Demons of the 1970's (Part I of II)

DEMONS OF THE MIND (1972)

One of Britain's last costumed Gothics, DEMONS OF THE MIND was filmed as BLOOD WILL HAVE BLOOD, exploring "dreams of sexual fear supressed through guilt."

AMID the dying embers of the 1970's British film industry, attempts to move into more psychological thrillers resulted in a number of underappreciated efforts. Dumped onto the wrong end of a double bill with TOWER OF EVIL, DEMONS OF THE MIND - directed by Peter Sykes and written by Christopher Wicking - is a Hammer production which focuses on Baron Friedrich Zorn (Robert Hardy), who fears he has passed on the "family madness" to son Emil (Shane Briant) and daughter Elizabeth (Gillian Hills). Held captive to curb their incestuous desires, Emil is at least released at night to murder women, while Elizabeth is "bled" to make her weak (making use of a vintage Scarificator from the British Museum). When discredited psychologist Falkenberg (Patrick Magee) arrives with his associate scholar Carl (Manfred Man singer Paul Jones), an experiment to rid Emil of his lust involving Inge (Virginia Wetherell) ends in another strangulation. The villagers, influenced by a deranged, self-styled Holy Man (Michael Hordern), decide that Zorn is the true demon, and stake him with a burning cross.

A mix of Hammer's Mittel Europe and fledgling psychiatry was one way the company attempted to make its product fresh, another was by infusing proceedings with new young directors and screenwriters. But DEMONS OF THE MIND is more cynical than satisfying, conveying a relentless dourness (quoting Psalm 38 "For my loins are filled with a loathsome disease, and there is no soundness in my flesh") where conventions are either twists or throwbacks: Magnee's unhinged Mesmerist and Van Helsing substitute helps no one ("Better men than I have been booted out of Vienna!"), an alleged Priest is a dangerous zealot, and the villagers revel in their own sadism.

In a role originally intended for Marianne Faithfull, Gillian Hills plays somnambulant Elizabeth Zorn. Faithfull was pulled late on due to insurance issues on her drug use.

A Poe-like story of an incestuous, murderous dynasty crumbling to dust, Zorn is driven by subconscious compulsions of his peasant bride's "virgin blood" and bare flesh (Zorn is a character undermined by Hardy's pantomime performance; to think we might have had Eric Porter, Paul Scofield, Dirk Bogarde or James Mason). Hordern is also overtly loopy, barely able to carry his over-sized wooden cross, and despite the emotional slant, DEMONS OF THE MIND actually serves up a copious amount of exploitative, early 70's gore: although optically fogged, Zorn's wife is seen to slash her wrists and throat in front of her children, but further scenes of Emil killing maiden aunt Helda (Yvonne Mitchell) with a bunch of keys and Zorn's climactic impalement are in no way shrouded.

The original pitch to Hammer by Frank Godwin - the composer-cum-independent producer who penned Strange Love for LUST FOR A VAMPIRE - was actually a werewolf picture. The studio was intrigued by Godwin's knowledge of the legend of Blutlust, and together with Wicking, formulated a treatment based on the Bavarian story of a man-wolf which was actually a psychopathic condition not understood by the medicine of the time. However, the tale was a complete fabrication, and Hammer did not warm to the werewolf elements anyway, leaving only a vague lycanthropic reference in the finished film where Zorn imagines himself stalking as an animal (to further the pseudo-werewolf angle, the muted cinematography is lensed by Arthur Grant, making his last Hammer picture in an association which started with THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF).

Don't Look Back in Anger

Kenneth Anger's chaotic relationship with British rock gods

A follower of Aleister Crowley's Thelema religion, Kenneth Anger's filmic influence can be seen in the emergence of the music video, and the work of David Lynch and John Waters.

SANTA-MONICA born Kenneth Anger is equal parts Aleister Crowley disciple, avant-garde filmmaker, and gay Hollywood gossipmonger. Fixated with fading silver screen stars and homosexual male icons, his scandalous tome Hollywood Babylon lifts the lid on an endless array of tinsel town drug abuse and depravity, stories of deviance and death that would befit The Great Beast himself. Anger considered Rolling Stones guitarists Keith Richards and Brian Jones - and Anita Pallenberg, who had been a lover to both musicians - to be at the centre of his provocative path. Perhaps the Stones themselves saw Anger as a possible conduit for the rebellious tone of the late 1960's, yet looking at the cover of their 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request, it isn't absolutely clear how serious the group were taking the magus (the band wear sorcerer garb that would only suit a pantomime).

Anger's infamous film LUCIFER RISING is a mesmeric ritual charting the shift of Christianity (Aeon of Osiris) towards a demonic land (Aeon of Horus). Anger considers movies as spell-casters, "a transparent excuse for capturing people," but this subscribes to Crowley's religious cycles, looking at a post-anointed faith. Mick Jagger was intrigued by Anger, and how occultism had the potential to inspire counterculture. The filmmaker tried to convince The Stones talisman to take the role of Lucifer, but Jagger baulked and offered his brother Chris instead. The more famous Jagger composed a gratingly discordant moog score, which would be used in INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER, a short that salvages initial LUCIFER RISING footage and splices scenes from The Stones Hyde Park concert for what is essentially a film about a funeral for a cat. Donald Cammell was also cast as Osiris in LUCIFER RISING, together with Marianne Faithfull as Lilith and Jimmy Page in a cameo as "Man holding the Stella of Revelation." On set, Anger repeatedly argued with Chris Jagger, resulting in the latter being fired, and Faithful fell off a mountain, luckily sustaining only mild concussion.

Mick Jagger's score for INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER was created from a newly acquired Moog synth and it shows; it has the much the same effect as turning on the instrument and leaving it running.

The soundtrack to LUCIFER RISING is another contentious affair. Anger met Page at a London auction where they were both bidding for Crowley memorabilia. Anger convinced Page to compose the soundtrack for his film, with the rock star giving Anger permission to move into the basement of his London mansion to use his editing suite. In October 1976 Anger got into an argument with Page's then wife Charlotte, who threw him out for allegedly giving guided tours to strangers. The magus consequently labelled Page as a washed out musician unable to meet deadlines, and removed him from the project. In fact the Led Zeppelin guitarist had the soundtrack in place before he ever saw any footage; Page had extended an existing piece that he thought would fit the film, centred around a "majestic drone" on a bass tanpura acquired from India. He then used chants and assorted instrumentation to create a twenty-minute track that takes up one side of the 2012 release Lucifer Rising and Other Soundtracks.

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.