Sheer Bliss?

One of the pleasures of a weblog like this is the ongoing excuse to finally get around to watching films that you may have owned for years but never actually seen. Films like ‘Madhouse’, in fact.

Hammy veteran horror actor Vincent Price stars as hammy veteran horror actor Paul Tombs. Tombs may be a psychotic killer, but he can’t remember and the Police don’t have any proof – all they know is that his fiancé had her head cut off in mysterious circumstances and he had a complete nervous breakdown, so they have their suspicions. In jolly old Britain to stage a TV comeback, Tombs is dismayed to find that the people around him are being bumped off in unpleasant ways, and only his old friend Peter Cushing doesn’t think he’s the culprit. The truth, of course, is much, much weirder…  

A rather good, civillised slasher with lashings of Gothic and a large pinch of Giallo, ‘Madhouse’ is enlivened by numerous clips from Price’s horror resume, as well as wry, solid performances from the two leads. Sort of a conflation of ‘Theatre of Blood’ and ‘Dr Phibes’, ‘Madhouse’ isn’t hugely original, but it is good fun, and the denouement is gleefully ridiculous. Good stuff - I should have watched it ages ago.

Pete and Vince

From 'Madhouse', two horror legends enjoy a party. It could be worse, boys, at least Christopher Lee isn't in this one. 

Madhouse

They Can Only Shriek, Shriek

'Cry Of The Banshee' is effectively a cross between the better known 'Witchfinder General' and 'Blood On Satan's Claw' in theme and style but, sadly, doesn't come close to either film in terms of quality or interest.

The usually good value Vincent Price gives perhaps his most boring performance, seemingly rendered immobile by the dullness of the production, too stupefied to even arch an eyebrow. The story, which has nothing to do with Poe no matter what the posters say, is set in the sixteenth century and concerns an arrogant Lord (Price) and his boorish, spoilt brat children who piss off a local witch coven (by hacking most of them to death) and then feel their wrath, one by one, victims of a supernatural entity called Patrick Mower.

It pains me to say it, but this film is a waste of time. You don't even get to see the monster properly. A very poor show all round.   

A Thing That Never Learned To Die

More from 'Cry Of The Banshee'.

Cry of the Banshee

The rather Pythonesque titles (darting boggly eyes and all) are, perhaps not surprisingly, by the very Pythonesque Terry Gilliam.

Where Vile Things Crawl

'The Oblong Box' was originally to be directed by Michael Reeves, but he chucked a spanner in the works by dying of a drugs overdose in the pre-production stages. The film re-united (the Reeves directed) 'Witchfinder General' star Vincent Price with his co-stars Rupert Davies and Hilary Dwyer and, like that production (in the US at least), attempted to link the film to American International Picture's highly successful Edgar Allen Poe cycle. 'The Oblong Box' is the title of a Poe story, true, but this is not that story.

A sort of bizarre take on 'Jane Eyre', it concerns Julian Markham (Price), a rich man with a young fiancee and a dark secret gained in the Colonies: a crazed and disfigured older brother who he keeps chained up in an attic - but, as crazed and disfigured elder brothers chained up in attics are prone to do, keeps getting out and causing mayhem. The problem is exacerbated by catalepsy, body snatching and a Voodoo curse. Thinking about it, what problem wouldn't be?

Not entirely successful, but very entertaining, AIP liked the film enough to immediately fling Hessler, Price and most of the supporting cast into Elizabethan horror 'Cry Of The Banshee', which just so happens to be the featured film on this very weblog tomorrow. We don't always just throw this shit together, you know.  

The Oblong Box

Disoriented

'Scream and Scream Again’ is a ridiculously confusing film which only (partially) comes together after an hour of disparate scenes set in various places with a raft of actors and actresses, many of whom later admitted they didn’t know what was going on either. For all its muddle, however, it’s very effective, and the individual story strands are very watchable, just don’t expect a neat and tidy conclusion.

Starring two Horror colossi (Cushing / Price) and Christopher Lee, the film was directed by Gordon Hessler, who had already made a couple of UK based AIP films with Vincent Price and would later go on to direct the greatest TV movie ever made, ‘KISS Meet The Phantom Of The Park’. The story was based on a 'novel' by pulp writer Peter Saxon (actually, a generic pen name used by several writers), who will be cropping up again on this blog sometime in the future.

Promotional activity at the time made a big deal of the fact that Fritz Lang had watched ‘Scream and Scream Again’ and, when asked his opinion, thought it excellent, although he was 80 at the time and may have misheard the question. Actually, that’s a cheap jibe: the narrative may be all over the place, but, overall, it’s good cinema, with some startling individual scenes.

Scream and Scream Again