Where Science & The Occult Clash!

‘Nothing But The Night’ is a bit of a one off, which is wholly appropriate given that it was the sole product of Charlemagne Films, a company set up to make intelligent horror films but lost so much money that they folded before they could make a follow up.   

The narrative takes a while to come together but, ultimately, it turns out to be a curious mix of (to paraphrase the US poster) science and the occult, with some lovely Highlands and Islands scenery and a great cast, including Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Diana Dors, Kathleen Byron, Keith Barron, Fulton Mackay and Cassandra out of ‘Only Fools & Horses’ as a kid who WILL-NOT-STOP-SCREAMING and, ultimately, will utter the greatest lines ever spoken on film by a child:

"You've destroyed my dreams. I curse your cruel God"

At its core is a rather disquieting tale of child abuse in a remote orphanage, but perhaps not in the way that you might immediately think. There’s also a marvellous sequence in which dear old Diana Dors (playing a crazy, shouty clairvoyant) goes feral, running around the countryside evading the authorities like a chocolate munching Ray Mears in a ginger wig and red leatherette rain coat.

Little seen, somewhat neglected, this film always reminds me of a pleasing mix of ‘The Damned’ and ‘Scream and Scream Again’, and although it’s no kind of masterpiece, it nevertheless has strange ideas and weird horror at its core, and that’s like Turkish Delight on Toast for me.     

Nothing But The Night

Coming Soon...

Island Of The Burning Damned

‘Night Of The Big Heat’ was known as ‘Island Of The Burning Damned’ in the USA, a ridiculously hyperbolic title for what is, unfortunately, a terribly tedious film.

Set on the remote Orkney Isle of Fara (actually uninhabited since the sixties), the premise is quite intriguing: the island is experiencing an incredible heat wave which has put all the phones out of order, killed all the sheep and left all the men with enormous sweat patches. That sort of weather is unusual enough for Scotland, of course, but it’s absolutely unheard of in November.

Stupefied from the heat, the villagers mainly gather around the local pub and bicker with each other. Peter Cushing is there, inexplicably wearing a jacket that looks like it’s just had a bucket of water thrown over (take it off, Peter, just take it off). Visiting rude twat scientist Christopher Lee is up to something strange, but is too rude and twattish to let the islanders in on it. The pub landlord (Patrick Allen, always good value) is also a writer, and his life is complicated by the arrival of his ex-lover, who is posing as his secretary and spends most of her time exposing parts of herself to him. As if it wasn’t bloody hot enough. It doesn't sound a lot on paper, but I had high hopes for it.

From here on in, however, the film very, very, very slowly degenerates into something extremely dull indeed. There are half a dozen deaths and, ultimately, a dynamite attack on an extraterrestial race who resemble rocks with lights in them but it’s all done at such a draggy pace that even the supposedly exciting climax is like watching the proverbial pigment grow parched. In the end,  it starts to rain and the hot rocks, having travelled thousands of light years to take over our world, are killed by it. Yes, that’s right, aliens who can be killed by rain decided to start their invasion of Earth in Scotland. Idiots.

From the same crazy fools who brought us the magnificently titled ‘Island of Terror’, ‘Night of The Big Heat’ has no particular real reason to be so dull, it just is. Perhaps the temperature got to them all.

Some notes on Patrick Allen:

Allen is a proper old school actor. He’s not particularly good at the dramatic stuff, but he has a wonderful, sonorous voice and a very expressive physiognomy. His straight face is so straight it’s almost funny, which is why he keeps it mobile. I never believe that he believes it, he's just glad to be there. In this film, there’s a scene where he’s driving along and he just seems full of childlike joy, as if he can’t quite believe that someone is paying him to kiss girls and attack aliens and pretend to be driving along. There’s no method for Patrick, his motivation is that it’s his job, and it's fun. He specialises in capable, rough hewn types who ladies like and men respect, the sort of man who can tie knots, rig up a generator, make a boat out of a fallen tree and smoke a hundred cigarettes and kill a dozen Germans before breakfast, all whilst wearing extremely tight trousers. I miss him.

Night Of The Big Heat

Bred From A Dozen Corpses

After two excellent and highly successful films (and a six year break), Hammer decided to completely reboot their Frankenstein franchise but, strangely, ‘The Evil Of Frankenstein’ doesn’t go back to the beginning. Instead, it takes place ten years after the Baron (Peter Cushing, of course) created his original monster, with the back story eventually established via a lengthy and slightly unconvincing flashback. It doesn’t really work, but the film is not without merit, just all over the place and hard to love.

The story revolves around Frankenstein returning to his hometown as ‘it’s been ten years – no-one will remember me’. Of course not, Baron, the creation of a living creature from spare parts which then goes on the rampage is a fairly commonplace event in the life of a small village. When he gets back to his castle he finds that the greedy powers that be have snaffled all his stuff - apart from his beloved monster, which is stuck in a glacier in suspended animation.

Being frozen for a decade has affected the creature’s brain, however, so Frankenstein has to employ the services of an odious sideshow mesmerist, Professor Zoltan, to get the creature to do anything, but the nasty Zoltan takes the opportunity to use the reanimated man-beast to settle a few scores (with the same men who Frankenstein has a grudge against) and it all kicks off. There’s violence, chaos, murder, fire, and an explosion that destroys a castle. You know, the sort of thing that absolutely no-one will remember in ten years’ time…

Oddly structured, ‘Evil’ has its moments, but is definitely a lesser effort, being neither one thing nor another. On the plus side, Cushing is great, and we get a proper monster, played by wrestler Kiwi Kingston who sports the familiar and iconic square headed look of the classic universal films (Universal Studios were now in partnership with Hammer, so granted them the copyright). On the negative side, it’s slow and slightly confusing, and the characterisation of the Baron is skewed to fit with ultimately irrelevant plotlines (the proper Frankenstein lives only for his work and is prepared to accept any privation to continue with it – here, he’s upset because some bloke is wearing his old jewellery).

Oh well. I enjoyed it though, flaws and all - but then there is something slightly wrong with me.

The Evil Of Frankenstein

Monsterpiece

'The Revenge Of Frankenstein' is a direct sequel to 'The Curse Of Frankenstein', the mega successful macabre masterpiece that changed the direction of the Hammer studio forever. 'Revenge...' starts with Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) about to be guillotined for the various crimes he has commited in the name of science. Needless to say, Frankenstein escapes the chop in quite shockingly ruthless way, before moving to another city and setting up under the inspired pseudonym of Doctor Stein.

Herein lies the marvellous ambiguity of Hammer's Frankenstein character: he is a good physician and has set up a hospital where the poor can be treated free of charge, which is marvellous - but every now and again he will perform an unnecessary amputation or organ removal in order to continue with his pet project: the creation of a healthy body, cobbled together from spare parts, into which he will transplant the brain of his (quite willing) crippled and hunchbacked henchman, Karl. Which, again, is sort of nice when you think about it, or sort of horrible when you think about it bit longer.

The operation goes well, and Karl is given a fully functional body. Easy peasy, really, as (Franken)Stein has already transplanted the brain of an orangutan into the body of a chimp. Hybrid ape Otto is perfectly healthy, except that he now has a voracious appetite for meat, prompting this fantastically deadpan exchange between 'Stein' and his medical assistant, Dr. Kleve (Francis Matthews) --

Kleve: Did Otto eat flesh before you operated?

Stein: No, I discovered it soon after the operation. He ate his wife.

Kleve: Ate another monkey?

Stein: What else would he be married to? 

Kleve: You mean he turned into a cannibal?

Stein: Yes. I didn't attempt to correct it. He's perfectly happy and in good health.

Of course, this couldn't happen again, especially not to a human subject, well, not unless the patient received a bang on the head or something silly like that.

After having received a bang on the head, Karl becomes a hungry homicidal maniac and, to add insult to brain injury, his new body turns against him, becoming twisted and deformed. In the end, Frankenstein's true identity comes out and he is beaten to death by his own patients, who aren't exactly happy about having unknowingly donated bits of themselves to Stein's science project. That said, Frankenstein is a hard man to put down, so I expect he'll turn up again in another city under another name, Dr. Frank, or something cunning and unexpected like that. 

'The Revenge Of Frankenstein' is superb: shocking, unexpected, compelling, ridiculous, and all conducted at top speed. This is Hammer at its best, and Hammer at its best is absolutely brilliant.

The Revenge Of Frankenstein

Asylum: The Weird Tailor

‘The Weird Tailor’ is the best of the episodes, full of atmosphere and dread. It’s also terribly sad, but we’ll get to that. Max (Barry Morse) is a tailor, and a good one – but one that can’t make a living. His problems seem to be over when the prosperous looking ‘Mister Smith’ (Peter Cushing) walks into his shop with a special order he is willing to pay £200 for. Using a strange irridescent material that Smith has provided, Max is to make a suit for Smith’s son, but can only work between the hours of midnight and five am, and to a very exact set of specifications.

After several long shifts, Max completes the suit and delivers it to Smith’s large townhouse. Smith is not quite what he seems, however: his home is in darkness and disarray, and he readily admits that he cannot pay for the suit now, but still desperately needs it – for his son. Max discovers that Smith has spent all of his money on obtaining a rare, ancient book of magic, and that the design for the suit has been taken from its pages. His much loved son is in the next room, dead and decomposing in an open coffin.

A gun is produced, a scuffle takes place and Smith is accidentally shot and killed. Max takes the book and the suit back to the shop, asking his wife to burn them. Instead, she puts the suit on the shop dummy, Otto, hoping the unusual design and material will bring in some trade. Horribly, Otto comes to life and goes on the rampage before escaping out into the night. According to Max, Otto is still out there somewhere so, if you see someone that looks like Nigel Mansell in a flashy two tone suit lumbering towards you, leg it.

An excellent story with a genuinely frightening finale, ‘The Weird Tailor’ again benefits from brevity and from good writing, with a weight of ideas conveyed beyond the sparse dialogue and compact running time. Peter Cushing’s performance is full of an overwhelming sense of loss and desperation, but is achieved without histrionics or showboating, conveyed simply with a modulation of his finely tuned voice and a haunted, tragic look in his expressive eyes. It’s tempting to link Peter’s obvious feeling for the role with the loss of his wife, Helen, a few years earlier, a tragic event that he never fully recovered from, but that would be conjecture. What is quite clear, however, is that he was a wonderful actor.

Crawling, Killing, Living!

'And Now The Screaming Starts!' comes out of the traps like a mad greyhound on PCP and, for half its running time is full of thrills, shocks and the marvellous décolletage of Miss Stephanie Beacham.

The pace is so fast and the film so full of incident that after about half an hour you start to wonder how on earth they are going to maintain it for another hour. Right on cue, a strange malaise sets in, the pace slackens and it loses focus and interest, before partially pulling it back in the dying minutes with a climax that could have been chilling if director Roy Ward Baker hadn’t botched it by using all the wrong shots. Still, hey and, indeed, ho, at least we have a decent thirty minutes.

The film is set in the eighteenth century, and takes place at a marvellous looking stately home which is, in the story, the ancestral home of the wealthy Fengriffin family (it’s actually a place called Oakley Court in Bray).

Lord of the manor is Ian Ogilvy who brings his comely fiancée Catherine (Stephanie Beacham) home only for her to immediately become hypnotised by a scary portrait of his long dead grandfather (Herbert Lom). Within the first ten minutes, all hell has broken loose – a severed hand starts crawling across the floor, an eyeless corpse appears at a window and the newly married Catherine gets sexually assaulted  by the hand and an unseen assailant while waiting for her new husband to consummate their union.  It’s all go and, for the next thirty minutes it’s all killer dogs, sinister woodsmen, misty graveyards and a series of murders that knock off the illustrious supporting cast (Guy Rolfe; Rosalie Crutchley; Patrick Magee) whenever they get close to revealing what they know about the toxic family secret that underpins all the supernatural shenanigans.

The film starts shuddering to a halt with the appearance of Peter Cushing as a psychiatrist brought in to help the increasingly unhinged (and now pregnant) Catherine. I have a massive amount of respect for Peter, but he has little to work with here and, unfortunately, just becomes a giant earhole to pour seemingly endless exposition into. The upshot is that Grandad Fengriffin did something awful fifty years ago, and now there is a curse upon the family, a curse that results in more death, a possessed baby, and a complete breakdown for Catherine and Lord Fengriffin, who ends up exhuming his nasty ancestors mouldering skeleton and smashing it up in a frenzy whilst Mr. Cushing looks on and shakes his bewigged head. Not exactly a happy ending, and not a particularly well executed one, unfortunately, but at least it makes some sort of narrative sense.

As a final note, this is now the third film (after ‘Witchfinder General’ and ‘From Beyond the Grave’) in which Ian Ogilvy attacks something with an axe. In fact, he attacks two things with an axe, a door and a grave. He’s rather good at it, so I suppose he just thought he’d play to his strengths.

As a final, final note, Oakley Court is now a four star hotel, so I might book a room, perhaps get a massage or a manicure or molested by a severed hand.

And Now The Screaming Starts!