TORTURE GARDEN

1967/Director: Freddie Francis/Writer: Robert Bloch

Cast: Jack Palance, Burgess Meredith, Beverly Adams, Peter Cushing, Maurice Denham, Barbara Ewing, Robert Hutton, Michael Ripper

I remember the first Amicus film I ever saw was Tales from the Crypt on late night TV. I had always been intrigued by the film’s poster art which I saw on one of the issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland. That film and Vault of Horror typify the Amicus approach to many of their pictures as they were patterned after the EC comics of the same name. There are usually four or maybe five stories linked together in some fashion and sometimes featuring a host. In the case of Torture Garden the host is the sinister sideshow carny Dr. Diablo played to the hilt by Burgess Meredith. This sort of story telling –called portmanteau- was certainly not invented by Amicus and probably goes back to the 1945 film Dead of Night. Of course there is the classic Black Sabbath from 1963 by Mario Bava, one of my all-time favorite films, with three supernatural yarns woven together by host Boris Karloff. But the format would become practically synonymous with Amicus though they did produce feature length films as well. Some of their excellent feature films included the atmospheric City of the Dead, The Beast Must Die and At the Earth’s Core. It can be easy to think that you’re watching a Hammer film when watching an Amicus production. The style is often visually similar –though the Amicus stories and settings are less Gothic than Hammer’s– and often the cast and crew included many Hammer notables. Like Hammer Amicus was a British production company though it was founded and ran by two Americans, producer Milton Subotsky and screenwriter Max Rosenberg. Torture Garden lacked Christopher Lee –a decision made by the American producers who felt he did not have box-office power and replaced him with Jack Palance– but was capably directed by Oscarwinning cinematographer and Hammer director Freddie Francis. Francis also directed the first Amicus portmanteau Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors as well as Taled from the Crypt. Hammer institution Michael Ripper has a small but vital role and the film’s final and best story features Peter Cushing. And if you read the credits –like I do looking for some familiar name  in the music or make-up department- you will see that the film’s score was composed by James Bernard who did some of the best Hammer soundtracks. In fact during the 60’s it is hard to find a good Hammer film that Bernard did not score.

MORE AMICUS HORROR IN TORTURE GARDEN HERE >>

I am making my second horror book now that I am about half way through with my history Jack Hill’s exploitation style cinema. The Jack Hill book was very informative and gave he in an insight that I did not have before into the world of low budget film making and in particular with working with Roger Corman. I would definitely like to find the Roger Corman auto-biography How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime in PDF format. Well my next hmemade book project is a hefty one at 313 pages and yet worth it. It is A History of Horrors: The Rise and Fall of the House of Hammer. I can’t wait to get it bound up and sit back and read through it and then provide some articles on what I learn. I may have to do some posts that add some new information to some of the many Hammer posts I have already done here. I also have collected almost every Hammer film ever made here and have them scattered about on several DVD discs. I just enjoy those films so much and have seen many of them several times. Some I have yet to actually see – such as The Stranglers of Bombay and Maniac – and look forward to some viewing as soon as I get through the movies I am watching now. I should say while I am the topic of movies I am watching that I have watched quite a few Vincent Price films in the last few months and have yet to write one blasted post on the man or his films. I will have to correct that situation soon. So in the mean time I lifted some images from the PDF of A History of Horrors and will share those with you. I left the text to the images so the context can be explained. I am sure most of these have never been seen online before. Most show behind the scenes activities or dinner parties for the Hammer bigwigs.

UPDATE: Got the book made today and thought I would post the cover to it. Again, like the Jack Hill book, it cost me about .50 to print as we used our own paper and printer to print it out. This is a great book and of course it would nice to own the real thing, but that is not going to happen here in China. Here are some scans of the covers. I had to make a cover in Word Doc for the fibery cover the printing places use and then put a color cover on the inside. The quality is pretty good.

IMAGES FROM A HISTORY OF HORRORS

MORE RARE PICTURES FROM THE HISTORY OF HAMMER FILMS >>

TODAY’S EXPLOITATION FEATURE FROM GERMANY

HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND

SEE HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND HERE! IF YOU DARE! >>

SCARS OF DRACULA

1970/Director: Roy Ward Baker/Writers: Anthony Hinds as John Elder

Cast: Christopher Lee, Dennis Waterman, Jenny Hanley, Christopher Matthews, Patrick Troughton, Michael Gwynn, Michael Ripper, Wendy Hamilton, Anouska Hempel

For people who say that this is the worst Hammer Dracula film ever made they must have stopped at this 1970 feature and never checked out Dracula A.D. 1972 and then The Satanic Rites of Dracula, the last of the Hammer Dracula features. This is the last of the Hammer series to feature the Count in a Gothic setting however. In this one the Count is back in Transylvania and the continuity the series had followed fairly well over the last three films (Dracula: Prince of Darkness, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave and Taste the Blood of Dracula) is jarred by the fact that at the end of Taste the Count is left a pile of powdery, desiccated blood in London. Scars does have the Count start off as powdery blood but there are some  gaps here that leave the last story dangling. How did the powdered blood get to Translyvania and into Dracual’s secure chamber, accessable only from the castle wall overlooking a steep cliff? Earlier features spent a good portion of the early story explaing how Dracula returns from the dead but this one sort of bypasses all that and simply has a bat vomit blood on the red powder. Why? Where did the blood gorged bat come from and how did Dracula control it? We will never know.  The film was shot on a skimpy budget and shot quickly. It was released, sometimes on a double bill with Horror of Frankenstein, only a few months after Taste the Blood of Dracula. It was director Roy Ward Baker’s first stab at a Gothic film and the absence of such maestros of the style like Terence Fisher or Freddie Francis is sorely felt. But to be honest Ward does the best he can with a script that offers very little in the way of something new to add to the series and a small budget and tight schedule. He just does not have the flair that Terence Fisher had but those are pretty big shoes to try and fill in the first place.

MORE OF SCARS OF DRACULA HERE >>

FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN

1967/Director: Terence Fisher/Writer: Anthony Hinds

Cast: Peter Cushing, Susan Denberg, Thorley Walters, Robert Morris, Duncan Lamont

Frankenstein Created Woman is the fourth of the Hammer Frankenstein films and sees the return of Terence fisher as director after a brief absence from the helm while Freddie Francis directed The Evil of Frankenstein. Anthony Hinds is back as script writer under the familiar pseudonym John Elder. We will get to The Evil of Frankenstein another day as I will eventually get all the Hammer Frankenstein efforts reviewed then move on to the Dracula films. But I did want to clear something up that puzzled me for a while regarding the film Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell. In that film I made the error of stating in my review of that film that Baron Frankenstein shows the damage he received at the end of Frankenstein Must Be destroyed. I was recalling that from memory and I am far from an expert on the films but it would seem that in Frankenstein Created Woman Frankenstein already shows some damage to his hands. We may infer from this that the injuries were received at the end of 1964’s The Evil of Frankenstein when the castle burns down and then explodes (like in the James Whale version) though it not shown or explained. Anyway, I always wondered about his hands in that film and need to go back and rewatch Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, a fine Terence fisher film as well, and see if his hands are gloved in that one.

MORE FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN HERE >>

EYES WITHOUT A FACE (Les Yeux Sans Visage)

1960/Director: Georges Franju/Writers: Jean Redon, Pierre Boileau

Cast: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Juliette Mayniel, Edith Scob, François Guérin, Alexandre Rignault, Béatrice Altariba

I cannot say honestly that I have seen much French cinema. I went through a phase almost a couple decades ago where I watched a batch by the big names like Jean-Luc Goddard and Francois Truffaut but other than the Truffaut film The 400 Blows I can’t remember any of that stuff. I do now recall I saw Goddard’s Breathless and it was so much better than the remake with Richard Gere. I guess the only French filmmaker I may follow at all would be Jean Rollin. Well I had read about the film Yeux Sans Visage for a while and had had it on disk for months before I was in the mood one night for some Euro-fare. I did not expect too much going into the film other than maybe some nice black and white cinematography and loads of spacey acting. I am happy to report that I was surprised by this film and it deserves the praises it normally receives in reviews. The cinematography was great as was the score by Maurice Jarre and the acting was down to earth and believable. I mean, for a French film. I am not into the European ‘existential’ school of depressed method acting. For example like Catherine Deneuve in Polanksi’s Repulsion. Damn, I can’t finish that film no matter how hard I try. I guess depression is scary. I mean just watch Woody Allen’s Interiors. That’s some scary stuff!

MORE EYES WITHOUT A FACE HERE >>

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GIALLO

2009/Director: Dario Argento/Writers: Jim Agnew, Dario Argento

Cast: Adrien Brody, Emmanuelle Seigner, Elsa Pataky, Robert Miano, Byron Deidra

God knows I have tried to like Dario Argento. His name pops up everywhere in the horror world and yet I have to admit I have cared for very little he has ever done. His sycophantic supporters say that even if his newer work is weak we must acknowledge the genius of his ‘high period’ when he helped to usher in the great giallo films of the late 60’s and early 70’s as well as his unique brand of horror. And that may well be unarguable. Some of his films from the period, that I have seen, are Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Tenebre, Deep Red, Suspiria, and Phenomenon. While these are classics of some sort, I guess, I have to admit that  all of these films are some of the most confusing and haphazard movies I have ever sat down to watch. When the killer and her motives is finally revealed in Deep Red (some minor female character who had about two or three minutes of screen time earlier in the film) I was so disappointed. Not to say that that is a reason to pan a film and not see it but I seem to missing something that hordes of other people are getting and don’t know what it is. Why is Deep Red (Profundo Rosso) considered to be one of the great giallo films of the 70’s? It is a mediocre film at best. One defense I have read of Argento (and most Italian giallo and horror in general) is that one must not look for a linear story in the Hollywood fashion and instead you have to let yourself go along with the surreal quality of the film and receive its messages on an almost unconscious level.  One is to not watch and analyze the film as a whole but you have look for those special moments that cannot be found in any other genre. I am not sure about all that but as time has gone on I have to admit I have developed a liking for Italian horror and suspense films I did not have when I was younger. I liked Italian post war dramas and pepla and spaghetti westerns for some reason but was confused by Italian horror until I explored Mario Bava’s work. Then I read that Bava was an inspiration for Argento and the men even worked together on some projects at the end of Bava’s career. I decided there had to be something there my Cro-magnon mind could not fathom. Years later I finally concluded some of the stuff is okay after all though I can still be at a loss and typically cannot finish an Italian made horror or crime film in one setting.

MORE GIALLO HERE >>