Were I to watch only one hour of television this week it would have to be the second instalment of the three-part “A History of Horror” with Mark Gatiss which, in an episode entitled “Home Counties Horror”, focuses on the genre’s films from the 50s and 60s, an era dominated by Hammer Films. In the first programme, Mark covered the Universal pictures made in the States, in the 30s, recalling Bela Lugosi’s performance as “Dracula” and Elsa Lanchester’s seminal outing as “The Bride of Frankenstein” while, in next week’s final show, he will be exploring the US horror films of the late 60s and 70s such as “The Exorcist” and 1979’s “Dawn of the Dead” where four people, barricaded in a shopping mall, struggle to repel rampaging zombies. But Mark’s favourite period, and mine also, is the one covered in tonight’s documentary. Not only that, he also cites “Blood on Satan’s Claw”, made in 1971, as the era’s finest example and, again, I agree it is definitely amongst the best…
“Blood on Satan’s Claw”, ironically not from the studios of Hammer but from Tigon Pictures, stars Linda Hayden and concerns witchcraft and superstitions. Unlike in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible”, with which it has much in common, the fears of local villagers are well-founded as Linda, playing temptress Angel Blake, attempts to seduce popular “Doctor Who” character The Master! Yes, Anthony Ainley appears as a preacher, the Reverend Arthur Fallowfield, who gives into her naked charms inside his very church. A whole host of famous faces appear in this film. Wendy Padbury, as Cathy Vespers, is ritualistically raped. Simon Williams dons 17th century period costume as Peter Edmonton while Michele Dotrice, playing Margaret, gets away from Frank Spencer! The film is extremely seductive owing, in no small part, to the direction of Piers Haggard. He is the great grand-nephew of author H. Rider Haggard, though perhaps equally famous, in his own right, as the director of Dennis Potter’s much acclaimed television serial, with musical numbers, “Pennies From Heaven”.
Another contender for the crown of best horror movie is the Peter Sasdy-directed “Taste the Blood of Dracula” from 1970 which, like “Blood on Satan’s Claw”, stars Linda Hayden as well as a certain Christopher Lee! You guessed, this one’s a Hammer horror… I did at one time know more about this studio’s films than I did “Doctor Who” simply because they were oft-repeated while I was growing up. I especially love their vampire movies and “Taste the Blood of Dracula” is the fourth in their seven-film “Dracula” cycle. Dracula doesn’t actually get to say much, except count the number of his victims, but boy is this film sensually erotic. It details three bored hypocritical aristocrats, including Geoffrey Keen from the “James Bond” films and Peter Sallis from long running sitcom “Last of the Summer Wine”, seeking ever-extreme thrills until, one night, they take on more than they bargained for in the crypt of a church. Plenty of heaving bosoms but little nudity, it is in fact James Bernard’s music score which delivers the romance with such beautifully-orchestrated melodic punch. Linda Hayden, as Alice Hargood, is the heroine to die for. I’d quite happily be bitten by her, anytime!
Finally, I would suggest another Hammer movie for the aforementioned title. It’s also another vampire film although with John Hough’s “Twins of Evil”, made in 1971, the inspiration isn’t from the pen of Bram Stoker but J Sheridan Le Fanu, albeit interpreted rather loosely. It’s one of a trilogy of films centring on the legend of the Countess Mircalla and my favourite movie to feature the much-missed Peter Cushing. Here, though, he isn’t playing Van Helsing but a witch hunter called Gustav Weil, rather in the mould of “The Witchfinder General”. The beauty of this film is in the blurring of the lines between who is the hunter and who the hunted. Good and evil are Twins of the same coin when both lead to the deaths of innocent young women (if there is such a thing!). The title, taken more literally, stars real life twins and “Playboy” playmates Mary and Madeleine Collinson, as Maria and Frieda Gellhorn, who, while undoubtedly beautiful, aren’t exactly the world’s finest actresses. The incidental music strangely makes the film feel like a western at times and, amongst the many delights on offer, concludes with the gruesome decapitation of one of the sisters! But, which one?
Following Mark’s programme on BBC Four, there is an increasingly rare chance to see the fifty-year-old Hammer film “Brides of Dracula”. Despite the title, Dracula does not appear but when a beautiful young teacher unwittingly frees the mysterious Baron Meinster, he turns the students of a school for girls into vampires. And with a synopsis like that, “Brides of Dracula” is definitely ripe for a remake! “St. Trinian’s” with fangs!! Actually, in my younger days, when one of the brides escapes the confines of her coffin and advances upon a possible victim pleading “Let me kiss you”, it scared the hell out of me. Also showing later this week, on the same channel, is Brian Donlevy in “The Quatermass Xperiment” in which the sole survivor of a British rocket’s crash is revealed to pose a deadly alien threat. At the weekend you can catch the Tigon Picture most claim is their best, apart from Mark and myself, the previously mentioned “The Witchfinder General”, filmed in 1968. It’s a disturbing tale of evil, set during the English Civil War, telling the story of Matthew Hopkins, Oliver Cromwell’s Witchfinder General as portrayed by that other bastion of horror Vincent Price. And, if you can’t get enough of Mr Gatiss, in his capacity as an actor he can be seen in a new adaptation of HG Wells’s science fiction classic “The First Men in the Moon” tomorrow evening. With a playful new twist on the original, beginning with the Apollo astronauts set to land on the Moon in 1969, an old man tells of how he and a professor were first there in 1909!
