Above And Below The Sea

When I first saw the trailer for 'Warlords Of Atlantis', I remember thinking 'well, that looks like the greatest film of all time'. It's not quite that good, but it is energetic, fast moving and action packed, especially as, every fifteen minutes or so, there's a rubber monster attack.

Sucking his belly in, in Doug McClure stars as a Victorian engineer who is unknowingly on a trip to discover Atlantis. After being lost since the dawn of time, you'd think that finding the sunken city would be a tall order but, nope, within about ten minutes Doug, scientist / archaeologist Peter Gilmore and the rest of the raggle taggle scum  bag crew have been plucked from their boat by an enormous octopus and dragged down to a land beneath the sea where giant, angry mutated animals roam the land and all the men have weirdo avant garde pie dish fringes. It's a funny place, especially when the Atlanteans reveal that they came from Mars and, finding the people of Earth 'retarded' (cheers) have been pulling the strings for our species since pre-history.

Their next goal as 'the master race' is progressing to a world of pure science - and total obedience - and, to illustrate what it might be like, they mind project pictures of Hitler addressing a Nazi rally. Having taken some time and trouble to get there, our intrepid adventurers now can't wait to get the hell away, especially as, if they stay much longer, they will be fitted with gills and forced to join the Atlanteans enormous slave army. Cue gunplay, high dives and a load of plastic fish that leap out of the water to rather ineffectually nip at parts of their fleeing bodies.

A great mix of cheapo action, high camp and Boys Own, 'Warlords' may not actually be the greatest film of all time, but it's a good laugh and utterly unpretentious, and the rubber monsters are fantastically rubbery.

Here's that trailer. It's not exactly how I remember it!

Warlords Of Atlantis

The Adventure You Will Never Forget

‘The Land That Time Forgot’ is classic school holiday fodder, a rip-roaring adventure full of dinosaurs, spear chucking and volcanic explosions. This one even has a submarine which, I must admit, I always find a bit exciting. I love submarines.

Set during World War One and based on a book by pulp colossus Edgar Rice Burroughs, the action takes place on the mysterious island of Caprona, an uncharted place which, despite being near Antarctica, has a tropical climate. It also has a unique eco-system where pterodactyls rule the skies and stegosaurus’ are forever getting into scraps with tyrannosaurs. Chuck in some Neanderthal type people, some lost German sailors and Doug McClure at his most McClure-ish and you’ve got yourself one hell of a film – if you’re about eleven. Happily, that’s my mental age.

One of a number of films that Amicus produced aimed firmly at a younger audience, ‘The Land That Time Forgot’ is cheap, unpretentious fun – but not without imagination, perhaps even style. Pulp source material of a certain vintage often throws up something odd – some bizarre theory or pseudo-scientific viewpoint (usually insanely right wing) – and here it is hinted that the unusual properties of the island mean that its inhabitants evolve not over time but over distance, i.e. the further north people go, the more sophisticated they become. It’s pretty suspect (people from warmer climates are more primitive?) but it gives the narrative an edge of strangeness and mystery, which it needs. Man does not live by pterodactyl attack alone, you know.

The Land That Time Forgot

Terror To Delight

 

Two types of 'From Beyond the Grave' posters: a pretty shabby US one with art copied from the back of a fourteen year old boy's exercise book, and a classy Japanese photomontage one which doesn't tell you much but is rather creepy. 

FBTG: The Door

The final 'From Beyond The Grave' is the only tale with a happy ending, mainly because Ian Ogilvy, who stars, is the only customer not to try and rip off 'Temptations Ltd'.

Writer Ogilvy purchases an ornate antique door which he puts on the front of his stationary cupboard. One night, the door swings open revealing not the expected staples and pencils but a stately blue room, covered in cobwebs and imbued with a heavy atmosphere of doom. The room disappears quickly but, over the next few nights, the room returns, for longer and longer each time. Eventually, the dissipated figure of the room's owner, an undead libertine and occultist who has gained eternal life by stealing other's souls, appears, and he has his eye on Ogilvy's wife, the comely Lesley Ann Down...well, he's only human. Sort of.

Being a decent and honest bloke when it comes to shopping has definite advantages, though, and it all turns out okay in the end, although you have to wonder why they had to go through it in the first place.

Interestingly, after 'Witchfinder General', this is the second film in which the suave Mr. Ogilvy hacks a man in 17th century costume to death with an axe, although this time it's smashing up the haunted door which obtains the required effect. Marvellous.

FBTG: The Elemental

Every portmanteau film has to have at least one story that contains a comic relief element or is out and out farce and, to be honest, it's usually the weakest part of the film. 'The Elemental' serves that function in 'From Beyond The Grave', and although it may be daft it has a chilling conclusion.

Ian Carmichael plays an upperclass duffer who visits 'Temptations Ltd' in search of a snuff box, craftily swapping price tags to get one for a better price. Cushing isn't fooled, though, he just lets the deception take place and says goodbye with a cheery 'I hope you enjoy snuffing it'.

On the commute home, he is approached by photofit batty psychic Madam Orloff (Margaret Leighton) who warns him he has an evil force on his shoulder, an Elemental. Naturally, he thinks she's ele-mental (cheers) but, when his dog runs away and his wife is attacked he calls Madam Orloff back so that they can both ham it up something rotten in a chaotic exorcism scene. 

Elementals have to go somewhere, of course, and this one ends up in Carmichael's wife, Nyree Dawn Porter, who goes from ditzy doormat to snarling she-beast in about ten seconds. The effect is genuinely quite scary. Mrs. Elemental kills her husband and then knocks down the front door and heads out into the world. No good can come of that, no good at all.

FBTG: An Act Of Kindness

'From Beyond The Grave's second story stars the always tightly wound Ian Bannen, Diana Dors and the deeply creepy father / daughter combo of Donald and Angela Pleasence.

Bannen plays Lowe, a dull middle manager with an awful home life (his wife hates him, his son thinks he's pathetic), who takes advantage of a chance meeting with ex-soldier Underwood (Donald Pleasence) to make up an alternate past where he was a war hero (he was actually a pay clerk) and was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. To further this claim, Bannen visits Temptations Ltd to purchase a secondhand DSM only to be told by Cushing that he can only sell it to him if he has proof that he was once awarded one. Desperate, Bannen steals the medal and seals his fate.

I don't wish to be ungallant, but Angela Pleasence looks like her Dad, and that makes her perfect for horror films. Here, as the daughter Underwood offers up to Lowe, she is perfect: odd, witchy, and, in contrast to Lowe's shrewish wife (Diana Dors at full pelt) docile and accommodating. When she offers Lowe a way out of  his loveless marriage by occult means he eagerly takes it, little realising that the Underwoods are not working for him, they're working for his son, and his wife is not the only one on the hit list...

FBTG: The Gatecrasher

In the first ‘From Beyond The Grave’ story, natty neckerchiefed David Warner buys an antique mirror from Temptations Ltd, but pretends it is a reproduction to slash the price, which he then negotiates down even further. A bit cheeky, and altogether a very bad idea.

Having a party, he and his annoying friends decide to hold a séance, which is no fun at all as it unleashes a malevolent spirit trapped in the mirror who, ultimately, takes control of Warner, forcing him to kill again and again.

In time, when enough blood has been spilled, the spirit is able to leave the mirror and walk the earth. He is not in the least a nice man, and this concept is particularly unpleasant. To put the tin lid on it, poor old blood-stained Warner finds himself in the mirror world.

Years later, the new tenant of the flat has a party, and he and his annoying friends hold a séance, and the whole cycle begins again. Ulp.

From Beyond The Grave

The portmanteau or anthology film is a perfect format for horror. The idea, which is to create a film using interlocking but separate stories, had been around since the earliest days of cinema, but it was successfully revived for the horror genre in 1965 with ‘Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors’, which was a big enough success to provoke a slew of similar films up until the early eighties.

‘From Beyond The Grave’ is a 1974 film from Amicus studios. Amicus are the horror portmanteau studio, and, for my money, ‘From Beyond…’ is the best of the lot, an absolute classic. No other anthology film has such strong individual stories, such good performances, and such a genuinely unsettling atmosphere of foreboding and doom.

The four individual stories are linked by Temptations Ltd, an antique shop run by Peter Cushing (sporting an uncharacteristic Yorkshire accent). His customers are a dishonest lot, switching prices, negotiating unreasonable prices and, in one case, stealing, but they soon learn the error of their ways as soon as they leave the shop and their story begins.

It’s a good enough film to split it up into component parts, so that’s what we’ll do this weekend, although, of course, you realise I did this all one damp, dull night weeks ago and I’m currently at a pool party having an amazing time.