A Horrifying Excursion

‘Paranoiac’ is one of those stylish, squiffy supporting feature thrillers that Hammer quietly excelled at in the sixties although, sports cars and Hush Puppies modernism aside, it could just as easily have formed part of their better known Gothic cycle. It’s about a haunted house, after all, and is as morbid as hell - choc-a-bloc with murder and madness and desiccated corpses and organ playing in the dark. Oh, and darts.

It’s also about the 25 year old Oliver Reed, excellent here as the febrile Simon, a bag of neuroses in a bruiser’s body– an overgrown, over-wrought child who drinks too much, drives too fast and has a dirty, nasty, nutty secret which has driven him around the bend. He’s in good company, though, as more or less everyone in the story is absolutely barking mad – except for the hero, who is a fraud and a criminal. It’s a wonderful advertisement for country living, and a nice summary of upper class values that still rings true today.

The story, which twists and turns before skidding through a hedge and hurtling off a cliff, is competently and cleanly directed in crisp black and white by Freddie Francis, perhaps the most interesting of all Hammer helmsmen. The dénouement is a thick, fat slice of Grand Guignol, and is absolutely delicious. I must have seen this film a dozen times. I never tire of it.

Paranoiac

Makes Your Blood Run Cold

Sieges are great subjects for films, aren't they? Tense, exciting - and even more tense and exciting if you have a mix of ruthless criminals and sympathetic innocents, say an international criminal and a trigger happy drunk holding an asthmatic child, an old man and a lady doctor at gunpoint? No? Not exciting enough? Well, what if there was a Black Mamba loose on the premises? What about that?  Yep, now you're interested...

'Venom' is really stupid. But as really stupid films go, it's a corker. I needn't go into how the deadliest snake in the world was given to a small child by accident, or how that very snake gets loose in a house and inadvertantly becomes a key character in a foiled kidnapping attempt, so let's just say that it happens and move on. I also won't go into why the house in question, a large Georgian terrace, was thoughtfully built 250 years ago with a massive stainless steel air conditioning system for the venomous killer to slither around in.

What I have to say, however, is that this film has one of the most eclectic and downright bloody dangerous casts ever assembled: Oliver Reed, Klaus Kinski, Nicol Williamson, Sarah Miles and Sterling Hayden - a collection of unreliable nutters, troublemakers, malcontents, free spirits, drunks and degenerates that shouldn't even be able to co-exist in the same small space in the universe. The insurance premiums must have been through the roof. Shame Brando wasn't available.

Throw in Susan George as a scheming maid who gets her kit off in minutes and then turns dying from a snake bite into something wanton and erotic and you have half a dozen reasons for watching, and that's before you even get to the quite amazing finale where an out of control Kinski grapples frantically with a rubber snake, trying to blow the synthetic serpent's head off as he himself is shot repeatedly by Police snipers. It's like something out of a Norman Wisdom film. That one with the guns and the snakes.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention that Ollie Reed gets bitten on the bollocks. That's one brave hisser. Mr. Reed also suffers the indignity of a really nondescript credit, and I say that as someone who (much like everyone else) has several mates called Dave.

Venom

 

The Devil At Longleat

‘Blue Blood’ is a bit like Pinter's ‘The Servant’ in its tale of a man overcoming his master, but with added sex, drugs and satanic ritual. Yes, it does sound good, doesn’t it?

Derek Jacobi plays Lord Gregory, an enormously rich nobleman living in a huge stately home in the country. The selfish and spoiled Lord does very little during the day apart from painting erotic murals but, in the evenings, he throws lavish parties and sleeps with as many women as he can. In true feudal style, he keeps a retinue of ladies onsite to provide him with sons although, rather dopily, as he is married, very few of the kids can count as legitimate heirs. He obviously  just likes having his peerage polished.

Behind every decadent Lord there is a psychotic, jealous servant with a big moustache, and here that role is played by force of nature Oliver Reed as head servant, Tom. Tom knows he is a better, stronger, more powerful and more deserving man than his master, and has decided to take the house, the possessions, the wife, the ‘wifelets’ and the life and freedom that Gregory takes for granted away from him, and Tom has no qualms whatsoever in achieving his goal.

I like Oliver Reed a lot, but he’s not at his best in this film. He has the dark, glowering physical presence required, of course, and he delivers some key speeches brilliantly, but he saddles himself with an exaggeratedly working class accent which makes his character sound ridiculous and comedic rather than manipulative and menacing and fatally damages what he’s trying to achieve. Director Andrew Sinclair should have told him but then he may very well have been scared to broach the subject lest Ollie go mental and start flashing his tattooed cock.   

An uneven, sometimes queasily psychedelic film, the production benefits enormously by being filmed at Longleat House, the ancestral seat of the Marquis of Bath, a place of opulence and isolation, a real place with the feel of a fantasy. The Marquis’ son and heir, Alexander Thynn, wrote the book the film is based on, and also serves as the model for the promiscuous but slightly pathetic Lord Gregory. Thynn inherited the title (and the house and safari park) in 1992, becoming known as ‘The Loins Of Longleat’ in the tabloids for his interesting love life and unconventional lifestyle - although, as far as I know, this did not include employing a mad, bullying butler. Oh well, his loss.

Blue Blood

 

Hairy Noon & Nighty Night Night

For some reason, 'Classic British Horror' tended to steer away from films about werewolves, I don't know why, perhaps the make up is too expensive. It's a shame, as the few examples I can think of are pretty good, particularly 'Curse Of The Werewolf' (1961), which is absolutely terrific.

Set in 19th century Spain, a lengthy prologue shows us exactly how a werewolf is made: a crazy feral tramp rapes a buxom deaf mute and makes her pregnant. Sorry, if that's unnecessarily scientific for you. The result of this unholy union is Leon, a sweet little boy who kills sheep at full moon and grows into a young Oliver Reed. Reed is perfect in the role - likeable, but full of brooding intensity. When he flips, and flip he flipping well does, he makes one angry, bloody, white werewolf.

Excellent stuff, from Terence Fisher's fluid direction to the innovative look of the monster, it's a shame Hammer didn't follow this up with a series of sequels. They made four Mummy films, for instance, and everyone knows a werewolf is better than a mummy. You couldn't make it up.

Curse Of The Werewolf

 

No Cage Can Hold His Lust

Oliver Reed was a pretty good actor before he decided being a clown was an easier option. His best performances have a sort of brutal sensitivity: he's vulnerable, and liable to smash your face in if you mention it. In 'Sitting Target' he takes this persona to the very edge.

Harry Lomart is a professional criminal who can endure any hardship inside as long as he has the backing of his much loved wife outside. When she tells him that she's leaving him, he breaks out of prison to kill her, her lover, and anyone else who gets in his way. At the end of his rampage, he simply lays down to die besides the body of the woman he loves, all passion spent, all point gone.

It's a pretty hard hitting film, and Reed is brilliant in it, a force of nature, a brute with a broken heart. Lomart is no cold, ruthless Jack Carter, he's full of rage and barely in control. That said, the net result is more or less the same. Revenge, eh?

Sitting Target

The Damned

Ice and Darkness

'The Damned' may be the most cerebral film Hammer ever made. It's certainly the best film ever made in Weymouth. It has it all: cold war, a government conspiracy, an underground facility, radioactivity, creepy kids, eerie sculptures, leather boys, pointy bras and Oliver Reed.

Once seen, never forgotten. Seriously.