Night Of The Big Heat

W Is For Wyngarde

‘The Man Who Liked Lions’ is a 1966 episode of long running ITC series ‘The Saint’, starring an alternately smug and sulky (and surprisingly chubby) Roger Moore, although here the draw is an appearance by our old mucker, Sir Peter Wyngarde. Wyngarde isn’t in it that much, really, but, by Christ, he makes the most of his time onscreen.

He plays Tiberio Magadino, an Italian gallery owner who, in his spare time, is an international hit man. He likes lions (hence the title) and Romans and, in the episodes climax, fights a gladiatorial battle with The Saint while dressed as a Roman. Oh, and over an open trapdoor that leads to a cellar with a hungry lion in it. Wyngarde doesn't so much steal the show as simply stride up to it, shout 'I'm taking this', before putting it in his pocket and marching off. It’s a commanding performance, devoid of camp, although nothing he does is not without a wry, arch sense of amusement. I particularly like the sheer brio he brings to the scrapping, throwing his all into the sword play. It’s also inconceivable that any other actor could bring such clipped menace to lines like –

'I'm a great admirer of the early Roman culture. It had much to recommend it: force, compulsion, discipline and strength. At least it produced men, real men, unlike our sick, decadent society today. What has it produced? Long haired, self-absorbed effeminates.  I'd like to see most of them quietly exterminated'. 

There’s an interesting scene where Tiberio is being massaged by a muscular black man. When another heavyset man enters, the session stops, although the masseur apparently sneaks a quick peek at Tiberio’s exposed crotch. Interestingly, Tiberio then grabs the masseur’s hands and forces him to his knees, out of shot. In context, it is clearly meant to convey that Tiberio is a surprisingly powerful and dangerous man but, in reality, the whole thing reeks of homoeroticism. I’ll bet Peter would have found the scene terribly funny. I certainly did.

The Avengers: How To Succeed...At Murder

More 1966 'Avengers'. 'How To Succeed At Murder' has Mrs. Peel infiltrate a gang of female assassins who are knocking off their male bosses in order to establish a matriachal society after thousands of years of subjugation. Their leader, of course, is a ventriloquist's dummy named Henrietta.

The chief assassinatrix (I think I've made that word up) is played by Angela Browne. Angela was an intelligent, cultured and very beautiful presence in any number of British films and TV shows from the 1950s onwards, including 'Danger Man' and 'The Prisoner' (as Number 86 in 'A, B or C'), before giving up showbusiness for charity work in 1990. She died in 2001.  

The Avengers: The House That Jack Built

For my money, the first Diana Rigg Avengers season was the high watermark of the series, although the next season (the first in colour) comes very close. Surreal and psychedelic before most people knew what the term meant, the Brian Clemens scripted 'The House that Jack Built' is a fantastic episode, and also looks to have had a bit of an influence on 'The Legend of Hell House'.

Nazis On Ice

Nazis are good value, horror wise, aren’t they? The evil regime that keeps on giving.

In ‘The Frozen Dead’, Dana Andrews is attempting to establish a fourth Reich using the bodies of party members who chose to be cryogenically frozen when the war ended twenty years previously. The thawing process isn’t working, however, so the defrostees come out brain damaged or, in the case of a young Edward Fox, totally psychotic.

What the ‘kindly’ Doctor (who used to preside over a concentration camp and knew Josef Mengele) really needs is a living brain to study, which is soon delivered to him thanks to Fox’s strangling hands. The victim is a friend of his niece who is immediately decapitated and her head is kept in a box and fed a glucose diet. When the box is opened, the severed head scowls angrily – a look I recognise (and fear) from my own wife. When the box is shut, she uses telepathy to call to her friend and to wind up the frost damaged Nazis. It’s a powder keg with a dynamite girdle and nitrogylcerine wheels.

Extraordinary in many ways, few of them good, ‘The Frozen Dead’ is not necessarily terrible, just totally ridiculous. There’s a scene where the American hero is exploring the ‘castle’ (it’s actually just a large house) and, as he explores the dungeons, he comes across a skeleton manacled to the wall. Why? He doesn’t even register surprise, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Why do the frozen Nazis swing around in the freezer? Have they been doing that for twenty years? Couldn’t they have been secured a little better?

The daftest elements are, naturally, courtesy of the severed head: blue, bald, covered in tubes, its baleful presence is exploited to the full and its scornful, hate filled expression is the stuff of nightmare / farce. The bald blue bonce even speaks at the end (impossible, but why start applying logic now?), before using sheer willpower to revenge itself on its nasty Nazi tormentors. Ludicrous. Recommended!

The Frozen Dead

There Is No Escape!

Despite its sensational title and poster, 'Naked Evil' is a rather creaky affair, which is a real shame as its premise - Voodoo comes to London - has distinct possibilities. Despite the supernatural overtones and a few well done atmospherics, however, the film never rises above a fairly basic whodunnit, and although its setting (a hostel for commonwealth men attending college in the UK) is fairly unique, its portrayal of the 'coloured' students as a musical, superstitious, cowardly, slightly comical lot is very much 'of its time'.

On the other hand, the film also presents us with the facinating spectacle of future Dr. Who Master Anthony Ainley enjoying some Jamaican ska jazz. Even Basil Dignam approves.

Naked Evil