Scars of Dracula (1970)

scars of dracula

Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of Hammer Studios horror films. The truth is I don’t necessarily think all their films are all that good, but there is something about them that I love anyway. They are like Classic Doctor Who in that manner.

Scars of Dracula isn’t a great film by any real measurement, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself with it anyway. I truly can’t get enough of Christophe Lee enjoying himself as Dracula.

You can read my review of this film in all of its 4K UHD glory right here.

31 Days of Horror: The Mummy (1959)

the mummy

I’ve talked about Hammer Horror numerous times in these pages. Their most famous, and arguably their best, films were when they essentially remade the classic Universal Monster Movies (Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Mummy). Hammer updated the filmmaking to 1950-1970s standards, giving them lots more violence and sex appeal, while still keeping the stories interesting and familiar. They made a lot of sequels to the three main monsters, and I’ve seen most of them, but never in order. A few weeks ago I thought it would be fun to actually watch them in order. Unfortunately, I watched the first two (Dracula, The Revenge of Frankenstein) before I decided to start writing again, and it has been too long for me to reasonably be able to talk about them now. So we’ll just begin here.

The Mummy (1932) is my least favorite of the classic Universal Monster Movies (at least of the originals; some of the later sequels are pretty bad.) And so it is with Hammer’s attempt at making a Mummy movie (the only truly good Mummy film is that one with Brendan Fraser from the 1990s).

This one has its moments, but it gets bogged down in a rather dull backstory that completely destroys any momentum the film had going for it. The plot steals most of its details from several of the sequels to the Universal Mummy movie. A couple of archaeologists are searching for the tomb of Egyptian Ananka in 1885. The father finds it and accidentally awakens Kharis (Christopher Lee) the mummified guardian of Ananka. This sends the father into a catatonic state.

He awakens three years later and tells his tale to his son, John Banning (Peter Cushing.) The Mummy will now attack all those who desecrated Ananka’s tomb. But first, an overly long backstory. The film flashes back to tell us about Kharis and his secret relationship with Ananka. Honestly, it isn’t interesting enough to delve into, but the film seems to love it.

Actually, I feel like the costume and set designers worked really hard on this section (and probably spent a lot of money on it), so the filmmakers felt they needed to make all that time and money fill the screen for a while. There is literally a parade where extras in extravagant costumes, carrying ornate props, walk across the screen for several minutes. It completely kills the momentum of the film.

Eventually, we get back to the film proper and get some good Mummy action, and it is there that the film excels. Christopher Lee’s mummy costume looks great. He mostly just moans and walks awkwardly across the screen, so I can’t say much about his acting (he is unmummified in the flashbacks, which might be why that scene is so long – Lee wanted more time on screen unwrapped). Whenever the Mummy gets shot, holes blow right through him. The effect is pretty chilling (though sadly there is no scene like you see on the poster where a light shines straight through.

Peter Cushing is great as always and the scenes where he’s battling it out with the Mummy are the best parts of the movie. The rest of it is rather dull, I’m afraid.

Still, it is definitely worth watching if you are interested in Hammer Horror. But I’d recommend the Dracula films first.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Dr. Terror’s House of Horror (1965)

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I was planning on watching The Substance tonight and writing about it. I’ve wanted to watch it since it came out. I ordered a free 7-day trial of Mubi just to watch it. I had to force myself to wait until Friday to watch it so I could make it my Friday Night Horror Movie.

Then Friday finally came. It was a long, busy day at work. I was unable to knock off early like I usually do. By the time I was done my daughter had already taken over the television upstairs in my bedroom. That’s usually where I watch my horror films these days as my wife doesn’t like them and she’s usually downstairs.

That’s where she was this evening, watching some crafting videos on YouTube. I was being blocked from watching The Substance, or any horror movie. I wound up back in my office playing games until supper.

After eating I did talk my wife into watching a movie, just not a horror movie. We watched Certified Copy, a very arthouse film about…well I’m not entirely sure what it was about, but I’ll be writing about it soon for Foreign Film February.

As it started getting late I started having little panic attacks. It was Friday Night and I’d not watched a horror movie, let alone written this article.

It was too late for The Substance as it is a bit long and I didn’t want to be up past midnight trying to write something. We are both big fans of Hammer Horror films and so I talked her into this film (which is from Amicus Productions, not Hammer, but they always treaded in the same waters).

Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors is an anthology film consisting of five short films all tied together by an encompassing story. Five men board a train in the dead of night. Just before it leaves another man (Peter Cushing in heavy makeup) joins them in their car.

He is a soothsayer, a fortune teller, and he agrees to tell everyone their future by reading his deck of Tarot Cards. Naturally, their futures are our movie.

Five stories plus introductions to them on the train all told in 98 minutes doesn’t leave much time for each story. This is one of the reasons I don’t tend to like anthologies. All you get are quick sketches of a story. The good ones leave you wanting more and the bad ones only accentuate the fact that you could have more of the good ones.

Four of the five here are pretty good and quite economical. If your story is only going to last fifteen minutes or so it needs to be slim and lean – no fat on that bone. The one bad one is all fat. It takes time for no less than three musical interludes.

Quickly here they are.

Werewolf: A man returns to his ancestral home to help the new owner with some renovations. In the basement, he discovers a coffin in a secret room and a curse. The curse is, of course, a werewolf. It comes with a nice twist ending.

Creeping Vine: A couple comes home to find a large vine growing in their garden. When they try to cut it down it attacks them back.

Voodoo: A jazz musician gets a gig in the West Indies. There he stumbles upon a voodoo ritual and digs the music. He takes the mad beats home with him and is cursed by the voodoo gods.

Disembodied Hand: By far the best story stars Christopher Lee as a snobby art critic who lambasts artists he doesn’t like (Michael Gough) resulting in his suicide. The, you guessed it, disembodied hand of the dead guy takes its revenge.

Vampire: A doctor (a young Donald Sutherland) takes his bride home only to discover she’s a vampire (the titles of these stories are pretty obvious don’t ya think?)

The film does pretty much exactly what these types of things are supposed to do. The stories all have a very basic premise and they get in and get out with economical speed. None of them are great, but most of them are quite fun, and that’s all I’m looking for.

Well, what I was really looking for was getting to watch The Substance, but this will do in a pinch. I guess I’ll be paying for a month of Mubi in order to finally watch that movie.

31 Days of Horror: House of the Long Shadows (1983)

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I’ve talked about Hammer Horror numerous times in these pages. Clearly, I’m a great fan and one of the things that makes me a fan is the actors the studio used over and over again – namely Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Those two actors make even the silliest, most ridiculous films worth watching. I don’t think Vincent Price ever made a picture for Hammer Studios, but he was starring in a lot of similar horror films around the same time. I feel the same way about him as I do about Cushing and Lee. Adoration is the word.

Put the three of them into a film together and let’s just say you have hit my horror sweet spot. It is then tough to admit that the final results of House of the Long Shadows just aren’t very good.

The setup is intriguing enough. Kenneth Magee (Desi Arnaz, Jr.) a successful young writer who is only in it for the money bets his publisher that he can write a novel of the caliber of Wuthering Heights in less than 24 hours. He only needs a secluded and quiet spot in which to do the writing. The publisher just so happens to know a manor in the Welsch countryside that will do just nicely. Upon arriving he finds the manor not so much quiet and empty as crowded with an eclectic and possibly insane, and murderous collection of weirdos (guess who plays those guys?)

But the film takes entirely too long to get going. We spend a while with the setup, with Kenneth and his publisher working out the details of the bet. Then there is a long drive (through a dark, stormy night of course) to get to the manor. We stop off at a train station to ask for directions where some strange things occur (all to establish mood of course). Then he finally arrives at the manor and it still takes far too long for everybody to be introduced. Christopher Lee doesn’t show up until 49 minutes after the opening credits.

Oftentimes the film seems to be winking at the audience as if to say “Isn’t it so cool we have all these horror legends in one place?” This is especially true at the end when it pulls a bit of a trick switch on the audience. But the film isn’t a comedy, there aren’t any jokes. It plays it all straight, but just with a slight knowing smile. As such I couldn’t take it particularly seriously, but neither was it fun to watch.

The actors, too, seem a bit bored. In the IMDB trivia, it notes that John Carradine (another great horror actor from the period) fell asleep during one of the scenes. From what’s on the screen it feels like he slept through most of them. Peter Cushing’s performance is limp. Part of that is the way the character is written and part of it is most likely Cushing was in ill health at the time. But none of the main characters give their best performances. Dezi Arnaz, Jr. is way out of his depth.

It is not that it is a terrible film for there are a few moments of interest, and it is wonderful to see those three actors working together, but it is a disappointing one. With those actors you want the film to be memorable. Instead, in a week I won’t remember I’ve seen this at all.

The Whip and the Body (1963)

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I’ve written about Mario Bava’s kinky melodramatic gothic romance before. It was a Friday Night Horror Movie last summer. But I got a nice Blu-ray copy of it this past spring and wrote another thing about it for Cinema Sentries. I always like it when I write two reviews of something many months apart. It is a fun way to see how my feelings have changed.

They didn’t change all that much with this one. I always find the visuals to be incredible, but the story to be a little lacking. You can read the Blu-ray review here and my Friday Night Horror essay here.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The City of The Dead (1960)

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Christopher Lee made well over 200 films in his storied career. Not all of them were great, of course, out of the 40 I’ve seen only a few of them are truly wonderful. But I love him just the same. From the late 1950s through the early 1960s he had a run of horror films that are just terrific. Many of them were made for Hammer Studios and I’ve talked about a few of them, but he made plenty of other films for other studios as well.

The City of the Dead was put out by British Lion Studios. It was directed by John Llewellyn Moxey who mostly did TV work (including the influential The Night Stalker in 1972). It is a slight, but evocative slice of gothic heaven.

Lee plays Alan Driscoll a history professor whose lecture on the New England witch trials intrigues his student Nan Barlow (Venetia Stevenson). Enough to make her want to take a trip there to get some first-hand sources. Driscoll recommends the small town of Whitewood and tells her to stay at the Blackbird Inn, where his name will guarantee her a room.

One fog-filled night she drives to Whitewhood. Along the way she’s warned off by an old man at a petrol station, then she picks up a creepy hitchhiker who magically disappears when she arrives and is met at the inn by the mysterious Mrs. Newless (who looks suspiciously like – and is played by the same actress, Patricia Jessell – as the woman we saw burned at the stake in the flashback sequence that begins the film).

Strange things are afoot at the Blackbird Inn.

I won’t spoil what happens next. Not that anything that happens is too surprising, the film’s plot is pretty standard stuff, but it has style to spare.

The town is in a constant state of fog creeping in. The buildings are all in disrepair, making it look ancient and decrepit. The cemetery with its crosses sticking out at odd angles sits in the center of town. The stark black-and-white photography gives it an eerie quality.

The townspeople are creepy as can be. Nan has a boyfriend back home, and a brother. She befriends one friendly lady in Whitehall. They all come looking when she goes missing, giving the film some needed action.

At just under 80 minutes in duration, it all goes down quick and smooth. I had a marvelous time watching it.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Devil Rides Out (1968)

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I am 100% a fan of Hammer Horror. I love the production designs, the sets and costumes, and the way their films looked. I love their stable of great British actors including Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. I’ve watched something like 28 of the 70 or so films the studio made in the horror genre. So again I say I am a fan.

But I have to admit, that while I love a great many things about these films, I often find them rather dull. The films look gorgeous, and there is often a wonderful amount of sex and violence for a 1960s production, but the plots often have this staidness to them. There is a lot of boring talking and exposition that takes place that just causes me to nod off.

The Devil Rides Out (or The Devil’s Bride if you prefer) kept me completely enthralled from start to finish. It is quite wonderful throughout.

Christopher Lee stars as Nicholas, Duc de Richleau (who was apparently a recurring character in a popular series of novels from 1933 to 1970) a nobleman with a sturdy education and who is well-versed in the occult.

When his friend Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) returns home from a long voyage they decide to stop at their mutual friend Simon Aron’s (Patrick Mower) house. There they are met by a strange group of people Simon calls his Astronomy Club, but whom Richleau quickly deduces is a satanic cult.

They manage to rescue him from the house but almost immediately lose him again. They rescue him a second time, this time from a Satanic Orgy/Baptismal ceremony where a goat-headed Satan has been summoned. They also rescue Tanith Carlisle (Niké Arrighi) who was also supposed to be Satanically baptized that night.

Simon and Tanith are both somewhat under the spell of the head Satanist Mocata (Charles Gray). He can sometimes mind-control them into doing things for him (and sometimes he can’t depending on the needs of the script).

It is all a bit silly, but it won me over by the power of the performances (especially Christopher Lee who is always great, but especially wonderful here). Unlike a lot of Hammer films which tend to lean into their silliness, The Devil Rides Out is completely serious in its presentation and it is all the better for it.

There is a scene in the back half of the film in which Richleau creates a circle of protection that he and his cohorts must stand in to resist the power of Mocata. It begins with most of his friends being skeptical. It is a bit silly to think a chalk circle with some Latin written in it will protect them from anything. But then there is a loud knocking on the door and the sound of Simon yelling to be let in. Then a giant spider attacks, followed by Death riding a horse. The effects are cheap and goofy, but somehow effective. By the end, everyone is terrified, including me.

It is a scene that shouldn’t work. In the hands of less competent people, it wouldn’t work. And yet it is one of my favorite scenes in all of Hammer Horror. The entire film is like that. It shouldn’t be as good as it is, but somehow it is all pulled off magnificently.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Wicker Man (1973)

The Wicker Man

A very conservative and deeply Christian police Sergeant receives a letter stating that a young girl has gone missing from a small, remote island off the coast of Scotland. He travels there by himself and discovers a strange pagan community where the children are taught about the phallic symbolization of the May Pole, where teenagers dance naked around a fire, and adults openly fornicate in a park in the evening.

The Sergeant, Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) is utterly shocked by all of this, but he’s a dutiful police officer and stays until he gets to the bottom of things. Not only are the villagers engaged in a litany of sins, but they are utterly unhelpful to his investigation. At first, they claim they have never seen the girl in their lives, but then it changes to how she was on the island but died tragically, and then…well it is best not to spoil things.

The Wicker Man has become a cult favorite and one of the premier films in the subgenre known as Folk Horror. It is also a truly strange little film. It is almost a musical as the villagers often break into goofy little folk songs and dance about (often naked). There is a very real sense of dread flooding the film. The camera is often tilted at odd angles making everything just slightly off. The villagers are ever so strange and are led by Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee is one of his most interesting performances) who seems to take glee in making the Police Sergeant feel out of sorts.

There is a scene in which a woman puts a frog inside a child’s mouth to help her with a sore throat. A shop owner has a bottle full of foreskins. Britt Ekland plays the pretty daughter of the pub proprietor and at one point she sings a silly song whilst dancing in her room stark naked as an attempt to seduce the Sergeant. She beats wildly on his wall while he, soaked in sweat attempts to resist.

It is all a bit off-putting at first, but if you can roll with what it’s doing it is a rollicking good time. Not at all scary in the traditional sense, but it creates a wonderful sort of mood.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Brides of Dracula (1960)

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Some of the best Hammer Horror films are the ones where they essentially remake the classic Universal Horror movies. Remake isn’t really the right word for the Hammer versions of the classic Universal Monsters (Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, and the Wolfman) often differ greatly from their Universal origins. The Hammer films were much more violent and sexual than the original films, and just as stylish. They all appear a bit tame by today’s standards, but realizing that many of them were made in the late 1950s and early 1960s it is fairly astounding that they got away with so much.

The Brides of Dracula is the first sequel to Horror of Dracula (1958) (they made several more). Christopher Lee was great in that one as Dracula, but he died at the end so they couldn’t put him in this sequel (he is very much missed here and so he shows up again, despite being dead, in the next movie). Peter Cushing does return as Dr. Van Helsing.

A French school teacher, Marianne (Yvonne Monlaur) takes a position at an all-girls school in Transylvania. She takes the usual rickety coach through the usual creepy woods in the usual middle of the night. When they stop off at a little village for a bite to eat, the coach driver gets spooked and abandons her.

The innkeepers fret about, warning Marianne that she can’t possibly stay the night in their village alone. Just about that time in walks Baroness Meinster (Martita Hunt). She’s old and creepy but kindly offers to put Marianne up for the night in her castle. Despite the innkeeper’s warnings, she agrees.

There she finds a strange servant and the Baroness’s son Baron Meinster (David Peel) locked in his room and chained to the wall. The Baroness warns that he is ill and maybe a bit crazy, but he’s nice to Marianne, and handsome so she unlocks him.

Of course, he’s a vampire. Of course, he pretty quickly starts turning the pretty ladies of the village into his brides and has his eyes on Marianne.

This is where Van Helsing comes in. He does his usual thing which eventually leads to a showdown with the vampire. I won’t spoil it but it has one of the best vampire kills in all of vampire moviedom.

The thing is I generally find Hammer Horror films to be slightly tedious in terms of plot and pacing. The Brides of Dracula is no different. The plot just kind of plods along. It takes ages for a vampire to show up and ages still for Van Helsing to come along. Even then the action is often broken up by too much talking.

But the real thing is that I don’t ever really mind. I love Hammer Horror movies. They always build these incredible sets and costumes. They light it spectacularly with all of these lovely reds, blues, and greens. Their films always look amazing. The men are always dressed in these fabulous suits and the women are draped in the most marvelous flouncy gowns.

I love Peter Cushing (he is so much more than Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars. He’s surprisingly athletic in this film, running and jumping all over the place. I love Christopher Lee, too and he is greatly missed in this movie (try as he might but David Peel is the palest of imitations).

So, yeah, plotwise The Brides of Dracula isn’t great, but it is so much fun to look at and watch I don’t really mind.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Taste of Fear (1961)

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On Friday nights me and the family usually go upstairs to my room and watch Doctor Who. Afterward, the wife and daughter remain in our room to watch Youtube videos, while I go downstairs and watch a horror movie. Tonight, the daughter is staying over at a friend’s house. Which leaves me and the wife here alone.

Friends, I have to admit I didn’t know what to do with myself. We were too tired and poor to really go out for a date night. It is too hot outside to go to the park or anything. So, we had a little dinner and watched a movie. Two movies, actually.

Because I am a creature of habit I could only watch a horror movie tonight. That’s just what I do on Friday nights. Also, I write this article and I couldn’t let you all down, could I? I know every single one of my readers waits for me to tell them what horror movie I watch on Friday nights. 🙂

But my wife doesn’t like horror movies. So, I had to find something she could enjoy as well. Enter Hammer Studios. They made a whole lot of horror movies in the 1960s and 1970s that are not too scary, or gore-filled but are also a lot of fun. My wife can enjoy that sort of thing, and actually quite likes Hammer Horror as a genre.

The first film we watched was Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966) which is the third film in Hammer’s Dracula series and the second to star Christopher Lee as the vampire (the second film The Brides of Dracula (1960) doesn’t actually have Dracula in it at all). It wasn’t great and since we decided to watch another film after that one, and it is actually quite good, I’ve decided to talk about it instead.

Taste of Fear (sometimes called Scream of Fear) is a wonderful bit of gothic psychological horror. It stars Susan Strasberg as Penny Appleby a wheelchair-bound heiress who has been away from home for ten years. When her father summons her she returns to his estate on the French Riviera. Strangely, when she arrives she finds that her father has just left on business. Stranger still, that night she sees a light on in the no longer used summer cottage attached to the estate. Upon investigating she finds the corpse of her father sitting in a chair.

Fleeing, she accidentally falls into the pool and knocks herself unconscious. When she awakes she is assured by everyone that it was all just a hallucination caused by fatigue and too much wine. As an avid moviegoer, I know at this point she’s being gaslit, but the reasons why are unclear.

The film has a lot of fun (very slowly) unveiling those reasons. Penny continues to see and hear things that make her believe her father is at the house, but no one will believe her. Well, almost no one. The chauffeur (Ronald Lewis) eventually does and becomes the love interest. The film gives us so many twists and turns that it is hard to know what is real and what isn’t. Just when I thought I knew what was happening the film mixed things up and I was completely surprised.

It is a bit of a slow burn, it takes its time to get interesting, but it is beautifully shot in black and white and is filled to the brim with atmosphere and mood. Once things do take off it becomes really quite wonderful.