Wild in the Country

THE DARK (2005)
THE WICKER MAN (2006)

Explore undead children and menacing mutton in THE DARK.

JOHN Fawcett’s THE DARK - based very loosely on Simon Maginn's 1994 horror novel Sheep - buckles under the heavy influence of other bodies of film, especially the 1973 THE WICKER MAN and Nicolas Roeg's DON’T LOOK NOW. Cliff-jumping sheep point to a Jim Jonesesque cult on the Welsh coast, but far from being worried by these sheep, you’ll find yourself counting them during this often laughable film. It opens with Adèle (Maria Bello) and her daughter Sarah (Sophie Stuckey) visiting estranged husband James (a disinterested-looking Sean Bean). While out by the sea, Sarah vanishes and appears to drown; later, a young girl named Ebrill (Abigail Stone) - who apparently died over fifty years ago - suddenly materialises. Adèle starts investigating and her search leads to Annwn, a portal hidden under the sea.

In Welsh legend, Annwn ("afterlife") is said to be accessed by the living through a door located at the mouth of the Severn once a year. Inhabitants would welcome the living for feasting and celebration, upon the condition that they took nothing back with them to the human realm. Surviving from pre-Christian Celtic mythology, it's neither Heaven nor Hell in the Christian sense, as humans can enter spiritually or corporeally. Shot in Cornwall and the Isle of Man, the film looks stunning, yet only wakes from its slumber when Adèle crosses the watery threshold late on. On land, its haunted farmhouse and neighbouring abattoir settings are sadly unscary, and when things do turn grisly with harrowing flashbacks of child torture, it feels like the scenes are an intrusion from a different work altogether.

The unintentionally hilarious Hollywood remake of THE WICKER MAN - watch for Nicolas Cage in his bear suit.

When a major American studio release with two Oscar-winning stars opens without press previews, one assumes the distributor is trying to hide the film from critics. In the case of Neil LaBute's THE WICKER MAN - a pointless remake of the fabled cult curio - it's entirely possible that Warners wanted to conceal it from audiences as well. This reboot sees California motorcycle cop Edward Malus (Nicolas Cage) receiving a letter from his ex-fiancée Willow (Kate Beahan), begging him to find her missing daughter. Malus heads out to the island of Summersisle, where he discovers a matriarchal society of beekeepers.

Robin Hardy’s original THE WICKER MAN serves as a working definition of a cult film: initially overlooked and offloaded as a support feature (to DON’T LOOK NOW), the unclassifiable project now has a sizeable following; when viewed today, it suffers from a flower power feel and a slew of honey-dripping folk songs. By throwing Hardy's meditation on pagan faith and Christian sacrifice out of the window, screenwriter/director LaBute rips the heart out of the ethos, turning Summersisle into a bizarre community where men are "drones" and the women mead-quaffing harpies led by Lady Summersisle (Ellen Burstyn in a Mel Gibson mudpack). The script is riddled with jaw-dropping declarations ("killing me won’t bring back your fucking honey!") and the production wastes an array of strong actresses (Leelee Sobieski, Francis Conroy, Molly Parker et al). But what's most curious is it's utter sexlessness - the nude dancing and orgies that made a palatable case for earth worship over Christian repression in 1973 is replaced by Cage’s hangdog investigator barking at and punching women in the face.

Comedy of Terrors

SEVERANCE (2006)
THE COTTAGE (2008)

If only former BROOKSIDE actress Jennifer Ellison had remained gagged for THE COTTAGE’s entire running time…

TWO jet-black humoured horrors set within the backwoods, and made by second-time directors, SEVERANCE and THE COTTAGE will never approach the finesse of SHAUN OF THE DEAD in the comedy stakes; both are grimmer, more shocking, and considerably less amiable. SEVERANCE tells of seven Palisade Defence employees on a team-building weekend in Hungary: there's Steve (Danny Dyer) the laid-back stoner-slacker, Harris (Toby Stephens) the golden-boy sales champ, Gordon (Andy Nyman) the overly enthusiastic corporate pawn, Richard (Tim McInnerny) the odious upper-management tyrant (“I can’t spell success without u…”), Maggie (Laura Harris) the sex-object, Jill (Claudie Blakley) the practical-minded girl with glasses, and Billy (Babou Ceesay) the token black PA. When Jill spots a masked figure outside their run-down bunker, it is only the start of a fight against a group who have more than axes to grind.

Christopher Smith - who previously made the London Underground chiller CREEP - adds underlying themes of dubious arms trading and exploitation of Eastern Europe, but any such commentary is overwhelmed by the gallows humour, including an encounter with a bear trap and a severed head rolling away still reacting in surprise. It is a thoroughly entertaining piece of work with one standout comedy moment - the accidental blowing up of a passing plane by Palisade’s American boss George (David Gilliam) - and the dwindling survivors are characters who are up a fight, even though the gun-toting call girls are more Russ Meyer than survival horror.

Claudie Blakley shortly to become toast at the hands of the Flamethrower Killer - one of the many denizens haunting the backdrop of SEVERANCE.

Contrastingly, THE COTTAGE feels like a cheap cash-in. Writer/director Paul Andrew Williams - whose debut was the critically acclaimed LONDON TO BRIGHTON - unleashes a unrelentingly violent and uneven sophomore effort. Two brothers - David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith) - kidnap nightclub owner’s daughter Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) and hold her ransom in a secluded country cottage. When her dim-witted step-brother Andrew (Steven O’Donnell) - who is in on the scam - delivers the ransom, they find out that not only have they been tricked, but Andrew has been followed by his father's bloodthirsty Korean henchman. As the blackmail spirals out of control, Tracey manages to turn the tables on her kidnappers and escapes with Peter as her hostage, fleeing into the woods; it isn’t long before everyone faces a desperate battle against a disfigured local farmer (Dave Legeno in see-the-join make-up).

Williams claims THE COTTAGE explores the bond between brothers, but while early scenes of Serkis and Shearsmith show potential, this quickly gets lost amid the director’s insatiable appetite for humour and gore. The brothers spend too much time bickering to endear themselves, and Ellison’s expletive-heavy Liverpudlian is every bit as monstrous as the main killer himself, resulting in a priceless understanding glance between the farmer and Peter. In a role written especially for Shearsmith, the LEAGUE OF GENTLEMAN star shines brightest of all; the butt of continual violence, and permanently bloody-nosed, the deadpan Royston Vasey-stalwart completely understands this undiluted strain of Amicus-like weirdness.

Gallifrey Gothic

The Philip Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes DOCTOR WHO (1975 - 77)

Emaciated Master makeup for THE DEADLY ASSASSIN.

THE gothic tradition in DOCTOR WHO’s mid 1970s serials runs deep through the British science fantasy tradition, placing the exotic into our stoic world. Most fans of the original DOCTOR WHO believe this period to be the golden era, when Tom Baker's goggle-eyed eccentricity was married with chilling horror stories. Producer Philip Hinchcliffe and script editor Robert Holmes plundered Universal, Hammer and 1950s science fiction movies for their inspiration, as murderous dummies and disembodied hands kept Mary Whitehouse busy filing letters to the BBC. DOCTOR WHO’s take on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus - THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS - summoned the wrath of the self appointed moral guardian, with Whitehouse proclaiming the story "contained some of the sickest and most horrific material seen on children’s television." When the Corporation issued an apology to Whitehouse over a drowning sequence at the end of episode three of THE DEADLY ASSASSIN, the show would never be as consistently absorbing again.

A criticism levelled at Hinchcliffe and Holmes was that they were making these stories for themselves. But it's the fear factor in DOCTOR WHO that holds a special significance for many people, the "hiding behind the sofa" mentality that in itself has entered the British psyche. Their debut season saw them tackle a set of scripts already commissioned during Barry Letts’ time as producer, and although the serials featured reassuringly traditional elements, there was also a clear indication that the show was undergoing significant change, particularly the phasing out of UNIT. The classic GENESIS OF THE DALEKS - with its themes of racial hatred and war - was one example of a more horrific yet realistic quality. But calling Hinchcliffe’s tenure simply "the horror era" detracts from the ingenuity and intelligence channelled into the programme during this time. Writers, designers and directors were specifically briefed and consulted prior to production, and assigned to their strengths (budget willing) to bring Hinchcliffe and Holmes’s serial thrillers to life: each story had to have a power, a mix of rounded characterisation and sense of atmosphere to adhere to the required adult scientific concepts and convincing worlds.

A major factor in the success of DOCTOR WHO in the mid 70s was the on-screen performances of Elisabeth Sladen and Tom Baker. Here, Sarah Jane and The Doctor appear in THE ARK IN SPACE.

Holmes - perhaps the greatest original series writer - was in his element, injecting a more black, sardonic humour. But in addition to the more mature and macabre approach, a great deal of the success was the chemistry between The Doctor and his assistant Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen). Baker was also creating a Doctor more overtly and fittingly alien; you need only look at his homo sapiens speech from THE ARK IN SPACE to see that he was taking things seriously, unlike later seasons when the actor’s impulse to fool around was not held in check.

In THE PYRAMIDS OF MARS, the gothic horror style is given its fullest expression; the TARDIS materialises on Earth inside an old priory owned by Egyptologist Marcus Scarman (Bernard Archard), who is possessed by the god-like Sutekh (Gabriel Woolf). With its entombed ancient evil and walking Mummies (in fact servicer robots), there is a genuine feel of dread, with the Mummies particularly effective in their simple yet hulking appearance. As Sutekh, Woolf creates a classic WHO villain, and it is noticeable how many such roles are voice parts - think Michael Wisher’s untouchable turn as Davros.

Following the success of the British Museum’s exhibition of relics from Tutenkhamen’s tomb, Ancient Egypt was big in the 1970s, a mythology embraced by THE PYRAMIDS OF MARS.

THE TALONS OF WENG-CHIANG was Hinchcliffe’s swansong. Widely regarded as one of the best ever serials, magician Li H’sen Chang (John Bennett) procures young girls for Magnus Greel (Michael Spice), a 51st Century war criminal who has come to 19th Century London to retrieve his lost time cabinet. The fog-laden streets, amateur sleuthing, oriental mystery and sinister doll Mr Sin (Deep Roy) make the story an entertaining romp, despite the major flaw of the giant sewer rats, which Greel uses to keep people away from his Palace Theatre lair. But THE TALONS OF WENG-CHIANG is also one of the most controversial: it was the first DOCTOR WHO that showed the taking of illicit drugs, and its use of nunchucks in one fight scene led to trouble with the censor for its first release on VHS. The most dominant controversy, however, was its uniformly bleak portrayal of the Chinese ("inscrutable chinks"), which lead to a rebroadcast ban in Ontario after complaints from the Chinese-Canadian community.

Bad Moon Rising

THE COMPANY OF WOLVES (1984)

Swamp Thing #40 (1985)

With her pale skin, black hair, and air of innocence, 13-year-old Sarah Patterson was perfect for Rosaleen in THE COMPANY OF WOLVES.

UNLIKE Disney's sugar coated simulacrums of folktales, Neil Jordan’s THE COMPANY OF WOLVES resembles the original oral folklore of medieval times. These stories - the television and pornography of their day - were consistent with times full of violence, as well as beauty. Based on Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, the film is essentially a coming-of-age tale, a dark retelling of Little Red Riding Hood making explicit its sexual and Freudian subtext. For the writer, the original version(s) of Little Red Riding Hood operated as a structured agenda to warn young girls of the dangers of sexual maturity, and implicates for them a passive family and societal role. By viewing this and other traditional tales from a feminist perspective, both subtle and blatant inversions took place within Carter’s stories. Jordan wrote the script in collaboration with the author, and as such, the film creates a symbolic world where the transition from child to adult - from girl to woman - is a change to be both celebrated and feared.

As in Freud, Rosaleen (Sarah Patterson)'s visage deals with her psyche as characters in her dream. Grandmother (Angela Lansbury) symbolizes the path of rules, caution, and fear. Rosaleen is warned by her Grandmother to never "stray from the path… once you stray from the path you're lost entirely! The wild beasts know no mercy. They wait for us in the wood, in the shadow, and once you put a foot wrong they pounce!" What the elder is really saying is to stay on the path of celibate adolescence leading to marriage, and to beware of the bestial sexuality of men.

Swamp Thing #40 contained The Curse, a segment of Alan Moore’s American Gothic story arc.

Like John Fawcett’s GINGER SNAPS, THE COMPANY OF WOLVES uses the changing body of the werewolf as a metaphor for puberty, menstruation and sexual maturity. The recurring motif of the full moon draws obvious parallels between the menstrual (often thought lunar) cycle and the 'call of the wild' of the full moon for werewolves, which was also the subject of Alan Moore’s story for DC Comics Swamp Thing #40 titled The Curse. This tale provoked more heated mail - pro and con - than any other entry in Moore’s celebrated run on the title, ranging from letters about feminism to suicide. But The Curse works as a female werewolf yarn on three levels: as a horror story standard, an allegory for menstruation, but also men’s attitude to the female sexual cycle and by extension their attitude to woman. This hints at Moore’s true illustration for the work - that physical and psychological mistreatment of the gender goes back a long way.

Anarchy in the UK

O LUCKY MAN! (1973) 
BRITANNIA HOSPITAL (1982)

A leading theatre director, Lindsay Anderson was also an eloquent and perceptive critic, editing Sequence - still widely regarded as the most influential film magazine ever published in Britain.

O LUCKY MAN! and BRITANNIA HOSPITAL complete a trilogy of boldly conceived and literate films from director Lindsay Anderson, scriptwriter David Sherwin, and actor Malcolm McDowell as everyman Mick Travis, which began with the schoolboy rebellion allegory if…. Despite the shared name, Travis isn’t the same character in the three, nor do the stories follow-on; they do, however, jointly illustrate through fantasy and satire the sobering reality of how our institutions succeed in dehumanisation. A study of Britain during the first half of the 1970s, O LUCKY MAN! is an energetic piece of work which shows our country retreating from its imperial past but managing to retain some influence in the world by means of corrupt dealings with foreign dictators. Within its lumbering three-hour timeframe, Travis starts off as an ambitious coffee salesman who finds unexpected riches in the North East, narrowly avoids being blown up by the army and killed in the name of science, makes a fortune associating with a dishonest businessman, and finally becomes a movie star. At the end, Mick is lucky not because he is successful, but because he has survived a world where cruelty is random and kindness rare.

Anderson has described O LUCKY MAN! as an "epic in the classical, poetic sense." Travis changes careers frequently and philosophies as many times, enjoying good fortune and enduring injustice and suffering. Because of this, the character bears marked similarities to Perceval, the archetypal quester of medieval romance. The film has aged well because many of the issues - the class divide, corruption of authority, the immorality of international affairs and the ruthlessness of science - are all still relevant. Science comes off especially badly at the Millar (Graham Crowden) research laboratory, where Mick narrowly avoids having his genes spliced with those of an animal – he’s luckier than another who has had his head grafted onto the body of a sheep. Sherwin’s script hits out in all directions, giving the work a disjointed feel of a series of prolonged sketches; apart from McDowell, the only real constant is the score of Alan Price, who provides a commentary for the serendipitous events. His lyrics could act as a warning, but atypically remain unheard.

BRITANNIA HOSPITAL - lost when initially released during the Falklands conflict - is an English political cartoon similar to MONTY PYTHON’S THE MEANING OF LIFE.

With the imminent visit of the Queen Mother, Britannia Hospital couldn’t be any less prepared. In the opening sequence to BRITANNIA HOSPITAL, an elderly patient in an ambulance is blocked for entering by striking workers. The old man is only let through because he is about to die, and even inside the staff decline to attend to him because their shift is over. Also, kitchen workers refuse to prepare food until a union leader (Robin Askwith!) is bought off with promises of O.B.E.’s. Later, in a scene which plays like an anticipation of RE-ANIMATOR, Dr Millar (Crowden, in his recurring role) - a surgeon conducting deranged experiments with public funds - inadvertently rips the head off his Frankenstein creation.

Much more than a scathing satire on British healthcare - and unfairly dismissed as the lesser entry of the trilogy - BRITANNIA HOSPITAL acts as a grotesque sledgehammer to where the world was heading. Anderson presents a society incapable of accepting any responsibility, or communicating in anything other than demand. There are no heroes - here, Travis is reduced to an investigative reporter whose head is used for Millar’s monster, and even the hospital administrator (Leonard Rossiter) fells a striking worker with a shovel. However mad, Millar is the only authority figure who inspires loyalty from his staff, and the only character who cares about the world around him. In his climactic monologue, Millar prophetically announces that a "motion picture entertainer of North America will receive enough money in a month as would feed a starving South American tribe for a hundred years."

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.

An Angel for Satan

THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW (1971)

EXPOSE (1975)

A charming publicity photograph of Linda Hayden for THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW…

A graduate of the Aida Foster stage school, Linda Hayden's first role was in BABY LOVE, playing an amoral 15-year old who seduces a man (who may well be her father), his wife and his son. This was a stepping stone to her later roles, as the actress was frequently cast in horror productions - TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA, VAMPIRA, MADHOUSE - or as window dressing for British 1970s softcore (often with then partner Robin Askwith). Her career path belittled her obvious talent: stunningly attractive, and able to absorb the screen through looks and observation, Hayden often mixed a naughty demeanour with a perverse sex appeal - with her eyebrows Satan-sent.

Tigon British was a relatively short-lived company that made a handful of classics amongst quite a bit of rubbish. Piers Haggard’s THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW is one of Tigon’s best; an eerie gothic which was intended as a successor - in spirit if not in story - to the company’s crowning achievement WITCHFINDER GENERAL. It is an intelligent study of repression set towards the end of the 17th Century, where the children of a small rural community start to play sinister games: pouting leader Angel Blake (Hayden) is in league with a half-glimpsed cowled Behemoth, while the others donate body parts to make the creature complete.

…and Hayden as she appears as Angel Blake, ringleader
of a group of Devil-worshipping children.

Hayden is a revelation as Angel; her false accusation of sexual assault against Reverend Fallowfield (Anthony Ainley) holds a powerful charge, and the moment where Blake stabs Cathy Vespers (Wendy Padbury) to death and languorously smells and licks the blade is preceded by a tour de force unrivalled in British horror: Vespers is lured to a ruined chapel and raped as the crowd of mutilated children (and a toothless old couple) look on in undisguised excitement, as the offscreen demon rasps “give me my skinn-n-n-n.” Not only does THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW provide a blueprint for the lethal potential of teenagers, children and babies that would wreck havoc in 1970s cinema, it portrays a turn-of-the-decade stench of the Manson Murders and child-strangler Mary Bell.

James Kenelm Clarke’s EXPOSE builds a claustrophobic mood of sweaty summer expectancy in its tale of blood, breasts and rubber gloves. Here Hayden plays a manipulative secretary - Linda - for Paul Martin (Udo Kier), a best-selling author of pulp fiction who can only work in complete silence and seclusion in his rented country cottage. Under pressure to meet the deadline for his second novel Straw Summer, Martin is tormented by nightmarish delusions; a control freak who is only able to make love to his girlfriend Suzanne (Fiona Richmond) while wearing surgical gloves, it transpires that his last book was actually written by Linda’s husband, who was driven to suicide when Paul tricked him out of the manuscript.

“You look really, really good”: Linda Hayden
seduces Fiona Richmond in EXPOSE.

EXPOSE was the only British entry in the Department of Public Prosecutions’ list of banned movies during the video nasties furore of the early 1980s, and it is hard to see why the film deserved such a fate. Linda’s sex game with two gun-toting Essex boys could be interpreted as a rape scene in which the victim starts to enjoy herself - mirroring the controversy of Susan George in STRAW DOGS - but this hardly warrants the branding of a video nasty. Of the performances, Kier is sufficiently deranged and unlikeable, and Richmond is amicable in her first sizeable film role, yet it is Hayden who excels, charting Linda’s progress from seducer to psychopath with consummate skill. Hayden has subsequently disowned the film, claiming that material was inserted after she finished work on it somehow lowered the tone. Given the conspicuous absence of body doubles in her masturbation scenes and seduction of Richmond, Hayden’s attitude is a perplexing one.

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.