British

Hammer Horror - Dracula and Brides of Dracula

Part of the aim of writing this blog and of taking more notice of what I watch, is to improve my general film knowledge and to encourage me to fill in some of the gaps - whole genres and famous names that I know little or nothing about.

Sometime of course, fishing about in new genres just isn’t appealing and I’ll settle back into the safety of the Spaghetti Western or a predictably nonsense ‘horror’ film - like Attack of the Killer Shrews. Recent viewing however has seen me beginning to get to grips with classic American Film Noir (about which I’m sure I’ll write something soon) and, for this post, the wonderful world of Hammer Horror.

I’m not quite sure how on earth I’d gone for so long with very little awareness of Hammer’s output. As a firm fan of both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, with a fondness for slighly camp British horror of the last few decades, how had I never really become a Hammer fan?

Thankfully, I am now very much a Hammer fan. I bought A New Heritage of Horror by David Pirie (I.B.Tauris, £15) which, however much he tries to deny it in his introduction, is basically a history of Hammer’s film output. And none the worse for it. Much as my love of Zombie films was gently lead and guided by Jamie Russell’s Book of the Dead (Fab Press, £11), I found myself flicking through this book with a growing list of scribbled down “must-see” titles.

I started with X: The Unknown (radioactive slime crawls out from the centre of the planet and munches its way through some tasty radioactive things), Hound of the Baskevilles (Good fun adaptation) and The Devil Rides Out - which I enjoyed a lot and might have to re-watch and review)

My now fairly strong feeling that I was onto something rather wonderful was confirmed when I moved onto the Dracula series. So let’s start at the begining shall we?

Hammer’s 1958 version of Dracula is brilliant. THere are flaws a plenty but I think it’d be hard not to enjoy the film. It’s well-paced, ever-so British and it has Christopher Lee draining the blood from those around him. What’s not to like?

It was one of Hammer’s first widescreen and colour production and really does look beautiful - although the colour of the blood is decidedly more akin to strawberry than it perhaps should be. Though obviously not being produced on a massive budget, the sets are wonderful, Dracula’s Transylvanian castle is as real as you could hope for and the whole film carries its gothic mood wonderfully.

Budget constraints did force them to savage the plot somewhat (Johnathon Harker’s family now live er… right near the castle) and many elelments are missing but this doesn’t particularly hurt the film in itself. Whilst it might suffer in comparison to the novel, the story that remains is strong enough and moves along at a decent pace, aided no doubt by some brilliant acting. Christopher Lee is a perfect Dracula; just the right balance of menace, charm and pointy-teeth, whilst Cushing is brilliant in the somewhat more understated part of Van Helsing.

The film was one of Hammer’s biggest successes and sold well the world over….

….So they made some more.

Needless to say, Hammer quickly realised that having Dracula destroyed at the end of the first film wasn’t really the smartest move - they needed more vampire and they needed it now! Similarly awkward was Christopher Lee’s absence; David Pirie writes that it’s unknown whether he flat-out refused or asked for more money than Hammer could spend. Either way, he wasn’t coming back. So neither was Dracula.

Infact, the follow-up to Dracula, 1960’s The Brides of Dracula is pretty surprising as a Dracula film for er…. not having Dracula in it.

It’s still pretty good fun; Cushing returns as Van Helsing who really does just happen to be in the right place at the right time all over again and is on hand to help stop the rise of the Baron Meinster who has escaped from his perpetual confinement and has gone on a bit of a rampage, sinking his teeth into the necks of the women he meets.

It’s another good fun film, although there’s decidedly less tension to it - despite the fact that I didn’t already know the story, this Baron was so much less charismatic, so much less calm and cool, that I really did struggle to imagine him winning. Needless to say, he doesn’t.

What it loses in tension and atmosphere -especially in the second half - however, it does mostly make up for by being generally a lot of fun. And we like fun films, right?

Of course we do.

Scream and Scream Again

Scream and Scream Again? Sigh. With a name so dull can we really expect anything much from this 1970 UK horror flick? I mean, Scream and Scream again? How prosaic.

What could it possibly offer us to whet our appetites? Oh, Vincent Price is in it, you say? [One eyebrow raises…] Now there’s something, Mr Price has a bit of a reputation as horror supremo of the 60s/70s… perhaps you could tell me more?

Peter Cushing? Well I’ll be damned; not one, but two of the best horror actors to hit the screen. [Second eyebrow raises] This almost sounds worth watching: to hell with the plot, it’s got Price and Cushing in it. So… a little more info?

Christopher Lee? [Damn, no more eyebrows to raise] Christopher Lee as well? What a trio! Now I really don’t care what the plot’s about. Who could? It hardly matters at all! But, you know, since we’re here, tell me something about the actual story…

Mad scientists? CraZed killers? Genetically created Frankenstein-a-like super-beings? Shady (Soviet-in-all-but-name) foreign powers? Vats of acid?

The ingredients of this film are so good as to be almost untrue. In fact, if I’m brutally honest, the ingredients are too good; the film simply can’t live up to its summary. Though (a lot of) fun, Scream And Scream Again is sadly less than the sum of its parts. It’s as if we have several films here at once; the foreign spy adventure is treading on the heels of the police-detective thriller which in turn keeps bumping into the mad-scientist sci-fi body horror. There’s just too many films happening at once here.

Perhaps if it were made nowadays it would’ve hit the two hour mark and made the story a bit more clear with an extra 30 mins. Or, then again, perhaps there was no clear story. The disappointing thing is that this film really does feel like it should make sense; we have several characters fleshed out in detail, we have wonderful ideas and we have a really fast paced story but… it’s just too fast for its own good. Whether it was always intended to be this way or was cut down for running-time’s sake I may never know; it certainly seems as if it’s just a little too savagely edited.

All this sounds like I didn’t enjoy it. I did enjoy it. I enjoyed it immensely. From start to finish there wasn’t a single dull moment (which puts it above nearly every other film on this blog…) and I loved it. I just didn’t necessarily understand it all very well..

Price, Lee and Cushing are all as reliably smashing as you could hope for, which it makes it all the more remarkable that Alfred Marks, as Superintendant Bellaver, completely steals the show. Grumpy, rude and oh-so-British, this is a fantastic performance and one that the film would be poorer without.

If you come to watch Scream and Scream Again with expectations as high as its ambitions you will be sorely disappointed; it’s ambitions are just far too high. If you come to watch it expecting middle of the the road 70s Brit horror you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Highly recommended and good fun; just make sure you pay attention or you’ll be far too confused.

Oh, and the whacky science towards the end is just great…

The Black Windmill

Many of the films I watch can be sorted into three categoraries - there’s big, well known films (there doesn’t seem much point writing about these, there are a million film blogs outs there…), there are the criminally ignored (the ones that really should be seen by everyone but just aren’t) and then the comically bad (the weird, the low-budget and the badly directed).

Black Windmill falls into none of these categories really. It’s not very well know, it probably doesn’t deserve much greater recognition and it’s not too bad. But not too good. So just…. you know….ok?

Sometimes though, an ok film is just fine. This is well acted (Michael Caine AND Donald Pleasence!), it has a vaguely engaging story and no major problems. Sadly it’s just npwhere near as gripping as it should be.

The plot meanders along; Michael Caine is a British spy, a baddie kidnaps his son in an attempt to blackmail diamonds from the British government, things all go a bit wrong from there. It’s all well written, with twists and turns in the story - hell, if you swapped the ‘diamonds’ for a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon you’d basically have the plot of a generic episode of Spooks!

Maybe though, that’s the problem. THe material here would probably work in a tightly edited hour-long tv episode but, clocking in at 1h40, this crawls along; the surprises aren’t surprising enough and the baddies aren’t bad enough. Ho hum.

But wait! It has got Michael Caine AND Donald Pleasence in it! All is not lost. Watch it if you’re bored; if you give up halfway through you’re probably not missing much…

(I realise that this sounds quite damning - it’s not meant to be. The film is quite good. It’s just not…. terribly exciting)