Escape from the Asylum

GHOST STORY (1974)
KILLER'S MOON (1978)

Even though GHOST STORY won Best Picture at the Sitges and Paris Film Festivals, it was never released theatrically, languishing on late-night TV before resurfacing on home video a decade later under the title MADHOUSE MANSION (to avoid confusion with Peter Straub's best-selling novel Ghost Story, which was filmed in 1981).

STEPHEN Weeks' GHOST STORY and Alan Birkinshaw's KILLER'S MOON are two films that feature Droog-like asylum escapees, but in very different styles. M.R. James meets P.G. Woodhouse in GHOST STORY, where three mismatched ex-university chaps are haunted in a stately house. Weeks' slow-burning chiller is set in 1930s England, where McFayden (Murray Melvin) invites former college associates Duller (Vivian Mackerell) and Talbot (Larry Dann) to spend a few days at his recently inherited isolated mansion. McFayden eventually reveals rumours that the house is haunted and it is the sensible Talbot - rather than spiritualist Duller - who becomes susceptible to a demonic antique doll and a supernatural gateway which shows Robert (Leigh Lawson) incarcerate his sister Sophy (Marianne Faithfull) in a nearby asylum for incestuous desires. The institution is run by Dr Borden (Anthony Bate) and Matron (Barbara Shelley), and when Sophy's former servant Miss Rennie (Penelope Keith) attempts to free her, the inmates (all played with relish by members of a hippy commune) accidentally escape and run riot.

Tired of behind-the-scenes complications on I, MONSTER and GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, Weeks co-wrote, produced and directed the picture under his own "Stephen Weeks Company," so he would have full artistic control. Shooting most of the film in South India gives GHOST STORY a fittingly otherworldly detachment, where the colonial architecture and sun-baked locations act as a backdrop to an exaggerated, dream-state Englishness which is further enhanced by its time-lapping narrative and an atmospheric, experimental score by Pink Floyd collaborator Ron Geesin. The performances are all first rate, especially a post-Rolling Stones Faithfull - who arrived five weeks late on the shoot with her heroin-dealing boyfriend in tow - perfectly cast as the doomed innocent, and GHOST STORY can also boast the only major role of the late Mackerell, Bruce Robinson's inspiration for WITHNAIL AND I. Unsurprisingly, the actor talks like Richard E. Grant, and you can hear traces of Withnail in his indignation at being served a jam sandwich.  

Imagine a film fused with the backwoods sleaze of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, CARRY ON CAMPING, Linda Hayden's sister Jane, and a shot of the old ultra-violence, you would arrive at KILLER'S MOON.

In comparison, KILLER'S MOON is a notorious, badly misconceived slice of Britsploitation. A coach populated by the kind of people who only would appear in 1970s British films - a driver from ON THE BUSES, prim and proper school teachers, and a group of school girls all played by actresses in their twenties - are on their way to a singing contest in Edinburgh when their vehicle brakes down on a backwoods country road. A local groundskeeper leads them to a hotel where they can spend the night, run by Mrs May (Hilda Braid). The bus driver (comedian Chubby Oates) isn’t so lucky, as he meets four men as he goes back to sleep on his stranded vehicle: Mr Smith (Nigel Gregory), Mr Muldoon (Paul Rattee), Mr Jones (Peter Spraggon), and Mr Trubshaw (David Jackson). The men are escaped mental patients in an induced LSD-addled state, who are convinced they are living a shared dream in which they are free to rape and murder.

Exactly why this LSD state is good therapy for the escapees is one of the film's many mysteries. In fact, it is difficult to conclude what is the most unbelievable element: is it the fact that the film actually enjoyed a theatrical release after being granted an uncut X certificate by the BBFC, or is it the debacle was co-scripted by Birkinshaw's sister Fay Weldon, who goes uncredited. Or is it the crass dialogue, which includes "all men want to kill their mothers - isn't that what they say?" and "look, you were only raped. As long as you don't tell anyone about it, you'll be alright." Fittingly for such a demented release, Hannah - a three-legged Doberman Pinscher - gives the best performance. Supposedly attacked by the escapees at the beginning, in reality the dog was awarded the canine V.C. in 1974 for defending her master in an armed robbery - during which she was shot and had to have a leg amputated. Hannah's bravery hit the headlines when her owner - the landlord of the Cheeky Chappie public house in Brixton - was held at gun-point after closing time.

Santa Slayer

DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS (1984)

“Do you think we might have a psychopath on our hands?” Wearing a distorting plastic mask, a hooded killer is terrorising London Santa's in Britain's answer to the American slasher craze of the 1980s.

WITH a scene of 198 naked, elderly men corralled in an electrified reindeer pen, the release of Finnish horror RARE EXPORTS: A CHRISTMAS TALE is set to rekindle interest in the sleazy sub-genre of mean-spirited Christmas cinema. Origins of this particular type of film can be traced back to the Mexican-made SANTA CLAUS in 1959, which displays both a nauseatingly wholesome attitude to its hero and near surreal art direction. It features Santa battling Satan, who sends bad dreams to innocent children and inspires them to break windows and steal toys. The original killer Santa appeared in the celebrated And All Through the House segment of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, before the festive season was the setting for two influential slashers released in 1974: the sorority-house based BLACK CHRISTMAS and the giallo-like SILENT NIGHT, BLOODY NIGHT. The most notorious, SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT is actually nothing special, but came along at the wrong time and felt the brunt of a slasher-weary protest movement during its 1980s explosion. Rather than following the mold of these previous entries, DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS makes Santa the victim, focusing on the search for a London serial killer who slays Shopping Centre Father Christmas's.

The film is associated with a long list of cult personalities. Producers Stephen Minasian and Dick Randall had previously been involved with FRIDAY THE 13TH and PIECES; Derek Ford, a director and writer of sex films throughout the 1960s and 70s, wrote the screenplay; Alan Birkinshaw, who helmed the notorious KILLER'S MOON - here credited as Al McGoohan - is "assistant director"; and Des Dolan (the guiding light behind the Go Video label) provides the score. Fallen star Edmund Purdom heads the cast as Scotland Yard detective Ian Harris, and set dressing is provided by Caroline Munro cameoing as herself, and sex starlets Pat Astley (as a nude model) and Paula Meadows (as the London Dungeon secretary). In his final film Alan Lake plays journalist Giles, a fittingly seedy role to end a seedy life; a notorious heavy drinker who had punched an extra on the set of THE PLAYBIRDS, he was most famous for being the third husband - and attempted murderer - of Diana Dors, before shooting himself in 1984.

Why has a killer such an apparent and vile disgust for Santa and the festive holiday? The answer is supplied in this obligatory childhood flash-back scene.

This role call of suspect talent could not prevent DON'T OPEN TILL CHRISTMAS suffering one of the most troubled shoots in British cinema history. The film took two years to complete and scenes were reshot and rearranged endlessly, with Birkinshaw, Ford, Purdom and editor Ray Selfe all taking turns in the director's chair. What eventually surfaces looks suitably filthy and is technically inept, but at least the body count is kept consistent and the deaths bloody and inventive; one Father Christmas has his penis cut off with a razor, while another has his face thrust into roasting chestnuts. There are also scenes that exude a sleazy charm: the photographer snapping nudes in his grubby bedsit could have come straight from any British smut-fest of the previous decade, and Munro's glittery performance of an instantly forgettable song (Warrior of Love) concludes with a scream when a Santa with a machete in his face comes up through the stage trapdoor.