The Love of Darkness

CAT GIRL (1957)
RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK (1966)

"The love of darkness, the craving for warm flesh and blood … it is my legacy to you ... passed on from generation to generation of our family …  for 700 years!" Ernest Milton and Barbara Shelley provide the only sparks to this pedestrian programmer.

PRODUCED by Val Lewton and directed by Jacques Tourneur, RKO's 1942 CAT PEOPLE divided critics at the time, but is now considered a sophisticated classic. Telling the story of young Serbian Irena (Simone Simon), who believes herself to be a descendant of a race of people who turn into cats when sexually aroused, the style of the film concentrates on the theory that unseen terrors are more effective than visual ones (what Lewton referred to as "patches of prepared darkness"). This use of suggestive shadow, and the genre-defining shock Lewton Bus moment, was in contrast to the Universal trend of the time, who would make FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLF MAN a year later.

CAT GIRL - a British CAT PEOPLE from Insignia directed by Alfred Shaughnessy - barely registers as horror, its stagy and stilted execution making it hard to believe it was released in the wake of Hammer's game-changer, CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Leonora (Barbara Shelley) is summoned to her ancestral estate by uncle Edmund Brandt (Shakespearean actor Ernest Milton, doing his best Ernest Thesiger impression). Recently married to Richard (Jack May), Leonora also brings friends Cathy and Allan (Patricia Webster and John Lee) to the house. Brandt's niece discovers that she is to be united with the soul of Edmund's pet leopard, continuing a family curse which enables mental control of the big cat to "kill ... kill." Under Leonora's control, the leopard savages her husband for having an affair with Cathy, then turns its attentions to Dorothy (Kay Callard), the wife of Leonora's true love Dr Marlowe (Robert Ayres).

Barbara Shelley - the "first leading lady of British horror" - is haunted Leonora. Shelley's looks and stature command the screen, with Barbara playing it commandingly straight.

Aside from Shelley and Milton, the performances are self-conscious (even leopard Chiefy, a performing cat from Southport Zoo, surprisingly lacks menace), and Ayres makes for a particularly characterless 'hero'. Shaughnessy - directing his only fantastic film before creating UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS and planting the seed that would become Pete Walker's HOUSE OF WHIPCORD - couldn't remain positive about the release's own main legacy, lamenting in his autobiography "by using [Barbara Shelley] I fear we condemned a very beautiful and talented actress to a long career in horror films."

Similar to Shelley's Helen in DRACULA PRINCE OF DARNESS, when a hex kicks in, Leonora's sexual repression is unshackled. Now infused with feline aggression, things get weird when she briefly imagines herself turning into a leopard, and eats a budgie (off screen); Leonora's eyebrows also suggest a sudden predatory look (critic David Pirie argues that it is with CAT GIRL that British film heroines started to distort from their emotional norm, even if they are portrayed as mental patients and die violently). In her first starring role Shelley atypically shows off areas of flesh; yet any real charge is smothered by the picture's mundaneness, as a lingering shot of Leonora's naked back sees the camera pan away, leaving the maid to comment on her beauty.

"Everything else is darkness"; the hypnotic stare of Christopher Lee as RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK.

Directed by Don Sharp and scripted by Anthony Hinds, Hammer's RASPUTIN THE MAD MONK casts Shelley again under the spell of Christopher Lee in redressed sets from DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS. After healing an innkeeper's wife and cutting off the hand of the keeper's daughter's suitor, Grigori Rasputin (Lee) is hauled before an Orthodox bishop on grounds of sexual immorality and violence. Preferring to give God "sins worth forgiving", Rasputin is unperturbed by the bishop's claims of Satanism. Heading for St Petersburg, the exiled Monk befriends struck-off Dr Zargo (Richard Pasco) and begins his campaign to infiltrate highest Russian society. This includes gaining influence over the Tsarina's ladies-in-waiting Sonia (Shelley) and Vanessa (Suzan Farmer), but his relentless sexual appetite and pursuit of wealth eventually leads to his death at the hands of Zargo and Ivan (Francis Matthews).

Initially announced in 1961 as THE SINS OF RASPUTIN, Hammer's brisk pseudo-exploration of "History's Man of Mystery" is dominated by Lee's extraordinary performance. Unlike his appearances as Dracula - often off-screen and reduced to set pieces - Rasputin is overpowering from his appearance at the Inn door. Passionately researching the role, the actor even sought advice on how to play a medically accurate death by cyanide poisoning. But the film was hampered by overspends on DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS, foreshortening the script and scope; the production was also under the threat of legal action from Prince Felix and Princess Irina Yousoupoff, Felix being one of Rasputin's real-life assassins. Having successfully sued MGM over their 1932 release RASPUTIN AND THE EMPRESS, pressure from the Yousoupoff's is the reason that Hammer's surrogate assassin Ivan is Vanessa's brother rather than husband, and why Vanessa and Rasputin do not meet in the film's climax.

Composite Beings and Zombie Bikers

SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN (1970)
PSYCHOMANIA (1972)

In SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN, two hikers out on the moors are being shot at by Nazi-like soldiers. The female ambler is  played by a pre-LUST FOR A VAMPIRE Yutte Stensgaard, who is subsequently taken to a castle for torture.

BOTH these pictures come from a period in British horror where more outlandish themes were being explored rather than the increasingly dated Hammer Gothics. Gordon Hessler's SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN is a conspiracy thriller like no other, an AIP/Amicus co-production that features a delirious mix of body parts, gallows humour and police pursuits. With the major draw of Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, the film basically is another take on the Frankenstein legend. Opening with a runner collapsing in a London park and finding himself waking in a strange hospital where he's missing a leg, the story weaves its way through three main plot threads: rogue general Konratz (Marshall Jones) murdering his way into power of an unnamed Eastern bloc country; serial vampire rapist Keith (Michael Gothard) preying on young women he picks up in 'happening' nightclubs; and Dr Browning (Vincent Price)'s Composite programme, a plan to infest the world with controllable beings of organic and synthetic tissue.

Based on the 1966 SF novel The Disorientated Man by "Peter Saxon" - in reality a pen name used by W.Howard Baker and Stephen Frances - the film rights were picked up by Milton Subotsky, who turned in his usual old-fashioned treatment which was re-written by Christopher Wicking. The resulting screenplay is remarkably faithful to the book, apart from dropping an alien explanation for a paranoid political message. Price fares best of the top-billed stars, with Lee and Cushing given disposable roles: the former as a government official and the latter as a very disposable military superior. However it is Gothard and Alfred Marks - who apparently ad-libbed much of his dialogue as Inspector Bellaver - who give the most memorable performances. Marks shines in the grand pantheon of disgruntled police inspectors that populate British horror, and in a part described by Jonathan Rigby in English Gothic: a Century of Horror Cinema as resembling "a bionic Mick Jagger", Gothard carries out a very unpleasant alley attack and later there is a celebrated car chase sequence. Its all infectiously ridiculous, capped by a maniacal climactic battle between Browning and Konratz, filled with a vulcan-like shoulder squeeze and hearty swings of a gas cylinder.

John Cameron's score is the highlight of PSYCHOMANIA, essentially a rock soundtrack that achieves the gravitas of a sweeping orchestra.

Don Sharp's PSYCHOMANIA tells of Tom Latham (Nicky Henson), the leader of The Living Dead motorcycle gang, who terrorise the Home Counties and hang around standing stones called The Seven Witches. Tom's mother (Beryl Reid) is a medium aided by butler Shadwell (George Sanders), and there is a mystery surrounding the death of Mr Latham ("Why did my father die in that locked room? Why do you never get any older? And what is the secret of the living dead?") When Tom achieves "the ton," he crashes off a bridge and dies; the gang bury him upright on his bike, and he comes back to life a couple of days later, terrorising the local populace and convincing his gang members that in order to come back from the dead you only have to believe you will. Only Tom’s girlfriend Abby (Mary Larkin) refuses.

PSYCHOMANIA's incoherent and kitsch charm mixes the trademark tranquil eccentricity of British horror with Frog cults and zombie bikers, becoming a metaphor for teen rebellion and anger at the establishment (all the members of The Living Dead want to do is cause trouble and "blow some squares’ minds"). The film was almost universally blasted by critics on release - The Times wrote that PSYCHOMANIA was only fit to be shown at an "SS reunion party" - but today this Benmar production is a guilty pleasure. Like Tom's early exchange with Shadwell, there are more questions than answers: what actually occurred at Tom's birth?; what is the history of the magic room?; who is Shadwell servant to?; and did Mrs Latham's powers turn seven witches into the standing stones? Henson is the lifeblood, but Sanders' bizarre presence has the distinction of seemingly being the film that drove the actor to suicide. Leaving behind an aptly Wildesque note, Sanders wrote "Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck."

Kiss of Dracula

THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE (1963)
KISS OF EVIL (1966)
COUNTESS DRACULA (1971)

Isobel Black as Tania in THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE. Her first feature, the actress shifts effortlessly between beguiling and malevolence and, as Tim Lucas notes in his Video Watchdog review, "is never shown biting anyone out of hunger, but rather to indulge a childlike, yet severe, streak of sadism."

DON Sharp's THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE is a Hammer vampire film without Peter Cushing or Christopher Lee, but well worth investing your time. Shot with a colourful Gothic angle by Alan Hume, the film is set in an isolated area of Bavaria, 1910. Honeymoon couple the Harcourts - Gerald (Edward de Souza) and Marianne (Jennifer Daniel) - experience car trouble and are forced to stay in the unfortunately named Grand Hotel, whose only other guest is reclusive alcoholic Professor Zimmer (Clifford Evans). Doctor Ravna (Noel Willman) - owner of the chateau that sits imposingly above the locale - invites them to dinner and their association with his seemingly charming family grow. When the pair attend a masked ball, however, they discover that Ravna is the head of a vampire cult. Zimmer performs a ceremony known as the Corpus Diabolo Levitum which forces "evil to destroy itself"; with the ritual taking the form of a swarm of vampire bats (apparently props purchased from Slough and Maidenhead branches of Woolworths), they smother Ravna and his gowned disciples.

THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE develops themes from Terence Fisher's magisterial BRIDES OF DRACULA. Teenage cult member Tania (Isobel Black) imitates Greta from the earlier film by trying to coax a newly buried initiate from the grave; Zimmer extrudes a bite similar to Cushing's branding iron scene; and Anthony Hinds' script also explores vampirism as a social disease/order. Additionally, there are direct transfers from dropped BRIDE sequences: Zimmer interrupting his own daughter's funeral to throw a spade through the coffin lid, and the climactic bat attack (a scene vetoed by Cushing on the grounds that Van Helsing would never evoke evil himself). But Sharp's film has attractions of its own, notably Black's performance: in one scene, Tania tears open the shirt of our hero, scoring her fingernails down his chest, upon which our quick-thinking leading man smears the blood in the form of a crucifix. Another memorable element has a hypnotised Marianne actually spitting in her husband's face.

Ingrid Pitt and Sandor Eles star in Hammer's dramatisation of the Elizabeth Bathory legend, COUNTESS DRACULA.

Released with the tag line "Shocking! - Horrifying! - Macabre!" THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE was less so when NBC acquired the film from Universal in 1966. Considered too brazen for television viewing as the film stood, most of the quirky erotica - and Zimmer's pre-credits shovel scene - was cut and replaced by specially shot footage in Los Angeles by Irving J. Moore, a director who would become synonymous with episodes of DALLAS and DYNASTY. Now titled KISS OF EVIL, these new, bland insertions - totalling around fifteen minutes to fill a two hour slot - tell of a local couple whose teenage daughter rebels when they attempt to prevent her attending the masked ball. The most interesting thing about the TV version is the casting: the mother is played by Virginia Gregg, who gained fame by voicing Mrs Bates in PSYCHO, while the daughter is portrayed by Sheilah Wells, once flatmate of Sharon Tate.

COUNTESS DRACULA is Hammer's pedestrian take on the legend of Elizabeth Báthory, a countess of Hungarian nobility who allegedly killed and bathed in the blood of young virgins to retain her beauty. Made by two Hungarian émigrés working in England: producer Alexander Paal and director Peter Sasdy, the film tells of Countess Elisabeth Nádasdy (a robust but dubbed Ingrid Pitt), who discovers that her youth and libido can be temporarily restored if she bathes in the blood of young, virgin women. Her steward and lover Captain Dobi (Nigel Green) kidnaps and murders local girls, whilst she pursues Imre Toth (Sandor Eles), a young solder. As a cover for her crimes while in her rejuvenated state she takes the identity of her own daughter, a plan that is complicated when her actual daughter Ilona (Lesley-Anne Down) returns home. Despite Báthory's blood-drenched legacy, the production is more historical drama/fairy tale, as Jeremy Paul's script focuses on the aging, widowed Countess. The handsome sets and costumes - inherited from ANNE OF A THOUSAND DAYS - give the film a splendid tableaux, but Sasdy's theme of the disintegrating family unit was much more successful in TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA.

Hampden House of Horror

HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR (1980)

The House That Bled To Death is a double-twist shocker featuring a priceless scene where a pipe spurts blood over children at a party. A family move into the dilapidated abode where a man had carved up his wife with an ornamental machete, though the new owners have an Amityville-like agenda of their own.

TELEVISION always served Hammer films well. After all, if it wasn't for the success of their adaptation THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, it is likely that their vivid re-imaginings of Frankenstein and Dracula would have never been made. By the 1970s, Hammer's usual output of costumed gothique was in its death throes, slices of entertainment that seemed frozen in time. However, the studio's big screen spin-off of ON THE BUSES was a box-office phenomenon, leading the studio on a comedic vein which included LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR and MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE. Hammer's attempts to make TV projects of their own resulted in four separate ventures; the series under consideration here was followed by HAMMER HOUSE OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE, but earlier projects were TALES OF FRANKENSTEIN - an abortive pilot starring Anton Diffring - and seventeen episodes of JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN.

British horror had largely become past tense from the mid-70s; Tigon's last official release was the sex film COME PLAY WITH ME, and Amicus ceased production after THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT in 1979, the same year in which Hammer called in the receivers. But two former board members, Brian Lawrence and Roy Skeggs, assumed control and immediately began looking at ways to revitalise the company. Lawrence and Skeggs needed a new base of operations and leased Hampden House in Buckinghamshire - close to Hammer's spiritual home of Bray - to develop a new series for television. A former private house and exclusive Girl's School, the majestic property and surrounding areas are used ad infinitum, and most of the production, including the editing, was overseen there. Assembling their crew, the two men unsurprisingly drafted in a number of former Hammer employees, including directors Peter Sasdy, Alan Gibson and Don Sharp, visual effects man Ian Scoones, and James Bernard scored two stories.

Diana Dors and her brood in Children of the Full Moon, a long way from Oliver Reed and THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF.

Funded by ITC and screened between 13th September and 6th December 1980, the 13 episodes of the HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR were refreshingly bleak, mixing contemporary horror and titillation in the manner of Norman J. Warren (with Frankenstein and Dracula nowhere in sight). Hampered by meagre budgets, pedestrian scripts and flat direction, the fifty-minute stories are surprisingly watchable, thanks to their variety of topics - devil worship, time-travelling witches, cannibalism and Nazi pet shop owners - and stars such as Hammer favourites Peter Cushing, John Carson and Robert Urquhart, together with Brian Cox, Jon Finch and Warren Clarke et al (a young Pierce Brosnan appears as a randy jogger victim, a character so incidental that he's even denied an onscreen death).

HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR falls into that notion lovingly referred to as guilty pleasures. Even the worst entry, Carpathian Eagle, stars Suzanne Danielle as a psychotic seductress/writer who rips out the heart of her victims with a dagger. The best two episodes hold up as memorable slabs of TV horror: The Two Faces of Evil is a dazzling doppelganger yarn with a genuinely jolting prologue, and the delirious The Mask of Satan sees a morgue worker believing he has a disease engineered to bring Satan to Earth. The rest of the output fall somewhere in between; at least Rude Awakening attempts something different in its total abandonment of logic, with adulterous estate agent Denholm Elliott persistently accused of murdering his wife; and VAMPIRE CIRCUS helmer Robert Young brings some stylish flourishes to the voodoo-themed Charlie Boy.