Behind Forbidden Doors

THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR (1969)

THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR makes the cover of German magazine Film Neues-Programm, where it was released under a title which translates to GOOSEBUMPS.

AN early attempt at the teen slasher movie that would explode a decade later, Michael Armstrong's THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR begins during a less than swinging shindig in Carnaby Street. A group of bored youths - including Chris (twenty-nine year old Frankie Avalon, in a role intended for Ian Ogilvy), Sheila (Jill Haworth), Gary (Mark Wynter) and Peter (Richard O'Sullivan) - leave the party and drive to a deserted mansion haunted by a killer who murdered his family in a frenzied knife attack twenty years previously. When Gary is slayed, rather than report the incident to the police, the group hide the body and try to solve the mystery themselves.

After all the problems with THE HAUNTED HOUSE OF HORROR, it is amazing that director/writer Armstrong had the inclination to continue in the industry. Developed from his script THE DARK from 1960, Armstrong envisioned the film as a vehicle to showcase the talents of then unknown David Bowie, who the filmmaker had worked with on the 1967 avant-garde short THE IMAGE. With this being a joint Tigon/AIP picture, American International's head of British productions Louis M. Hayward ordered a new draft to add sex scenes, Americanise characters, and include an ill Boris Karloff so the literally fading star could see out the last three days on his AIP contract. "Deke" Hayward also rejected any involvement with Bowie, insisting that Stateside audiences wouldn't except any songs unless they were sung by Avalon. Deke then butchered Armstrong's revised draft anyway, turning Karloff into a crazed Police Inspector in a wheelchair, somehow rampaging around a derelict house before proving to be a red herring; this was a similar synopsis for Karloff that actually reached some kind of fruition a year previously with CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR.

Michael Armstrong encountered endless front office interference while making his debut picture, but things didn't get better for his next project, filming the notorious MARK OF THE DEVIL in Austria. The Bolton-born filmmaker would later write numerous 1970's British sex comedies and Pete Walker's HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS.

To ease tensions between Armstrong and Hayward, Tigon head Tony Tenser intended to shoot two versions: essentially Armstrong's third draft, and Deke's AIP/Karloff version. But when it became evident that Karloff was too ill to participate - even in a desperately proposed introductory speech - the inspector role was awarded to Dennis Price. While Hayward was called away on problems with Cy Enfield's DE SADE, Armstrong shot his scenes while Tenser attempted to capture Deke's wheelchair killer; with a rough cut not ready for an international sales pitch by AIP heads Arkoff and Nicholson, Tenser cut together what he could - to disastrous results. With Tigon trying to appease AIP and Hayward attempting to hide his meddling, Armstrong then discovered that Gerry Levy was shooting additional scenes (essentially giving Sylvia (Gina Warwick) an affair with sugar daddy Kellett (George Sewell), a pub sing-a-long, and generally toning down the feel of the film - under the pseudonym Peter Marcus). Filled with clichéd lines ("I really dig this place", "Let's hold a séance!", "I think its a gas!"), Armstrong's intended darker, sexually edgier piece is not surprisingly lost in the mess.

Sixties Sorcery

THE SORCERERS (1967)
CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR (1968)

"You enjoyed it, didn't you?" In an allegory for the thrills of cinema itself, THE SORCERERS tells of an old couple who invent a machine to live vicariously through a young man.

MICHAEL Reeves was a true cineaste and perhaps the greatest lost talent of the British film industry. Although he only directed three pictures, the Sutton-born Reeves increasingly became frustrated about the difficulty of getting projects off the ground. Suffering from depression and insomnia, on the 11th of February 1969 he died at the age of twenty-five from an alcohol and barbiturate overdose which many - including lifelong friend Ian Ogilvy - believe to have been purely accidental (indeed, the coroner's report stated that the level of barbiturate dosage was too marginal to suggest any dark intention). There is nothing critics like more than to mythologise an untimely artistic death (Brian Jones would follow five months later), but there is no mistaking that Reeves was a precocious talent. This is a man who travelled to Hollywood at the age of sixteen, sought out the address of his favourite director - Don Siegel - and subsequently gained employment. But after the critical and commercial success of WITCHFINDER GENERAL in 1968, Reeves seemingly lost his way. Starting to drink heavily, the boy wonder was also taking uppers and downers, and those close offered a variety of reasons: the development hells, the strain of his on-set clashes with Vincent Price, a failed romance, and an underlying nihilism.

There is much to enjoy in Reeves' second feature under consideration here, which followed the British/Italian REVENGE OF THE BLOOD BEAST shot in 1966. THE SORCERERS is a trippy slasher movie made as the 1960s neared its dizzying end. Retired and discredited hypnotist Professor Marcus Monserrat (Boris Karloff) and wife Estelle (Catherine Lacey) are an elderly couple who, through hypnosis, can "live" through young people and feel their emotions. Marcus picks up a bored youth - Mike Roscoe (Ogilvy) - at a Wimpy bar, who partakes in a ground-breaking experiment at the Monserrat household. When the pensioners choose to 'tune in' their fun begins mundane enough - Estelle instructs Roscoe to steal a fur coat - but soon she becomes hooked on the strength of her manipulative powers, forcing the hipster into carrying out a series of increasingly gruesome acts (such as a scissor murder of Audrey (Susan George)). As Marcus becomes mentally and physically overpowered by his wife, the husband manages to break the spell by causing Mike to die in a fireball of a car crash; the film ends on the image of the Monserrat's charred remains miles away at their home.

"... as though Boris Karloff's going to pop up at any moment." Barbara Steele's only home-grown horror - and Boris Karloff's last - CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR also wastes the talents of a bored Christopher Lee, who wears his own tweed jacket throughout.

By 1967 exploitation guru Tony Tenser had left Compton-Tekli and formed Tony Tenser Films, which would soon be renamed Tigon. THE SORCERERS was a co-production with the American company Curtwel - run by the husband-and-wife team of Patrick Curtis and Raquel Welch - and it is an effectively edited and lively lensed film which confronts cinema's inherent voyeurism. It also deftly contrasts gyrating youth culture with the dreary existence and tired home décor of the older generation; quieter sequences are governed by the sound of a ticking clock, as if to signify the both the passing joy of youth and the beginning of the end. Reeves makes the most of a derisory budget (£11,000 of the total £50,000 went to Karloff), though Monserrat's laboratory set is achingly threadbare. Karloff - sporting a pinstripe suit and goatee - gives a strong performance in his twilight years, still managing to sustain a erudite presence but also very much under the shadow of past glories. But it is Lacey who is the star, her demented wide-eyed enjoyment of Roscoe's building mania made even more disturbing by the fact that it is portrayed through violence rather than sexual yearning.

If Karloff was fading here, Tigon nearly finished the star off totally during Vernon Sewell's CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR, where Boris contracted pneumonia during night scenes filmed in freezing rain. Based uncredited on H.P. Lovecraft's The Dreams in the Witch House, Robert Manning (Mark Eden) goes in search of his brother, who was last known to have visited Craxted Lodge, Greymarsh. Manning is invited to stay by Eve (Virginia Wetherell) - the niece of Lodge owner Morley (Christopher Lee) - but is haunted by nightmares. When wheelchair-bound Professor Marshe (Karloff) informs Manning about a cult based around Lavinia Morley (Barbara Steele), and Robert discovers that he is descended from Lavinia's chief accuser, Craxted Lodge is burned to the ground, and Morley - exposed as the head of the followers - is consumed in flames. Starting with a written extract about hallucinatory drugs, the film descends into an unintentionally hilarious attic ritual, where Lavinia is aided by a man wearing an antlers head cap and leather underpants, and a woman with nipple-patches and horsewhip. The camp continues at a swinging party at the Lodge, which includes an exotic dancer pouring champagne over her breasts, but this is where the fun ends. Eden and Wetherell are functional at best, and the climactic notion that Morley and Lavinia are the same person - which would have made sense under the shooting title THE REINCARNATION - is left unexplored.

Cushing Centenary (Part II of II)

ASYLUM (1972)
--AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS! (1973)

ASYLUM's Richard Todd is attacked by that favourite of Amicus plot devices - the severed limb - for the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland #97 (April 1973).

DIRECTED by Roy Ward Baker and with Robert Bloch adapting his own tales, ASYLUM was the fifth of Amicus' seven portmanteau pictures and one of the silliest, despite a strong framing story. Dr Martin (Robert Powell) arrives at Dunsmore Asylum and meets wheelchair-bound Dr Rutherford (Patrick Magee). Rutherford tells Martin that he will be considered for employment if he can deduce who is Dr Starr - the former head of the facility - now among the inmates. Attendant Max Reynolds (Geoffrey Bayldon) admits Martin to the cells where he interviews each in turn: in Frozen Fear, Bonnie (Barbara Parkins) tells of lover Walter (Richard Todd), who suffered the consequences of murdering voodoo-studying wife Ruth (Sylvia Syms); The Weird Tailor has Bruno (Barry Morse) recount how Mr Smith (Peter Cushing) requested an elaborate suit made from a mysterious fabric; and Lucy Comes to Stay is a split personality story featuring Barbara (Charlotte Rampling). The final tale - Mannikins of Horror - is not viewed in flashback but sees Martin encounter Dr Byron (Herbert Lom), who is working on soul transference to small automatons.

Bloch had constructed the flow of stories to build the tension slowly, intending the running order to be The Weird Tailor, Lucy Comes to Stay, Frozen Fear and Mannikins of Horror. After seeing a first edit, Amicus co-founder and financier Max Rosenberg ordered the stories to be re-arranged, on the basis that distributors would need a more action-orientated start to the picture. Both Bloch and Baker were unhappy about the restructuring, but it is hard to see the film vastly improved no matter what the order - the Lucy Comes to Stay segment would grind any release to a halt. In summary ASYLUM packs out-of-work British star quality - most of whom in their twilight years - into very little, and it is up to Cushing, yet again, to bring emotional depth into his small role of a grieving father planning to resurrect his son. As Tim Lucas states in his Video Watchdog review, the film "...suffers from an out-moded script, more appropriate to 1940s horror radio than 1970s horror cinema," another example of Amicus' juvenile approach.

Catherine Fengriffen (Stephanie Beacham) is drawn into the mystery and madness of --AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS!.

Amicus assembled much the same cast and crew - including director Baker, stars Cushing, Lom, Magee, and the crawling hand - for the peculiarly titled costumed gothic --AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS!. This meandering effort is set in the late 18th century, where newlywed Catherine (a ravishing Stephanie Beacham) moves into the stately mansion of her husband Charles Fengriffen (Ian Ogilvy). Almost immediately, the bride is plagued by spectral visions, including an eyeless, one-handed phantom. We learn that the family curse originates from Silas the woodsman (Geoffrey Whitehead) having his hand chopped off on his wedding night by Charles' lecherous ancestor Henry (Lom), who also deflowered the woodsman's young bride. Family doctor Whittle (Magee) summons psychiatrist Pope (Cushing) to the house, who witnesses the birth of Catherine's baby, an infant that sports Silas' facial birth mark and hand less stump.

Based on David Case's 1970 novella Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale, the use of Oakley Court Manor - a location that would soon become THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW castle - provides a rich backdrop for such a meagre-budgeted film. Cushing's character does not appear on screen until half-way through the picture, and although this is a welcome adage, without doubt it remains Beacham's film; the actress gives the most rounded performance made the more evident by the fact that Catherine is surrounded by soon-to-be-murdered ciphers. Even husband Ogilvy seems a bit-part among the turmoil of his own family's sordid history, though he belatedly comes alive in an unsettling rage at Henry's tomb during a downpour. The final shot of Catherine with her mutant son clashes wildly with the confusing opening narration, which recollects these historic events in a forced sereneness, rather than the bludgeoning horrors that unfold.

Temptations Limited

FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1973)

Years before becoming a stalwart of television tat,
Lesley-Anne Down earned her stripes fighting forces of evil.

FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is an Amicus gem which stars Peter Cushing as the wily Yorkshire-accented proprietor of Temptations Limited. This decrepit antiques shop situated between a cemetery and a demolition contractor has its customers face a supernatural death if they conduct their business dishonestly. There are four stories here, all based on the work of R. Chetwynd-Hayes: The Gate Crasher has David Warner buying a haunted mirror; An Act of Kindness sees middle-aged Ian Bannen finding solace from his overbearing wife (Diana Dors) in the company of a street vendor and his daughter (Donald and Angela Pleasence); The Elemental documents Ian Carmichael possessed by an imp; and The Door bought by Ian Ogilvy and Lesley-Anne Down opens an ancient blue room.

Directed by Kevin Conner, FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE is an anthology bettered only by DEAD OF NIGHT, and similar to the Ealing classic, the framing story has a resonant thread (and the first and fourth tales are closely modelled on the Googie Withers/Ralph Michael DEAD OF NIGHT segment). The Elemental strongly shifts from comedy to horror in its final twist, as the demon passes from Carmichael’s bland, commuter-belt persona to Nyree Dawn Porter’s disgruntled housewife. The Door contains the most sophisticated use of colour attempted in a British horror - the cobwebbed room of a Necromancer bent on "the entrapment of those yet to be born" - but it is An Act of Kindness that cements the reputation of the film, a compelling narrative of believable characters with poignant yearnings. Donald Pleasence - his every utterance a military cliché - is suitable unsettling as the kipper-tied, match-selling old soldier, yet it is the performance of real-life daughter Angela which is the most unnerving.

Civil Warlock

WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968)

WITCHFINDER GENERAL was released as THE CONQUERER WORM in the United States, as illustrated by Midnite Movies’ busy DVD case art. AIP had Vincent Price recite Poe’s poem The Conqueror Worm over the credits, in the aim to cash-in on their success with the Roger Corman pictures (note the totally redundant Pendulum motif).

WITH the exception of PEEPING TOM, no British horror film carries more critical baggage than WITCHFINDER GENERAL. Dubbed "the most persistently sadistic and morally rotten film I’ve seen" by Alan Bennett, rarely has movie violence been used so legitimately. Co-produced by Tigon – British exploitation’s most endearingly downmarket film company - and AIP, only Michael Armstrong’s MARK OF THE DEVIL suggests the same rural cruelty in the witch-torturing subgenera. Set in pastoral East Anglia during the Civil War between Cromwell's Roundheads and King Charles's Cavaliers, Vincent Price stars as pious opportunist Matthew Hopkins, the self-appointed General who profited from the chaos by ‘discovering’ witches among the peasantry. The film has long been a cult item, in part because its talented 25-year-old director, Michael Reeves, died of an accidental barbiturates overdose shortly following release, but mainly because it is an extraordinarily bleak story of political evil.

Often described as a Suffolk Western, the film has a robust autumnal quality that perfectly suits its setting, and cinematically it bears the mark of the late 1960s - there's an overabundance of zooms, and an easy reliance on the brutality of brightly hued gore. The white-gloved Witchfinder is both implacable and terrifying, a distillation which is simultaneously unfathomable and, sadly, recognisable. With the character of Hopkins at its centre, WITCHFINDER GENERAL takes a despairing view of the human condition every bit as gruelling as the outbursts of violence which punctuate it. Reeves shows bloodshed as a communicable disease, engulfing everyone from young and old; when Roundhead Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy) tackles brutal henchman John Stearne (Robert Russell), and then hacks Hopkins to death with an axe, his initial boyish likeability seems like a forlorn memory.

The sinister figure of Matthew Hopkins casts a long shadow over horror fiction, folklore and history.

Reeves’ reputation quickened almost immediately after his death. Whether he was cinema’s Keats or its Ian Curtis, we are, however, in the same light-constricted forests, and under the low thatched ceilings, that are forever Terence Fisher’s Slavic Europe. Yet WITCHFINDER GENERAL equates the English Civil War with the culture clashes of the 1960s. Witchfinders are allowed to call victims’ perpetrators as part of a moral vacuum that exists on the ungoverned fringes of any unrest. Loitering military bands, and forgotten human carcasses decaying in the bracken, are both social consequences in the breakdown of the system, allowing starvation and criminal behaviour. There is no Evil Incarnate, only perpetual corruption.

No matter how well the director captures the atmosphere of 17th century religious upheaval and moral hysteria, the real Hopkins – and the social context in which he operated – remain less well known. Qualifying his actions through religion, and aided by Stearne’s boiling Puritan blood, between 1645 and 1647 it is suspected that Hopkins was associated with as many as 200 executions - if not by his direct "examinations", then by his murderous, and seemingly omnipotent influence. It can be said that Stearne was the adrenalin of Hopkins, but not the greed. One of the most significant contributions to the legend was Ronald Bassett’s Witch-finder General, a 1966 novel which posed as source material for the film, where Hopkins is portrayed as a middle-aged Ipswich lawyer who reinvents himself as "a black-winged Attila, leaving behind him a trail of gibbet-hung corpses." But Hopkins was not so much the leader of the movement as an adjutant. It took a lot of people to hang a witch – witnesses, magistrates, clerks, executioners et al – so the witchfinder gave confidence to act. To call Hopkins a vindictive monster is to refuse to understand the hazardous potential of his followers; the same could be said about Hitler and Osama-bin-Laden. It was only after his death that people slowly began to see the error of their ways. The undertones of misery and guilt pushed the Hopkins persona into a legendary rather than historic mindset; children’s fairy tales would take on characters with tall buckled hats, knee-length boots and long knotted staffs, manifesting into an incubus. One could even suggest that the Child Catcher (Robert Helpmann) in CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG has something of Hopkins about him.

In one of his most humourless roles, Vincent Price was never better as the screen Hopkins.

Price classically renders Hopkins here, romanticising the events around the character, but WITCHFINDER GENERAL is extremely accurate in its interpretation of the accusation, torture and forced confession. The General is unshakeably matter-of-fact as he hangs, drowns, burns and has needles pushed into his victims, his face and voice convey comparatively little, even the sexual subtext implied by his interest in Sara (Hilary Dwyer). Price’s performance is not so much restrained but stone cold, and it can be argued that Peter Cushing’s interpretation of the Hopkins character, as Gustav Weil in Hammer’s TWINS OF EVIL, is closer to the real-life person. Price, by 1968, was inseparable from carnival-host and Freudian-camp. Reeves, who had wanted the tyrant to be played by Donald Pleasence, felt that Price’s tongue-in-cheek approach to horror was wrong for the role. Exactly how Reeves achieved this radical shift in the actor’s tone is now legend. Clearly, he and his star did not get along, but the friction is attributed to various causes. One publicity photo taken on set shows the two antagonists together - Price in full costume clad in black, hunched over and solemn, and Reeves in a white polo-neck facing in the opposite direction - the impression is of two figures worlds apart.