Blood Lust

VAMPYRES (1974)

This cult classic makes effective use of Hammer's Oakley Court stomping ground in its story of savage lust and supernatural desires.

THE 1970s offered a glut of lesbian vampire movies, and all of them seem to have attracted their own fanatical devotees. A rare horror film independently made in Britain, VAMPYRES is a collaboration between UK-resident Spanish director Joseph Larraz and editor Brian Smedley-Aston; yet its own precedent of the genre - Hammer’s conventional gothic THE VAMPIRE LOVERS - is shrugged aside in preference for Harry Kumel’s DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS. Fran (Marianne Morris) and Miriam (Anulka Dziubinska) are the eponymous bisexual vampires, spending their days insensible in a cellar (filled with Carpathian wine), and their nights seducing unwary drivers who they proceed to sexually exhaust and kill.

The astonishing debauchery of the murder scenes - filmed mostly by Larraz using a hand-held camera - are poetic in their excess, as Fran and Miriam slice their victims and lap at open wounds with ferocious intensity. As Larraz explains, “I imagine my vampires (to) turn almost to cannibalism, to take the blood from anywhere. I can't imagine anyone coming to suck blood gently. It would be very quick with urgency … urgency for the kill, urgency for the blood, because it's what they need.” The wintry shots of the vampires waiting by the roadside are effective, but it is also the smaller details that add to the overall lingering chill: Ted (Murray Brown) is horrified by Fran’s habit of sleeping with her eyes open, and people’s watches stop when in the vicinity of the bloodsuckers.

The two stars also showed their flesh on the printed page: Dziubinska was Playboy’s Miss May 1973, and Morris appeared in the October 1976 edition of Mayfair.

The two leads were cast for their bodies and not their acting talent, and both were subsequently dubbed. But Morris and Dziubinska play their roles remarkably well; Fran is the hunter-gatherer, while Miriam is the petite blonde waif that belies her savagery. An unusual production as far as it has plenty of loose ends and unexplained back-story, VAMPYRES is nevertheless the definitive erotic horror film, a primal piece which is driven by emotion and lack of logic - both distinctive traits of the vampire ethos.

Hamlet Covered in Snot

Alan Moore and (Saga of the) Swamp Thing (1984 - 87)

Gabriele Dell’Otto’s rendering of Swamp Thing and Abby Cable appeared as part of Alan Moore: Portrait of An Extraordinary Gentleman, a book to celebrate the creator’s fiftieth year.

WRITER Alan Moore - along with American creative force Frank Miller - was responsible for the injection of comic book relevancy in the 1980s. The Northampton resident’s literary skills moved mainstream superheroes ahead of popular culture, lacing fantasies with the nihilism of the liberal-minded, disenfranchised youth of Thatcher's Britain and Reagan's America; and as DC’s second attempt at a Swamp Thing running title was heading for cancellation, the company agreed to give him an unprecedented free rein. By the time Moore’s tenure had ended, the series had won most of comics top awards, and monthly sales had risen from 17,000 to over 100,000.

(Saga of the) Swamp Thing ushered in a bold new age for American comics: the so-called British Invasion. Moore dismissed everything that had gone before on the book; readers who had followed the Bayou monster’s attempt to restore his lost humanity for more than a decade saw their hero swept into an entirely opposite direction - not only would Swamp Thing not regain his humanity, he never had it to begin with. In the masterwork 'The Anatomy Lesson,' an autopsy discovers that the creatures’ body was only superficially human, its organs little more than crude, non-functional, vegetable-based imitations. This meant the Swamp Thing was not scientist Alec Holland, but only thought it was: a “ghost dressed in weeds,” where the vegetation had absorbed his mind, knowledge, memories, and skills to create a sentient being. Moore would later reveal that there had been dozens, perhaps even hundreds of Swamp Things since the dawn of mankind, and that all versions were defenders of the Parliament of Trees, an elemental community also known as The Green that represented all plant life on Earth.

(Saga of the) Swamp Thing #21 - which contained 'The Anatomy Lesson' - would change the character forever. It was a revelation that, like the best of revelations, felt so obvious we ought to have guessed it all along.

This innovation opened up the boundaries for a title which had been painfully restricted. A plethora of intriguing new abilities were suddenly available, with Swamp Thing able to mutate, transport himself around the globe, explore space, and even experience love on both a physical and emotional level. The monster’s consummation with Abby Cable in the extraordinary 'Rites of Spring' saw the first comic to exclusively focus on a sex act between members of different animal kingdoms, and was an indication just how far Moore had brought the title in his first year. In the comic book world sex is usually limited to large breasts, rippling muscles and thigh-length boots, but it is made abundantly clear that Swamp Thing and Abby’s partnership is based on love. We watch as they navigate through their first sexual encounter, Abby as confused about the mechanics of the process as we are. By eating a fruit that the Swamp Thing plucks from his back, Abby is transported to a psychedelic wonderland; instead of an external sexuality for the delight of the readers, the two share a private fulfilment that we are allowed to observe. Their communion is beautifully rendered on the page, awash in spirals and orgasms, without showing anything that could be considered titillating or censorable.

Moore’s run provided other nuances, including the creation of John Constantine - who helps Swamp Thing evolve into an elemental deity - and Hippie Chester Williams. The writer also included several of the obscure or forgotten (Phantom Stranger, Floronic Man et al), cementing DC's supernatural characters into a consistent mythology. But no re-introduction was as illuminating than 'Pog', which resurrects Walt Kelly's funny animal character Pogo (created in 1943). More than a simple homage, the story is a commentary on the lost innocence of the old comics, the cruelty of humans (“the loneliest animal of all”), and the destruction of a natural beauty that can never be reclaimed. Moore also experimented with form that would affect the standing of the DC universe: his characterisation of the Justice League in #24 - for example - would become a touchstone for the deconstructionist super-heroics that followed.

Alan Moore’s work crosses genre boundaries like no other, ranging from farce and high comedy to the dark, grim work that epitomised the comics revolution of the 1980s.

It was during issues #29-31 that DC, seeing what it had, dropped from the title's cover the box showing approval by Comics Code Authority - the self-censoring body established to keep comics safe for kids. DC replaced this with Sophisticated Suspense, running above the title's logo, signalling readers as to the content. At the time, this was an unprecedented move. It would lead in time to the label “Suggested for Mature Readers” - the titles carrying this label would form the basis of the Vertigo imprint.

Moore's Swamp Thing is filled with aggressive metaphors and narrative structures; stories end with a line or an image from the opening, creating a satisfying circular structure. The scribe publicly regretted, not long after his run, the pretentiousness of such designs. But these were the thoughts of a successful artist attempting to stay new: whatever critical overtones we may add in retrospect, the literary intelligence of Moore's run on the title was the single most important work that made comics unafraid of experiment. Every time a mainstream superhero barely features in his own title - or tries to craft a psychologically compelling tale of human longing - we have Alan Moore to thank.

Rape from Space

INSEMINOID (1980)
XTRO (1983)

Unremittingly cheesey and occasionally ridiculous, 
it really does feel like XTRO is from another planet.

IN the wake of seemingly endless ALIEN rip-offs, Britain’s contribution to this unnecessary subgenera were two low-budget films both structured around extraterrestrial rape: Norman J. Warren’s INSEMINOID - where Judy Geeson is assaulted by a monster with a test-tube penis - and Harry Bromley Davenport’s XTRO - where a male abductee is reborn fully grown by a girl who has been probed by an alien tentacle (for those who want to try this at home, the inseminatory fluid in Warren’s entry was a combination of raw egg and watered-down Swarfega). INSEMINOID tells the story of an archaeological expedition, who discover a vast tomb-like complex and an assortment of crystals beneath a strange planet. The first half is unbelievably slow (with dialogue functional at best), and only gets going when Sandy (Geeson) is attacked. Once impregnated the character - at the psychic urging of the crystals - hunts down her colleagues, feasting on them to sustain her pregnancy, and Sandy eventually gives birth to plasma-seeking twins who abscond to Earth. 

The highlight of INSEMINOID is John Metcalfe’s low-lit Chislehurst Caves interiors, which make the most of a combination of blue and red filters - with this surprisingly lush element contrasting with the increasingly garish content. Similar stylistic flourishes evaporate into a completely nihilistic shocker with XTRO, which mixes scenes of bitter, understated British life with effects heavy on teeth and slime. Narrowly escaping becoming the second official Brit-made video nasty - that honour only belonged to James Kenelm Clarke’s steamy sexploiter EXPOSE - XTRO was marketed as the anti-E.T., with the tagline “not all aliens are friendly.” In fact no-one “phones home” here: they're usually bludgeoned, stabbed or sucked to death in a mess of rubber mallet-head bopping, murderous toy tanks and (inconceivably) a black panther.

"Conceived in violence, carried in terror, born to devastate and brutalize a universe!": INSEMINOID's evil alien twins.

Surprisingly, XTRO opens on an idyllic autumn afternoon. Tony (Simon Nash) is playing with his father Sam (Philip Sayer) and their dog in the garden of their house; the sky shatters, its crisp sunlight replaced with darkness and howling winds. Sam is absorbed by a blinding white light and disappears; three years later, Tony is suffering from recurring nightmares. Feigning amnesia, Sam returns and moves back into a fragmented family unit, and sets about rebuilding his relationship with Tony and Rachel (Bernice Stegers). But this is a front to get closer to his son; in an unsettling scene which could be viewed as a child abuse allegory, Sam bites Tony's neck and starts pumping secretions into the child, preparing him for a similar change. This gives Tony amazing abilities which he uses to bring a toy clown and an Action Man doll to life. The latter set piece is truly outlandish - the boy sends the life-size doll to slaughter his next door neighbour after she chops up his pet snake. The fact that neighbour Mrs Goodman is played by Anna Wing - who spent years as Lou Beale on EASTENDERS - is a fittingly trivial fact for a trivial viewing experience.

A Bit of Mischief

HOUSE OF WHIPCORD (1973)

FRIGHTMARE (1974)

HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN (1975)

FRIGHTMARE’s iconic poster art depicts Sheila Keith’s pre-Abel Ferrara use of power drills as an implement of murder, and is the film that best illustrates Pete Walker and David McGillivray’s distinctive brand of grot guignol.

FOR a regrettably brief period, Pete Walker made some of the most striking movies to come out of 1970s British cinema, at a time when the country’s film industry was in serious decline. Segued from sexploitation, Walker’s pictures tend to be downers (even his sex films are depressing), often featuring sadistic authority figures punishing anyone (but usually young women) who don’t conform to their strict codes. He has denied there being any political subtext to his work; however, HOUSE OF WHIPCORD is dedicated to "...those who are disturbed by today's lax moral codes and who eagerly await the return of corporal and capital punishment," suggesting Walker isn't entirely unsympathetic towards his villains. Although never undergone a critical reappraisal in the same way as American contemporaries Tobe Hooper and Wes Craven, the producer/director maintains an avid cult following, commenting on his filmography “…all I wanted to do was create a bit of mischief." Walker is an auteur: his films are technically competent, if declining to indulge in grandstanding displays of technique that might have won him more recognition in the manner of Ken Russell.

By directing films set in the Home Counties, Walker bucked the trend of English Gothic; instead of mad scientists and cloaked vampires, his films dwell on old ladies and teenage tearaways. In HOUSE OF WHIPCORD - the first of four collaborations with critic-scriptwriter David McGillivray - Walker delivers a deliciously raw view of what happens when individuals decide to mete out justice in their own backyard. Ann-Marie de Vernay (Penny Irving) - a naïve French model living in London - is enticed by playboy Mark E. Desade (Robert Tayman) into spending some time at his parent's house. But Julia finds herself imprisoned in a corrective institute run by Mark's mother Mrs Wakehurst (Barbara Markham), and senile Justice Bailey (Patrick Barr). Overseen by sadistic warders Walker (the filmmaker’s illuminus, Sheila Keith) and Bates (Dorothy Gordon), she exists in a living hell where minor infractions are punished by whipping, and subsequent misdemeanours result in hanging. As the prison’s intractable sergeant-at-arms, Keith delivers her lecherous lines (“I’m going to make you ashamed of your body di Vernay … I’m going to see to that personally”) with venomous aplomb. Less admirably, Irving is possibly the most irritating Gallic damsel-in-distress (“zees cannot be!”), and the film does suffer from a too tidy resolution, and a bundle of day-for-night scenes.

Censor Stephen Murphy’s fanciful conviction that HOUSE OF WHIPCORD’s self-appointed governors Wakehurst and Bailey were savage lampoons of Mary Whitehouse and Lord Longford led him to pass the film with only the deletion of a single whiplash effect.

Although Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM is far superior in an artistic sense, HOUSE OF WHIPCORD shares that film's troubling evocation of the agony brought by imminent death and the way in which the viewer responds to it; Peter Jessop's deliberately dark lighting suggests all manner of depravities which aren't directly on screen. Indeed, one of the defining features of Walker's style is that the overwhelming impression of brutal violence is often much more disturbing than anything which is shown. The torture scenes aren’t in the same league as Ilsa, yet the forced haircuts, sham legalities and ghastly institutional food are far more credibly appalling; instead of titillating shower scenes or lesbian gropings, we have unerotic nudity in uncomfortable surroundings.

Another facet of Walker is an extraordinary sense of the impotence of men to do anything to protect the women they care about. Time and again, the male characters who should be heroic are pleasant types, but totally ineffectual. When the battered heroine escapes, lorry driver Mr Kind (Ivor Salter) hands her back to Wakehurst under the impression that the prison is a clinic where she will be treated for her wounds, and the apparent hero (Ray Brooks) arrives too late. Walker seems to find women much more interesting, and this immediately marks out his work in a world - exploitation horror - which, at the time, tended to have women as purely victims. Walker's heroines may often be victimised but they are also vivid, tough and proactive. If they fail, it's not for lack of trying.

Despite her long and varied career on stage and television, Sheila Keith is best remembered for her collaborations with Walker, FRIGHTMARE being the only time she had a lead role.

Arguably Walker's best film, FRIGHTMARE turns the concept of the family unit upside down. In a black and white prologue, Dorothy Yates (Keith) is sentenced to rehabilitation in a psychiatric ward for her uncontrollable taste for human flesh. Her husband - Edmund (Rupert Davies) - is sentenced along with her, leaving their daughter, Debbie (an alarmingly credible Kim Butcher), in the care of Jackie (Deborah Fairfax), Edmund's child from a previous marriage. Years later, both Dorothy and Edmund have been released and live an isolated life out in the country. In London, Debbie has become an embittered juvenile delinquent, much to the dismay of Jackie and her psychiatrist boyfriend, Graham (Paul Greenwood). Unfortunately Dorothy's bloodlust continues unabated, with people falling prey to power drills, pokers and pitchforks.

Although Davies brings a complex pathos in his fine performance as Edmund, this is unquestionably Keith's show. FRIGHTMARE allows her to run the gamut from a tremulous and confused aging woman to a crazed, bloodthirsty maniac in the span of a few seconds, and her attacks are explicit and intense. Although Walker clearly sees her as a threat to society, he gives her enough quiet moments - made genuinely touching by Keith's performance. Walker cleverly subverts expectations by pointing out that corruption stems not from the swinging lifestyle shown at the beginning of the film, but rather from barbaric familial practices spread down from one generation to another which fester under the noses of polite society. From a technical standpoint this is also one of Walker's most accomplished features, creating an oppressive atmosphere as he contrasts the bustling city life with the dark, damp, lonely country locations, all enhanced by a chilling Stanley Myers score. FRIGHTMARE is a tightly constructed piece from McGillivray which invites the viewer to decide who amongst the Yateses is the biggest monster.

Influenced by Walker’s Catholic school background, HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN (released in America as THE CONFESSIONAL) is another enduring classic.

Not as condemned for its assault on the Catholic church as Walker would have liked, HOUSE OF MORTAL SIN was made in an era when priests were good press in genre movies as exorcists and advisers. This melodrama taps into abuses of power, and the channelling of repressed sexuality into ultra-violence, as Father Xavier Meldrum (Anthony Sharp) secretly tapes confessions and develops obsessions with young women. In McGillivray’s intricate script, the writer packs in several Walkeresque murders by flaming censer, poisoned communion wafers and a string of rosary beads, while a more distinguished cast bring to life an interesting array of characters: Susan Penhaligon and Stephanie Beacham as sleuthing sisters, Sheila Keith as a one-eyed lovelorn housekeeper, Hilda Barry’s bedridden mother and Norman Eshley as the more approachable Father Cutler.

But Sharp is simply spellbinding as Meldrum, at once frighteningly mad and genuinely tragic. Like several other cast members, Sharp was apparently dismayed by the subject matter, and its impossible to tell from his feverish performance whether we are watching Meldrum’s or Sharp’s self-disgust. Meldrum approaches his victims Dracula-like, achieving a brilliant role reversal as his glimmering crucifix becomes an object of terror rather than reassurance. The eruption of violence within such a genteel actor more accustomed to playing minor civil servants or stooging for Morecambe and Wise, makes them all the more unsettling.

Creepy Compendium

DEAD OF NIGHT (1945)

The demonic silent film roles of Conrad Veidt were an inspiration for Michael Redgrave’s extraordinary performance in DEAD OF NIGHT.

PREYING masterfully on the country’s post-war fears and paranoia, Ealing’s portmanteau DEAD OF NIGHT - over sixty years later - still remains a resonant work of art. Representing a departure for the studio from the classic comedy mould, the film is a psychological thriller made up of five ghost stories, which brought such a disturbing aura of unease at the time of release, that several newspapers called for it to be suppressed. The work sets up a classic genre opposition between science and the supernatural, and makes it clear from the outset which side it is on. The character of Psychiatrist Dr van Straaten (Frederick Valk) is quickly isolated; his attempts to offer rational interpretations are dismissed - and pays for his scepticism with his life.

DEAD OF NIGHT is structured as a recurring nightmare, in which architect Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) arrives at a strangely familiar country cottage. Unlike most horror compendiums, this framing story is embedded into the narrative, and is not just a device to link the tales. The first story recounts the presentiment of death offered to a racing driver (Anthony Baird), while the second touches on a young girl (Sally Anne Howes) who encounters a boy murdered several decades previously. The third has a couple (Googie Withers and Ralph Michael) whose cloying self-satisfaction is destroyed when she presents him with an ornate mirror, before the film takes an ill-advised detour into comic relief with the much maligned golfing segment. The film’s fifth episode is its most famous and disturbing, with Michael Redgrave as unbalanced ventriloquist Maxwell Frere, with John Maguire as his jeering alter ego Hugo Fitch. By the end of the story the ventriloquist is seen confined to a hospital bed, face alight with madness as the castrato tones of Hugo issue from his unmoving lips, a scene which anticipates the ending of PSYCHO.

Dreamlike poster art for Ealing’s only foray into horror.

The film as a whole can be seen as a response to the social dislocations caused by the end of the war, a confusion in masculine identity arising from difficulties in integrating a large part of the male population back into civilian life. On one level, DEAD OF NIGHT reveals a male fear of domesticity, which is here equated with the presence of strong, independent women who are seen to have usurped male authority. The film is full of weak, crippled, and/or victimised male characters: an injured racing driver, a boy murdered by his elder sister, a meek accountant dominated first by his fiancée and then by the influence of the haunted mirror, and a neurotic ventriloquist who eventually collapses into insanity. It is significant in this light that the character whose dream the film turns out to be is an architect, a symbolically charged profession at a time of national reconstruction. That this architect is indecisive, frightened, and harbouring murderous desires underlines the DEAD OF NIGHT’s lack of confidence in the future.

This can be connected with one of the characteristic themes of British World War II cinema, namely the formation of a cohesive group out of diverse social elements. Instead, this group is fragmented by the film's insistent stress on the ways in which each individual is trapped within his or her own perceptions. Repeatedly characters stare disbelievingly at the "impossible" events unfolding before them, and seeing is no longer believing. Therefore, the faith in an objective reality central to British wartime documentaries and which also contributed to the style adopted by many fiction films has been eroded in DEAD OF NIGHT. Dreams and fantasies have taken its place, to the extent that "None of us exist at all. We're nothing but characters in Mr Craig's dream."

Stairway to Sex Magick

The Strange Case of Aleister Crowley and Jimmy Page

English Occultist Aleister Crowley, aka "The Great Beast 666," "The Wickedest Man In The World," and a number of other equally outlandish monikers.

BORN in the Victorian age into a family of Plymouth Brethren - who regarded sex as horribly sinful - Aleister Crowley spent his life violently reacting against this view. Legendary for an unabashed use of hashish, opium, cocaine and heroin, Crowley achieved further notoriety with sex magick, or sexual intercourse continued indefinitely - without orgasm - to produce long, drawn-out states of ecstasy and intoxication. Traditional magicians had built a system of ritual and drama; but Crowley felt that real magick was hidden in a man's will, and could be summoned by an unconscious process. Conventional morality was worthless; Crowley's credo became "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." Suffering from bronchial infection and addicted to heroin, he passed away quietly in an unassuming Hastings boarding house during 1947, and was almost forgotten until the rock musicians - who alone had the money and inclination to live as Crowley did - started reading about him years after his death. With his libertarian agenda, insatiable appetite for sex and drugs, and a wardrobe of spectacular costumes, it’s as if Crowley had already predicted the heady counterculture of the 1960s and transformed into an icon of rebellion - a metamorphosis crowned by his appearance on the cover of The Beatles’ ‘Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ (1967).

Boleskine House - a sprawling U-shaped farmhouse on the shores of Loch Ness - is the most physical ramification in the link between Crowley and Led Zeppelin’s virtuoso guitarist Jimmy Page. Bought by Crowley acolyte Page in 1970, it was purchased in 1900 by The Great Beast for almost twice its value, because it met certain requirements of Abra-Melin the Mage. These included windows and a door that opened to the north toward a secluded structure that was to serve as an oratory (those who practice Thelma - the religious philosophy Crowley founded - are still instructed to "face north to Boleskine" when conducting ceremonies). Crowley subsequently styled himself The Laird of Boleskine, adopted the kilt, and began trying to summon Thoth and Horus. Stories of unexplained – and unconfirmed - occurrences in the area during his residency are numerous; one tells of a local butcher accidentally cutting off his own hand with a cleaver after reading a note left by Crowley.

Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page. Zeppelin’s phallic guitar worship and uninhibited sexuality made them the rock phenomenon of their era. Asked of any connection to the Black Arts, the groups publicist B. P. Fallon once said, “Jimmy certainly wasn’t sacrificing virgins at midnight. He couldn’t find any.”

Page was quoted in Roadrunner magazine discussing further mayhem, including the story that Boleskine was once the site of a church that burned to the ground with its congregation. This historical background gives insight into the lyrics of Zeppelin’s landmark track Stairway to Heaven. When we consider its nature - a woman searching for the path to a Celtic higher plane - it is a yearning for spiritual transformation; it also appears to be partially a song of hope for all those who once suffered at Boleskine. Controversy for the tune began in 1982, when a prominent Baptist used his radio pulpit to preach that Stairway to Heaven carried subliminal messages. Then the California State Assembly played a backward tape in a public session, with members of the committee claiming they heard the words, "I live for Satan." Zeppelin were duly denounced as agents of The Devil, who were luring millions of teenagers into damnation as unwitting disciples of the Antichrist.

Rumours of devilry dogged Zeppelin throughout their career, fuelled by Page’s interest in Crowley and their deliberately mysterious album sleeves and personal tragedies - singer Robert Plant’s son Karac died of a respiratory infection in 1977, and drummer John Bonham succumbed after a drinking binge in 1980. Shortly after Bonham’s demise, rumours resurfaced about Zeppelin’s so-called 'Black Album', a record of death chants that a German writer claimed he had translated from Old Swabian. Plant himself dismissed any pacts with the Devil, remembering that the only deal the band made was with some of the girls’ High Schools in San Fernando Valley. But Page’s interest in Crowley is profound; the magus took Lucifer as an agent of intellect and freedom, the liberation of the individual. Without any restrictions, there would be no frustration to lead to violence, crime or mental breakdown. Feeling Crowley a misunderstood genius, the musician believed this doctrine of common sense.

Marshall Law

DOG SOLDIERS (2002)
THE DESCENT (2005)

DOG SOLDIERS returns to the kind of lycanthrope comedy-horror that hasn't been seen since AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON.

WITH their seven foot tall werewolves and cave-dwelling people eaters, Neil Marshall’s DOG SOLDIERS and THE DESCENT gleefully tore open the heart of the British horror movie. What Marshall lacks in budget and satiric savvy, he recoups through razor-sharp shooting in low-light and as much blood as he can spill; DOG SOLDIERS takes all of two minutes to dismember its first pair of victims, while THE DESCENT wait’s a full three to skewer a father and young daughter. Both pictures are barebone survivalist shockers, but the Newcastle-born auteur - in the great tradition of the B movie - gets a lot out of nothing, the dark in particular.

Portrayed well, the werewolf is the most sympathetic of monsters. David Kessler, the lead character in AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, embodied the creature as a near-tragic figure, while GINGER SNAPS drew comparisons between lycanthropy and the onset of menstruation for the Buffy generation. This horror of transformation is at the heart of the werewolf condition, a fact disappointingly ignored by DOG SOLDIERS; rather than a werewolf movie, it is a soldiers-under-siege picture reminiscent of James Cameron. The first glimpses of the towering beasts are effective enough: silhouetted for a few frames between trees, and shards of cold illumination backlight the swirling fog akin to Ridley Scott, but there are far too many inconsistencies. Why, for example, would the werewolves conceive an elaborate trap which turns their home into a battlefield rather than simply devour their prey in the wild?

Exaggerating the usual horror movie gambit (pretty girls in danger), THE DESCENT invites you to reconsider your generic expectations. As the girls play all the variously gendered roles, they’re as aggressive, selfish, mean, and courageous as any male characters have been in similar situations.

Far more polished is Marshall’s second feature. Both a commercial and critical success, THE DESCENT is the story of female friends on an ill-fated caving trip in the Appalachian Mountains. As the group journeys deeper underground, repressed antagonisms return - particularly those between Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) and Juno (Natalie Mendoza) - and freakish, cannibalistic creatures shadow their every move. Taking forty-five minutes to introduce its albino monsters, Marshall keeps the suspense high enough beforehand with its exploration scenes of cave-ins and bone-crunching falls. Red flares, green glow sticks and yellow torches all penetrate the natural dark, and atmospheric use is made of the ghoulish grey-greens of a video camera’s infrared. The orcesque, chattering “crawlers” are satisfyingly repulsive, recalling the figurative hillbillies of American Gothic and the Morlocks from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. These humanoids, admittedly, are blind reductions of us, hunting, feeding and inbreeding in their own nuclear “family.”

Drink A Pint of Blood A Day

TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA (1969)

Anti-father and Anti-Christ: Christopher Lee and Linda Hayden on the cover of Little Shoppe of Horrors #4 (April 1978). Cast primarily as seductresses and nymphets, Hayden is one of a handful of British actresses who can look back on a genuinely dizzying career in film and television.

TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA - directed by Peter Sasdy - was one of Hammer’s most troubled productions. There were accusations of script plagiarism from Freddie Francis’ son Kevin - who had handed in a rejected treatment entitled DRACULA’S FEAST OF BLOOD - a drama which indirectly lead to Anthony Hinds relinquishing his directorship of the studio. When an already disillusioned Christopher Lee insisted on a percentage of the American gross to appear again in his signature role, Hammer took the unimaginable step of replacing him with Ralph Bates. But by the time Warner Bros-Seven Arts reminded the studio that co-finance was on the condition that Lee played the Count, the actor’s late u-turn caused Dracula to be a supporting character in his own movie.

Hargood (Geoffrey Keen), Paxton (Peter Sallis) and Secker (John Carson) are three Victorian gentlemen whose charitable work in the East End is, in reality, a front for illicit thrills. At a brothel run by the effeminate Felix (Russell Hunter), Hargood has his prostitute taken from him by the contemptuous Courtley (Bates), who is known to dabble in the black arts. Courtley takes the three men to visit Weller (Roy Kinnear), who sells them the clasp, signet ring, cloak and powdered blood of Dracula. In a deconsecrated church, Courtley mixes his own blood with the powder in a ceremony to summon the Prince of Darkness, but his new-found colleagues refuse to drink the concoction; as the Acolyte chokes on the blood, the three men panic and beat him to death. During the night, Dracula is reborn, vowing to destroy those who have killed his servant by the mesmeric manipulation of the men’s previously obedient children.

Christopher Lee’s fourth outing as The Count for Hammer followed on directly from the actor’s stint in Jess Franco’s EL CONDE DRACULA.

Enveloped by one of James Bernard’s strongest scores, TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA hints at the brutality and breasts to come in Hammer’s twilight years and, despite its troubles, is a film that skilfully unravels the hypocrisy of Victorian society as well as adhering to the progressive anti-establishment ethos of the times. Dracula may be pushed to the sidelines, but with the character acting as an omnipresent puppet master, his presence becomes no less imposing, acting as a Charles Manson-like catalyst for the “liberated” youths. In fact, the highlight of the film is the metamorphosis of Alice Hargood (Hayden) and Lucy Paxton (Isla Blair) from prissy little rich girls to vulpine harlots; in a particularly powerful sequence, the suitably loathsome Hargood - alluring to incestuous desires - drunkenly prepares to beat his daughter for her forbidden alliance with a male suitor. Confronting Alice in her bedroom and brandishing a riding crop, Alice’s escape into the arms of The Count is one of relief, and, having telepathically issued her instructions, recedes into the darkness as Alice hits her father with a shovel, twinkling with impish glee. Hayden uses her innocent face to ironic effect as Dracula’s main complicit in the ensuing retribution. And on a more trivial note, look out for Madeline Smith as a young prostitute.

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.

Devil's End

DOCTOR WHO - THE DAEMONS (1971)

DOCTOR WHO’s Moriarty: Roger Delgado is The Master.

SHOWN as part of BBC4’s recent Archaeology Night, THE DAEMONS fits neatly under this banner for two reasons. Firstly, this Jon Pertwee DOCTOR WHO serial revolves around the live broadcast (on BBC3 no less) of the excavation of an ancient barrow. Secondly, the episodes themselves are something of a treasured relic; shortly after transmission, four of the original five colour videotapes were wiped. Luckily, BBC Enterprises had made a black-and-white film copy and a colour version (also now lost) for overseas sales. In the 1990s, the BBC painstakingly produced a watchable colour restoration using the black-and-white film and the colour signal from a fan’s home-recording made in the United States.

The Master (Roger Delgado) - posing as local vicar Mr Magister - uses black magic in an attempt to assimilate the powers of Azal. The story’s underlying theme of science versus magic is established early on, then explored during the episodes in which the viewer learns that many of the magical traditions and images are in fact a product of the Daemons “psionic science.” Viewed today, the story suffers from Pertwee's arrogant and inconsistent attitude, and the monumentally inappropriate line when The Doctor refers to Hitler as a “bounder.” The serial is also weakened by its somewhat simplistic denouement - Jo (Katy Manning)’s offered self-sacrifice makes Azal self-destruct - but there's also much to enjoy: in dog collar garb and latterly scarlet ceremonial robes, Delgado’s Master is a highlight, the epitome of evil charm.

The stone gargoyle Bok (Stanley Mason) is brought to life as a servant to the Master. Whether this is because of The Master’s rituals or as a side effect of Azal’s appearance is never made clear.

The Time Lord’s writers had always transformed generic material for their own ends, but the Pertwee/UNIT era drew on Nigel Kneale’s Quatermass to create a template for a large run. The Third Doctor’s first story SPEARHEAD FROM SPACE, for example, gleefully referenced - to put it politely - QUATERMASS II. THE DAEMONS’ plot is not the most groundbreaking regardless of outside influences - witchcraft in an English village has long been a staple ingredient - and the idea of an impenetrable dome barrier had previously been used in John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos. But ultimately THE DAEMONS recalls QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, with its televised opening of an ancient burial mound which turns out to contain an alien spacecraft, whose dormant crew use technology which Mankind has come to know as Magic.

Bly Spirit

THE INNOCENTS (1961)

The BFI’s Region 2 DVD of THE INNOCENTS includes an introduction and commentary by Christopher Frayling, and one of the very few booklets that can be celebrated as a true DVD extra.

JACK Clayton’s ambiguous THE INNOCENTS, adapted from Henry James’ 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, builds suspense slowly, subtly, and inexorably. It tells the story of repressed Victorian governess Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr), who is hired by a wealthy and irresponsible man (Michael Redgrave) to assume charge of his country manor, Bly House, and his orphaned niece and nephew - Flora (Pamela Franklin), and Miles (Martin Stephens). Giddens sees the ghostly apparitions of her late predecessor Miss Jessel (Clytie Jessop) and former groundskeeper Quint (Peter Wyngarde) and, knowing that the children were exposed to this sadomasochistic relationship, she becomes convinced that this memory must be purged before it contaminates them.

The films’ gothic angst and creep-outs manipulate its traditional ghost story ethic with remarkable freshness. Metaphor is one of cinema’s richest streams, and Kerr takes perfect advantage of her respectable facade wrestling with unspeakable turbulence. Prim and sexually straitjacketed, her character is corrupted by the old house. The ambiguity is consequently fascinating or maddening - according to taste - with critics labelling Giddens insane to even a paedophile. Whatever your conclusion, it is an unforgettable portrayal, and with Franklin and Stephens delivering performances of astonishing maturity, THE INNOCENTS may well be the finest-acted horror film.

The possible otherworldly intervention of Quint in the life of Miles is one of THE INNOCENTS’ many ambiguous threads.

Photographed by Freddie Francis in CinemaScope, THE INNOCENTS’ musters its frisson by both candle and daylight, its oil-black and snow-white compositions teasing the eye toward faces haunting the periphery or deep background. Francis’ self-made red iris filter deliberately frames in oval twilight, making outer edges appear shadowy and mysterious. Most haunting are the glimpses of Jessel, sobbing uncontrollably at her lectern, or standing forlorn among the reeds, and Quint’s initial unexpected surge toward the camera (and Giddens) gives the distinct impression of movement within another dimension. The audio effects are also noteworthy, with the natural sounds of the house’s garden amplified so that even bird song becomes unsettling.

Deborah Kerr passed away on October 16th at the age of 86. Kerr’s angular beauty and self-possessed femininity distinguished more than fifty films in four decades. Though her poise might be ruffled in scenes of passion (most famously by her encounter on the beach with Burt Lancaster in FROM HERE TO ETERNITY), her well-bred airs and graces made Kerr a model of British womanhood in Hollywood. Yet her refined sensuality proved refreshingly attractive, since it hinted at hidden desires and forbidden feelings, giving an extra edge and interest. If she still looked more at ease on screen as a nun than as a nymphomaniac, or as a governess rather than a seductress, Kerr loved to hint at what she called "banked fires," the volcano steaming away beneath the surface. Never was this more evident than in THE INNOCENTS.

Evil Heritage

SATAN'S SLAVE (1976)

Based on an unmade AIP project intended for Vincent Price called THE NAKED EYE, for all its blatant exploitativeness, SATAN’S SLAVE remains atmospheric and engaging.

SATAN'S SLAVE tells of Catherine Yorke (Candace Glendenning), a young girl who is unexpectedly orphaned when her parents’ car explodes outside the house of her Uncle Alexander (a moustachioed Michael Gough). She is taken in but finds herself troubled by strange visions; gradually, Catherine falls in love with her brooding cousin Stephen (Martin Potter) - much to the chagrin of her Uncle’s secretary Frances (Barbara Kellerman) - but what she doesn’t realise is that her intended role in the household is more sinister than she could possibly expect.

A film aficionado fascinated by the medium since childhood, Norman J. Warren started in pictures by helming two sexploiters, HER LIVING HELL and LOVING FEELING. Not wanting to be typecast as a skin director, Warren moved onto the horror genre, and his brief period of activity - PREY, TERROR and INSEMINOID - provided a body of work which was derivative and makeshift, yet curiously casual and endearing. Along with Pete Walker, Warren’s films are sometimes dubbed New Wave British horror, on account that they upped the ante of explicitness, were mostly set in the modern day, and centring around twenty to thirty-year old protagonists. SATAN’S SLAVE firmly established Warren’s style as one which, for the most part, avoids kitsch and gets the most of what were obviously very limited resources.

Michael Gough, Candace Glendenning and Barbara Kellerman
star in Norman J. Warren’s cult classic.

Les Young’s cinematography is incredibly evocative here - the Gothic-style mansion is lensed in all its autumnal splendour - turning the English countryside into a place of terror. Warren is also helped by David McGillivray’s script which, like his work for Walker, succeeds in combining classic genre themes with a realistic contemporary setting. Glendenning’s wide-eyed performance as victimised waif mixes a delicate balance of independence, vulnerability and confusion. Gough is the big name in the cast and he doesn’t disappoint as the head of a coven; he’s a caring, considerate and gracious host, but underneath we sense the evil. Gough handles the role with great gusto and lack of pretension, delivering his ceremonial lines with Satanic-Shakespearean zeal, and Potter gives a superbly creepy performance as the unbalanced Stephen.

Combining nudity and violence in a censor-baiting concoction designed to compete with the gore and cynicism of its contemporary American and European counterparts, SATAN’S SLAVE delivers on a number of effective shock sequences. Catherine’s boyfriend John (Michael Craze)’s demise is particularly bloody – he jumps off a tower block roof and ends up as a heap of twisted meat - and towards the end of the film Catherine stabs Stephen in the eye with a nail file. In fact, SATAN’S SLAVE behaves like a black cat – dark, calm, and collected, yet you are intermittently aware of its claws.

Reality Bites

THE ZOMBIE DIARIES (2007)

As a bird flu-like virus hits Britain, its inhabitants are turned into flesh-eating ghouls. Unfortunately, the budget for THE ZOMBIE DIARIES could never stretch to as many undead on its impressive poster art.

PRODUCED, written and directed by Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates, this low budget film is a culmination of six years work, and conceptualised long before the announcement of George A. Romero’s similarly themed and upcoming DIARY OF THE DEAD. THE ZOMBIE DIARIES comprises of three separate video stories, that later cross and merge around an army-related prologue and ambiguous coda. The first is “Outbreak,” where four documentary makers set out to interview a blighted Hertfordshire farmer; the second, “Scavenger,” follows three people desperately looking for supplies, and in the third, “Survivors,” a beleaguered group start to unravel when one member becomes infected. Under a simplistic and sparingly used score, the work is a slow-burning and often unnervingly creepy experience, mixing social commentary with crowd-pleasing scenes of gut-munching and zombie sex. The cast acquit themselves with a commendably naturalistic and improvised acting style, but THE ZOMBIE DIARIES ace card is that it asks the question “in a decaying world, could human nature be a greater threat than the zombies?”

From the titillating showmanship of INGAGI, to the haunted backwoods of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT and the video diary of a serial killer in THE LAST HORROR MOVIE, the vogue for films constructed from faux footage has always benefited from the miraculous fact that the person holding the camera never drops or damages it, or simply throws it and runs. Ruggero Deodato’s quintessential Third World horror CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, in particular, shares similarities to Bartlett and Gates’ movie in both structure and its ending narration, “I wonder who the real cannibals are.” Yet THE ZOMBIE DIARIES seems more perfect because it exploits this technique for the noughties age of media obsession, where we feel the need to document any aspect of human experience for public consumption. The filmmakers can be proud that they have created a fitting apocalypse for our YouTube generation.

The Last Gothic

SCARS OF DRACULA (1970)

New Zealander Anouska Hempel bares her fangs. The actress also played "Australian Girl" in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and the title role in Pete Walker's TIFFANY JONES. Now a hotelier and designer, she married Allied Dunbar chairman Mark Weinberg in 1980, becoming one of the richest woman in Britain. During 1998 Hempel bought the right's to Walker's film and Russ Meyer's slave picture BLACK SNAKE - where she stars as Lady Susan - in order to keep them out of circulation.

HAMMER’s bloodiest film, SCARS OF DRACULA - scripted by Anthony Hinds - is also one of its most beautifully shot, defying its typically meagre budget. Braking the sequence began with their original DRACULA, no attempt is made to link it to the conclusion of the previous entry, TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA. The Prince of Darkness (Christopher Lee) is afforded more screen time and dialogue, uttering his lines in a dreamy tone (under pasty make-up) that could be the result of Lee’s oft-quoted desire to express “the loneliness of evil” and the curse of immortality. Alternatively, it could be the disenchantment of an actor tiring of a limiting role (John Forbes-Robertson was considered before Lee was persuaded to return, but would later be cast as The Count in THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES). What is grating is that the film dispenses with Hammer's sensual lord vampire to create an atmosphere of brutal violence. The young cast are tepid at best (a miscast Dennis Waterman as Simon, the dubbed Jenny Hanley as Sarah, and Christopher Matthews as womaniser Paul), but the real meat comes from the supporting cast, with Patrick Troughton transforming Dracula’s urbane butler Klove into a masochistic errant boy, and Anouska Hempel as concubine Tania.

The last of the studio’s Gothic Draculas - and developed as a double bill with Jimmy Sangster's equally misguided THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN - the film revels in 70s-style exploitation. Dracula is consequently transformed into a sadist, mystifyingly stabbing vampiric Tania to death, and branding Klove with a white-hot sword. He also impales Paul on a metal hook, and sends legions of bats to massacre an entire church of women and children; even the story is set in motion by a bat vomiting blood on the Count’s remains. Away from the general gore, Hind's screenplay is a plethora of nonsense: for example, the opening of "The Angry Mob" burning down the castle doesn't seem to have disrupted the interior. Director Roy Ward Baker’s preparatory work apparently drew him to actually read Dracula, inspiring the filmmaker to add an "unprecedented" shot from the novel of The Count scaling his castle’s wall which he claimed was his “only contribution … to the Dracula cycle” (obviously he had never seen DRAKULA ISTANBUL’DA, filmed seventeen years previously). In fact, the film’s “only contribution” is to have the most laughable bouncing rubber bats in British horror film history.

During the climax, Jenny Hanley's cleavage is ravaged by a vampire bat, eager to tear away her crucifix necklace. This "blood on breasts" sequence would have been unheard of for less liberal times.

During the audio commentary on Optimum's R2 DVD of 2006 - woodenly moderated by Marcus Hearn - Lee and Baker wax lyrical about the classic cinema dictum "less is more," views that particularly contradict the nature of the film they are viewing. Comments on The Count's shift towards frenzied violence are almost an afterthought, with the duo more lost in their silver screen legacies and after-dinner like recollections. Its a particularly meandering and name-dropping vocal from Lee, who quite rightly highlights the standard of actors Hammer cast in bit parts (here, Michael Ripper as the innkeeper, Michael Gwynn as a priest and Bob Todd as the Burgomaster), but he also makes the amazing statement that not only is Dracula's stabbing of Tania nonsensical, that such a scene is troublesome in the annals of influencing true crime.

How Do

THE WICKER MAN (1973)

During the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, from which Halloween was derived, Druids burned huge sacrificial wooden effigies known as Wicker Men atop sacred hilltop sites. The Wicker Men were sometimes filled with animals, prisoners of war, criminals, and other sacrifices to Druid deities.

WHILE Terence Fisher, Peter Cushing and Madeline Smith were bringing Hammer’s Frankenstein saga to an unrelenting grisly end with FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL, Christopher Lee was filming in Scotland, working for free in a role specially written for him. Although marketed as a horror film, Robin Hardy’s THE WICKER MAN is a counterpoint to the flamboyant excesses of Hammer, and a genuine genre misfit, equally resembling a detective story, an erotic thriller, a religious allegory, an art film, and even a musical. Hardly the “CITIZEN KANE of horror” as labelled by Cinefantanstique magazine, it became lost in a tangle of bad marketing, careless editing, and public indifference. The work does however remain a solid cult favourite, its status reinforced by a series of outlandish behind-the-scenes stories: the master negative was apparently lost when it was inadvertently included in a shipment of disposable material buried beneath the then under-construction M3, and rumours circulated of inhumane acts towards animals. Lee even offered to pay for his critic friends to view the film when the bewildered new regime at British Lion refused to distribute it.

Edward Woodward, in a role intended for Cushing, is Sergeant Howie, a humourless policeman whose devout religious views cause him to look dimly upon any kind of heathen activity. When he receives an anonymous letter informing him that a young girl is missing on the beguilingly remote Scottish island of Summerisle, he flies out to investigate, consequently discovering a community of pagans - led by Lord Summerisle (Lee) - who worship the old Celtic gods and have rejected Christianity. In the schools, children are taught to venerate male genitalia, while at night outside the public house, couples copulate openly. Howie’s faith further comes under assault when a naked Willow (Britt Ekland), the sensual daughter of the innkeeper, offers herself to him in an adjacent room while singing the haunting 'How Do' (Paul Giovanni’s celebrated score often moves the story along rather than the dialogue). Convinced that the missing girl is intended as a sacrifice for the islander’s May Day celebrations, Howie realises too late that she is part of a scheme to ensnare “the right kind of adult.”

The cover for Optimum’s 3-disc DVD of THE WICKER MAN, containing the original 84m theatrical release, the 99m director’s cut, and the soundtrack CD.

Within this miniature Holy War, Howie is no Sherlock Holmes, but the viewer is convinced by his dogged persistence, although his dour disposition and puritanical outlook makes it difficult to fully sympathise with the character. This investigative outsider is just one of many horror film clichés playwright Anthony Shaffer spins into his games-laden script: the raucous pub that falls silent on his arrival, a journey by carriage to the castle of an overlord, and the midnight exhumation of a coffin, are all present and correct. But the climax - in which the Sergeant is improbably manoeuvred into, and burned to death, within a sixty foot Wicker Man, is one of British cinema’s most visually arresting final scenes.

When Do We Live?

if.... (1968)

Malcolm McDowell and Christine Noonan’s celebrated
tussle in the extraordinary if…

THE time-honoured British Boarding School subgenera has been a stock scenario since the 1930s; explorations of how our hero - a potentially recalcitrant individual - could be brought to accept the wisdom of an Empiric value system. But it wasn’t just in actual boarding house narratives that public school values found cinematic expression. From the 1950s, headmaster-like commanding officers exerted stern benevolence; indeed, this pervious ethos enveloped anything from horse-play (“come chaps, off with their trousers!”) in THE DAMBUSTERS, to the exclusive girls school in the endearingly abysmal gothic LUST FOR A VAMPIRE. Winner of the 1969 Palme d’Or, and a loose remake of the Jean Vigo short ZERO DE CONDUITE, Lindsay Anderson’s if…. is one of the most stimulating and visceral of all British films. Scripted by David Sherwin, it introduced Malcolm McDowell and featured a veritable repertory company of distinguished actors (among them Arthur Lowe, Graham Crowden and Mona Washbourne) who would subsequently inhabit two further Anderson/Sherwin films headlining McDowell as wily Everyman Mick Travis - the horrors of big business in O LUCKY MAN!, and the critique of Thatcherite healthcare BRITANNIA HOSPITAL.

Released in the wake of actual revolution in Paris, where students challenged the authority of De Gaulle and the French State, if…. is a blueprint for future anarchy that might take any number of contrarian forms: participating in public demonstrations, starting an underground newspaper, or simply buying a copy of The Rolling Stones’ Street Fighting Man. The film plays like a lighter version of Stanley Kubrick’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, with the mischievous and always watchable McDowell as the protagonist in both films. The actor already radiates his mix of arrogance and compassion here, which would be honed and forever etched into Kubrick's lead droog. It is in if…, however, that you understand more fully why McDowell's character is the way he is, your frustration and rage growing until you're relieved and horrified at the same time by its climax. if…. may, at times, display an overt fascination with the sadism it sets out to challenge, but its condemnation of the meaningless, colonialist rituals of a minor public school is utterly convincing. Tradition is only as good as those who maintain it, and Royston Lambert’s 1974 written survey of boarding school life, The Hothouse Society, offers ready evidence that Anderson’s work is closer to documentary than many critics would allow.

A publicity pose of Noonan, who plays if….’s enigmatic heroine. It's such an odd role and the actress - short and solidly built beneath a curtain of black hair - seems a decidedly non-ethereal person to have been cast, but she lays absolute claim to it.

The character of The Girl (Christine Noonan) first appears as a waitress, where she communicates with Travis through sight and smell. Venting their passion like a pair of tigers, they roll violently on the floor, all teeth, claws and flailing limbs; suddenly there is a change that cements the sequence as one of the most memorable in British cinema: the two wrestlers are suddenly naked, The Girl baring her teeth and sinking them into Mick's arm.With her taking part in their vicious final assault, the climax becomes more fanciful; she's an inspirational image, like the magazine clippings adorning the dormitory walls. The presence of The Girl in this final sequence helps to coalesce the rebels into an alternative family, fighting for righteousness and brotherhood. All these years later, she retains her uncanny ability to provoke and encourage our vestiges of revolutionary spirit, and there are those of us who will always love her for it.

if… is a great film because it both loves and hates Britain. It captures the wing collars and tailcoats, "whips" (prefects) and "scum" (fags), crusty masters and militaristic padres, chaotic feelings and quasi-fascistic discipline. Yet at the same time it cherishes the friendships and loyalties of an all-male school, including the moments of kindness - and the crushes. For many who were fortunate enough to see the film on the threshold of adulthood, it became a true rite of passage. On the surface a seething, surrealist tirade against the hypocrisies of The System, the film (which was largely shot in Anderson’s old haunt of Cheltenham) uses its setting to explore more universal issues, such as society’s refusal to conduct itself in accordance with the morals it professes to hold. This fundamental question is posed in the history class scene: were the atrocities of the past the fault of lone dictators, or the collective result of the population? Ultimately, we create our own Hitlers and Hungerford’s.