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).

Drama Nation

DRAMA PLAYHOUSE - THE INCREDIBLE ROBERT BALDICK (1972)

DOCTOR WHO - THE ANDROID INVASION (1975)

"He cannot resist the inexplicable; almost any happening qualifies for his interest so long as it is out of the ordinary." Terry Nation's stab at DRAMA PLAYHOUSE created Robert Baldick.

FORMING part of the third season of DRAMA PLAYHOUSE - the BBC's launching pad for potential series - THE INCREDIBLE ROBERT BALDICK: NEVER COME NIGHT was Terry Nation's first completed work for the Corporation's drama department since his six episodes of DOCTOR WHO - THE DALEKS' MASTER PLAN in 1965. Directed by Cyril Coke, this never-commissioned pilot is a Victorian Gothic with the titular Baldick (Robert Hardy) an eccentric detective/scientist who owns his own steam locomotive and has a pet owl. A fusion of Sherlock Holmes and Fox Mulder, Hardy plays Baldick with suffocating gusto, but there are too many themes in too short a running time to create a satisfying whole. Elements of Victorian literature (loyal assistants, windswept nights) and Gothic fiction (secrets in the woods, ruined abbey, failed exorcism, unruly villagers) are further complicated by the alien artefact sting, a payoff that is not just a narrative anomaly but an unnecessary Quatermass-like "resolution".

Squire Aldington (Reginald Marsh) and Reverend Elmstead (James Cossins) discover the corpse of a young woman in the reputedly haunted ruins of Duvel Woods Abbey. Elmstead visits friend Robert Baldick, in the hope that the unconventional sleuth will assist in this latest of murders to effect Boardington village ("local legend has it that the deaths go back into prehistory.") Aided by his valet Thomas Wingham (Julian Holloway) and burly gamekeeper Caleb Selling (John Rhys-Davies), Baldick delves into local parish records, and discovers that the Abbey has long been associated with human sacrifice. Excavating deeper within the crypt, fear and anxiety grips the group; Thomas is pulled into a chamber below, which is full of human bones and pervaded by a sense of absolute evil. Baldick is convinced that the Abbey contains a distillation of the terrors and phobias of all the people who have visited the enclose, and later studies a strange object he retrieved from the floor: a small metal box containing intricate electrics and runic symbols.

DOCTOR WHO - THE ANDROID INVASION was the second of two non-Dalek scripts Terry Nation turned in for the series (the first was THE KEYS OF MARINUS from 1964).

Although beautifully shot and well received, the programme suffered from scheduling problems which was triggered by a behind-the-scenes tussle over the name of the character. BALDICK was originally to be shown on 6th September, but in the immediate aftermath of the Munich Olympic massacre, it was removed at the last moment and eventually aired at a later than usual time slot on 2nd October. However, the original airdate of 23rd August was quashed by legal ambiguities between the BBC and Robert Baldick Junior, a PhD student whose father Dr Robert Baldick - an Oxford French literature academic - had granted Nation permission to use his name. Unfortunately Baldick Senior died before the broadcast date, and head of drama serials Andrew Osborn eventually conceded that - although it was too late to change the pilot - the name would change if the venture would develop.

For DOCTOR WHO - THE ANDROID INVASION, Nation invented the rhinoceros-like Kraals, who go to finite trouble to create an exact replica of an English village and populate it with synthetic organisms to rehearse an invasion of Earth. Chief Kraal scientist Styggron (Martin Friend) also intends to release a deadly virus to aid resistance, but this is ultimately as unnecessarily convoluted as BALDICK. Themes of duplication and mind-draining are lost in a number of silly plot elements, most of all duping astronaut Crayford (Milton Johns) in thinking he has lost an eye by simply giving him an eye-patch. On the surface this is a minor entry in the Time Lord's greater Gothic scheme of the mid-70's, but it does cover interrogation - The Doctor (Tom Baker)’s subjection to the Analysis Machine - and 1950’s Sci-Fi paranoia; Crayton may be a critical laughing stock, but is a man in identifiable flux.

Twisted Tales

SUPERNATURAL (1977)
INSIDE NO. 9 (2014 - )

SUPERNATURAL based two of its episodes around creepy dummies. After the death of her mother, and her father's re-marriage, a young girl becomes obsessed by a doll in the Peter Sasdy-directed VIKTORIA.

SUPERNATURAL was a BBC anthology devised by Robert Muller, who wrote seven of the eight tales. Muller intended the show to rekindle the flavour of early horror cinema, subtle tales of fear based around The Club of the Damned. Each week, a prospective member will tell a true tale of terror; if successful, they will be given lifetime membership, if they fail, murder awaits. It is certainly a series of two halves, with the first four stories suffering from verbal diarrhoea and two excruciatingly loopy lead performances by Robert Hardy (as a haunted actor in GHOST OF VENICE) and Jeremy Brett (who falls under the spell of Lesley-Anne Down in MR NIGHTINGALE). Amazingly the series then opens up considerably: Denholm Elliott and John Osborne expertly play brothers living with their paranoid mother in LADY SYBILL, and NIGHT OF THE MARIONETTES has Gordon Jackson a biographer of Byron and Shelly. Unfortunately this momentum is lost with DORABELLA, a straightforward Gothic where two travellers are ensnared to provide a new vampire blood line. The exterior scenes breath some fresh air, even though it relies heavily on matte shots from Hammer's SCARS OF DRACULA.

Inexplicably broadcast on BBC1 in the summer - and scheduled to clash with BBC2's popular Horror Double Bills - SUPERNATURAL was shot on then industry-standard videotape, and suffers from visible ghosting (the muted colours of the gloomy castles and Victoriana add to its tired façade). Muller's intentions may well have been "to set the viewer's mind into action" with a set of archetypal examinations, but the series was not re-commissioned, despite strong supporting roles by Ian Hendry, Cathleen Nesbitt, Catherine Schell and Vladek Sheybal. The Club of the Damned is also disappointedly underdeveloped, with members displayed as stuffy armchair dwellers rather than bloodthirsty Turks all too eager to literally wield an axe.

Graham Humpreys' poster for THE HARROWING, the final episode of INSIDE NO. 9 series one. Here, a unsuspecting schoolgirl housesits a Gothic mansion, but is actually the centrepiece for a demonic transfer.

During the Radio 4 documentary HOUSES OF HORROR, the observation is made that the main difference between Hammer and Amicus is that Amicus's dour, modern settings were what is revealed after Hammer's large-bosomed damsels and mist-enveloped castles evaporate into your romantic mind's eye. One of its commentators, Reece Shearsmith, really takes this to heart for his INSIDE NO. 9 - co-written with Steve Pemberton - a series of stand-alone thirty minute dramas that feel like TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED melded to PLAY FOR TODAY. The twelve episodes so far have been noteworthy for their eloquently dark writing and almost cinematic staging, with stellar casts bringing to light every sickly twist and turn. The tone has also been refreshingly irrelevant; SARDINES, for example, sees Tim Key cast as a victim of paedophilia, exacting his revenge on his tormentor, family and associates while they are all locked in a wardrobe, while A QUIET NIGHT IN focusses on physical comedy. The highlight of the second series is THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTINE, a tight-as-a-drum emotional journey of a young woman beautifully played by Sheridan Smith.