Their Satanic Majesties Request

THE HELLFIRE CLUB (1961)

TERROR (1978)

French A style poster for New World's THE HELLFIRE CLUB, more pulp adventure than demonic horror.

THE real-life Hellfire Club was famed for its debauchery and devil worship, the name given to several establishments in Britain and Ireland as meeting places for "persons of quality," who wished to take part in immoral acts. Founded in 1719 London, The Club motto Fais ce que tu voudras (Do what thou wilt) was a philosophy associated with François Rabelais' fictional abbey at Thélème, and later adopted by Aleister Crowley. Set in 18th century England, THE HELLFIRE CLUB tells of circus acrobat Jason (Keith Michell), in his attempt to reclaim the estate of his estranged father Lord Netherton (Andrew Faulds), leader of The Hellfire Club. Years earlier, Jason as a boy (Martin Stephens) is whipped by his father after walking in on an orgy, and together with his mother (Jean Lodge) flees with Timothy (David Lodge). Jason discovers that his cousin Thomas (Peter Arne) has stolen his inheritance, and together with lawyer Merryweather (Peter Cushing), plans to bring an end to the deceit and break the grip of The Club on King George II’s rule. 

Although billed as a guest star, Cushing's fussy but erudite character is pivotal to the fate of English society (the actor later adapted Merryweather's demeanor for his takes on Doctor Who and Abner Perry). Because of Cushing's presence and its lush staging, the film is often mistaken for a Hammer release; but there is no bite to the picture, limiting itself to a handful of orgies where most of the participants remain fully clothed. Directed by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman from a script by Leon Griffiths and Jimmy Sangster, it is more swashbuckling melodrama, using The Club as a pinning to hang its elaborate fight scenes and love interests (redheads Adrienne Corri and Kai Fischer). Like most cinematic heroes brandishing a sword, Jason is not only morally perfect but also irresistible to women, and Michell gives a likable performance as he gathers his circus comrades to do battle with the hierarchy.

With a running time of only 80 minutes, TERROR is a whirlwind of gore, semi-nudity and in-jokes. Amazingly, the film topped the UK box office charts for a week in early 1979.

TERROR takes a more traditional approach to the devil. Reuniting director Norman J. Warren with scriptwriter David McGillivray after SATAN'S SLAVE, TERROR is not so much an unashamed rip-off of Dario Argento's operatic gore noir SUSPIRIA but a star-struck reaction to it. The movie starts with a witch hunt and a beheading, subsequently revealed to be a "film within a film" being watched in the same house where hundreds of years before the events being portrayed on screen took place. The witch exacts her revenge on the ancestors of her persecutors, one of whom is the production's director, James Garrick (John Nolan). After a makeshift hypnosis goes awry, the curse takes on a more direct approach, including death by lighting equipment, murderous film cans (in reality nine faulty prints of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER specially supplied by Rank Laboratories) which leads to a very Argentoesque window-pane decapitation, and aspiring actress Carol (Glynis Barber) is impaled to a tree trunk.

The performances are generally competent, but James and Ann Garrick (Carolyn Courage) both have too little screen time to develop the family curse scenario. Instead, the focus is on Les Young's coloured filters to provide TERROR with a suitably garish tableau and enhance the hallucinatory disregard for logic. The opening "film within a film" acts both as a Hammer Gothic pastiche and a expostulation of it, but this is not the only nod to a cinematic heritage; the viewer is also treated to a fictitious softcore film called BATHTIME WITH BRENDA, scenes heavily indebted to experiences not necessarily enjoyed by Warren and McGillivray in their careers. Other points of interest are a nightclub act you won't forget in a hurry, and a red herring sequence culminating in a Peter Mayhew cameo.

There's Something About Mary

COME PLAY WITH ME (1977)

David Sullivan’s (The New Blue) Exciting Cinema was ostensibly created as another platform in which to promote Mary Millington's appearance in COME PLAY WITH ME. This issue - from February 1978 - shows Mary posing next to her Mercedes-Benz.

MADE by Roldvale and distributed by Tigon, COME PLAY WITH ME features - rather than stars - Britain's favourite 1970s sexpot, Mary Millington. Born into unmarried parents, and suffering low-esteem during her formative years, bisexual Millington committed suicide in 1979 at the age of 33. Described by the Sunday Mirror's Colin Wills as the "Tooting Marilyn Monroe," Mary became an uninhibited performer for magazine shoots - including her lover David Sullivan's Playbirds and Whitehouse - and the modelling funded her beloved Mother's cancer treatment. On the printed page and on screen, the 4'11" non-actress clearly rejoiced in the naked form and loved being the centre of attention. Mary was also a high-class call girl, and her list of 'conquests' allegedly included Harold Wilson. Enjoying her celebrity status and lavish home, Millington's shrewd public image shrouded her private "little girl lost" demeanor, a savage contrast that determined a fall as swift as her rise.

Latterly Mary suffered from depression, kleptomania and cocaine abuse, becoming increasingly frazzled following the death of her mother in 1976. After this, Millington's bizarre level of morbidity included taking a Mortician course, and she even considered opening a funeral home. Mary was also a long-standing campaigner against censorship, having a disregard for authority that was fueled by repeated raids of her sex shop by the Obscene Publications Squad, and pressure from the Inland Revenue. Even an amateur psychologist can see the cracks: rejected by her father at birth, and with such a gulf between the public and real Mary, the need for value to offset her emptiness was recognised by money (she once proclaimed that cashing up at her sex shops was more gratifying than any carnal activity). As Julian Upton states in Fallen Stars: Tragic Lives and Lost Careers, Millington's films "...will never stand up, but her life story is a cautionary tale with a timeless significance."

The cover to Odeon's 2010 DVD. The disc also includes a 1975 8mm short made by George Harrison Marks and featuring Mary Millington - SEX IS MY BUSINESS - and publicist John M. East's dubious 1980 documentary MARY MILLINGTON'S TRUE BLUE CONFESSIONS.

An atrocious, star-studded sex comedy, COME PLAY WITH ME amazingly broke box office records throughout the UK and went on to become one of the most profitable movies of the decade, strongly sold by the image of Millington - who only appears on screen for a few minutes. The film tells of Cornelius Clapworthy (George Harrison Marks, also director/writer) and Maurice Kelly (Alfie Bass), two elderly forgers flooding the UK with fake £20 banknotes. On the run from gangster boss Slasher (Ronald Fraser) and government official Podsnap (Ken Parry), the pair pretend to be musicians, hiding out at a struggling Scottish B&B run by Lady Bovington (Irene Handl). When Bovington’s choreographer nephew Rodney (Jerry Lorden) arrives with his troupe of dancing girls business picks up, as the females - vaguely under the leadership of Rena (Suzy Mandel) - decide to help out by dressing up as nurses and re-opening the Manor as a brothel.

COME PLAY WITH ME gestated from an old Marks script bullishly pushed into production by Sullivan, who at this point was keen to produce movies. By 1976 "glamour" photographer/publisher Marks had endured two obscenity trials and seen his business empire go into receivership, but initially this team-up between the British porn kings seemed amicable, especially when Sullivan gave Marks a £120,000 budget without reading the full script. When footage was shown to the producer - a tired mix of music hall and veteran performers fluffing their lines or blankly gazing into camera - Sullivan was horrified, and extra filming took place at the Mayfair Burlesque Club and his own sauna in Croydon (plus extensive scenes on and around Brighton Pier). Sullivan also ordered shooting of additional hardcore sequences for the continental version, but the strong cut was never sold and was only screened once by mistake in North London. But the damage had been done; furious at the inclusion of blue material, Handl, Bass and Fraser all made complaints to Equity. This was all priceless publicity for a film which stands as one of the most bafflingly popular motion pictures in history.

Do You Dare Spend a Night in the ...

MADHOUSE (1974)

"In our day in Hollywood, the monsters didn't need makeup ... they just came as themselves." The MADHOUSE cover to Famous Monsters of Filmland #109 (August 1974).

MADHOUSE begins with friends gathered to celebrate the horror movie career of Paul Toombes (Vincent Price), whose signature role is Dr Death, a character co-created by writer/actor Herbert Flay (Peter Cushing). Toombes has decided to settle down with fiance Ellen (Julie Crosthwait), an actress who has been previously linked to producer Oliver Quayle (Robert Quarry). However, the night ends in tragedy as Toombes finds Ellen beheaded, a murder undertaken by someone wearing the cinematic garb of Dr Death. Though never convicted of the crime, Toombes is institutionalised. Twelve years later, Flay convinces Toombes to resurrect Dr Death for a new television series to be made in England; before long the body count begins, leaving Toombes to wonder if he is enacting the events of his character in real life. Eventually consumed with guilt, he locks himself into the studio, turns on the cameras, and sets fire to the set. In fact it has been frustrated actor Flay who has been committing the murders; a burnt Toombes returns to kill Flay and cavort with his spider-obsessed, basement-dwelling wife Faye (Adrienne Corri), who has had long-standing feelings for Toombes.

This joint Amicus/American International venture plays both as a requiem for Price's association with AIP and the nature of the 60s/70s B-movies that became suppressed by the release of THE EXORCIST. COUNT YORGA star Quarry - who had appeared with Price in DR PHIBES RISES AGAIN and was originally cast in the Herbert Flay role - was being groomed to replace the horror star, and this was one of many frictions: Price was also experiencing an impending divorce, the budget-cutting Twickenham Studios provided indifferent production values, and director Jim Clark wrote a despairing letter to Price complaining about Milton Subotsky's interference in the editing room. The feel of MADHOUSE also isn't helped by the extent of footage used from Roger Corman's Poe pictures to illustrate Toombes' career; in fact, so much so that Corman almost deserves a co-directing credit. As Denis Meikle observes in Vincent Price: The Art of Fear, "[Price] comes closer to playing himself in this film than in any previous one ... and with the footage having been supplied by Corman's Poes, Price must at times have felt like a dying man, watching his life pass before his eyes."

Pulp potboiler Devilday acted as the source material for MADHOUSE. The film dropped the satanic overtones of the book, and makes its lead character more sympathetic.

With Price and Quarry being snide on and off screen, the supporting cast supply a number of welcome diversions. Natasha Pyne is enthusiastic as Toombes' PA Julia Wilson, and Linda Hayden leaves an all-too-brief impression as stalking actress Elizabeth Peters, who is despatched by pitchfork. In a further eerie pursuit, Peters' parents Alfred (Ellis Dale) and Louise (Catherine Willmer) follow the actor across twilight lawns before both being skewered on the same sabre. But the real meat lies in the final ten minutes, where Flay sees Toombes step down from the screen of his own snuff movie and subsequently murder and become Flay, utilising some startlingly effective make-up as Cushing's distinctive cheekbones are melded with Price's heavier facade. 

MADHOUSE was loosely based on the novel Devilday by Angus Hall, a smutfest of late 60s/early 70s Satania. In the book Toombs is a sadistic heroin addict, a latter-day Aleister Crowley whose film career is in meltdown after being suspected of inserting an icicle up a vagina (paralleling Fatty Arbuckle's notorious scandal of 1921). Opening with a quote from Poe's Marginalia, of men who "soared above the plane of their race," during the course of the novel the faded star - as "the dark and dreaded" Dr Dis - enjoys relations with jailbait groupies, and appears at a Black Mass so that the congregation can (literally) kiss his ass. At the climax, he is killed by a falling rock, and a swarm of fans scavenge his corpse for souvenirs; but years later the book's narrator glimpses Toombs in a Rolls-Royce, leading him to suspect that the notorious actor's LaVeyan mayhem will resume. 

"I Was Having a Problem Drawing the Alligator"

The From Hell Companion (2013)

Queen Victoria's physician Sir William Gull is revealed as Jack the Ripper as early as the second chapter of From Hell. Gull experiences increasing visions during his ritualistic murders, glimpsing future shock moments such as television and mobile phones.

THE sprawling, post-modern From Hell remains a work Alan Moore is proud of. The book's fourth chapter holds a special significance for the writer, as a line of dialogue - "the one place in which Gods and demons inarguably exist is in the human mind where they are real in all their grandeur and monstrosity" - sparked his interest in becoming a magician, fueled by drugs and imaginative concentration. Moore has never been a fan of tags, stating in a Mustard #4 Vol II (March 2009) interview "my experience of life is that it is not divided up into genre; it's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science fiction cowboy detective novel ... with a bit of pornography if you're lucky." Subsequently, From Hell is more than a graphic novel of the Whitechapel murders, rather a meditation on the mechanics of five socially-charged murders that expertly adhere to Moore's quest that his work acts "like a drug ... if you put the words in the right order with the pictures, you can create a psychedelic state." 

This Knockabout softcover is a selection of Moore’s original scripts and sketches for his alluringly brutal masterpiece, with annotations and commentary from the books' artist Eddie Campbell. Campbell provides a fascinating series of narrative-order anecdotes and confessions that only he can, having shared an exhausting decade-long journey that survived three publishing bankruptcies and spawned a vacuous film adaptation. Moore’s voluminous, capital-bashing scripts are overpowering in detail - for example, in a chapter three market scene, a single 3" x 2" panel could never start to depict an envisioned sexual relationship between two street urchins - and Campbell includes a word count for each of the entries like a badge of honour, the highest of which surpasses 2000. It is therefore refreshing that even though the reader is awash in the dankness of Victorian London, Campbell - despite an over reliance on references from Wikipedia - speaks comfortably and clearly about the problems with confronting such an onslaught and its transition to the comic page.

"Our story's written, Netley, inked in blood long dry ... engraved in stone." A new Eddie Campbell watercolour graces the cover of The From Hell Companion; in Campbell's epilogue, one closes the book sharing the illustrator's sentiment "all the people that I worried I could never quite bring to life now sadden me with their last glimpse."

What is evident when reading through this companion is that when the artist did diverge from the writers intentions, Campbell chose a similar clarity. Yet one wonders if the passionate descriptions are best suited to the comic book page; the completed From Hell could only ever have been a dilution of Moore's meticulous actions, foundations creating mood and tone that would possibly only stand justice in a series of hefty novels. The FROM HELL movie is just that, diluting the book's convoluted narrative in a way only a Hollywood blockbuster can. Moore has never championed the silver screen, insisting that the medium is inherently technical thus financial, creating a tendency to drive and immerse the viewer on a set path thus limiting personal interaction and development. Books and comics therefore are the arts of choice for the Northampton magus, where the reader isn't spoon-fed.

In the foreword, Craig Fischer and Charles Hatfield highlight the need for a companion book, to explain a project that is densely threefold: firstly, the connections between freemasonry, occultism and architecture; secondly, how these heady subjects are insight-fully woven into a story; and thirdly, how a personal friendship and artistic collaboration survives under such prolonged duress. Moore has always been more vocal and robust in his theories than his esteemed artist, but Campbell is equally fascinating as both an individual and illustrator; the Australia-located Scot surmises that the human condition cannot except a random universe, inventing its Gods and conspiracies to explain at least some order. Perhaps it is better to believe that evil is in control, rather than there being no control.

Arc of a Journey

The Sonic Adventures of Broadcast

BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO (2012)

Broadcast's Trish Keenan: a unique talent tragically cut short.

TAKING the aesthetics of 1960s psychedelia and the avant-garde, West Midlands electronic group Broadcast rejoiced in a deluge of musical, literary and cinematic references. Co-founded by partners James Cargill and the late Trish Keenan - who passed away in 2011 aged 42 having contracted the H1N1 flu virus on tour in Australia - Broadcast were key in the development of what the music press would term hauntology. There was a compelling aura that surrounded them from their first gigs, detached among hypnotic light-shows akin to Andy Warhol's Factory and The Velvet Underground's psych-outs. Keenan's ethereal vocals - like the person herself - were heartfelt yet fragile. As Jeanette Leech notes in her capsule critique of the singer in Shindig! #32 (April 2013), Keenan subscribed more to the intensity and bravado of The United States of America's Dorothy Moskowitz than the killer-stares of Grace Slick or Nico.

Broadcast's debut in 2000 - The Noise Made By People - is one of the great first albums, a work swathed in references from John Barry to Martin Denny, yet forges a hazily spectral sound of its own. 2003's Haha Sound is more intricate, which coincided with Keenan's discovery of the Czech New Wave VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS and Cargill's obsession with library music. By the third album released two years later - Tender Buttons, named after Gertrude Stein's 1914 book of verse - Broadcast had stripped back to the two founders, which consequently produced a more minimal sound. The next album was released in 2009 and would simultaneously frustrate and alienate; infused with a trance-like quality, Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age was influenced by Cargill and Keenan moving to the countryside and immersing themselves in ancient folklore.

Secretary Elena (Tonia Sotiropoulou) in BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO.

The spirit of Broadcast lives on in their soundtrack to Peter Strickland's Lynchian art-house hit BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO. Even though the music is used sparingly, the atmospheric fragments bleed into the drama that unfolds. A lonely English sound engineer from Dorking, Gilderoy (Toby Jones), travels to Italy to work on the post-production of the horror film 'The Equestrian Vortex.' Struggling with the language, he attempts to get his airfare reimbursed with a disinterested secretary, and is later disturbed by the hostilities of director Coraggio (Cosimo Fusco) and producer Santini (Antonio Mancino). Repulsed by the violence depicted in the film which requires him to record various witch incantations, torture and an "aroused goblin," Gilderoy loses his sanity as reality and fiction merge.

With BERBERIAN SOUND STUDIO being a claustrophobic love letter to analogue recording and the world of Italian giallo soundtracks, it exists in a vacuum between academia and exploitation. There is something outlandish with an environment that is visually static yet aurally harrowing: human viscera is replaced by bludgeoned cabbages, slashing kitchen knives and watermelons spliced with machetes. Jones is superb as the innocent abroad, a character who can only truly express himself within his beloved sonic landscape; the question remains if Jones actually exists on a higher plane, or is being manipulated by magic spells rendered through the fast-forwarding and rewinding of the material. For all its measured build up, it is up to the viewer to judge if the final sequences of Gilderoy's madness are an example of audacious film-making or pretentious self-indulgence.

Cushing Centenary (Part II of II)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cushing Centenary (Part I of II)

THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS (1960)
THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR (1968)

100 years young today; Peter Cushing's Dr Knox commands the screen in THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS.

"THIS is the story of lost men and lost souls. It is a story of vice and murder. We make no apologies to the dead. It is all true." So begins THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS, John Gilling's take on Burke and Hare. The film is not only one of the finest British horror films, but a production that may well have provided Peter Cushing with his best ever performance. Capturing the squalid atmosphere of 1828 Edinburgh, the film sees "brilliant, aggressive, provocative" Dr Knox (Cushing) use "resurrection men" Burke (George Rose) and Hare (Donald Pleasence) to supply fresh cadavers for his medical students. When one of these students Chris (John Cairney) becomes involved with feisty prostitute Mary (Billie Whitelaw), the communion begins a chain of events that brings the murders too close to home: Burke is hanged, Hare avoids prosecution only to be blinded by the angry mob, and Knox sees the error of his ways.

Knox is the only person that ultimately changes. Beginning with a flow of intelligence, authority and conviction, this rationality for his beloved medical cause ("men of medicine are the modern miracle workers ... you are entering the most honorable profession in the world") is eventually melted by the fears of a young girl. After instructing Chris that "emotion is a drug that dulls the intellect," Knox quietly tells niece Martha (June Laverick) "as a child, I believed in God and the devil; it took a child to show me what I am now." Cushing's posture and delivery is pitch-perfect across his character arc, and his disagreements with the medical council are laced with a wondrous snideness ("now, if you would be so good as to incline your heads slightly to the right, you will observe the door; please use it.") Cushing is complimented by sly performances from Rose and Pleasence, who further inject the film with sardonic black humour. 

The Vampire-Beast Craves Blood. Together with Japan's Mothra, the creature of THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR is part of a pretty exclusive club of moth-related monsters.

On the other end of the scale, Vernon Sewell's THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR was described by Cushing as perhaps the worst film he ever made. Two murders have left the police perplexed, with the only witness insane and several petal-like scales left at the crime scenes. Inspector Quennell (Cushing) is drawn to the house of entomologist Doctor Mallinger (Robert Flemyng, replacing Basil Rathbone after his fatal heart attack two weeks before principal photography). When a further slaying implicates Mallinger and his daughter Clare (Wanda Ventham) the couple flee, but Quennell traces them and - together with daughter Meg (a stilted Vanessa Howard) - travels to a remote fishing village. It is discovered that Mallinger has created a Death's Head moth/female human hybrid, which drinks blood and kills when sexually aroused.

An erratically-edited programmer, Tigon's THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR suffers from a formulaic script by Peter Bryan (though there is a bizarre departure with an amateur theatrics sequence), threadbare special effects (that makes the moth on a par with Roger Corman's THE WASP WOMAN) and alleged comic relief (from Roy Hudd as the cliched mugging mortuary attendant who enjoys eating lunch among the corpses). Flemyng's mad scientist is blatantly suspicious from the opening lecture scene, and Cushing's customarily stoicism allegedly included extensive re-writing by the actor himself. In America, distributor Pacemaker re-christened the film THE VAMPIRE-BEAST CRAVES BLOOD, followed by some even more deranged hyperbole by the publicity department: "A ravishing Psycho-Field with diabolical power to turn into a Giant Death Head Vampire, to feast on the blood of her lovers before clawing them to death."

Slasher Sleaze

SCHIZO (1976)
THE COMEBACK (1978)

The Daily Mail described SCHIZO as "polished, pernicious cods wallop."

IN the 1970s, Pete Walker made a series of films more sophisticated than the exploitative titles implied. SCHIZO is an under appreciated slasher given added cult status by the fact that the leading lady is Lynne Frederick, who was married to Peter Sellers and died of substance abuse at the age of 39. The film opens with night shift worker William Haskin (Jack Watson) reading in a newspaper that ice-skating star Samantha Gray (Frederick) is to marry wealthy manufacturer Alan Falconer (has-been pop star John Leyton). Haskin starts to stalk Gray, who looks for reassurance to her psychiatrist Leonard Hawthorne (John Fraser), lover of her best friend Beth (Stephanie Beacham). Gray tells Hawthorne that when she was a young girl, she witnessed Haskin stab her mother during a lover's quarrel. After serving sentence he now is after Samantha; or is there a different connotation?

Walker has always heralded the twist ending as something fresh, but the climax is more of a contrived confirmation than a revelation. Screenwriter David McGillivray struggled to add meat to Walker's bones of a story - delivering a first draft allegedly only 42 pages long - and there is evidence here that the Walker-McGillivray partnership was going through the motions. Yet there are several effective shock sequences - death by hammer and knitting needle - and a roving camera and close-ups generate tension and menace. The casting of Watson is a big plus, an actor able to suggest a lot by doing very little, whose worn facade and controlled stares makes his character genuinely unsettling. As Steve Chibnall points out in Making Mischief: The Cult Films of Pete Walker, the main difference with SCHIZO when compared to the film maker's more famous canon of work - HOUSE OF WHIPCORD, FRIGHTMARE et al - is that previously Walker explored contrasts between aged killers and youth culture; here we have the victimisation of common man.

Redemption's remastered US import Blu-ray of THE COMEBACK, released in February.

Quitting school at 15, Frederick appeared in a number of supporting roles in the early 1970s, including Dora Mueller in VAMPIRE CIRCUS. As Julian Upton acutely states in Fallen Stars: Tragic Lives and Lost Careers, the actress "went from appearing in SCHIZO to marrying one" when she tied the knot with Sellers. Within weeks, Frederick's emotional destruction began, amid violent attacks, the actor's increasing heart problems, and Sellers' plummeting box office appeal. After Sellers' death, his widow binged on drink and drugs; in his hastily revised will, Frederick was left almost everything, while his three children were left an insultingly token sum. Frederick subsequently married David Frost then LA heart specialist Barry Unger, filling the Unger marital home with photographs of Sellers and even devoting a room to his memory. Sellers biographer Roger Lewis describes Lynne as Seller's "supernatural double or fellow lost soul; except she acquired his insanities without the compensations of his genius."

Walker followed SCHIZO with THE COMEBACK, and in an attempt to appeal to an American market in the wake of the crippled British film industry, the most conventional. Gone are the low-key locale of Walker's earlier triumphs; now the viewer sees locations for the rich and famous. Reuniting the director with the scriptwriter of DIE SCREAMING, MARIANNE, Murray Smith, the picture sees crooner Jack Jones cast as Nick Cooper, a faded singer returning to England from the US to make a comeback album. His ex-wife has been murdered in their docklands penthouse, a fact unknown to him as he is staying in a mansion maintained by Mr and Mrs B (Bill Owen and Sheila Keith). Increasingly disturbed by nocturnal sounds, and driven to a breakdown by the discovery of a rotting corpse then a head in a hatbox, Cooper discovers that Mr and Mrs B are exacting revenge for the suicide of their daughter, an obsessive fan who could not accept his marriage. Both psychological thriller and violent mystery, THE COMEBACK never quite gels, but Walker manages a memorable conclusion when our nominal hero confronts the dastardly duo.

Carnage and Carnality

THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW (1972)

"If it wasn't so tragic and horrible, it would almost make a movie script."

THE bluntly independent horror output of Pete Walker often depicted society itself as the monster, a clinically cold England that tries to cast off the shackles of the past, only to be smothered by a tide of permissiveness after generations of repression. Unlike Hammer or Amicus, Walker's monsters are not based in the supernatural, rather symbolically drawn from a bygone age. Scripted by Alfred Shaughnessy, Walker's first venture into horror, THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW, tells of a young acting troupe led by Mike (Ray Brooks) residing in an abandoned seaside theatre. The group - which includes Julia (Jenny Hanley), Carol (Luan Peters), Simon (Robin Askwith), Sarah (Candace Glendenning) and Jane (Judy Matheson) - are engaged by a mysterious agent to produce a musical review. When the aspiring thespians are picked off by a hooded prowler, the killer is revealed to be distinguished actor Sir Arnold Gates (Patrick Barr), who previously entombed his wife and her lover alive during a production of Othello.

THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW explores the relationship between life and illusion and the connection between acting and promiscuity. Gates' outburst - "They're all the same, young actors, filthy and degenerate lechers, all of them. And the females, flaunting their bodies, offering their thighs and their breasts. Scum! Excrement!" - subscribes to a world where performance is being eroded by the body. Sir Arnold's views reflect those of Walker himself, whose contempt for the acting profession is illustrated by him saying "If I could make films without actors, I would rather do it," a standing that has also been noted by many of his scriptwriters, particularly David McGillivray, who quotes the director as describing actors as "egotistical poofs" and actresses "pompous prostitutes." Not content to having his dramatis personae reduced to ciphers and sex-crazed starlets, Walker obliged the scantily-clad performers to suffer for their art by shooting THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW in February. 

Best remembered for presenting MAGPIE, Jenny Hanley was briefly a Bond girl in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE and survived the SCARS OF DRACULA.

Using the concept of Ten Little Indians, THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW is a rich British giallo similar to TOWER OF EVIL. Both these features include the staples of the slasher film before this much-maligned sub-genre really existed. It is also interesting to note how the film sows the seeds of Walker's stabs on the establishment that would flow freely in his more famous output. The small town where the picture plays out feels creepy enough on its own even without the aid of the maniac on the loose, but THE FLESH AND BLOOD SHOW's major fault is its incredibly murky photography. Also to the production's detriment is its use of an experimental 3-D process - seen only in a flashback to the wartime Othello production - which appears so late in the proceeding to lose any real shock value.

Curse of Kah-to-Bey

THE MUMMY'S SHROUD (1967)

South African non-actress Maggie Kimberly escapes the clutches 

of Eddie Powell in Hammer's third Mummy picture. 

EGYPT, 1920: a British archaeological expedition financed by businessman Stanley Preston (John Phillips) - comprising of Sir Basil Walden (Andre Morell), Preston's son Paul (David Buck), photographer Harry Newton (Tim Barrett) and psychic linguist Claire de Sangre (Maggie Kimberly) - discover the tomb of child prince Kah-to-Bey. Members of the find are soon being murdered by the Mummy of Prem (Hammer's regular stuntman and Christopher Lee double Eddie Powell), Kah-to-Bey's devoted servant, who can be revived by reading the words off the Prince's burial shroud.

Following Terence Fisher's magisterial THE MUMMY of 1959 and Michael Carreras' disposable 1964 release THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB, THE MUMMY'S SHROUD ("Beware the Beat of the Cloth-wrapped feet!") is a formulaic affair, and the last movie shot at Bray. Written and directed by John Gilling, and scripted by Anthony Hinds, the film starts with a painfully dull and micro-budgeted ancient Egyptian prologue - which includes Dickie Owen, the titular fiend from THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY'S TOMB, as the living Prem - and viewers will also be disappointed by the lack of cleavage, especially as so much is on offer from Kimberly's promotional poses. Unusually for Hammer, the glamour girl role is a character with a narrative function (the somnambulist Claire has the ability to read the "words of death"), but unfortunately Kimberly - who had just appeared in Gilling's secret agent spoof WHERE THE BULLETS FLY - is the worst actress in the Classic Hammer canon.

Studio Canal's Blu-ray/DVD was released in October 2012, containing two standout documentaries: an informative making-of and a touching tribute by Madeline Smith for husband David Buck.

As Jonathan Rigby points out in English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema, a telling sign of the relegated stature of Hammer's Mummy sequels is that stunt men were cast as the monster, following Christopher Lee's barnstorming performance in Fisher's original. The real monster of THE MUMMY'S SHROUD is Preston, expertly portrayed by Phillips as an arrogant coward: quick to enjoy the spoils, even quicker to escape when the curse starts to take hold. Elizabeth Sellars, as his wife Barbara, makes an excellent foil, and it is good to see Michael Ripper in a prolonged role as Preston's long-suffering valet, the myopic Longbarrow. Completing the cast are Catherine Lacey and Roger Delgado's scene-stealing turns as the mother-and-son team whose family have barred the entrance to Kah-to-Bey's tomb for centuries. In fact Lacey's role as fortune-teller Haiti, together with Barbara and Claire, form a trio of female characters with second sight, while the male protagonists are lambs to the slaughter. 

The Mummy has always been the slightest of movie monsters. Covered in bandages that barely conceal the decay beneath, and often reduced to stalk-and-slash with a mystical backdrop, the Mummy started life on film as a device for camera trickery; in both Melies' 1899 CLEOPATRA and Walter Booth's 1901 HAUNTED CURIOSITY SHOP, the creature was used to illustrate the joys of celluloid illusion. Unlike the literary origins of Dracula and Frankenstein, the springboard for the Mummy as a potential movie monster was enhanced by real life: the myths surrounding Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon's 1924 expedition to uncover the tomb of Tutankhamen. In Hammer's fourth and final excursion into this sub-genre - BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB - the studio side-stepped including the bandaged menace altogether. Yet unlike Universal's arthritic Mummy movies, at least Hammer's ancient terrors were brutal threats.

Beast of Burden

AGAINST THE CROWD - MURRAIN (1975)
BEASTS (1976)

The thing in the wall: Jo (Jane Wymark) increasingly feels that she 
and her unborn child are in danger, in the BEASTS episode BABY.

MADE for the ATV anthology series AGAINST THE CROWD - a set of self-contained dramas focusing on outsiders - the Nigel Kneale-penned MURRAIN acted as an impromptu pilot for BEASTS, produced for the same ITV studio a year later. MURRAIN is the story of young vet Alan Crich (David Simeon), who discovers that a stretch of farmland may be hexed by Mrs Clemson (Una Brandon-Jones). Crich attempts to mediate between the alleged witch and the disgruntled local farmers, led by Mr Mably (Bernard Lee). Featuring Kneale's preoccupation of the clash between the supernatural and the rational, the play is also influenced by the writer's own superstitious locale growing up on the Isle of Man. There are no real scares in the programme, rather it is a character-and-mood piece where the viewer is left to draw their own conclusions.

Kneale's six stories for BEASTS would detail another of his favourite themes, that of primal instincts within civilised man, and the effects when repressed feelings are set free. BABY sees the mummified remains of a strange creature found in a country cottage; BUDDYBOY features a haunted dolphinarium; THE DUMMY has an actor taken over by his monster suit; SPECIAL OFFER tells of a gremlin loose in a mini-market; WHAT BIG EYES shows an amateur scientist carrying out experiments to turn himself into a wolf; and rats are on the rampage in DURING BARTY'S PARTY.

Set in North Cornwall, the farmers of MURRAIN believe a witch is responsible for the plight of their pigs, and the illness of a local boy.

Kneale was always an "ideas" man, but BEASTS shows a developing flair for character and dialogue. Thankfully then that the series features a number of stoic performances from fresh faces and seasoned veterans - including Simon MacCorkindale, T.P. McKenna, Martin Shaw, Clive Swift, Thorley Walters, Pauline Quirke and Elizabeth Sellars. Particularly effective are the verbal battles between Michael Kitchen's RSPCA officer and Patrick Magee's eccentric pet-shop owner in WHAT BIG EYES. For a such a character-driven series, the misses are uniform to a handful of weaker performances. Quirke is fine in SPECIAL OFFER, but her co-workers seem staid in what is in itself the silliest and most repetitive episode. BUDDYBOY is the oddest of the tales, and the fusion of Shaw as a porn theatre owner taking over a disused dolphin pool never quite gels in story or execution. The actor is suitably bullish, but the performance of Pamela Moiseiwitsch as a girl who has an umbilical connection with the ghost of the star dolphin is overtly glacial.

As BEASTS is made up of six totally unrelated entries, the quality ultimately dips, despite Kneale's impressive scope of imagination. The doom-laden BABY is almost a companion piece to MURRAIN, as it features another vet at odds with a superstitious rural community. It is widely considered to be the best - and certainly the most chilling - of the series, and as Andy Murray points out in his programme notes to the Network BEASTS DVD, BABY also has connections to QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, with builders unearthing "a sinister, ancient capsule which turns out to contain ... something." THE DUMMY is also a highlight, and a real joy for Hammer fans, as Kneale draws on his underwhelming experiences working for the production house. There is little doubt that with the casting of Walters and the feature being made by a fictional British company - REVENGE OF THE DUMMY - are thinly veiled snipes at his time with the famous studio.

Attack the Block

Action (1976)
DREDD (2012)

Carl Urban as Judge Dredd. A fusion of Dirty Harry and Desperate Dan, the super fascist was named the seventh greatest comic book character by Empire in 2011, beaten only by Superman, Batman, John Constantine, Wolverine, Spider-Man and The Sandman.

THE British comics scene of the mid to late seventies mirrored the changing social and political environment. Publications such as Warlord had started a more grittier trend away from the Beano/Dandy norm, and within the rise of radical trade unionism and an increasing punk ethic, the antihero became a leading light. This shift was typified by Action comic: 'Hellman of Hammer Force', the story of a German Panzer major, and the JAWS cash-in 'Hook Jaw', established a pattern for unconventional or unsympathetic characters, while 'Look Out for Lefty' was a football strip which openly depicted hooliganism on the terraces. Within weeks of the first issue the media had picked up on the title's violent content, with The Sun dubbing Action "the seven penny nightmare." Following its withdrawal Action's co-founder Pat Mills unleashed the science-fiction themed 2000AD in 1977, essentially Action in space. Early strips were particularly honed to the forerunner's expertise, with 'Flesh' a bloodthirsty time-travel story involving dinosaurs, and 'Shako' essentially 'Hook Jaw' with a polar bear.

Futuristic law enforcer Judge Dredd first appeared in the second "prog" of 2000AD. Britain's best-known strip character of the past thirty-five years was in fact created by Canadian-born writer John Wagner and Spanish artist Carlos Ezquerra; Dredd is the most notorious of a group of super cops, religiously disgusted yet righteously determined to fight crime in the post-apocalyptic milieu that is Mega-City One. An encapsulation of Eastern American cities with a population of four-hundred million crammed into Dickensian tower blocks, this megalopolis houses The Hall of Justice (at once judge, jury and executioners). Straddling an armour-plated patrol bike, living by his stock phrase "I am the Law," and always donning his visored-helmet, Dredd fights more and more outlandish adversaries within the Mega-City One walls and in the wastelands beyond, affectionately labelled The Cursed Earth. His most grotesque foe - Judge Death - is a skeletal inter-dimensional tyrant who considers life itself a crime.

The cover that got Action banned. An unfortunate colouring decision - making a police helmet the same shade as a fallen member of the public - was the final straw.

The Judge Dredd strip was originally informed by the cinematic landscape of the 1970s - vigilantes, out-of-control cops, dystopian futures - and Wagner even suggested to Ezquerra that he used David Carradine's character from DEATH RACE 200 for his main visualisation of Dredd. This British/South African co-production - directed by Pete Travis and written by Alex Garland - at last brings a faithful version of the character to the screen, following Sylvester Stallone's version of 1995. With DREDD, it is refreshing to see a comic book movie that strikes at the core of an iconic character without overt allegory, bloated posturing or need of an origin story. Here its just another day at the office as Dredd (Karl Urban), partnered by psychic rookie Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), investigate a triple homicide at the 200-storey Peach Trees block. The Judges discover that a criminal gang - led by Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) - have taken over the building and are using it as a base to market the designer Slo-Mo drug.

Either viewed in 3D or 2D, DREDD is a robust, action-based entertainment given a distinctive visual motif with its slow-motion sequences: everything from bath water to blood spray are given a hallucinogenic twist, with Slo-Mo a much-needed excursion to slow chaos down around the user and the viewer. There is never any great hope in Garland's fantasy screenplays - 28 DAYS LATER... saw most of Britain wiped out by the infected, and SUNSHINE revolves around a suicide mission to the stars - but here the writer manages to evoke a tangible futurism: the inward-looking sets are impressive, and offset only by fleeting exterior CGI of Johannesburg. Consequently it is a rounded illustration of the comic strip world, and in a pretty thankless role, Urban's square jaw is fine. It is, however, Thirlby that excels in such a daunting baptism of fire.

Worlds of the Dead

THE ZOMBIE DIARIES 2: WORLD OF THE DEAD (2011)
OUTPOST II: BLACK SUN (2012)
COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES (2012)

ZOMBIE DIARIES 2's decontamination suites recall images from George A. Romero's original CRAZIES. The cut-away scenes of the white figures rounding up civilians like cattle to shoot then burn them is detrimental to the "race against time" narrative.

RETURNING to the world created in their 2007 hit THE ZOMBIE DIARIES, Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates use the same lead character Leeann (Alix Wilton Regan, replacing Victoria Nalder) and predatory villains Goke (Russell Jones) and Manny (Hiram Bleetman) for the pro-military sequel THE ZOMBIE DIARIES 2: WORLD OF THE DEAD. Found by a squad of T.A. reservists - with their own documenting cameraman - traumatised Leeann journeys with them across zombie-infested Hertfordshire towards Hope’s Point, where rescue ships are due in two days. As the group head towards this destination, civilians are as much a threat as the ghouls. Starting effectively with an intimate family birthday gone to hell, ZOMBIE DIARIES 2 is more polished than the original, but doesn't bring anything new to the table. Its relentlessly grim facade rejoices in three rape scenes, the most self-defeating filmed in gloating close-up; and it is ironic that the most memorable aspect was produced by a fortuitous cold-snap during production, with snow adding to the struggle and providing an edge to the midnight dash through a graveyard.

Released four years after their claustrophobic and testosterone-fuelled OUTPOST, director Steve Barker and writer Rae Brunton widen the scope - and shift the tone - for OUTPOST II: BLACK SUN. In the present day, a NATO force is sent to Eastern Europe, where a sinister enemy appears to be killing everything in its path. Following in the footsteps of her late father, Lena (Catherine Steadman) - an investigator on the trail of the notorious German scientist Klausener (David Grant) - learns that the war crimes of the man she is looking for goes far beyond the blasphemy of extermination camps. Together with former colleague Wallace (Richard Coyle) - a physicist who has been chasing Nazi secrets for years - they team up with the NATO force to prevent the rise of a zombie 4th Reich.

The depiction of the Nazi undead is the highlight of OUTPOST II: BLACK SUN; relentlessly brutal, the zombies either club their prey or stab them repeatedly, with the visuals presented in an effectively dirty brown-and-grey colour palette.

Despite a promising opening salvo with an aged SS officer, Steadman becomes yet another ineffectual female lead and largely unable to look after herself, despite being a seasoned Nazi hunter. As usual, it is up to the military grunts to protect her, who are portrayed as the usual stereotypes: the ruthless one, the compassionate one, the belligerent one, and the wise-cracking one. In fact, the history of the Black Sun and its adaptations into popular culture are more interesting than anything in Barker's film. This motif may have originated from the Theosophy of Helena Blavatsky's Central Sun, an invisible or burnt out star which symbolises an opposing force or pole, and it was former SS member Wilhelm Landig who coined the idea of a mystical source capable of regenerating the Aryan race. Pop culture references include Grant Morrison's comic strip Zenith, which makes its Black Sun cult a combination of Nazi and Lovecraftian ideas; in the novel Satan's Seed by Mark Ellis, the Brotherhood of the Black Sun and Aleister Crowley use geomancy to travel through time; and in the computer game Wolfenstein, the Black Sun was actually another dimension altogether.

The feature directing debut of German Matthias Hoene - who rebooted Hammer for the 2008 online serial BEYOND THE RAVE - and co-written by James Moran, who penned SEVERANCE - the zombie-gangster-comedy COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES does everything it says on the tin, but isn't as wily as it thinks it is. A proposed building development threatens the Bow Bells Care Home with closure, and to secure the wellbeing of their war-hero grandfather Ray (Alan Ford), chancer brothers Terry (Rasmus Hardiker) and Andy (Harry Treadaway) ineptly rob a bank with the aid of spunky cousin Katy (Michelle Ryan), friend Davey (Jack Doolan) and psychopathic weapons-specialist "Mental" Mickey (Ashley Thomas). But the East End of London has more pressing matters; workers at the development site have excavated into a plague pit sealed by Charles II in 1666, unleashing a mutated infection that transforms humans into shambling zombies.

"The Undead are Brown Bread." Former EASTENDER Michelle Ryan is effortlessly strong and sexy in the otherwise irksome COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES.

Overtly formulaic and a SHAUN OF THE DEAD facsimile, COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES suffers from muted action scenes, no real tension, and cockney rhyming slang jokes that wear thin pretty fast. Consequently, it's not funny enough to be a memorable comedy, and not scary enough for hardcore zombie enthusiasts. The film works best when it depicts the potential abandonment of the elderly. In the stand-out sequence, deaf Hamish (Richard Briers) hobbles along on his zimmer at the same pace as a ghoul eager for his flesh, and it is this old guard of performers - Ford, Briers, Honor Blackman, Dudley Sutton, Tony Selby, Georgina Hale - that provide the production with ballast.