Tales from the This Is Cinerama Breakdown Reel

So, the other night I was watching This Is Cinerama.  There's a lot to talk about when it comes to the film itself but right now I want to spend a bit of time on one of the special features included with this film: The Breakdown Reel.

The Breakdown Reel is essentially five minutes of filler meant to be projected during a technical difficulty.  Given the complexity of Cinerama (three projections on a curved screen with seven channels of sound) there was a real possibility of a breakdown.  Or a reel possibility.

One of the investors behind Cinerama was Lowell Thomas.  (Another was Merian C. Cooper, the director of King Kong.)
If you've ever seen Lawrence of Arabia then you'll remember the squirrely American reporter who shows up to publicize Lawrence in order to whip up war excitement back in the U.S. (and presumably make a quick buck.) That reporter was based on Lowell Thomas (1892-1981), who made his name following Lawrence and General Allenby in the Palestine Campaign in the First World War.  After the war, Thomas made a name for himself (and quite a few bucks, slow and fast) traveling around the world and presenting a slide show and film about Lawrence.

Thirty years later Lowell Thomas was one of those famous voices and not only was he a prime investor in Cinerama, he was also the narrator for This Is Cinerama.  And that  brings us back to the Breakdown Reel.

It begins innocuously enough.  Thomas describes why sometimes things go wrong with projecting a film, talks about the amazing sound and talks a little about the very highly regarded members of the orchestra for the film.  He periodically stops to announce that it looks like they're ready to begin again and then says that it looks like they're not ready yet so he's going to tell some more stories.

And this is when it gets...interesting.  Because Lowell Thomas shares two stories about presenting his Lawrence film in the 1920s.  In the first anecdote he talks about presenting his film in the capital of Sri Lanka, Colombo.  Apparently the venue had an open courtyard and there were coconut trees nearby.  And monkeys.  The monkeys pelted the audience with coconuts.  It was "very embarrassing for me and also embarrassing for the audience." The monkeys were not embarrassed, because they were monkeys.

The second anecdote though, is a doozy.  He was in Bombay for a chunk of time showing his film.

"It was the year that Gandhi started his famous non-cooperation movement and his followers were [slight pause] full of life and wanting to start trouble anywhere and I was telling the story of Allenby and Lawrence at the Royal Opera House in Bombay for several weeks and Gandhi's followers in their little white Gandhi caps used to come each night and the would scatter about in the audience and then they would create disturbances.  The English superintendent of police in Bombay decided to do something about it.  So he scattered his policemen throughout my audiences and whenever a Gandhi-ite would create a disturbance up would get a policeman nearby and start a real ruckus with him.  Can you imagine what a problem it would be for anyone trying to tell a tale standing on a stage under those circumstances?  Well, you have all sorts of weird experiences when you're presenting a film.  And now, back to our Cinerama adventure."

 Wow.

Let's unpack this story a little bit because it is of great relevance to us today.

Lowell Thomas is telling this story in 1952.  It is 4 years after Gandhi was assassinated and 5 years after India's independence.  The story he's telling was from thirty years in the past at that point.

First, look at what he refers to Gandhi's movement as.  "Non-cooperation." I want you to think about that.  What weren't they cooperating with?  Imperialism?  Occupation?  Oppression?
Non-cooperation.  These days we are shown Gandhi as a paragon of non-violence and we are expected to uphold some mythical standard of pacifism in the face of whatever is being shoved down our gullets because "Gandhi was non-violent" but look carefully at this account and the terminology being used.  "Non-cooperation."

Now look at that pause.  It is a brief second.  But you can see Lowell Thomas struggling to avoid saying something really horrible.  Seriously.  He comes up with "full of life" but you can see him wanting to say something entirely different and then restraining himself.  But you get the gist of what he meant to say when he goes on to say that the Indians were looking to "start trouble anywhere."
Does that kind of rhetoric sound familiar?
Have you been told to be more civil lately?
Have you been told to be more civil because it's what Gandhi would have done?
This is what people who were around when Gandhi was an activist had to say about his movement.
They were troublemakers.  They were "creating disturbances."

I could talk more about the way he refers to the protestors as "Gandhi-ites" and the obviously dismissive nature of the phrase "little white Gandhi caps."  I mean, if you just want to show people a textbook example of slightly genteel racism, well...here it is.

And then notice Lowell Thomas's obvious pleasure when the British police decide to "do something about it."  He chooses his words carefully when he says that the police "start a real ruckus" with Gandhi's protestors but even in euphemism the point is clear.  Go back and watch Richard Attenborough's Gandhi (1982) which is, after all, relatively sanitized and imagine what kind of "ruckus" Lowell Thomas is imagining the British police starting with these Indian protestors and activists.  Is it the ruckus where people are merely clubbed in the head or is it the ruckus where people are shot and killed. 

Now let's come back to present day.  We are told that Gandhi was a paradigm of non-violence and we should comport ourselves like Gandhi when we protest injustice.  We are told this by the inheritors of Lowell Thomas's mantle.  We are told to be civil...like Gandhi.  But here's a time machine hidden in the special features of a 2018 release of a 1952 film to remind us that the much vaunted civility which we are expected to maintain is the same as the "cooperation" which the oppressors of the past expected from the people they were oppressing.

British cops starting a real ruckus. Very droll, Mr. Thomas.

Again, this is 1952.  This is the much vaunted civility of the past.  Little white caps.  Ruckuses. Non-cooperation.  I wonder if anyone bothered actually listening to the story on this breakdown reel.
Well, I did.  I'm glad I did. 

And that last bit of serious narcissism where Lowell Thomas asks for our empathy in imagining how hard it was for him to give a talk while people where being clubbed by cops in the audience.
It must have been so difficult for him.
But he managed to make it.  Lowell Thomas endured his troubles, whether it was coconuts or ruckuses.
And think again for a second about how he had two stories of tribulation in the subcontinent and how one of those stories was about wayward monkeys and the other was...SERIOUSLY?
I feel like I just got hit in the face with a baseball bat that has "symbolism" scratched into it.

What are you laughing at, Lowell Thomas?  The only way anyone would see you recounting these "hilarious" stories would be if your rotten Cinerama system broke down.
 So laugh it up.
Now, just hold that smile a second, Lowell Thomas.  Let me take your rotten bloody picture for the rotten bloody newspapers.

The Ladyfriends of Count Dracula

Brides of Dracula (1960)
Directed by Terence Fisher
Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster, Peter Bryan & Edward Percy

aka The Brides of Dracula

First of all, the title never promises you Dracula, so you can quit complaining that Dracula is only very tenuously connected with this film.  The film's title isn't Count Dracula and his Lady People, the title is Brides of Dracula (or The Brides of Dracula).  Of course, none of the characters in this movie are in fact brides of Dracula.  They might qualify as brides of a vampire (depending on your definition of vampire marriage) but that vampire is definitely not Dracula.   So you can complain about that, if you're already looking for something to complain about.  

If you're not already looking for something to complain about then here are some fandom reasons to enjoy the film. 
1. Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.  Do I need to say more?  At the risk of turning this into the Peter Cushing Posthumous Fan Club I will state that Peter Cushing was a towering figure of 20th century cinema so any chance you get to see Grand Moff Tarkin at work is time well spent.  This may not be Peter Cushing's best work, but he does make a good Van Helsing.
2. Miles Malleson's comic relief.  Malleson provided some charm for Hammer's Hound of the Baskervilles, but he just about steals the show as the useless doctor in this film. 
3. Michael Ripper.  This one is for the Hammer Rep Company home game.  It's not a major role, but it's a little reassuring to see the chipper face of Michael Ripper. 

Brides of Dracula is a film about the asymmetric threats to the post-World War II order.   Really?  Did I just say that?  Sure.  The film is set in the late 19th century but it's still a 1960 film.  Because it's not a film with a direct allegory to its contemporary history its easy to dismiss it as a cultural indicator of historical anxieties, but consider the opening narration:
Dracula, monarch of all vampires is dead.  But his disciples live on to spread the cult and corrupt the world...
Now, it's easy enough to figure out that in a 1960 context the dead Dracula is the dead Nazi behemoth.  But the anxiety of 1960 as represented in this film isn't about some Boys from Brazil fear of a secret Nazi movement, it's about evil/violence writ large.  The dead Dracula represents a Pandora's box of the evils of violence and war.  And in that regard the allegory is much more clear.  Dracula wasn't the source of evil any more than Hitler was the source of all evil.  In both cases they represent symptoms of the violence of mankind.  As such, you can kill the granddaddy of vampires and that doesn't mean that all vampirism has been wiped out any more than you can kill one murderer and wipe out all murder.  It is a condition that continues.  Now, this theory is bogged down by the notion of "cult" introduced by the narration but the plot of the film sort of doesn't fit the idea of singular evil cult.  It's almost like that word belongs more to the 1963 Kiss of the Vampire which IS about a vampire cult.  Here, we're not even sure the lead vampire was in any way connected to Dracula other than by living in the general neighborhood of Transylvania.  My point is that this is a film that plays on the anxiety that victory in one war is no guarantee of victory over the idea of war. 

Brides of Dracula is a film about the exotic darkness of Eastern Europe.  In that regard the film is merely a continuation of Bram Stoker's project which is in some ways a longer term project of exoticism of the other to begin with.  Is this related to some sort of tangential orientalism?  Or is it more like that aspect of dark romanticism that views the wild woods as a dark otherworld?  Folks have long noted the trope of the dark forest and in films such as this Transylvania is just shorthand for that kind of thought.  It seems almost funny in a way that if you actually combine this film with the original Hammer Dracula in a continuum then you have to imagine a Transylvania where every castle is a nest of vampires.  (Throw Kiss of the Vampire into this mix and this becomes almost ridiculous.) There is an aspect to this that I will come to in a moment.  But this is definitely a film that starts off with a Little French Riding Hood marching into the big bad forest and putting herself in danger.

Brides of Dracula is about the dangers of letting people (well, not people generally, but women specifically) loose into the "big bad forest" of unregulated society.  At first it looks like this film will be slightly progressive since the main character is Marianne, a single French teacher who comes by herself to take up a teaching position in Transylvania at a private school run by Herr Lang and his Frau.  It is a girls school and in a film with the title of this film it's not hard to see where this might be heading.  It doesn't actually go there, which is either an act of restraint or a lack of imagination.  At any rate, the Lang school is a mechanism that allows society to reinforce its norms, especially in terms of gender and sexuality though the project no doubt extends to all aspects of society and not just the hottest of the hot buttons as it were.  Marianne is a typical Pandora or Eve in the sense that her curiosity gets her into trouble in releasing the vampire Baron Meinster.  But it is also the case that it is the result of her good qualities that she releases this evil.  The Baron plays on her sympathy and trusting nature.  Marianne's kindness unleashes (literally unchains) the vampire.  The fact that the vampire is a handsome young man only makes the job easier because Marianne can't say no to that. 

Of course it isn't just plain curiosity which is dangerous because ultimately vampirism is about sexuality.  Would Marianne's interest in the imprisoned Baron Meinster be the same if he wasn't sexually attractive to her?  We can't know that, but what we do know is that despite what she's been through earlier Marianne immediately accepts the Baron's offer of marriage.  But if you're looking for vampirism as a metaphor for sexuality in this film then you need only look at Marianne's friend and coworker Gina.  (Wipe that smirk off your face now.)  Gina is a little jealous of Marianne's good luck in landing herself a handsome aristocrat, though it is certainly good natured joking.  Now, when the Baron shows up and drains Gina's blood you can't deny the sexualization of the vampirism because Gina herself expresses the event in those terms later when she gets out of her coffin and chats with Marianne.  Gina even asks Marianne for forgiveness for "letting him love me."  Ultimately, the lesson here is that your attractive friend will always try to have sex with your vampire fiance and your vampire fiance will always go looking for a bit of action on the side. 

Speaking of love, I am really curious about the Baron's servant Greta who basically raised him.  She seems to protect the Baron in a very maternal fashion, but on the other hand she forces Marianne to look at the Baroness's body in the aftermath of the Baron's escape.  Is it because the Baron's escape has made it more difficult for Greta to protect him?  Or is Greta jealous of the young woman's possibly sexual relationship with the Baron? 

The Baroness is a bit of a red herring because it looks at first as though she might be a villain and that her invitation to Marianne to spend the night is a trap.  Now, there are two strains of thought here. One is that the Baroness is just a lonely old woman and that even a moment of company with a passing stranger (and an educated one, at that) will be a treat for her.  There's another darker idea that's hinted at, and that's that the Baroness and Greta kidnap the occasional passing stranger and feed them to the Baron.  Van Helsing's scene with the Baroness is one of the highlights of the film and her death is a genuine moment of pathos (she's a perfect example of a reluctant vampire) and allows Van Helsing a moment of kindness with his mercy killing. 

I haven't even mentioned Van Helsing yet, who is once again a representative of that strange mixture of science and faith that marks the occult science.  He is contrasted with the quack Doctor Tobler who is not only a serious mercenary but also a terrible hypochondriac.  So much for the medical science.

Brides of Dracula is also about class.  In case you've missed most of the history of classic vampire stories notice that the vampire Baron Meinster is an aristocrat.  It's not a coincidence.  It's not exactly a heavily Marxist critique (especially given that it's not a hammer and sickle that kills the vampire--though both are useful in that regard) but the fact that a bloodsucking monster is already a member of an upper class that derives its wealth from the labor of others is--well, it's not exactly a tightly veiled metaphor.  In this film the Baron plays on his aristocratic legitimacy to get Marianne to release him, thus he uses a classic story of aristocratic intrigue and usurpation to make others do his dirty work and get him out of his prison.  The loyalty of Greta to the Baron is mostly maternal, but her duty to the Baroness is definitely a matter of her station.  The reaction of the Langs to finding out that their new employee is marrying their aristocratic landlord is a priceless example of class pretensions.  Herr Lang is a staunch imposer of the social order in terms of his authority in the middle class and as the head of his own business (the school) he demands obedience to his rules from his teachers.  But when the Baron reveals his identity suddenly Herr Lang is a subservient bootlicker. 
Meanwhile the Baron feeds on the lower classes, mostly women.  The "Village Girl" doesn't even rate a name and she and Gina (along with the non-vampire Marianne) are the titular brides.  (Brides of Meinster was not a catchy title.)  The Baron menaces the countryside and once loose is likely to literally bleed the region dry.  It's not exactly a flattering portrayal of the upper classes. 

The gender issue of the film is ultimately a disappointment.  The female vampires are relatively ineffective and don't prove to be all that interesting.  There is a hint of the transgressive in terms of Gina's relation to Marianne once Gina has been turned, but nothing goes that far and as such it proves to be an untapped potential.  This is the sort of restraint that made things like The Hunger go so far in the opposite direction later.  

It is ultimately up to the man to rescue the one pure damsel in distress in this film.  (The other damsels in distress are "released" from the burden of being undead (and thus, impure.) 
Van Helsing is definitely a hero up to the task (though he is a hero of metis and cunning more than brawn and physical skill.)  The greatest moment in the science of vampirism is when Van Helsing wakes up from being bitten by the Baron and cauterises his wound with a hot iron and then pours holy water on it thus rendering null and void the vampire's bite.  The question is, if this process works how much time one has before the vampirism kicks in and if there is a sufficient lag why this isn't a more viable option when dealing with vampire victims. 

Greta sacrifices herself trying to keep Van Helsing away from the Baron.  She succeeds in making his task more difficult for him by knocking out his cross and it provides us with a great moment in vampire minion fighting because as a non-vampire she has only the rules of physics and biology to keep her from attacking Van Helsing.  Ultimately, she is the only minion of the vampire who is not mesmerized into doing his bidding and thus nothing can break her "spell."

The ending with the giant cross formed by the shadow of the windmill is both grand and at the same time utterly ridiculous.  In terms of vampire lore it creates and almost too easy standard of keeping vampires at bay.  (Think of all the window frames that are made up of a bunch of crosses, or the shadow of any two crossing items in a bedroom visited by a vampire.)  It's both ingenious and utterly ridiculous.  

So what's the lesson here?  Don't take a teaching job in Transylvania.  People kept prisoner are probably being kept prisoner for a good reason so don't let your essential kindness fool you into letting them out. The job of hunting evil is never really over because the castles of the aristocracy are full of bloodsucking monsters and some of them are even vampires.   Yeah, that about sums it up.

Judged in terms of the totality of the Hammer oeuvre, this film is middle of the pack.  It isn't truly awful by a long shot (certainly isn't unwatchable) but it's also not exactly a must see or a revolutionary adventure in filmmaking.  It's a damn sight better than a lot of non-Hammer vampire films circa 2014 (and the vampires never sparkle, you silly fools) and the visual style that continues from the first wave of the Hammer horror films is still in its classic period here.  The pacing is nice and slow in the beginning so that before you know it the film is over.  (This is one of the stranger effects of these films--that the early parts of it seem to be paced like a Merchant Ivory character study and then if you watch the clock you suddenly realize that there are only 20 minutes left for this film to wrap things up.)  In terms of the Hammer Horror collection this film is contained in, it's a perfect starting feature with Cushing as Van Helsing and Terence Fisher's directing to firmly ground things in the most familiar and well-known of the Hammer styles.  

I keep vacillating in how I feel about Brides of Dracula.  It's like the middle chapter of a book that doesn't really advance the plot and is very similar to the chapter before it and the one after it but you don't quite feel like removing it because you still like the book as a whole and you don't want it to be shorter.  So basically, if you're working on a classic vampire binge or working through the Hammer films or any form of comprehensive fan exercise (all the films of Yvonne Monlaur) then this is a good entry.  But on its own there's very little that would commend it as being the only movie of its kind that you'd want to see.  As such, again, it is to the benefit of the film itself and to any potential audience that it is included in a collection as opposed to standing alone where it might be completely lost. 

Time for the next up in The Hammer Horror Series: The Franchise Collection

Draculis personae
Dr. J. Van Helsing..........Peter Cushing
Marianne Danielle.........Yvonne Monlaur
Baroness Meinster.........Martita Hunt
Baron Meinster..............David Peel
Greta..............................Freda Jackson
Dr. Tobler.......................Miles Malleson
Herr Otto Lang...............Henry Oscar
Frau Helga Lang.............Mona Washbourne
Gina................................Andree Melly
Hans, a Villager..............Victor Brooks
Father Stepnik................Fred Johnson
Coachman.......................Michael Ripper
Johan, the Landlord........Norman Pierce
Landlord's Wife..............Vera Cook
Village Girl.....................Marie Devereux
Elsa, School Maid...........Susan Castle
Latour, The Man in Black......Michael Mulcaster
Karl.................................Harry Pringle
Severine..........................Harold Scott
Foxy Girl........................Stephanie Watts

Cinematography by Jack Asher
Music by Malcolm Williamson

86 min
1.66:1 Anamorphic Widescreen
Color
English
Dubbed in Spanish
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French

A Hammer Horror Extravaganza

And now for a look at a collection of Hammer films from Universal. 
The Hammer Horror Series: The Franchise Collection 

First things first, it's great to have a chunk of the Hammer oeuvre all in one place.   All eight of the films included were new to me.  There's nothing in the way of extras but the packaging is nice and complements the packaging for the Universal monsters collections.  Though I find the double-sided discs to be annoying not  because of disc-flipping (I'm not necessarily annoyed by having to get up and flip a disc.) but because of the increased potential for damage. 

This is an eclectic collection with two vampire films, one werewolf, one Frankenstein, the Phantom of the Opera, two psychological thrillers and one pirate movie.  6 color films, 2 Black & White. 
We'll be looking at the films themselves in detail in the next few entries.   They span from 1960-1964 and represent the second wave of classic Hammer Horror.   With the continuing series/sequels we can already see some aspects of sequel decay and redundancy.  On the other hand this collection is a really good introduction to the variety of Hammer films at the apex of their productivity.  One-offs like the Phantom were to eventually disappear from the Hammer repertoire as were pirate films (and adventure films in general) and the psych-mysteries that would be dubbed "mini-Hitchcocks" would also go away by the end of the 1960s as Hammer concentrated on vampires and evil scientists. 
At least one film in this collection doesn't come close to qualifying as a horror movie any more than the Indiana Jones films would qualify as "horror."  I suppose there's an argument to be made for either side of the inclusiveness of the genre heading. 

At any rate, here's the rundown of what we have to look forward to:

Brides of Dracula (1960)
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)
Phantom of the Opera (1962)
Paranoiac (1963)
The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
Nightmare (1964)
Night Creatures (1962)
The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)

Hammer of the Baskervilles

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
Directed by Terence Fisher
Screenplay by Peter Bryan

Fans of Sherlock Holmes are living in the golden age of Benedict Cumberbatch.  In the long history of Sherlock adaptations there have been some real gems and we are lucky enough to have more than one good contemporary version to choose from.   But as all of these many versions prove, there seems to be no real end to the demand for more Sherlock.  Fortunately, we are also living in an age where the archives of the past are more available to us than at any previous time and we should take advantage of that availability while we can.  So, maybe you need a new fix for your Conan Doyle addiction.  There are plenty of good choices out there and Hammer's foray into Baker Street is a good one. 

Hammer's Hound film was the first Sherlock Holmes film in color.  (Well, colour, to be more precise.) While this film got short shrift from Hammer's horror fans (and to some extent, still does) the fact is that the aesthetics of the film are substantially the same as the other Hammer gothics from the studio's initial wave of films that established its reputation.  The only real difference is that The Mummy, Curse of Frankenstein and Horror of Dracula all have a few moments of gore and horror added to what would otherwise be easily recognized as a similar kind of mystery adventure story that we see in Hound.  Hammer's gorehound fans in 1959 were not pleased and thus dissuaded Hammer from making more Sherlock films with Peter Cushing.  (Cushing would go on to play Holmes for a BBC series.)  We should not let the prejudices of the initial audience for this film guide our choices.  The Hound of the Baskervilles is not just a good Sherlock Holmes film, it's a good film regardless of genre or subgenre. 

Although I had seen this film before I thought I should take another look at it as I've been making my way through my Hammer collection.  I'm glad I did that, because I also needed some more Sherlock and this did the trick.   In terms of overlapping fandoms this film is a great confluence of the streams of culture.

Aesthetically, as I noted, this film is firmly of a piece with Hammer's Frankenstein, Dracula and Mummy.  Not coincidentally all three of those films were directed by Terence Fisher and featured Peter Cushing.  

The film opens with the legend of the Baskervilles.  While this sets us up for the red herring of the "curse" it also serves to give us a certain distaste for the landed aristocracy represented by the Baskervilles.  While Sir Hugo's vicious behavior (or, to be precise, behaviour) doesn't have to be a genetic inheritance, I think it's telling that his club of friends isn't exactly excoriating his nastiness or turning it away from him.  It's strongly indicated that Sir Hugo was planning on gang raping the servant girl who escaped from the locked room.  Gang raping requires a gang and his friends are the rest of the gang.  While the Baskervilles come out of this with a curse on their heads the rest of Sir Hugo's buddies (who weren't exactly restraining his excesses or vocally disapproving of them) are allowed to roam around the place curse-free.  While the story itself does not approve of an overthrow of the powers that be, it does make the death of Sir Hugo a desirable end for him and on the other hand it introduces a hint of ambivalence about the death of Sir Charles Baskerville and maybe even the death of the seemingly very affable Sir Henry Baskerville.

And if you need something to be ambivalent about Sir Henry it is the fact that in this film he is coming back to England from Johannesburg.  Exactly what was Sir Henry Baskerville doing in South Africa?  We never find out, obviously, but it raises a lot of questions.  The lacuna of his activities allows us a completely open interpretation.  We can imagine anything we want, from the most pleasant and edifying scenarios (He was in no way oppressing anyone or he might even have been there to champion freedom and equality for all mankind) to murkier possibilities in the grey zone (he was oppressing only Afrikaaners) to outright Hugo Baskerville levels of darkness.  (He was oppressing everybody.) 

We can imagine whatever we want about Sir Henry, but his ancestor was definitely a bully and a murderer.  The hound that kills him is a symbol of either natural or divine retribution for his ultimate transgression.  Justice is swift. 

As for Sir Charles, we are ultimately informed that he fell for a classic "honey trap."  The "honey" in this case was Cecile Stapleton.  Sir Henry also falls for the honey trap, though the rapidity with which he falls for Cecile is a little bit abrupt.  Cecile certainly sees Sir Charles's pursuit of her as a moral and ethical failing, an indicator of lechery that only confirms his descent from the terrible Sir Hugo. 
But then, the argument is undercut by the revelation that the Stapletons are themselves the illegitimate descendants of the Baskervilles.  Once you factor that last piece of information into the idea of the "curse" then the end of the story might even be seen as a proper result of the parameters of the curse as both Stapleton and his daughter Cecile are brought to an end by their evil/murderous schemes. 

If the Stapletons are undone by a malevolent sense of familial unity, then Selden the escaped convict is killed because of a more benign sense of familial unity.  Selden is Mrs. Barrymore's brother.  She provides assistance to him, including Sir Henry's old suit which attracts the hound that kills him.  Selden's death is the key piece of evidence for Holmes to solve the crime.  Stapleton tries to trap him in a mine shaft, but like Stapleton's other schemes this is again an imperfect solution.  

The inherited webbed hand is a nice touch added for the film.  It gives Holmes (and the audience) another piece of evidence linking the Stapletons to the motive for murdering all the Baskervilles. 

There is certainly a sense of real tragedy in that Sir Henry seems to have developed genuine attraction to Cecile.  Mind you, he is very attracted to her in a very short span of time.  But still, let's say that his intentions are noble and he really means it and would have been good to her.   The tragedy then, is that Cecile might have had a genuine chance to reconcile the historic wrong and unite the "legitimate" and "illegitimate" branches of the Baskerville descendants.  But was she always faking her attraction to Sir Henry to keep up her part of the plan?  That's what she says.  Everything she seems to do to get his attention seems to be part of her plan.  She even manages to lure Watson into quicksand believing him to be Sir Henry.  (Though she doesn't exactly go far in trying to seduce Dr. Watson the way she is clearly hate-flirting with Sir Henry.)   So maybe there was no real chance for Sir Henry and Cecile because she was never sincere in her attraction to him except maybe (maybe) in her physical attraction to him. 

As for the "hound" it is a largish dog with a really dumb looking leather mask, but then the original text featured a constant application of glow in the dark dog toothpaste, so maybe the mask is a classier choice. 

The comic relief from the Bishop is another nice touch.

As I said before, the only real ambivalence is in the continued rule of the aristocracy that is descended from the degenerate and brutal ancestors we see in the prologue.  But Sir Henry Baskerville seems like he is cut from a different cloth.  (For that matter, the only bad thing we know about Sir Charles is that he went out on the moors looking for a hot girl--when he is clearly single and living by himself in a large house.)  Sure, Sir Henry has been in South Africa but we can at least hope (fervently) that he is a nice guy on the right side of history.   Other than that possible bit of unease caused by the lack of information about Sir Henry, he and certainly the rest of the social order of the area appear to be quite benign and charming.   

All in all, The Hound of the Baskervilles is a fun film to watch.  It is a classic of its genre, a classic of its subgenre and a classic film regardless of genre.  It is one of the few Hammer films that holds together (in a way even better than the source material) and where the pacing does not shift to an abrupt ending.  This film is highly recommended and hopefully it will find its rightful place with audiences in the future.  

Sherlock Holmes -- Peter Cushing
Doctor Watson -- Andre Morell
Sir Henry Baskerville -- Christopher Lee
Sir Hugo Baskerville -- David Oxley
Cecile Stapleton -- Marla Landi
Stapleton -- Ewen Solon
Doctor Richard Mortimer -- Francis De Wolff
Bishop Frankland -- Miles Malleson
Barrymore -- John Le Mesurier
Mrs. Barrymore -- Helen Goss
Selden -- Michael Mulcaster
Perkins -- Sam Kydd
Lord Caphill -- Michael Hawkins
Servant Girl -- Judi Moyens
Servant -- David Birks

Cinematography by Jack Asher
Music by James Bernard

Kronos, Stakes of Fate

Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter (1972)
Directed by Brian Clemens
Screenplay by Brian Clemens

Captain Kronos was ahead of its time.  Nowadays if you do a pilot for a television series about a vampire hunter and his assistant traveling around hunting different kinds of demons you'd be told that it's been done before.  (Or you'd be told that television is dead and that so is every other form of media.)   But what if he's really good with a sword, you know sort of like the Highlander, or Blade?
Yeah, and make everybody younger and less experienced with the killing of vampires and you have Buffy.  But Captain Kronos was never given the chance that Buffy, Highlander and Blade had.  Is it too late for a story about a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars traipsing through Europe (and, by the looks of that katana, beyond) and killing vampires with his brilliant hunchback sidekick/watcher?
I really hope not.  And if the period setting is a dealbreaker imagine the whole thing Sherlocked into a contemporary setting.  Kronos is still a veteran, the hunchback is still a hunchback and the vampires are still vampires.

Speaking of Sherlock, here's another reason to look at this film again.  Take a closer look at Wanda Ventham as Lady Durward.  That's Benedict Cumberbatch's mother.

There are so many things to enjoy about this film.  For instance, the fact that Kronos saves Carla from the stupid punishment of being placed in stocks for dancing on a Sunday.  It's a good reminder of the kind of illiberal history of European and Western culture and religion that in most contemporary discourse is completely shunted onto swarthier folk. 

The class issues are great too.  Have you ever noticed that the big bad vampire is never a working class mook with a taste for blood but instead is by definition a member of an aristocracy that exploits the labor and life force of others even without supernatural bloodsucking?  Yep, those Durwards are a bunch of useless vampires no matter what.  And like all aristocrats they manage to mesmerize even sensible folks like Dr. Marcus into being extra nice to them. 

I had forgotten the old buddy from the war factor in the relationship between Kronos and Marcus.  Kronos owes Marcus.  It also makes the relationship much more personal.  Killing off Marcus is a seriously Whedonesque move in a pre-Whedon era.  If Kronos had become a series you can imagine there would have been a lot of that.  Of course, if the premise of the show had been that Kronos and Grost are completely itinerant (Have Stakes, Will Travel) there would have been a Bonanza effect when it came to anybody they met along the way. 

Different kinds of vampires is a very nice touch, especially since the ending ties things to the Hammer Karnstein films based on Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla.  Daywalkers are harder to track.
The family dynamic of the Durwards is enduringly ambiguous.  What is going on with the brother and sister there?  They're either having a relationship with each other or trying to be each other.
And for that matter the mother and father don't make things any more easy to understand.

At least a closer examination reveals why there's so much awesome swordplay since Hagen is played by William Hobbs who is now renowned for his work as a sword fight choreographer.

The existential angst of the hunchback sidekick is a really nice touch.  And the fact that he is a necessary part of the team as the researcher and armorer makes him much more than a sidekick and closer to being a real Giles.

I suppose leaving Carla behind was as much a contractual safety bet as it was a matter of leaving Kronos unencumbered by a relationship.  (It's clear that Kronos is not ready for a real commitment anyway.)

All in all, Captain Kronos survives closer scrutiny.  I already want to watch it again.    

Cast
Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter -- Horst Janson
Kronos (Voice) -- Julian Holloway
Grost -- John Cater
Dr. Marcus -- John Carson
Carla -- Caroline Munro
Lady Durward --  Wanda Ventham
Paul Durward -- Shane Briant
Sara Durward -- Lois Daine
Hagen -- William Hobbs
George Sorell --Brian Tully
Vanda Sorell -- Lisa Collings
Isabella Sorell -- Susanna East
Barton Sorell -- Stafford Gordon
Ann Sorell -- Elizabeth Dear
Kerro -- Ian Hendry
Pointer -- Robert James
Barlow -- Perry Soblosky
Giles -- Paul Greenwood
Barman --  John Hollis
Myra -- Joanna Ross
Priest -- Neil Seiler
Lilian -- Olga Anthony
Blind Girl -- Gigi Gurpinar
Big Man --Peter Davidson
Tom -- Terence Sewards
Deke -- Trevor Lawrence
Barmaid -- Jacqui Cook
Whore --Penny Price
Petra -- Caroline Villiers
Jane -- Linda Cunningham

Music by Laurie Johnson
Cinematography by Ian Wilson 

The Bureaucratic Machinery of Dracula

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
(Platinum Disc Corporation edition)
Directed by Alan Gibson
Screenplay by Don Houghton

Alright, I'm still trying to find a better edition of this film which lapsed into the Public Domain in the U.S.  This version starts out with some awkward blacked out credits (thanks copyright Stalins!). 

This film takes the Satanic ritual parts of Dracula A.D. 1972 and (obviously) puts them center stage.  In previous Hammer Dracula films the devilish rituals were focused on bringing back Dracula and then the rest of the business was left to Dracula to do his vampire thing.  In this film Dracula is already back (though we're not fully sure of it until Van Helsing confirms it) and Dracula himself is appealing to a lower darker power in order to...take over/destroy the world.  That's right, we've finally gotten to the point where the stakes have been raised beyond the simpler (and frankly more dramatically convincing) human-sized stakes (pun intended) of the older Dracula stories.  We've skipped right past the intermediate stakes and we're already talking about apocalypse.  Make no mistake, it's reckoning that Dracula is looking for.  This Dracula has an undeath wish and is intent on destroying all of humanity with a biochemical plague.  And to add insult to injury he again decides to take Van Helsing's granddaughter Jessica with him as his vampire longtime companion.  

As Van Helsing points out, Count Dracula's apocalyptic plan involves killing off his own food source and thus slowly starving for eternity.   But Dracula doesn't seem to care about the logical conundrum of his plan.  He just wants to take a giant rancid vampire dump on the world.  This is more than his erstwhile cult leaders can actually bear. 

See, after dealing with hipster youth in the 1972 incarnation Dracula gets wise and uses cult bikers as mere bodyguards and instead enlists ambitious pillars of the establishment who look to create a crisis that will allow them to unleash a neo-fascist regime that will enrich them leave them with complete power.   (We've been afraid of this kind of conspiracy for a while, you see.)  But exactly what did these guys think they were doing?  At least Julian Keeley the Nobel prize winning scientist who helps create Dracula's super-plague recognizes what he's doing beyond mere venal terms.  He knows that he is in league with evil, and whether it is because he is entranced or just plain bonkers he expresses quite eloquently the fact that he has decided that evil is just stronger in the end.  Van Helsing tries to get him to fight against it but he is instead knocked out by a gunshot (that only grazes his head, thanks to fate/divine will of Providence/power of writer).  Keeley is found hanged. 

Here's the question:  was Keeley murdered by the Dracula Satan Cult, and if so did Dracula give the order?  Because it's easy to see that Keeley's deteriorating mental state, combined with Van Helsing's contact, turn Keeley into a liability and possibly a set of loose lips that needs to be silenced.  But on the other hand Dracula ends up deciding to use Van Helsing as his "fourth horseman" to spread the plague which means keeping his deadliest nemesis close by at the crucial eleventh hour before his plan can come to fruition.  (Don't even get me started about the ham-handed "ticking clock" of the "Sabbath of the Undead.")  Of course, I understand Dracula's desire to stick it to Van Helsing by keeping him alive to watch Dracula turning Jessica into his absolutely fabulous eternal trophy wife.  But didn't you try this plan in 1972, Mr. Dracula?  That was only a year ago.  Why do you think the same plan will work better?  Don't you at least have a little tingle of spidey-sense that will make you slightly wary of trying the same thing that got you pinned on a hedge of spikes last year? 

Meanwhile, what's really interesting is that while Dracula has been literally brought back in corporeal form he has also become quite incorporated as well.  Are his collaborators really aware that the reclusive D.D. Denham, whose corporate headquarters building is built on the former site of St. Bartholph's Church (which was in ruins in the previous Hammer Dracula film) is actually Count Dracula?  Or do they just think he's a curious billionaire who likes to dabble in satanism and who promises a quick path to eternal life (which he's proved to them through the amateur theatrics of stabbing a pretty blonde girl and bringing her back as a vampire)? 

As for the reclusive billionaire who turns out to be a vampire bent on destroying a humanity that he despises by manipulating power hungry, greedy and lecherous pillars of society--well, isn't that really what all corporations are really up to?  D.D. Denham has the good grace of at least being an actual vampire with a soft spot for monologuing with his nemesis. 

And for all the money that he has why does Dracula have one of the worst looking top floor offices I've ever seen?  I hope Dracula drained the blood of the architect that came up with that room.  And what kind of recluse has an office where the elevator from the lobby can open up directly in front of your desk?  Are you trying to be assassinated?

Speaking of assassinations, I have to hand it to Van Helsing for walking into the Devil's den with the world's daintiest Derringer.  At least we see him melting down the silver cross and making his own bullet.  But then maybe it's refreshing to see someone who doesn't need one of those Underworld vampire assault rifles. 

Another motif from this film is that if the powers that be are infiltrated or controlled by people up to no good then the only way to confront them is to engage in a rogue operation.  You can see the problem with this logic.  It's good and well if the problem is that the minister in charge of the Intelligence Services is working with a vampire and you need to go rogue to infiltrate the vampire house and kill some vampires.  But take out that supernatural element and the whole conflict becomes shady. 

Let's talk gender issues for a second here.  There are plenty of women in this film, but they are either victims or monsters.  And only one of the victims manages to escape being turned into a monster and that is Jessica.  The case of Jane from the secret intelligence agency office is instructive.  She is sent home to get some rest after some hard work and is kidnapped by the world's worst dressed bikers. 
The intelligence agency doesn't even realize she's missing when they go take a look at the country house they have had under surveillance.  She is held by the cult and fed upon and turned by Dracula.  (Surely somebody in the cult is quite aware of the vampirism.)  When they do finally stumble upon her she is chained to a wall.  The paternal Torrence tries to rescue her, unaware that Jane is now a vampire.  When she tries to attack Murray manages to drive a stake into her chest...her now conveniently bare chest.   Now, there's a really good reason why the 1930s Dracula films cut away from the image of driving stakes into people's chests.  And while most of that reasoning was based on violence, the other half of that is the combination of violence and nudity that in this film quite frankly sexualizes the violence.  I might think this is an overreaction to some merely titillating (wipe that smirk off your face, Smedley) exploitation.  But then there's the later scene with Murray and Chin Yang. 

There's no other way to describe the positioning of bodies in the struggle between the police inspector and the vampire mistress than the position of sexual copulation but with murderous intent on both sides.  It's not just the fact that Murray is on top of Chin Yang and she is lying underneath him--they are fully clothed, more or less--but it's the camera angle and the way the situation lingers and continues for much longer than mere melee would demand.  It frankly looks more like a rape and in a situation where the man in the "rapist" position is nominally the good guy and the woman in the "victim" position is an evil vampire it's an awkward situation that seems to legitimize any kind of "staking" that Murray is about to deliver.  And if it was a simple matter of pinning her down and staking her as soon as possible, the fact that she's a vampire would seem to suffice.  But I will say it again, the series of images that can be mistaken for sex lingers for an impossibly long time, and the part where she has a fishnet thrown over her...I'll leave that for some other discussion some other time.  Let's just say that this staking was as much too obvious in its metaphor as the one with Jane. 

As for the other former victims who are now monsters (all of them women)?  Remember the thing from Dracula A.D. 1972 where the vampires can be killed off by running water?  Well, what better way to destroy a basement full of vampire women (who are chained to their coffins, mind you) than to open up the spigot of the helpfully placed sprinkler system at the top of the stairs?  While at first this might seem to be a case of the writers giving a character a too simple solution for a really big problem, it actually makes sense when you think about the corporate structure of the Denham/Dracula conglomerate and what they're up to.  It's not about proliferating vampirism and unleashing hordes of ravenous monsters on the country.  Especially if that means unleashing independent female monsters.  Dracula here isn't in the business of liberating anybody's sexuality.  He's harnessed it, shackled it and turned it into a commodity and lest anybody think there's anything the least bit liberating about it he's put a kill switch in easy reach where he can order the whole operation shut down with a simple sprinkle of water.  In that regard, this film has hidden within it a pretty cynical analogue for the very kind of exploitation that I found problematic with the deaths of Jane and Chin Yang.  This film is part of the very cynical media co-opting of "liberated" female sexuality.  (Look, I'm free to rip open my blouse and get staked in the chest if I choose to do that.)  But the vampire girls chained to their coffins have no real agency.  They are part of the machine that uses their bodies and keeps their bodies available and which will dispense with them once they are no longer of use.  They aren't even free to do the thing that they have been "turned" into desiring on their own volition.  They will be "fed" when the company has decided to feed them.  Of course, this kind of critique bears all the problems that go with Being the Thing You're Criticizing. 

At any rate, that's something I noted about this film that was a bit troubling.

Of course Van Helsing pulls through in the end and with Murray's help saves Jessica (and the rest of the world.)  Once again it is the articles of faith that are required to put down the vampire, though here there is no requirement of faith itself, just the articles of faith as if there's a mutual recognition that neither the vampire nor the vampire killer believe in the rituals they are engaging in (does Dracula really think the Sabbath of the Undead holds some sort of special meaning?) but that the objects have acquired the requisite patina of precedent that makes them the mutually agreed upon Things That Will Kill a Vampire Because...even if the vampire killer and the vampire don't really care about what you believe in.  Still, a hawthorne bush...that's a nice trick.  Not sure why Dracula wouldn't have a serious scent-based radar for the presence of hawthorne (granted, it's not garlic or wolfsbane). 

So this is the last of Hammer Dracula films with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing.  Not exactly a bang, but I'm not sure I would have liked to see what Dracula 1974 would have looked like.  I suspect that it might have looked like Five Easy Pieces or maybe it would have looked like Moonraker, who knows?

If Dracula A.D. 1972 played out like a seventies cop show, then this film played out like a seventies spy thriller.  Something like Day of the Jackal or The Eiger Sanction but with vampires and pseudo-satanic rituals.  And maybe part of the problem is that the film could have used a more self-conscious mixing of genre that would make the whole thing slightly more coherent. 

Cast
D.D. Denham/Count Dracula -- Christopher Lee
Lorrimer Van Helsing -- Peter Cushing
Jessica Van Helsing --  Joanna Lumley
Inspector Murray -- Michael Coles
Torrence -- William Franklyn
Julian Keeley -- Freddie Jones 
Colonel Mathews -- Richard Vernon
Chin Yang -- Barbara Yu Ling
Lord Carradine -- Patrick Barr
John Porter -- Richard Mathews
General Sir Arthur Freeborne -- Lockwood West
Jane -- Valerie Van Ost
Hanson -- Maurice O'Connell
Doctor -- Peter Adair
Vampire Girls -- Maggie Fitzgerald, Pauline Peart, Finnuala O'Shannon, Mia Martin
Guard #1-- Marc Zuber
Guard #2 -- Paul Weston
Guard #3 -- Ian Dewar
Guard #4 -- Graham Rees
Commissionaire -- John Harvey

Music by John Cacavas
Cinematography by Brian Probyn

Disco Dracula's London Groove Thang

Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)
Directed by Alan Gibson
Screenplay by Don Houghton

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee back together again, 1972 style.  Yeah, I'm willing to pay my Hammer tax and watch this film based on that alone.  You know there'll be an obligatory Seventies party scene with some funky music.   And maybe Dracula will drive around in a Trans Am.  

Okay, so this film starts out in 1872 with Lawrence Van Helsing locked in a deathmatch with Count Dracula on top of a speeding carriage.  After the carriage crashes Dracula is caught on a spoke and unfortunately nobody has a "jaws of death" to unimpale him.  Van Helsing finishes the job and then dies of his own injuries.  And thus the shortest of the Hammer Dracula films draws to a conclusion. 
But wait, Dracula has an acolyte--a Dracolyte--who gathers up his remains and secretly buries them at St. Bartolph's Church where Van Helsing is also buried. 

And now the story skips ahead by a hundred years.  It's 1972 and the fashions are atrocious and nobody really cares because all the cool kids are high as kites that have been put into carry-on luggage and flown to Lisbon.  If you've been paying attention (and in 1972 some people may not have been) you'd notice that young Johnny Alucard looks a lot like that Dracolyte who buried Dracula back in 1872.  And we see that Lorrimer Van Helsing looks just like his ancestor Lawrence.  Weird how genetics works like that.  Lucky for her and us Jessica Van Helsing looks nothing like a female Peter Cushing.   And I'm pretty sure that even someone who's really high would eventually roll to the fact that Alucard is Dracula spelled backwards.  Nobody is really named Alucard.  There's only one reason anybody has ever had the name Alucard is because they're trying to be coy about Dracula.  If  you have a "friend" named Johnny Alucard, he's not your friend.  He's a vampire or a vampire wannabe.  

And then there's the obligatory party scene featuring the band Stoneground.  Heck of a party, isn't it?  Really gives you a feel for London in 1972, doesn't it?  Now imagine Margaret Thatcher at that party.  Now imagine her at that party dressed only in a garland of lilies.  Now imagine your dad showing up to that party in an orange sportcoat and yellow and brown plaid pants.  That's 1972 in London.  Vampires are the least of your problems.  

So, simple hippy parties aren't quite exciting enough and thus the young generation turns to black magic for fun.  And what better place for some Satanic fun in London than a wrecked old church (St. Bartolph's, naturally.) where you might be able to resurrect Count Dracula and give him a special rebirthday present of one of your "friends."  Another piece of advice: friends don't feed friends to their vampire overlords. 

The film seems to meander between feeling like it's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and an episode of the British version of Kojak.  I think I just described what the original Kolchak: The Night Stalker was like.  Seriously, what kind of self respecting vampire would want to drink someone whose blood reeks of polyester, cocaine and patchouli?  

Here's another question: why did the Dracolytes wait a hundred years before trying to bring back Dracula?  Were they just too busy with the two world wars to bother unleashing the master of vampires?  Was 1972 all that great of a year?  Or is it just that the Dracolytes had to be so bored by everything else that they decide to resurrect Dracula the way some bored people decide to go out and buy some cole slaw just to get some fresh air?

In this incarnation Dracula has some serious score settling in mind with Van Helsing.  That's why it's really convenient for him that Van Helsing's granddaughter Jessica is hanging out with a hard partying crowd of vampire bait.  In 1972 Dracula has an elaborate plan of corrupting Jessica by turning her into his vampire companion.  (The ultimate insult of rendering the vampire killer's progeny tainted by vampirism.  Yes, it's an analogy for sexual purity.  What did you think it was?)
But in the grand tradition of Bond villains Dracula spends too much time dragging his eternally cold feet instead of proceeding with his evil plan. 

Van Helsing tracks down Johnny Alucard and kills him the way you would expect to kill a dirty hippy--with a cold shower.  Yeah, I said it.  Seventies hipster killed by bathing. 

Dracula's death by booby trap is a perfect Vietnam era death.  The only way it could have been more perfect would have been if Van Helsing had dipped the stakes in feces.  Not because it would be more lethal for Dracula, but because it would have been the right level of insult.  But that's not Van Helsing's style.  He does not lack elegance. 

As for Jessica, she is saved from the evil vampire who puts her under his spell and turns her into a mindless minion.  In short, she is saved from being a trophy wife married to a jerk who really only wants her in order to punish someone else and so that he can sully her with his touch. 

Jessica is also saved from a group of friends who are easily lured by their inquisitiveness/boredom into doing stupid evil things.  (Manson Family, anyone?)  And she also gets a clean break from her boyfriend who is drained of his blood.  How about that for a breakup story?  "Yeah, my last boyfriend was killed by a vampire...as were most of my other friends.  So, who's up for some tea and sandwiches?" 

There's something to be said for the choice of putting a vampire (and especially Dracula, THE vampire) in a contemporary setting.  But there's also something to be said for the Victorian Gothic setting.  It's apples and oranges in vampire films.  I can't help but feel that one of the flavors that makes the Dracula story is the period setting, but I also enjoy the idea of contemporizing the story.  Maybe I'd be less ambivalent if it hadn't been set in 1972.

I'll say this, at least there's no real sympathizing with the monster in this film.  Dracula is actively in league with evil and his minions not only ally themselves with Satan and Dracula but also commit wanton murder and use the bonds of friendship to lure people to their deaths.  This is a vampire you don't mind seeing destroyed in a pit of death for the undead.  

Cast
Count Dracula -- Christopher Lee
Lawrence Van Helsing/Lorrimer Van Helsing -- Peter Cushing
Jessica Van Helsing -- Stephanie Beacham
Johnny Alucard -- Christopher Neame
Gaynor Keating -- Marsha Hunt
Laura Bellows -- Caroline Munro
Anna Bryant -- Janet Key
Joe Mitcham -- William Ellis
Bob -- Philip Miller
Greg -- Michael Kitchen
Matron Party Hostess -- Lally Bowers
Charles -- Michael Daly
Crying Matron -- Jo Richardson
Hippy Girl -- Penny Brahms
Hippy Boy -- Brian John Smith
Go Go Dancer -- Flanagan (Maureen Flanagan)
Girl -- Glenda Allen
Boy -- Christopher Morris
Debby Girl -- Jane Anthony
Mrs. Donnelly -- Constance Luttrell 
Inspector Murray -- Michael Coles
Detective Sergeant -- David Andrews
Police Surgeon -- Artro Morris
Stoneground -- Stoneground (Tim Barnes, Sal Valentino, John Blakely, Brian Godula, Lynne Hughes, Deirdre La Porte, Cory Lerios, Lydia Mareno, Steve Price, Annie Sampson)

Music by Mike Vickers
Cinematography by Dick Bush

Hammered Stakes

Warner Brothers 4 Film Favorites: Draculas (2007)

This collection is a nice economical way of getting a dose of Hammer vampire action.   You miss out on the cover artwork (which should not be underestimated as part of the artistic package) but it is a nice sampler with a quadruple dose of Christopher Lee.

The collection includes these films: 
Horror of Dracula
Dracula Has Risen from the Grave
Taste the Blood of Dracula
Dracula A.D. 1972

All four films are presented in widescreen.  Theatrical trailers for Horror of Dracula and Dracula A.D. 1972 are included.  

My review of Dracula A.D. 1972 (longtime listener, first time caller) will follow shortly. 

Retaste The Blood Of Dracula

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
Directed by Peter Sasdy
Screenplay by John Elder (Anthony Hinds)

Go on, try the powdered blood of Dracula.  Taste it.  Savor it.  Tastes like talc and licorice? 
Seeing this film again reminds me that some of it is really delightful and some of it is just tedious.
Taste the Blood of Dracula marks a shift in style in the Hammer vampire films and in Hammer films in general.    

This film is about the boredom of decadence.  The staid elders of the society Hargood, Paxton and Secker are secretly members of a thrill seeking club that is constantly escalating.  While some of them seem content to get together every so often and head over to the cathouse for some exotic dancing and hanky panky William Hargood is bored to tears by hookers, booze and a woman dancing with a python (or a boa).  The other two guys seriously seem to be okay with what they've got, but Hargood looks like he needs something more.  It doesn't help that the bad boy Lord Courtley shows up and steals his girl.  Courtley doesn't even have to pay.  All the girls want to give him freebies.  In a different film this would lead to Hargood sleeping with Courtley in order alleviate the boredom. 

While this film maintains a Victorian/Edwardian time period (still no motor cars or dirigibles) it finally moves us over to England where things can be quite decadent and richer than the Central European milieu of the earlier films.  Here the elders have failed the call of civilization.  They are decadent hypocrites, seething at the inequity of Courtley's aristocratic behaviour even as they employ similar attitudes toward those lower than them on the class/status/wealth totem pole.  If anything, the younger generation are more pure and idealistic even while living up to the general ideals of morality.  The young Hargoods, Paxtons and Seckers are not the ones running around snorting cocaine, swilling booze, watching dancing girls put pythons in their mouths, having sex with prostitutes or drinking bubbling vampire blood and kicking people to death.  It's the old folks who are doing this, which is a serious inversion of expectations.  The symbolism is completed when the young Paul restores the altar pieces in the chapel where Courtley held the "Black Mass" where the thrill seekers killed him and unwittingly resurrected Count Dracula.  Paul and Alice are left to reconstitute society with their restored moral universe which at that point has been cleansed of their immoral progenitors, albeit with some serious collateral damage.

Speaking of that collateral damage, one of the things that really gets short shrift even in slasher sequels is how the decimated survivors go on after all their friends have been eaten by vampires.
Certainly they'll have to make some new friends, but how does that conversation go?
"It's so nice to meet you.  I don't understand why you don't have any other friends."
"Oh, all of our friends were killed by a vampire last year."

The storytelling here is an interesting jumble.  It's the kind of thing that I suspect would make a screenwriting workshop go apoplectic and that alone is a reason to like this film a little more. 

Cast
Weller -- Roy Kinnear
Count Dracula -- Christopher Lee
William Hargood -- Geoffrey Keen
Martha Hargood -- Gwen Watford
Alice Hargood -- Linda Hayden
Samuel Paxton -- Peter Sallis
Paul Paxton -- Anthony Corlan (Anthony Higgins)
Lucy Paxton -- Isla Blair
Jonathan Secker -- John Carson
Jeremy Secker -- Martin Jarvis
Lord Courtley -- Ralph Bates
Inspector Cobb -- Michael Ripper
Betty, Hargood's maid -- Shirley Jaffe
Felix -- Russell Hunter
Dolly -- Maddy Smith (Madeline Smith)
Chinese Girl -- Lai Ling
Snake Girl -- Malaika Martin
Redheaded Prostitute -- June Palmer
Bordello Girls -- Amber Blare, Vicky Gillespie
Vicar -- Reginald Barratt

Music by James Bernard
Cinematography by Arthur Grant

Dracula Has Left the Toilet Seat Up

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Directed by Freddie Francis
Screenplay by John Elder (Anthony Hinds)

Dracula has risen from the grave and he is ready for a rumble.  I was excited to finally see this film since I'd already seen Taste the Blood of Dracula which starts off with Dracula's death scene from this film.  That seems to be the only thing these two films share other than Christopher Lee.  I'd like to believe that I can spot the difference between a Freddie Francis directed film and a Terence Fisher, but the differences are not so obvious in this case.  Maybe I need to see some more Freddie Francis films. 

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is a film about faith, and also vampires, but mostly faith...and also class.  There is no Van Helsing here, instead the vampire hunting is left to conservative religious authorities as represented by the Monsignor.  Our young heroes are the Monsignor's niece Maria and her student boyfriend Paul.  Paul is modern through and through.  He's working his way through school as a baker's assistant in return for room and board.  His boss Max is a genial and kind man who is like a father and friend to Paul.  Max is a solidly working class man who might own his own house and bakery but who is clearly at home with the folks who come to his tavern for a drink or ten.  Paul might be a student working his way up but he is also clearly comfortable with modern ideas of egalitarianism.  Paul is a perfect example of a young revolutionary.  Remembering that this story is set in Central Europe (in this case in the strikingly modern year of 1905) it is quite easy to think of Paul as a Marxist in everything but name.  (Sort of.)  It's a telling thing for a film made in the momentous year of 1968.

At any rate, Paul is left in the uncomfortable position of meeting his girlfriend's family after being drenched with beer by his student friends.  So he meets Maria's mother and then her uncle the Monsignor while reeking of alcohol.  And then when pressed he admits he's an atheist.  And you know what that means in a vampire film...his beliefs will be tested by the appearance of a bloodsucking fiend and whatever issues Count Dracula has atheism isn't one of them.    The Monsignor is not happy at all.   And what does this have to do with Dracula?

Well, Dracula has been menacing the neighboring town (where his Castle looms on the heights above.)  The film opens with a young woman's body being found dripping blood and hanging in the church bell.  For some reason we are then fast-forwarded to a year later and supposedly Dracula is no longer around but his spirit has lingered and nobody is attending the cursed church and the Priest has turned to drink because he's lost his faith.  The Monsignor shows up and drags the priest along with him to post a giant gold cross to block the door to Dracula's castle thus barring its use as a vampire nest.  (Or something to that effect.)  The priest meanwhile refuses to go all the way to the crack of Mt. Doom because he's a coward.  While the Monsignor is doing his ritual blocking of the door a thunderstorm occurs which causes the priest to run away.  While doing so he trips cracks open his head and his blood goes trickling down to the frozen river below where it resuscitates Dracula (who was turned into a vampiric popsicle down there in the previous Hammer installment (Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)).

This thunderstorm is of course a serious question of theodicy.  Is the storm evil?  That seems to be the indication of the weather suddenly becoming foul when the Monsignor attempts to bottle up the evil of the castle.  But why should the weather be controlled by the forces of darkness?  The storms should be essentially a neutral phenomenon.  Surely omnipotent deity would not cede control over something like the weather to the whim of evil?  Let us think of this instead as being a storm created by the forces of storytelling instead of a question of theology.  The storytellers needed a storm to create an element of fate that puts into motion the resurrection of the frozen Dracula.

So Dracula has risen from his grave, his frozen wet grave and now he wants to go home, but he finds that Thomas Wolfe was right and now he's pissed.  Dracula decides to take his vengeance out on the Monsignor and luckily for the Count the Monsignor has a very pretty niece.   And because he really is evil Dracula turns the priest into his minion to help him enact his revenge.  Who would suspect that a priest is actually serving the cause of evil?  Ahem, who would have suspected that in 1968?  These days we'd suspect that the mute boy in the church was mute because of something the priest did.  At any rate, turning the (nominal) servant of all that is good into a servant of evil is a bit of a coup for Dracula. 

Next Dracula goes after Zena the barmaid, who has a bit of a thing for Paul but manages to keep it nobly unrequited.  Zena is bitten and turned into a minion of Dracula.  The lower class woman is expendable here (whereas the higher class Maria is a treasure to be guarded.) and likewise her virtue is suspect whereas even though Maria goes out of her way to sneak around town and see Paul she still maintains a front of purity, while Zena has no pretense at expressing her sexuality.  Once she's under Dracula's control she is eager to please him.  Unfortunately for Zena she gets the "You have failed me for the first time and thus you have failed me for the last time" treatment from Dracula.  Lucky for Dracula he still has the priest to clean up his mess.  

Maria is eventually bitten by Dracula, because that's what Dracula does.  He uses women and sometimes he intends for them to be special companions. If her daddy's rich, he might even take her out for a meal, but if the girl is poor then Dracula does as he feels. 

The Monsignor has to die.  You know that's coming because he's too much of an even match for Dracula.  He's the Van Helsing of the movie.  Also, the death of the Monsignor forces a crisis of faith onto Paul.  In this story Dracula can only be defeated by faith.  Paul is a committed atheist.  You know where this is going.  Paul fights the priest and manages to turn him back to the good guys side.  But the priest is pretty useless.  Even though he and Paul drive a stake into Dracula they don't complete the religious ritual required (only in this film) to finish the job.  Thus, Dracula waits until they're gone and pulls out the stake and goes about his business.  And his business is draining people of blood.  

The Count abducts Maria and heads to his castle. There's a chase scene, horse drawn carriage style.  Dracula takes Maria up to his castle and uses her to get rid of the giant gold cross/plot device blocking his door.  She chucks the cross down from the heights but it lands perfectly upright, just as you might expect from a giant gold plot device.

That's when the boys show up.   And this time they mean business.   Paul finds the strength to throw Dracula down into the valley where he lands right on the giant gold plot device/cross that had (by the divine hand of Providence) landed upright on that very spot.  But that just means they've got Dracula pinned on a stake.  He can't free himself the way he did when he pulled the stake out of his chest earlier.  This gives the priest a chance at redemption and he manages to recite the Lord's Prayer.  (Really, that's the ritual required?)  That's what turns Dracula into dust.  Paul (and the priest) save Maria and Paul as a last gesture crosses himself, presumably because after what he's seen he has been driven back into the arms of religion.  

So like I said, this film is overtly about faith in traditional religion.  The priest loses his congregation because in some way his faith was inadequate to the task of keeping Dracula away.   This compounds his own lack of faith and drives him to drink.  But he is redeemed.  As for the Monsignor, he has faith and traditional conservative religious values but he is a relic of a dying civilization who must give way to the younger generation (and some of their radical values.)  He is redeemed in some way by his recognition that Paul's feelings for his niece are genuine and that the young man has admirable qualities notwithstanding his atheism.  

One thing I've noticed is that whereas the Hammer Frankenstein films are only loosely connected and in many ways should be viewed as independent stories the Hammer Dracula Franchise (from Dracula Prince of Darkness on) were directly linked with the previous film and with the aforementioned film skipping all the way back to the first of the Hammer Draculas.  In some ways this creates some problems and conundrums but at least in this film it doesn't detract from the story. 

I think in many ways this is the last really solid Hammer Dracula and certainly the last one where Dracula is the real focus.  In that regard it is a film that has some nostalgia goggles attached if taken in context.  (Sort of like watching the last Buffy or Angel episode before a really major change occurs.)  If you go back to it you'll have a much different feeling about it than you do if you just see it in sequence or completely by itself.  One of the advantages of a loose sequel style is that neither the audience nor the storytellers are bound by characters and situations that come before or after the story.  This can be a liability when it comes to character investment, but it can be a strength in that it avoids adaptation decay.  The one character in this case who we have to worry about is Dracula, who by this time has been sort of killed too many times, each time in a way that should be a definitive end. 

Cast
Dracula -- Christopher Lee
Monsignor Ernest Mueller -- Rupert Davies
Anna Mueller -- Marion Mathie
Maria Mueller -- Veronica Carlson
Paul -- Barry Andrews
Zena -- Barbara Ewing
Max -- Michael Ripper
Priest -- Ewan Hooper
Mute Boy -- Norman Bacon
Student -- John D. Collins
Landlord -- George A. Cooper
Farmer -- Chris Cunningham

Music by James Bernard
Cinematography by Arthur Grant 

Hammer of Dracula

Horror of Dracula (1958)
Directed by Terence Fisher
Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster

Horror of Dracula, also known as just plain Dracula, is one of the original recipe Hammer Horror films from the late 1950s.  As such it is a landmark in cinematic history.  While we're still waiting for a US release of the new restored edition on Blu Ray we'll take another quick look at this classic.

Fan Points
Christopher Lee as Dracula and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing.  Done.  That should be enough.  This is the first of the Hammer Draculas, the first Dracula in color.  The Hammer supporting cast features some gem performances.

In this film Count Dracula seems to start out content to remain in his own neighborhood until Jonathan Harker shows up to catalog his library.  Harker, of course, is not just there to catalog a library.  Harker is already a vampire hunter and is there to hunt Count Dracula.  We don't know if Harker's ruse was successful because ultimately his mission is a failure.  He does take out Dracula's unnamed vampire ladyfriend, which may explain Dracula's decision to go after the women in Harker's life.  Why would Harker go after Count Dracula by himself?  It seems like the kind of mission that requires an actual team (as is eventually the case in both the novel and this film at the end.)  Clearly Van Helsing and Harker are already in the business of vampire hunting.  Why does Harker take such a big chance against Dracula?  Well, maybe the thing we have to consider is that in the fictional world we're talking about Dracula is not quite Dracula.  And by that I mean to say that in the fiction the character of Dracula does not come with the same obvious baggage that the name carries for any of us.  Harker is thus on a reconnaissance mission to find out if this Dracula fellow is the cause of the vampire stories coming out of the frightened townsfolk of Klausenberg.

As for Dracula, he must have a regular series of household job listings he puts out on the 19th century Craig's List in order to lure people to his castle and drink their blood.  Clearly Dracula and his lady friend get their regular supply from the locals, but ordering in every so often provides an occasional opportunity to avoid the hunting and just stay home.   Harker just happened to be a hunter in the bargain.  And that's why Dracula has to make an example of him and follow him to where he came from.  Dracula has decided to take the fight to his enemy and fight them there before he has to fight them back home on the defensive.

Like any offensive expedition Dracula's invasion is a risky proposition since he has to take his resting place with him.  Dracula's logistics are his point of vulnerability.  It's all about strategy and tactics.
While retaining the original names the film maintains a general Central European German milieu for the action.  In the novel and even in Nosferatu, the vampire arrives by sea.  Dracula's return to Transylvania is serious ordeal of timetables in the novel.  Here he as an internal line of communication back to his home base.  It's just a matter of a simple carriage race back and forth.  And once Dracula's opponent is as cunning as Van Helsing then suddenly Dracula is on the defensive.

Cushing's first Van Helsing outing represents the character as ultra-competent.  The fight is difficult and nobody quite wants to believe him at first, but ultimately he is a quite competent occult scientist.

Occult scientist?  How can we even use those terms in conjunction?  This is the central conceit of Dracula and it is central in this film as well.  Van Helsing is not a believer in superstition.  But he is aware of the existence of things that are considered supernatural.  It is his power of scientific observation that prevents him from dismissing the vampire stories the way his post-Enlightenment scientific peers dismiss the local superstitions.  Van Helsing does not dismiss superstition out of hand, but instead pursues it to greater knowledge.  In this case the knowledge is a series of specific quantifiable rules of vampirism.  And although the rules of vampirism are suspiciously based on objects and articles of faith/religion it is ultimately a quite rational irrationalism we're talking about.
The truly supernatural would be something that has no rules.  But these vampires are quite rationally designed/created.  They have to follow certain rules, sleep in a coffin filled with their local soil (bound by the accident of geologic specificity) and they can be killed in a myriad of ways.   The centrality of Christianity to vampire stories is something that is only being slightly addressed even after more than a century of these stories.   And there's more to say about that later.

As for sexuality, there is more of it on the cover for this film than in the film itself.  That's not to say that there is none, but just that it is almost as sublimated as it is in the novel.   Jonathan Harker is somewhat lured by the attractiveness of Dracula's ladyfriend (not knowing she was his vampire ladyfriend) but it seems to be equally based on believing her to be Dracula's prisoner.  (Would he have helped her out if she was a wart-faced hag?  Or an obese hirsute dude?  Would any of us deal with people with equanimity in that regard?)  Dracula goes after Lucy and turns her (in some way as the ultimate revenge on Harker and also as a means of replacing his lost minion) and it is clear that his visitations to her bedchamber are moments of ecstatic rapture for her (even if they do leave her utterly and fatally drained).  Curiously, when Lucy is turned she attempts to feed on children (hunting the ultimate symbols of innocence.)

Not content with Lucy, the Count goes after Mina as well.  Mina is married to Arthur and seems to be a quite respectable middle class housewife.  Thus, when Dracula goes after Mina it is a direct assault on the cornerstone of middle class morality.  Dracula is (metaphorically) sexually assaulting (but also even more dangerously, sexually awakening) the very heart of the family unit, and the bastion of contemporary (late 19th century) civilization.  Thus Arthur Holmwood is a metaphor for the cuckolded husband and the Count is the ultimate slick seducer.  (And it would take supernatural capabilities to make his wife cheat on him, right?)  And Dr. Van Helsing is that guy who'll help you kill the guy who slept with your wife.  Wait, what?

Yeah, the metaphor falls apart a little there because in that regard Van Helsing is a little bit of cheated upon partner wish fulfillment.

At any rate, Horror of Dracula delivers on the Gothic premise both visually and in terms of storytelling. The pace is slightly quicker and steadier than Curse of Frankenstein and like that film it is the closest that any of the Hammer films gets to the original version of the story and to the Universal films for that matter.

Cast
Jonathan Harker -- John Van Eyssen
Arthur Holmwood -- Michael Gough
Mina Holmwood -- Melissa Stribling
Lucy Holmwood -- Carol Marsh
Gerda -- Olga Dickie
Tania -- Janina Faye
Inga -- Barbara Archer
Dr. Seward -- Charles Lloyd Pack
Dr. Abraham Van Helsing -- Peter Cushing
Count Dracula -- Christopher Lee
Vampire Woman -- Valerie Gaunt
Landlord -- George Woodbridge
J. Marx, Undertaker -- Miles Malleson
Porter -- Geoffrey Bayldon
Policeman -- George Meritt
Frontier Official -- George Benson

Music by James Bernard
Cinematography by Jack Asher

Return to The Mummy

The Mummy (1959)
Directed by Terence Fisher
Screenplay by Jimmy Sangster

Revisiting the first Hammer foray into mummyland and I'm still a fan of this one.  Having delved even further into the depths of the Hammer catalogue I can now say with more confidence that the 1959 mummy stands out as a gem of the classic Hammer horror set.

Let's get the fan review out of the way.  If you want to explore Hammer films this is an essential.  Fan of mummy movies?  Essential.  Christopher Lee, with and without a massive amount of makeup.  Peter Cushing back when he was the young lead.   (He seems so much older as Van Helsing in the 1958 Hammer Dracula.)  The English country setting gives us some nice low comic stylings that reoccur in other Hammer films from this period and thus if you aren't a fan of Michael Ripper going in you will become one.  

The film itself is one part archaeological adventure, one part ancient Egyptian epic sampler and one part  drawing room murder mystery.

And of course there's the post-colonial discourse of the film.  Nowadays we might forget just how fresh the Anglo-French Suez crisis was in the minds of the British audience for this film.  It must have made for a very different attitude towards the Egyptian villain of the piece.   Mehemet Bey is indeed a curious character.  He is a closet worshipper of Karnak.  (Though the definition of closet is stretched by the large room he uses as a shrine in his rented house in England.)  The closet worshipper of an ancient religion is a familiar trope in adventure stories because it opens the door to exotic (inventive and invented) practices and rituals that make for more exciting stories than what you might get if Mehemet Bey was merely a moderately devout Muslim looking to recover antiquities with which he has no spiritual connection.   Instead he is a fanatic follower of Karnak and he has with him the living dead mummy of Kharis.  Putting off the backstory of Kharis for a second, Mehemet Bey uses Kharis like a golem.  It is ultimately his misuse of this instrument that causes his destruction.  Well, maybe not so much misuse as a misunderstanding of Kharis.  Sure, Kharis was the high priest of Karnak, but Mehemet Bey should have been more suspicious of Kharis's reliability as an instrument of service to Karnak.  After all, Kharis was entombed alive as a punishment for trying to resurrect the high priestess Ananka in order to engage in forbidden love with her.  So the whole reason that Kharis is there is because of his unreliability when it comes to obedience to the rules of Karnak.  Mehemet Bey should have known better.  Sure, what were the odds that he'd run into someone who is a dead ringer for the Princess Ananka?  But on the other hand, the only thing we know about Kharis is that he violated Karnak's sacred rules.  There's a logical fallacy at the heart of the punishment meted out to Kharis in the first place.  Kharis is obsessed with Ananka.  Ananka dies and he tries to bring her back to life in order to consummate his love for her.  (We are never informed about how Ananka felt about Kharis, mind you.)  Kharis is caught before he can resurrect Ananka.  His tongue is cut out and he is entombed alive, in the tomb of the woman he was obsessed with and so that he could be the guardian of her tomb.  Cutting out the tongue?  Yeah, that's a punishment.  But what part of putting him eternally close to the object of his obsession is supposed to be a punishment for Kharis?

At any rate, Mehemet Bey is determined to punish those who violated the tomb of Ananka and he does have the perfect instrument to enact vengeance since nobody cares more about Ananka than Kharis.  But Mehemet Bey's key flaw is that he believes Ananka is sacred because of her status as a priestess of Karnak, whereas Kharis was and is in love with Ananka.  Mehemet Bey underestimates the unpredictability of love.  Of course, what were the odds that one of the people he's hunting down would be married to someone who looks just like Ananka?  And how much of a facial match would someone have to be for Kharis's Ananka-radar to kick in?  Isobel Banning is an exact match.  What if someone was a 75% match?  Well, we do know that Kharis doesn't recognize Isobel as a match for Ananka if her hair is up, so even with a dead ringer Kharis isn't completely fooled.  And so, while Kharis is "fooled" by Isobel into believing she is Ananka and thus he unravels Mehemet Bey's revenge plan, on the other hand it is not pure Enlightenment rationality that wins the day because the mummy could only be fooled because of the miraculous coincidence (or should we call it fate?) of the resemblance of Isobel and Ananka.

One of the strange things that comes from this story is that while Stephen Banning, the man of science (archaeology, Egyptology), comes through against the closet cult fanatic (and possibly some form of apostate or closeted nonbeliever) it is not the values of science and enlightenment that prevail, per se.  The Bannings prevail because they recognize the existence of the irrational and mysterious and engage it to their benefit.  It's not exactly a victory of modern science, it's a victory of ancient irrationality.  At the end of the film the rational world has to deal with the genuine existence of the living dead and magical scrolls that can bring people back to life.  That's hardly a victory for the rational world.
But of course, the most irrational thing in this movie is love and yet for all its irrationality and the inability to scientifically prove its existence (show me a molecule of love) it does seem to be quite real.
And so Kharis's ancient love for Ananka wins out in the end.  Sort of.  He's now dead in an English bog and she's probably going to be on display in a museum.   Not exactly a love story for the ages.

While most of the main story of the film takes place in England and plays out in and around the Banning drawing room the discovery of the tomb in Egypt and even more so the ancient flashback that are the most vivid parts of the film.  The mass human sacrifice at the burial of Ananka is so tastefully played out that you might be forgiven if you don't notice that a lot of people are killed to join Ananka in her tomb.

So, were the archaeologists wrong to explore the tomb?  Was their search for knowledge (in this case knowledge about the past through archaeological study) akin to Victor Frankenstein's pursuit of forbidden experimentation?  I suppose one of the problems with cinematic archaeology is that the complete backstory of the archaeological discovery seems to always be available.  The archaeologists in this case know everything about the story of Ananka and Kharis.  All they need to do now is find the tomb.  This is one of the most unrealistic tropes that you can imagine.  I know this is a mummy story and not an archaeology story, but it would be nice to see some cinematic archaeology that doesn't involve already knowing the complete story of an archaeological discovery before you find an artifact.

Notwithstanding that last bit of crankiness I have always enjoyed this film and having seen some of Hammer's later forays into Egypt I have to say this is one that stands the test of time both compared to later mummy films (and yes, that includes all those Brendan Fraser vehicles) and to the earlier Universal mummy franchise.  Note also the joy to be found in a simple story with lowered stakes (still life or death, mind you) as opposed to the world-killing dust storms of the contemporary CGI era.  It doesn't always have to be the end of the world.

Cast
Stephen Banning -- Felix Aylmer
Joseph Whemple -- Raymond Huntley
John Banning -- Peter Cushing
Isobel Banning/Princess Ananka -- Yvonne Furneaux
Kharis -- Christopher Lee
Inspector Mulrooney -- Eddie Byrne
P.C. Blake -- George Woodbridge
Dr. Reilly --Willoughby Gray
Pat -- Harold Goodwin
Mike -- Denis Shaw
Poacher -- Michael Ripper
Mehemet Bey -- George Pastell

Cinematography -- Jack Asher
Music by Franz Reizenstein

Special Features
1. Theatrical Trailer

Frankenstein in Gaol

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973)
Directed by Terence Fisher
Screenplay by Roy Skeggs

If Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed represented an Endarkenment version of the title character, then Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell is a return to a mostly Enlightenment gone wrong interpretation.   Whereas in the earlier film Victor Frankenstein really was a monster, in the latter film he is once again merely a brilliant man who likes to experiment in abominations.  In fact, in this film Victor  is more moral than the character portrayed by Peter Cushing back in 1957.

Let's start with the fan aspects.  This is Peter Cushing's last appearance as Victor Frankenstein in a Hammer film.   It is also the first film pairing for Grand Moff Tarkin (Cushing) and Darth Vader (David Prowse).  This is Terence Fisher's final film.  If you're a fan of Bond films you'll notice that Tarmut the sculptor is M (Bernard Lee).   And for the Whovians, the bodysnatcher is Patrick Troughton, the Second Doctor.   And since Peter Cushing played the Doctor in two films from the '60s that means that technically there are two doctors in this film.   And then there's Madeline Smith who was a Bond girl in Live and Let Die. In a remarkably refreshing decision the filmmakers don't give in to the worst excesses of the 70s and keep their female lead clothed and Ms. Smith manages to be quite expressive for the major portion of the film where her character is mute.

As with other Hammer films from this period there is an attempt to pair their older stars with younger counterparts in a sometimes muddled attempt to pass the torch.   And while there are some attempts at a continuity of Victor Frankenstein in the Hammer series it is a very loose continuity and in many ways it is best to pretend that the character who perished in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed actually did die and that this character is another version entirely, especially since this Frankenstein incarnation is mostly benign.  I mean, apart from the murders of course.  But I'll come back to that in a moment.

The film commences with the young Simon Helder exercising his fan appreciation of Dr. Frankenstein by reading his book and attempting to continue the experimental progress of the Baron.  Unfortunately the law is not particularly kind to Dr. Helder's science and he is arrested and put on trial.  The policeman and the judge are model representatives of an unimaginative society.  Simon seems almost delighted to be sentenced to the same mental institution that Baron Frankenstein was sent to, because of course Simon really wants to be just like his role model.  As for the crimes involved, it's interesting to note that while in Curse of Frankenstein the Baron's only known crime was murder, here he (and Simon) are being specifically condemned for their abominable scientific experiments.  (Or at least for the illegal trafficking in body parts and grave robbing that are required for their research.)

Once Simon arrives at the institution he is initially mistaken for a visitor by the befuddled director Klauss who is furious at being deceived.  Klauss and his henchmen are not only incompetent but they are also quite corrupt.  If the law enforcement and judicial system on the outside are unimaginative and somewhat repressive they are not overtly corrupt or evil.  In the asylum, though, the system is brutal and corrupt.  It is no surprise that it turns out that Baron Frankenstein faked his death and has taken up the position of asylum doctor continuing his experiments with equipment provided by Klauss through threat of blackmail.  Klauss is so obviously incompetent that it's hard to believe he is afraid of being held to account for his job competence.  Instead, it turns out that Frankenstein rescued Klauss's daughter Sarah from an attempted rape (the shock of which left her mute) and has achieved his state within a state through the threat of blackmail.  This leaves Victor Frankenstein in a strange state of moral ambiguity.  On the one hand he is certainly a more benign and competent presence than Klauss.  (e.g. The brutal hazing Klauss's henchmen give to Simon, scarring his back with a forced shower with the high pressure water hose.)  But Victor's motivations aren't in any way altruistic (he wants the freedom to work on his experiments) unless you believe entirely in the notion that Frankenstein's experiments represent scientific progress in which case you might at least buy some portion of the argument that it is important to support his experiments.  Of course, Frankenstein's actual experiments undercut the notion that he is really achieving progress for humanity and the expansion of scientific knowledge.

But the bigger problem with Frankenstein's ethics is the fact that he does murder inmates in order to collect their most prized body parts.  Tarmut the sculptor, for instance, is killed for his hands.  In the case of Durendel, meanwhile, Victor drives the poor man to suicide in order to collect his brain.  Whatever kind of relative goodness we want to believe separates Frankenstein from Klauss, these acts of murder (there is no other word for it) undercut the sympathy we might have for Victor.  Sure, he's not a rapist in this film and he doesn't murder anyone for mere convenience as he did with Justine in Curse of Frankenstein, but nonetheless he is actually killing people in this film and in the case of Tarmut and Durendel they are seemingly very nice people.

As for Frankenstein's creature in this film it really is a creature.  It is not so much a monster from hell as a monster from a very large bath drain.  Herr Schneider is described as feral.  I think that's a real understatement.  Herr Schneider is as apelike as Mighty Joe Young.  (But the beast can be soothed with music--or rendered unconscious with a serious dose of chloroform.)
It's difficult to imagine what Frankenstein was thinking when he decided to use a hirsute beast as the base model for his cobbled together life form.  Even Frankenstein seems to acknowledge this when the beast is torn to pieces by a mob of inmates.  (The culmination of the film, mind you.)  The Baron shrugs it off says that it's "best thing that could have happened" and starts planning for a new experiment.  Simon and Sarah have the most priceless expressions as they realize that Frankenstein is simply shaking it off and moving on as if the entire "crisis" of the film was merely a bad inning and that there's still plenty of baseball to be played.   There is some ambiguity as to their enthusiasm for continuing to serve as Frankenstein's sidekicks as they seem to betray a sense of disbelief in Frankenstein's near delusional final monologue.  But on the other hand, with Klauss dead and Frankenstein now unrestricted in his control of the asylum that might be better than leaving things to the mob rule of the inmates or to whatever cruel and unusual new director the governing authorities might think to send in to replace Klauss.  There is every reason to believe that the outside world will not even notice Klauss's absence and will be content to not know anything about what goes on in the asylum.  (And once people go in they never come out.)

Klauss's death is the one act of justice in the film, but it is, like the tearing apart of the creature, an act of mob disorder.  Like other cases of "poetic justice" or "street justice" we have to have a certain civilized revulsion at it even when it is somehow satisfying because we "know" the "truth" about the character.  Certainly the mob of inmates at the asylum know plenty about Klauss's abuses.  They might have every moral right to take out vengeance for the wrongs done unto them.  It may be ethically compromised but at least the audience and characters are all aware that Klauss has it coming.  The creature is certainly violent, but does it really deserve to be torn into pieces?  Frankenstein is right in the sense that it is certainly a convenient way of ending the experiment and the creature will no longer threaten anyone.  But the creature, while achieving cleverness, does not really seem to have awareness of right and wrong, just feral rage.  Frankenstein, on the other hand, actually murders at least one person (and has probably done away with many more) driven some others to death and is even at the end of the film planning more murders.  He is delusional enough to think of the murders as involuntary organ and tissue donations.  To his credit, though, Frankenstein does his best to conceal the actual murders from Simon and Sarah (thus insulating them from complete complicity).  And his affection for Sarah and Simon seems to be genuine and paternal.

Simon and Sarah are complicit in the criminal aspect of Frankenstein activities now that they are fully aware of what he's up to.   We have no idea about their level of cooperation with the Baron in the future, but they really don't have any escape.  Of course, the trio will probably rule the asylum in a more benevolent fashion than Klauss, but Frankenstein is still planning to kill more people.  That's what leaves us with a sense of unease as the film closes.  As a valedictory film in the Hammer Frankenstein franchise Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell is a fine example of non-closure.  There is no burning castle, no execution, no disastrous plunge from a great height.  There's just the eternal tinkerer going back to the drawing board to keep working on his "science."

Cast
Baron Victor Frankenstein -- Peter Cushing
Dr. Simon Helder -- Shane Briant
Adolff Klauss -- John Stratton
Sarah Klauss -- Madeline Smith
Herr Schneider, The Creature -- David Prowse
Durendel -- Charles Lloyd Pack
Tarmut -- Bernard Lee
Transient -- Michael Ward
Wild One -- Elsie Wagstaff
Ernst -- Philip Voss
Hans -- Chris Cunningham
Old Hag -- Lucy Griffiths
Muller -- Sydney Bromley
Brassy Girl -- Andrea Lawrence
Gerda -- Sheila D'Union
Smiler -- Norman Atkyns
Twitch -- Mischa De La Motte
Letch -- Victor Woolf
Mouse -- Winifred Sabine
Chatter -- Janet Hargreaves
Aggressive -- Gordon Richardson
Death Wish -- Nicholas Smith
Bodysnatcher -- Patrick Troughton
Police Sergeant -- Norman Mitchell
Judge -- Clifford Mollison
Landlord -- Jerold Wells
Coach Driver -- Peter Madden
Inmates -- Hugh Cecil, Ron Eagleton, Lianne Gilmore, Beatrice Greek, Toni Harris, Peter Macpherson

Music by James Bernard
Cinematography by Brian Probyn

Special Features
1. Commentary by Jonathan Sothcott, Madeline Smith & David Prowse
This is a gentle and genial commentary with authoritative moderation by Sothcott.   Prowse and Smith are quite affectionate and friendly and Sothcott keeps the commentary informative without being overly intrusive.  Everybody loved Peter Cushing.  Director Terence Fisher was a serious alcoholic and this was his final film.  (But he was also a very nice man.)