Neither Blood Nor Legacy

NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND (1972)

BLUE BLOOD (1973)
THE LEGACY (1978)

Mills and Boon meets George A. Romero as Michael Petrovitch shifts from misty-eyed romance to the annals of the undead.

IN July 2017, Screenbound collected these three pictures in a handily disposable budget DVD. Adapted from his own novel by ITN newsreader Gordon Honeycombe, NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND sees Anna Robinson (Susan Hampshire) taking a winter break in Jersey from a lifeless marriage, where she falls in love with introverted Hugh Dabernon (Michael Petrovitch). Hugh has a strange affinity with the rugged coastline, and his antiques dealer brother George (Frank Finlay) takes a disliking to Anna, who threatens the insular Dabernon lifestyle. While the inseparable couple are in the North of Scotland, Hugh suddenly has a fatal heart attack, and is issued a death certificate. Through the strength of love he is reanimated; now without conventional speech (conversations are limited to what may well be Anna's imagination), Hugh physically deteriorates, leading the lovers to a watery grave.

Originally optioned by Hammer, director Fred Burnley attempted to ensure that the film would not be known as "another Tigon horror movie" (Tigon would be rebranded LMG by the time of release), but regardless of genre expectations, it was labelled by Time Out as "one of the worst films of the decade." NEITHER THE SEA NOR THE SAND - nor entertainment - is a ponderous love story without charisma, and a supernatural tale with little Fortean interest (reincarnation within Dabernon history is briefly hinted, as is Robinson being a witch). With no connection on screen, Hampshire and Petrovitch are doomed from the onset, Hampshire's theatrics grating with Petrovitch's distant portrayal; when Hugh's rigor mortis starts to set in, there is no difference to our male lead's performance. What remains is ninety minutes of meaningful stares and glances.

The Peasants are revolting: Oliver Reed not so much chews the scenery than spits it out in BLUE BLOOD.

Directed by Andrew Sinclair, BLUE BLOOD is a delirious story of Devil worship set and filmed at Wiltshire's Longleat House. Gregory (Derek Jacobi) is a young aristocrat who complains of modern England while maintaining a servant lifestyle, which includes new German Nanny Beate (Meg Wynne Owen). Entrusting control of the house to butler Tom (Oliver Reed), and in a complicated relationship with his estranged singer wife Lily (an icy Fiona Lewis), the Lord succumbs to the unholy practises of the under classes, governed by his leading manservant. Adapted from Alexander Thynn's novel The Carry-Cot by Sinclair, Thynn is the 7th Marquess of Bath and grew up in his family's seat at Longleat (and to further the in-house connections, BLUE BLOOD features Thynn's wife Anna Grael as Gregory's mistress Carlotta). UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS on acid, Reed's ham performance is either extraordinary inept or one that plays to the general foolishness; moving like an automaton, Tom's Satanic control is built up by a series of almost freeze-framed red-hued images of black masses and sacrifice, usually depicting Owen, Grael and Lewis draped around him while holding a bloodied knife.

THE LEGACY is another tale of Mansion-based Satanic shenanigans. Designers Maggie Walsh (Katharine Ross) and Pete Danner (Sam Elliott) leave California to work for an anonymous British client. On reaching their destination they are involved in an accident with a limousine, which is actually owned by their benefactor, Jason Mountolive (John Standing). Inviting them to his estate, Mountolive introduces Walsh and Danner to five guests, who die in a variety of ways: Maria (Marianne Broome) drowns; Clive (Roger Daltrey) chokes to death; Karl (Charles Gray) is burned alive; Barbara (Hildegard Neill) is pierced by a splintered mirror; and Jacques (Lee Montague) falls from a roof. All had chequered pasts, and were spared punishment due to Jason's unorthodox interventions: his mother being Lady Margaret Walsingham, a practitioner of witchcraft. It transpires that Walsh is actually Mountolive's great-granddaughter, and Jason's last acts were to kill the other heirs so Katharine can continue Satan's work.

British character actor John Standing is under the emaciated

makeup of a dying Occultist in THE LEGACY.

Although graced with exquisite cinematography both externally (the lush country setting) and internally (white cats on marble staircases), this tepid Anglo-American production suffers from an inappropriate upbeat soundtrack and lengthy dull patches between the body count. Directed by Richard Marquand, THE LEGACY is all too twee to adhere effectively to the twin 70s fixations of black magic and haunted houses (to further amplify the Seventies feel, we have an opening credits "love-in" with a song from Kiki Dee). The original treatment was written by Jimmy Sangster and "polished" by British SF author Patrick Tilley and Paul Wheeler; Sangster unsurprisingly disowned the film as the "tinkering" involved moving the setting wholesale from a rundown Detroit hospital to the grounds of Mountolive's Ravenhurst.

Satan's Playthings

AND SOON THE DARKNESS (1970)
ASSAULT (1971)

AND SOON THE DARKNESS sees English nurse Pamela Franklin contend with a serial killer and the language barrier in rural France. The film was needlessly remade in 2010, where American girls go on a bike trip in a remote part of Argentina.

THESE thrillers both exploit rural settings as key plot devices, and play like a rebuttal to the sexual freedom of the Love Generation. Directed by Robert Fuest from a script by Brian Clemens and Terry Nation, AND SOON THE DARKNESS tells the story of Jane (Pamela Franklin) and Cathy (Michele Dotrice), two young student nurses from England on a cycling holiday through rural France. Jane intends to keep to a schedule, but Cathy wants to enjoy the surroundings at a slower pace, especially the local males. This conflict of interests leads to an argument where Jane leaves Cathy to lounge at an off-road spot. However, when Jane returns she can find no trace of her friend and, asking around, learns that a few years ago another blond woman was sexually assaulted and killed in the area. Joined by scooter-riding Paul (Sandor Eles), who claims to be a detective for the Sûreté, the evidence leaves Jane unsure as to whether he might be the killer.

The movie is set completely in broad daylight and unfolds almost real-time over a single afternoon. The bare openness of the fields and countryside brood with sinister effect, as the provincial landscape is a foreboding character in itself. The French language notably is not subtitled so the viewer feels the same alienation as Jane ("Meutre? That's French for "murder" isn't it?"), who is faced with a catalogue of unnerving locals all strangely lukewarm about the need to find Cathy; even the English schoolmistress Jane encounters is matter-of-fact ("loathsome business, sex.") AND SOON THE DARKNESS may be too slow-burning for some - especially as it shows restraint at a time when nudity and gore were beginning to characterise most output - but this British film prefigures the Backwoods Brutality cycle that would be defined by the classic slices of Americana THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE and THE HILLS HAVE EYES.

An uninspired tale of killer-baiting, ASSAULT is also known under a dizzying amount of alternative titles, including THE CREEPERS, IN THE DEVIL'S GARDEN, TOWER OF TERROR and even SATAN'S PLAYTHINGS. This is a 1980 re-release ad mat for a Miami theatre.

Based on Kendal Young’s novel The Ravine, Sidney Hayer's ASSAULT begins in Devil’s End wood, where Heatherdene Arts School student Tessa Hurst (Lesley-Anne Down) is raped. When a second girl is attacked and murdered in the same location, detective Velyan (Frank Finlay) is struggling for clues, as Hurst is psychologically traumatised and unable to speak. Velyan seeks the help of Dr Greg Lomax (James Laurenson) in profiling the offender, and eyewitness art mistress Julie West (Suzy Kendall) offers herself as bait by using tabloid journalist Denny (Freddie Jones) to run a story announcing she is about to complete a photo fit painting of the killer. The investigation takes on a different angle when Lomax decides to use Pentothal on Tessa to bring her out of her comatose state, but when he arrives at the hospital dispensary to collect the drug, it transpires that a fellow doctor has taken the supply.

Although any number of Italian gialli were set in Britain and/or were UK co-productions, ASSAULT is unique in that it a completely British giallo, illustrating plot devices made famous by the genre. Sadly, unlike the Italian entries, the cinematography here is staid and unimaginative, and the execution linear and logical. The production uses that infamous British trait of casting twenty year old vixens as fifteen year schoolgirls, and dressing them in mini-skirts short enough to get any real schoolgirl expelled. The most lurid scene involves the headmistress's lecherous husband Leslie (Tony Beckley) and a student librarian on a ladder; the "student" is played by Janet Lynn, a British sex star of the period who had featured the year before in Pete Walker's COOL IT, CAROL. Finlay and Laurenson make turgid investigators, and it rests with honey-blond Kendall - who starred in Dario Argento's notable giallo THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE - to bring some interest to the screen.

Alien Encounters

PREY (1977)
LIFEFORCE (1985)

A dog-nosed alien terrorises rural England in PREY, the strangest British horror movie of all time.

EXISTING in tandem with Hammer's decline was a vibrant sub-culture of independent filmmakers working with minuscule budgets but inspirational levels of enthusiasm. One such director was Norman J. Warren, who followed SATAN'S SLAVE with PREY, shot in ten days at Shepperton for around £50,000. A triumph of minimalism, with a principal cast of three, the film is the story of hesitant shape-shifting alien Kator (Barry Stokes), who adopts a human guise (and the name Anderson) from his first victim and finds himself stranded on Earth in the care of an unstable lesbian couple in their isolated home: possessive Josephine (Sally Faulkner) and childish Jessica (Glory Annen). Unnervingly bleak, PREY plays out its bizarre triangle with several moments of inspired weirdness: Anderson is forced to dress as a girl for a highly uncomfortable dinner party, and when the alien discovers he cannot walk on water, there is a seemingly endless slow-motion struggle in an improbably filthy stream. And when Anderson finally gets to go to bed with Jessica, Warren unleashes a truly shocking entrail-wreathed climax.

Josephine is more sinister than the alien, and has already killed one of her lover’s potential male suitors; Faulkner doesn't overplay this, and keeps the character at least two steps from insanity. PREY was Annan's first movie and despite a very halting style of delivery it is appropriate that she doesn't have the strength of Faulkner. Stokes is also memorable, his limited resources as an actor paying dividends where he's meant to seem awkward and an outsider. When he changes into his true form, however, Stokes looks less like a dangerous alien than a badly made-up dog on children's television. But considering the budget and the schedule, PREY is astonishingly effective and certainly deserves more attention. It’s also got one of the great final lines of any British horror movie.

Mathilda May's background in ballet lends her a certain onscreen elegance in the SF fiasco LIFEFORCE.

LIFEFORCE (commonly known as Lifefarce) is a film light years away from the intimate inventiveness of PREY, so conceptually ambitious that it bites off far more than it is ever capable of coherently presenting. Loosely based on Colin Wilson's 1976 novel Space Vampires, its tale of three sleeping humanoids brought back to Earth and draining London of its lifeforce plays more like a Quatermass scenario. Directed by American maverick Tobe Hooper, the film is remembered mostly for French actress Mathilda May - billed as Space Girl - who spends the entire film undressed. May is possessed of such a spectacularly statuesque physique that she could probably have conquered all of mankind even without her special talents, which include a form of electroshock vampirism and the ability to inhabit other bodies.

Hooper pays homage to his hosts, drawing on the British tradition of sci-fi drollness (tea is served as the country burns to a crisp), and much of its wryness is in the sincere performances: Peter Firth representing military authority and Frank Finlay playing the scientist ("well, in a sense, we are all vampires"). Producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus sank a then substantial $25 million into the production, clearly seeing LIFEFORCE as the next SF blockbuster. Hiring ALIEN co-scripter Dan O'Bannon and STAR WARS visual supremo John Dykstra, the film however was a box office disaster. In fact, LIFEFORCE and Hooper's other two Cannon projects - the INVADERS FROM MARS remake and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE 2 - ended up almost single-handedly sinking Cannon's finances and forced Golan and Globus to declare bankruptcy by the 1990s.

Gothic Romance

COUNT DRACULA (1977)

A feast of blood; the brides of COUNT DRACULA.

BRAM Stoker’s Dracula, published in 1897, is a novel that tells its story through letters and journals, where the reader can access the character’s thoughts in a way a film or television treatment can never convincingly portray. This BBC adaptation is considered to be one of the more faithful to its source material; it is certainly the first time we see the Count feed his brides an infant (the books’ nastiest and least often dramatised incident), and this is the only Dracula to shoot on Stoker’s Yorkshire locations, including St Mary’s Church in Whitby and the decaying cemetery that surrounds it. But there are also the inevitable liberties: Mina (Judi Bowker) and Lucy (Susan Penhaligon) are now sisters, and two of the latter’s suitors - Quincy P. Morris and Arthur Holmwood - are combined to form American diplomat Quincy P. Holmwood (Richard Barnes).

Another change from the novel is that there is no playing with the Count’s age, but this ensures a constant relevance to Frenchman Louis Jourdan’s performance as Dracula. Jourdan was an unusual choice, but pulls off some of the Count’s more inhuman moments (flapping down the castle wall like a bat) remarkably; not the otherworldly Valentino nor the imperious nobleman of Universal or Hammer norm, Jourdan speaks the familiar lines in an almost casual manner, purposely devoid of any affectation. This Prince of Darkness is supremely arrogant, coolly confident and totally disdainful of humanity; to him, the living are nourishment at best.

Louis Jourdan makes for a chilling Prince of Darkness.

Accentuating Jourdan’s take is an able cast, headed by Frank Finlay as Van Helsing, astutely capturing the kindness and steely determination of a vampire-slaying metaphysician, even if his Dutch accent can sound distinctly Irish. Bowker channels Mina’s innocence and intelligence directly from the page, and Jack Shepherd’s Renfield is more introverted than others, reciting William Blake to himself (“Am not I A fly like thee?/Or art not thou/A man like me?”). And back with accents, Barnes as the hybrid Quincy can’t sustain a credible Texan drawl, giving his scenes an unappealing comedic turn. COUNT DRACULA’s solarisation effects have also been open to much criticism, but allowing for it being a made-for-TV film, there is a delicious campiness to its clumsy composites and overlays. Actually, Dracula’s allure and supernatural powers are captured so sparsely that the harsh visuals act as counterpoint to the normal cinematography, which placidly captures the restraint of Victorian propriety. If the effects are risible now, they nonetheless exaggerate the contrast between the vampire and his English protagonists.