You're Invited To The Torture Party

‘Satan’s Slave’ is a film that director Norman J. Warren sweated blood to make, spending years on getting the finance into place. His efforts were rewarded with a sizeable UK hit and, best of all, a really cool piece of work that still entertains today.

Crazy old Michael Gough stars, here sporting an outsized moustache and, on occasion, a goat’s head mask. He has designs on his niece (Candace Glendenning), believing that her sacrifice will bring about the resurrection of a centuries dead witch. He is aided and abetted by his creepy rapist / murderer son who alternately woos and threatens the girl, who is especially vulnerable as her parents have just been burned alive in a mysterious car accident.  

Full of energy, verve and a keen sense of the grand guignol, ‘Satan’s Slave’ powers towards a surprising finale, but only after knocking off several cast members in a succession of grisly murders. Gough is his usual urbane / psychotic self, but a special mention should go to Martin Potter, who plays the evil son. Potter also appeared in ‘Goodbye, Gemini’, so seems to specialise in deeply fucked up individuals with a habit of stabbing their way out of uncomfortable situations. Potter is aided in his characterisations by his unforgettable face: at first glance rather handsome but, on closer inspection, waxy and haunted, like a contorted mask. It’s a great asset as an actor, although I wouldn’t want it between my ears.    

Satan's Slave

Gough Kicks Off

Eight years on from ‘Black Zoo’, Michael Gough was still played the cold eyed martinet, the ruthless ruler of all he surveys. In ‘The Velvet House’ (aka ‘The Corpse’, aka ‘Crucible Of Horror’) his kingdom is a domestic house, and his subjects his abused family.

It’s an odd set up. Gough prowls the house looking for things to kick off about and, when he’s not trying to start a fight, is seen strenuously washing his hands as if to absolve himself of his guilt. He has moulded his son into a mini version of himself and the boy puts on his headphones and turns the music up to full volume everytime he can hear an argument. Gough has dangerously contrary emotions towards his rebellious  teenage daughter: when she gets off her bike he secretly squeezes the saddle; when she gets out of line, he beats her savagely with a riding crop.

The wife / mother (played by the eternally downtrodden Yvonne Mitchell) locks herself away from everything most days, obsessively painting expressionist portraits of her feared husband. After the horse whipping, however, she turns wearily to her daughter and says ‘let’s kill him’ - so they do. Or at least they think they do…

A minor but intriguing little psycho drama, ‘The Velvet House’ is, ultimately, compromised by a lack of narrative clarity but it’s a thoughtful little film with an implacably nasty but very matter of fact performance from Gough, who plays the control freak father as a kind of passive-psychotic. Nobody does bastard like Gough, and he’s on top form here - alive, dead or reanimated making the lives of those around him a hell.

It's not on DVD (I think - cue comments and links to DVD copies), hence the slightly scabby screenshots. I’d like to see a cleaned up version, or at least one where you can still see what’s going on when it gets dark.

The Velvet House

Kill-Lust

Produced by Herman Cohen, starring Michael Gough, ‘Black Zoo’ is superbly silly stuff, full of violence and shock and death by wild animal. In its quieter moments, it also creates a sickly, unhealthy atmosphere in which odd family units are formed, then broken apart. It also finds a use for the old ‘Konga’ monkey suit, which more or less guarantees a good time.

Gough plays Michael Conrad, a private zoo keeper in Los Angeles. Gough excels at playing uptight psychotic types, driven men who are so certain of their destiny that murder is simply a way of getting there quicker. In his spare time, he attends meetings of a bizarre animal worshipping cult, and although this thread doesn’t really go anywhere, it quickly establishes his priorities: human life is cheap, it’s the animals that count. In the evenings he and his mute teenage son gather the animals around them – a lion, a tiger, a puma, a leopard – and Conrad plays the organ to them all. It’s all pretty eerie, especially as he quite often ends the get togethers by issuing the creatures their orders, which normally involve taking out some busy body or land developer that is impinging on their weird way of life.

After a while, the mute son realises that he can’t speak because he was traumatised as a child by something awful Daddy did to Mummy and it all comes tumbling down, but only after several heads have been clamped in several sets of jaws, and a lady has her skull smashed by a swipe of a massive simian paw (this bit is brilliant: a man in the ‘Konga’ suit does the dirty deed and, when he hears a police siren, starts hopping from foot to foot, flapping his hands around like he’s trying to think what to do next. I’m sure David Attenborough would have something to say about it).

Full of energy and unsettling moments (midnight tiger funeral, anyone?), ‘Black Zoo’ is full pelt early sixties horror – dripping with sensationalism but, over fifty years on, endearingly innocent and quaint. It’s grrreat.

Black Zoo

You'll Scream!

Lots of people collect things, don't they? Comics or snuff boxes or postcards or vases or cars or sugar sachets. In fact, if there is a thing, then there is usually someone who collects that thing. But evil skulls? Really?

Peter Cushing plays an evil skull collector in, yes, 'The Skull', a Freddie Francis film from 1965. The creepy cranium in question belonged to the Marquis de Sade and, naturally, has a troubled history, with several unexplained deaths being attached to its unsavoury legend. Within a few days of buying it at a bewitched bones auction, Cushing's ordered life is starting to spiral down the u-bend - he's having nightmares, experiencing hallucinations, standing over his sleeping wife with a big knife in his hand - the sort of things he never ever did before the malevolent noggin came into his world. Incredibly, it seems that the evil skull is bad news. Really bad news.

'The Skull' is pretty good, considering, with some nice out there fantasy sequences and some great skull pov photography. Cushing is always particularly interesting when his cool and calm demeanour breaks down and he starts to unravel, and he falls apart quickly and irrevocably here to great dramatic effect. Freddie Francis' direction is excellent and to the point as you would expect from a genre director of his quality. Even Christopher Lee is quite good (and not in it much) and there's a nice cameo role for 'Island of Terror' favourite, Michael Gough. I miss that guy. 

Right, I'm off to add 'evil skull' to my saved e-bay searches.   

Boiling Rage

I live about thirty minutes drive away from Derbyshire and, when I get chance, I like to visit the county's amazing show caves. I must have been twenty times over the years and on every single occasion I've thought of 'Trog'.

'Trog' is a fantastically entertaining film. When the missing link is discovered in a cave, anthropologist Dr. Beckton (Joan Crawford, in her last role) trains it to play with dolls, balls and, eventually, with the aid of an operation, to form simple words. Trog is at heart a beast, however, and every little thing that bothers him ends up smashed, chucked or dead. When he escapes (with the aid of shit stirring Christian nut job Michael Gough) it can only end one way: he's going out like Konga, in a hail of army bullets.

I unashamedly love this film. There are too many high points to provide a definitive list, but the long sodium pentathol sequence, where a whacked out Trog has a dubious flashback in which he watches dinosaurs fight, become extinct and the coming of the Ice Age (events a mere sixty odd million years apart) truly has to be seen to be believed.

Director? Freddie Francis: the patron saint of this weblog.

Trog

Conquerers From A Dying World

What can I say about Amicus production 'They Came From Beyond Space'? Well, it's cheap, cheerful, utterly ridiculous and, apart from some slightly psychedelic effects, looks more like 1957 than 1967.

It's an underwhelming affair, but it's inoffensive and unpretentious, and the mind control combat colander never fails to raise a smile. The late Michael Gough gives a performance that could be described as 'arch', although 'insanely camp' covers it better. If only they'd got The Pink Floyd to do the soundtrack.

They Came From Beyond Space

So Long, Michael

Michael Gough has died at the age of 94.

He appeared in films and on television for over 60 years, starring in some of the most seminal British horror films of all time, including 'Horrors Of The Black Museum', Hammer's first Dracula, 'Curse Of the Crimson Altar', 'Horror Hospital', 'The Legend of Hell House' (pictured) and many more. His performances may have been occasionally over ripe, but they were never, ever boring.

We've already featured some memorable Michael Gough films, and we will certainly be looking at more in the near future, he's one of the reasons this blog exists. RIP Michael, and give Konga our love.

Mighty Fury

'Konga' is a deeply ridiculous, terribly endearing film. Mad Scientist Michael Gough (who else?) reappears after a year in the jungle with a chimp and a handful of mystical herbs that can transform his pet into a massive gorilla (I can just about accept the increase in size, but a change in species?). Gough being Gough, he immediately sets the mutated primate on the trail of his enemies, and murder is the inevitable result.

Naturally (or unnaturally) it all goes wrong and, before you can say 'King Kong', Konga grows gargantuan and decides to trash London.

For once Wikkipedia describes the end best, with the poignant 'upon his death, he reverts back to a chimpanzee'. I love this film so much it's pitiful.

Konga