally screened with unsimulated sex scenes), the film nonetheless continues to inhabit an uncomfortable no man’s land between ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ cores.

A few, fleeting moments of explicit ‘action’ are included, but the film still largely relies on simulated coupling, often confined to long shots and lacking the artful/imaginative approach which allowed directors like Franco to liven up such ‘hard soft’ material in this period. (And yes, I’m going for a record for “most references to Jess Franco in a non-Franco review” here - thanks for noticing.)

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the middle-aged Mathot - who ostensibly takes part in every sex scene - did not ‘do’ hardcore, meaning that an obvious body double is employed for his sporadic full frontal / below the belt shots. Disastrously however, it appears that even Mathot’s allotted stunt-cock had trouble performing, lending the film’s sex scenes an awkward, fragmentary quality which somehow feels far more furtive and unsavoury than the, uh, ‘natural flow’, shall we say, of the full-on pornography which would come to dominate low budget French film production over the next few years.

Despite the fact that it conspicuously fails in pretty much everything it set out to achieve however, I must confess that - for some peculiar reason - I found ‘Draguse ou Le Manoir Infernal’ both exceptionally charming and hugely enjoyable.

I’m not sure I can quite explain why this is the case. Perhaps it was watching those Jean Rollin softcore movies all those years ago which warped my brain, or perhaps my recent enthusiasm for the films of Michel Lemoine has something to do with it [see my write-up on his ‘Les Désaxées’ here], but I just love the wonky, off-kilter, frankly ridiculous world in which these pre-hardcore French erotic films take place.

Even in a frankly shabby, low budget effort like this, it just all feels like so much fun; it’s all so inherently, casually surrealistic, full of bright, comic book-like colours and weird, canned music, interspersed with time-killing scenes in which characters sit in outdoor cafes or on patios, sipping white wine and having earnest conversations about utterly irrelevant topics.

In this particular instance, Patrice Rhomm directs with such a hap-hazard, “eh, what the hell” type disregard for narrative and cinematic logic - never mind the expectations of his chosen genres - that this strange effect is only intensified, adding an “anything could happen next, and WE DON’T PARTICULARLY CARE if it does” type insouciance to proceedings which I can’t help but get a kick out of.

So, the next time a furtive man approaches you in the park to ask whether you’d like to go back to his country house and have sex with a spectral witch, why not consider putting your finer feelings aside, and simply replying “well, I’m not doing anything else this afternoon, so, eh, why not?” Then finish off your unfiltered gitane, pull on your fringed velvet jacket and shuffle off after him…. as long as the funky harpsichord plays, you’ll be just fine.

Breakfast in the Ruins: Resurrection.

 

 * click *

Hello? Hello…?

Is there anybody out there..?

So, I just thought I’d give a quick heads-up to any long-time readers, old friends or other foolhardy individuals who have seen fit to keep this blog on their feeds / favourites lists through these dark months of silence, letting you know that, after a very stressful year, I’m gradually returning to a more normal pace of life. Which means, amongst other things, that I’ve recently found some time to start writing about movies and books again, and I’ve really been enjoying it too.

In fact, I’m genuinely thrilled that, in a few days, it will be October, bringing with it the annual challenge of trying to watch / read / write about something horror-related every single day leading up to Halloween.

And what’s more, I’m ready for it this time -- I’ve been preparing. After months of neglecting this blog, I now suddenly have multiple posts pretty much ready to go, just waiting to be spread out nicely across the first week or two of the month, whilst I (hopefully) work on stuff to fill the second half.

So confident am I in fact that I’m going to start early; our first Horror Express review will be in-coming tomorrow, and I’ll try to keep things ticking over after few days thereafter.

Dark gods willing, I may even be able to return to an on-going schedule of regular posting thereafter, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. So for now - welcome back, and my humble thanks for sticking around. The Sabbath beckons…