Primal Disorder

QUATERMASS (1979)
THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION (1979)

Sir John Mills is the fragile face of dystopian Britain in ITV's QUATERMASS serial, here making the cover of Time Out. Mills' performance has largely been underappreciated over the years, but as Tim Lucas points out in his Video Watchdog review (#106, April 2004), the actor is "steeped in the irony of a visionary whose ideas have been perverted and abused by the less visionary corporations he served."

NIGEL Kneale's long awaited fourth Quatermass television serial - directed by Piers Haggard - finally arrived on ITV in 1979, four years after the BBC's option had expired. Suffering from a long gestation period, and a fanfare that was quashed by a technicians strike which delayed the broadcast, QUATERMASS is doom-laden and lethargic. In a decaying near future, an elderly Professor Quatermass (a stoic John Mills, persuaded into the role by his wife) longs to be reunited with his runaway granddaughter. During a joint United States/Soviet space venture, the hardware is struck by an unearthly beam of light; it soon transpires that this ray is also striking ancestral gathering points around the globe - including stone circles and Wembley Stadium - and harvesting the Planet People, disillusioned youth of Earth who long for their misguided paradise in the stars. With the help of a radio telescope centre barely run by Joe Kapp (Simon MacCorkindale), and latterly a group of Pensioners, the rocket scientist succeeds in repelling the alien intrusion, but only at the cost of his and his granddaughter's life (thanks to a big nuclear "red button.")

Originally written in 1973, Kneale's exploration of youth alienation and the space race were relevant, but by 1979 are too distant topics to act as a successful hook. Kneale's often prophetic reading of society is limited to the Planet People being forerunners to New Age travellers, yet the writer had intended them to be proto-punks. In fact, QUATERMASS is more a wearying of life story, where youth and the elderly are warring species (and complete with internal frictions; even the usually sedate Planet People have their Kickalong (Ralph Arliss), apparently modelled on Charles Manson). The writer was usually lukewarm at best about the performers of his work, here labelling Mills as not having the authority of Quatermass, and questioned the casting of MacCorkindale as a rational and intelligent man; he also dismisses Barbara Kellerman, who play's Kapp's wife Clare, for her bouts of smiling. But Kneale himself must shoulder a great portion of the blame for a story that never permeates past its core idea.

Ashen-faced Simon MacCorkindale, Barbara Kellerman and John Mills in the TV Times listing of the second episode 'Lovely Lightning' (31st October 1979).

Haggard, who had provided a blueprint for folk horror with BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW, firmly places the Planet People within their spiritual, sexual landscape, but this is no longer a world for myth and legend, only one that reflects a Nazi concentration camp iconography: once harvested, ashes hang thick in the air and powdered flesh and bone seep into the earth (and to further a quasi-Third Reich agenda, in a dirty, makeshift London marketplace, books are on offer only because they can "burn well.") Unfortunately the director provides everything too flat for its own good, undermining what should have been the showpiece sequence of the Wembley stadium incarcerations, which is only memorable for Quatermass' dialogue on the sky ("the colour of vomit.") 

This relentless sombre atmosphere inevitably created a muted Press reaction, describing QUATERMASS as "pedestrian," "capable humdrum" and even "mumbo-jumbo." This was particularly galling for the amount of money and extensive location filming invested in it; made on 35mm Panavision stock by the Euston Films umbrella of Thames, a lucrative £1.25m budget was made available for the four-part programme and a re-edited, 106-minute theatrical version for overseas (entitled THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION). This truncated cut basically sliced in half the first, second and fourth episodes, with only brief sequences used from episode three, where Quatermass is saved and befriended by the underground OAPs. However, in the post-STAR WARS world there was little room for downbeat cinema science fiction, and the film version made only sporadic appearances across North American, and the intended UK dates never transpired.

Green and Unpleasant Land

PLAY FOR TODAY - ROBIN REDBREAST (1970)
THE SHOUT (1978)
THE MAD DEATH (1983)

Esteemed TV players Bernard Hepton and Anna Cropper's different world's collide in the rural horror ROBIN REDBREAST.

BROADCAST as part of the BBC's PLAY FOR TODAY strand, ROBIN REDBREAST is a folk horror rarity that acts as a precursor and influence to the more hard-hitting THE WICKER MAN and BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW. Written by John Bowen and directed by James MacTaggart, it is the story of Norah Palmer (Anna Cropper), a London-based TV script editor who temporarily escapes to the country in order to recuperate after a break-up. But with mice scurrying in the walls, birds coming down the chimney and local eccentrics like housekeeper Mrs Vigo (Freda Bamford) and Mr Fisher (Bernard Hepton) dispensing weird customs, Anna becomes increasingly isolated and lost within her new environment. When she falls pregnant after a one-night stand with SS-obsessed gamekeeper Rob (Andrew Bradford) - who she first encounters practising karate in the woods wearing only his underpants - Anna is embroidered in a conspiracy to prevent her leaving the village.

The class struggle theme is amplified by Anna being such a liberated, modern woman and Rob a himbo who looks to the history of the Third Reich to generate monosymbolic conversation. They have nothing in common but sleep together in the onset of fear, instincts which adhere to the programme's yearning to turn back to more straightforward times. The countryside may be full of shunned micro societies, but can the urban development of "civilised" post-war Britain - and the intrusion of the outsider - really ever erode the colour of tradition and ritual from a brutal prehistory? Talky but engrossing, ROBIN REDBREAST's slow burning dictum - and the inclusion of snobbish London friends Madge (Amanda Walker) and Jake (Julian Holloway) - makes a case that our green and unpleasant land will always govern our prudish endeavours.

The soul of a housewife is manipulated by a magical stranger in THE SHOUT; reverting to an Aboriginal state, Rachel scuttles on all fours through her cluttered kitchen.

Though THE SHOUT is connected with Aboriginal Outback culture, and was the first British film of Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, Englishness seeps through every frame. Shot in and around Braunton Burrows and Saunton Sands in North Devon - a stone's throw from this writer's home - the film shows a cricket match between the staff and inmates of an asylum. One of the patients, Charles Crossley (Alan Bates), is running the scoring hut, where he tells Robert (Tim Curry) a strange story ("every word of what I'm going to tell you is true. Although I'm telling it in a different way, it's always the same story … I vary it a little because I like to keep it alive.") Told in flashback, we see married couple Anthony (John Hurt) and Rachel (Susannah York); Anthony is a Church organist/composer, and Rachel a staid housewife. Crossley appears and announces that he has returned from eighteen years in the Australian outback, where he lived among the Aborigines and studied their magic. Even though the stranger tells the couple of him killing his own children, Crossley moves in with Anthony and Rachel permanently, establishing a spell over the household.

An ambitious but perplexing film, THE SHOUT opens with the featured couple asleep on a beach, both having the same dream of a witch doctor in a tailcoat. Crossley explains this was one of his teachers, and we learn more about the strangers powers: the ability to take another man's wife by simply keeping an item of her clothing - in this case a sandal buckle - and the secret of The Shout, a cry so despairing that it can kill. Crossley creates a disquieting, intimate awkwardness, made the more terrifying because his incantations are introduced naturally into country village life. The production's otherworldly quality is further enhanced by its use of an electronic and avant-garde score by Genesis linchpins Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. In fact the film's haunting central theme 'From the Undertow' was the opening track on Banks' solo debut album A Curious Feeling released a year later.

The THREADS of the Rabies world, the BBC Scotland drama THE MAD DEATH was made two years before its eventual transmission date.

In this age of bird flu and ebola, it is easy to forget that in the 80s Rabies was the virulent virus. The BBC had already featured the condition in a third season episode of SURVIVORS, but THE MAD DEATH tackles Rabies full-on. Based on the Nigel Slater book of the same name, writer Sean Hignett and director Robert Young examine the effects of a notional outbreak of "the mad death" on our shores. Opening with a titles sequence where a voice whispers 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' over a distorted image of a fox, the terror begins when an infected cat is smuggled by her owner from France into Scotland. When the feline is run over by a car, its body is eaten by a fox. The spread amongst the animal population goes undetected until the first human, womanising American businessman Tom Siegler (Ed Bishop), befriends the infected animal. After Siegler is confirmed with the disease in hospital, the government calls in leading Rabies specialist Michael Hilliard (Richard Heffer) and Doctor Anne Maitland (Barbara Kellerman). Maitland's jealous partner Johnny Dalry (Richard Morant) creates a tepid love triangle which fails to hold interest against a number of alarmingly brutal scenes.

By addressing humanity's fear of disease with a love of animals, THE MAD DEATH has a solid premise. While most commentators mention the shopping centre containment in episode two as the highlight, the demise of Tom in the first part is more dramatically satisfying. Benefitting from focuses on the declining health of the businessman for a continuous large portion of running time, we follow Siegler through the various stages of the disease, starting off with headaches, disorientation, and blurred vision; and in medical care, having hallucinations of being strangled, as hydrophobia takes hold. If the story seems pedestrian after the shopping centre sequence, it only serves as a foundation to the barnstorming final act, which depicts a still difficult to watch cull and creepy scenes within the home of Miss Stonecroft (Brenda Bruce) - the obligatory demented pet-obsessed loner - which includes the capture of Maitland and Stonecroft's attempt to feed her cat food and milk. Of the performances Bishop shines as the charismatic American, as confident and chatty as the English cast are reserved and stiff upper-lipped. 

The Greatest Monsters of All

THE MONSTER CLUB (1980)

John Carradine, Vincent Price and friend 
fail to liven up this banal portmanteau.

PRODUCED by former Amicus supremo Milton Subotsky and directed by Hammer veteran Roy Ward Baker, THE MONSTER CLUB opens with horror writer Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes (John Carradine) being attacked by Eramus (Vincent Price), a vampire faint from lack of blood. Assuring the victim that his bite was not deep enough to cause effect, the grateful Eramus takes the author to the title establishment, where Eramus explains the basic rules of Monsterdom, and illustrates with three tales. We see the story of Angela (Barbara Kellerman), her bullish boyfriend George (Simon Ward), and Raven (James Laurenson), the gentle but repulsive Shadmock whose lethal power is his whistle. Secondly we learn of Lintom (Warren Saire), whose father (Richard Johnson) is a vampire. Lintom is having trouble at school and is befriended by what seems to be the local vicar, but is actually Pickering of Special Branch (Donald Pleasence), concerned with eradicating the undead. Finally, an American horror filmmaker (Stuart Whitman) is on a location scout, and finds what he is looking for in a village of ghouls. In the coda, Erasmus proposes Ronald for membership. But the creatures protest that Ronald is a human being, whereupon Erasmus, citing man's ingenuity for destruction, proves that humans are the greatest monsters of all.

Linking these stories are rock bands - including B.A. Robertson swathed in blue for 'I’m Just A Sucker For Your Love' and Stevie Lange singing the sordid tale of 'The Stripper' - while extras wearing mail-order monster masks gyrate their dance moves. Even in the wake of DAWN OF THE DEAD and FRIDAY THE 13TH, Subotsky ploughed on undeterred with his quaint, juvenile brand of terror. Moviegoers no longer identified with ghosts and vampires, let alone a joint full of them, but at least THE MONSTER CLUB doesn't take itself too seriously. The second story - re imagining the childhood of Subotsky as "Lintom Busotsky, vampire film producer" - has been justly cited as one of the worst stories to grace any anthology, and is certainly on the same disastrous scale as the killer piano from TORTURE GARDEN. But Pleasence relishes his role; no-one could have possibly, even in 1980, uttered lines like "I'll see you home from school. It’s alright, I’m not a stranger, I’m a clergyman" with such aplomb.

"You could still love me": a page of John Bolton artwork for the fabled THE MONSTER CLUB comic magazine.

The most interesting thing about THE MONSTER CLUB is its unorthodox evolution. With Price, Carradine and Pleasence signed, but no time to shoot any footage to promote the project at Cannes, Subotsky turned to Dez Skinn, publisher of House of Hammer magazine. The producer had always been envious that his main rival had a promotional outlet, and asked for a comic strip adaptation to sell the film. Writing the strip himself, Skinn assigned artists John Bolton (stories 1 and 3, plus framing sequences) and David Lloyd (for story 2). With a print run of just a few hundred copies, Subotsky had his tool to target buyers, but also had a document that would act as a unique storyboard and source book for the production. The strip later surfaced in Quality's relaunched Halls of Horror, and was also part of Eclipse's John Bolton's Halls of Horror comic under the title 'The Monster Cabaret'. Amusingly, Eclipse took the notion further by dovetailing Bolton's adaptations of THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF and ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. from House of Hammer into this two issue 'Micro-Series,' with Eramus acting as an EC-style horror host. For Bolton, his conceptual art lead to work on the movie itself, producing the striking 'Tree of Monsters' plaque in the club, and the 'Ghoul history' in the final segment.

Evil Heritage

SATAN'S SLAVE (1976)

Based on an unmade AIP project intended for Vincent Price called THE NAKED EYE, for all its blatant exploitativeness, SATAN’S SLAVE remains atmospheric and engaging.

SATAN'S SLAVE tells of Catherine Yorke (Candace Glendenning), a young girl who is unexpectedly orphaned when her parents’ car explodes outside the house of her Uncle Alexander (a moustachioed Michael Gough). She is taken in but finds herself troubled by strange visions; gradually, Catherine falls in love with her brooding cousin Stephen (Martin Potter) - much to the chagrin of her Uncle’s secretary Frances (Barbara Kellerman) - but what she doesn’t realise is that her intended role in the household is more sinister than she could possibly expect.

A film aficionado fascinated by the medium since childhood, Norman J. Warren started in pictures by helming two sexploiters, HER LIVING HELL and LOVING FEELING. Not wanting to be typecast as a skin director, Warren moved onto the horror genre, and his brief period of activity - PREY, TERROR and INSEMINOID - provided a body of work which was derivative and makeshift, yet curiously casual and endearing. Along with Pete Walker, Warren’s films are sometimes dubbed New Wave British horror, on account that they upped the ante of explicitness, were mostly set in the modern day, and centring around twenty to thirty-year old protagonists. SATAN’S SLAVE firmly established Warren’s style as one which, for the most part, avoids kitsch and gets the most of what were obviously very limited resources.

Michael Gough, Candace Glendenning and Barbara Kellerman
star in Norman J. Warren’s cult classic.

Les Young’s cinematography is incredibly evocative here - the Gothic-style mansion is lensed in all its autumnal splendour - turning the English countryside into a place of terror. Warren is also helped by David McGillivray’s script which, like his work for Walker, succeeds in combining classic genre themes with a realistic contemporary setting. Glendenning’s wide-eyed performance as victimised waif mixes a delicate balance of independence, vulnerability and confusion. Gough is the big name in the cast and he doesn’t disappoint as the head of a coven; he’s a caring, considerate and gracious host, but underneath we sense the evil. Gough handles the role with great gusto and lack of pretension, delivering his ceremonial lines with Satanic-Shakespearean zeal, and Potter gives a superbly creepy performance as the unbalanced Stephen.

Combining nudity and violence in a censor-baiting concoction designed to compete with the gore and cynicism of its contemporary American and European counterparts, SATAN’S SLAVE delivers on a number of effective shock sequences. Catherine’s boyfriend John (Michael Craze)’s demise is particularly bloody – he jumps off a tower block roof and ends up as a heap of twisted meat - and towards the end of the film Catherine stabs Stephen in the eye with a nail file. In fact, SATAN’S SLAVE behaves like a black cat – dark, calm, and collected, yet you are intermittently aware of its claws.