Dracula A. D. 1972 (1972)

By the early 60s it was becoming obvious that the traditional vampire movie had been to death, so to speak. A new twist was needed to keep audiences interested, and the obvious move was to transplant the vampire into the modern world. Hence’s Hammer’s Dracula A.D. 1972.

In fact there had already been several vampires in the modern world movies. AIP’s Count Yorga, Vampire and Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos being the obvious examples. These movies had dealt with modern vampires, vampires who were quite comfortable in the modern world. There was another way to approach this problem, however, which was to have a traditional gothic vampire suddenly transported into a modern world that he understands nothing of. Since Hammer were unwilling to abandon their Dracula cycle and the proven box-office appeal of Christopher Lee as the Count this was the approach they were always going to take.

So we have Dracula resurrected in London in 1972 by an occult-obsessed hippie and vampire fanboy named Johnny Alucard. Johnny and his friends are looking for new thrills. So a black mass in a conveniently deconsecrated church seems like it might be groovy fun. Unfortunately Johnny’s friends don’t realise he’s serious about this stuff, and he just happens to have everything needed to bring the dreaded Count Dracula back to life (one of his ancestors was present when the Count was staked in 1872). All he needs now is some blood. And a beautiful young woman for Dracula to snack on when he’s brought back to life. Laura (Caroline Munro) is a fun-loving girl and eagerly volunteers, thinking it will be kinky fun.

Now Dracula is on the loose in London. Except he isn’t on the loose at all. He’s holed up in the abandoned church and can’t leave it. The reason he can’t leave the church is never stated but it’s obvious it’s because he knows nothing about this strange new world. He has no idea how to operate in such a world.

In fact things are even worse for the Count than he thinks. What he hasn’t yet realised is that this time he is the hunted. The grand-daughter of the famed authority on all things occult, Professor van Helsing (Peter Cushing), is one of Johnny Alucard’s little friends and now the professor knows that the ancient vampire has returned once more and being a van Helsing he knows his duty. And this time all the advantages are on van Helsing’s side. Dracula doesn’t yet know it but he’s a trapped animal, a gothic monster in a world that is much more scary than he is, a world in which he cannot hope to survive.

This is the least terrifying incarnation of Dracula ever. He is utterly ineffectual. He is in the unpleasant position of needing his disciple Johnny Alucard more than Johnny needs him. When Johnny demands to be made a vampire Dracula has little choice but to acquiesce. It would obviously be far more advantageous to keep Johnny under control by constantly promising him this gift without ever actually giving it but it’s Johnny who has the whip hand. Johnny (played with considerable elan by Christopher Neame) is the real monster here. With both vampiric powers and an understanding of how the world of 1972 works he is potentially far more formidable and far more dangerous than a Dracula cowering in his lair in the abandoned church.

I don’t know if writer Don Houghton intended Dracula to be so helpless or if he was even aware that he had made the Count into a victim. If so he may well have considered it to be a weakness in the script. And most viewers of the movie have seen the fairly minor and less than terrifying role played by Dracula to be a major weakness. I think it’s the most interesting thing about the movie. You almost feel sorry for Dracula - he never seems to have a chance.

The movie itself is in a similar situation to the Count - it’s a traditional vampire movie transplanted into a world it doesn’t comprehend. Screenwriter Don Houghton (who was in his early 40s at the time) is clearly as mystified and as horrified by 1970s youth culture as Dracula is. Director Alan Gibson was somewhat younger (he was 34) but also just a little too old to understand the hippie culture. Their attempts to give the movie a with-it contemporary feel are ludicrously wide of the mark but this is a key part of the movie’s campy charm.

Mention must be made of the music. Not the songs performed by the rock group Stoneground in the beginning, but the music composed by Michael Vickers for the movie. The music is always intrusive, almost always inappropriate, and at times it almost sees designed to actively work against the movie.

Christopher Lee has very little screen time. The film is dominated by Peter Cushing as van Helsing and Christopher Neame as Johnny Alucard and they’re both intense and charismatic and generally extremely good. Stephanie Beacham is van Helsing’s grand-daughter and shows considerable spirit in delivering some extraordinarily cringe-inducing dialogue. Caroline Munro’s role is small but memorable for her ecstatic facial expression when Dracula puts the bite on her. Munro always manages to make an impression even in a minor and fairly thankless role such as this one.

It’s very tame by early 70s standards - you can’t help feeling it might have done better with just a bit more in the sex and violence department.

I would never be rash enough to claim this is a good movie but if you’re prepared to accept it as a piece of silly high camp nonsense then it’s remarkably entertaining.

The Reptile (1966)

I’m going to be revisiting some lesser known Hammer movies in the next few weeks. First up is one of my favourites, The Reptile.

In 1966 John Gilling directed two movies for Hammer, both making good use of their Cornish settings and with a considerable overlap of cast and crew. Plague of the Zombies is the more highly regarded of this Cornwall duology (and it’s a great movie) but I have a definite soft spot for The Reptile.

Captain Harry Spalding (Ray Barrett) arrives in Cornwall with his new wife to take possession of his late brother’s cottage, Larkrise. Charles Spalding had died suddenly of a heart attack despite having no history of heart problems.

The locals seem not just sullen and unfriendly but also very uncomfortable in the presence of their new neighbours. Perhaps more than uncomfortable, perhaps even afraid. No-one is willing to talk to him, apart from the publican Tom Bailey (Michael Ripper). From Tom he discovers the story of the series of mysterious and terrifying deaths that have occurred in the village. Mr and Mrs Spalding also make the acquaintance of Mad Peter (John Laurie). When Mad Peter turns up at the cottage obviously dying and displaying horrifying symptoms they realise that the stories of mysterious deaths are more than just stories.

Even more disturbing are the inhabitants of the big house not far from the cottage, Dr Franklyn (Noel Willman) and his daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pearce). Dr Franklyn is a theologian who has spent years travelling through the east researching obscure religious cults. The atmosphere between Dr Franklyn and his daughter seems extremely tense and he seems to be excessively strict with her although he assures Mr and Mrs Spalding that he has very good reasons for his actions. Anna is an exotic beauty who seems oddly child-like and yet at the same time possessing a disturbing erotic quality, and is very fond of animals (although in a way that makes us just a little uneasy).

Anna seems keen to befriend the Spaldings while her father seems anxious not to allow any intimacy to grow up between them. Things come to a head when Captain Spalding receives a plaintive note from Anna and decides he must rescue her. He will find that things are not quite as they appear.

Mad scientist movies in which the mad scientist isn’t really evil but has simply succumbed to the temptation of pursuing scientific knowledge of things That Should Not Be Known are fun but commonplace. This is an interesting variation - a mad theologian who has fallen prey to the temptation of pursuing religious knowledge of things That Should Not Be Known. I’m especially fond of stories of strange evils brought back from the Mysterious East and this is a particularly good example of the breed.

While there isn’t much in the way of visceral horror in this movie it scores highly when it comes to the atmosphere which is nicely overheated, with suggestions of forbidden things.

Jacqueline Pearce doesn’t get enough screen time but she makes good use of what she gets, especially in her little musical entertainment for her dinner guests where she hints at a subtly perverse eroticism. Of course a few years later as Servalan in Blake's 7 she would show just how perversely erotic she could be. Her performance is one of the strengths of The Reptile.

The acting is in fact generally good. Ray Barrett makes a perfectly acceptable baffled but noble hero while Jennifer Daniel shows plenty of spirit as his wife Valerie. Noel Willman is creepy but not entirely unsympathetic. Dr Franklyn is not evil but he’s made one huge mistake and he’s never going to be able to escape the consequences. Michel Ripper gets a more substantial part than usual and as always he’s great fun.

The makeup effects are often regarded as the film’s weak point but I think they’re reasonably effective.

All in all it’s an underrated Hammer offering and well worth seeking out. The DVD release is still in print and it’s a solid transfer.

Octopussy (1983)

Octopussy was Roger Moore’s sixth outing as James Bond. But this time he was clearly too old for the role, but it scarcely matters. He has enough self-confidence, and sheer bravado, to carry him through.

This time Bond is up against three different enemies, all with very different agendas.

Initially what we have is a mystery involving a Fabergé egg, presumed to have belonged to the Russian Imperial family and now being offered for auction at Sotheby’s. But a fake Fabergé egg, an exact replica of this one, has just turned up in the hands of a dead British secret agent. And an exiled Afghan prince, Kamal Khan, is for some reason prepared to pay much much more than the egg is actually worth. He obviously must have the egg, but why?

Bond is off to India, where Prince Kamal Khan (Louis Jourdan) now lives in considerable slendour. The trail will lead Bond to the mysterious and beautiful Octopussy (Maud Adams), a fabulously wealthy woman who has what is effectively her own island queendom, inhabited entirely by gorgeous women. As you might expect, Bond is not displeased at the idea of infiltrating Octopussy’s island realm.

Octopussy has varied business interests, some of them legal. They range from diamond smuggling to circuses. Her circus is perhaps more of a hobby, but it will prove to be important.

But Kamal Khan and Octopussy are just two of the three players in this game. The third is an insane Russian general who believes the Soviet Union still has a chance of turning the Cold War into a hot war and winning. He has a scheme to do just that, and that’s where Octopussy’s circus comes in.

If you think it sounds like the plot has a bit too much going on you’re probably right but in the end it works pretty well. As usual in a Bond film there are exotic locations and they’re used extremely well. The Indian sequences are splendid, with a wonderful rickshaw case and then the piece de resistance, with Kamal Khan and his cronies mounted on elephants hunting Bond through the jungle.

And of course circuses always work in movies, and so do trains, and this one has both. In fact it has more than enough to keep any reasonable viewer entertained.

Casting Louis Jourdan as an Agfhan prince might have seemed a bit of a stretch but while he doesn’t look very much like an Agfhan prince he’s still perfect for the role. Although best known as a suave romantic leading man Jourdan was in fact rather good at playing charming evil (he was an excellent Dracula in the 1977 BBC -TV adaptation). He has a lot of fun with his role as a Bond villain.

This was the second appearance by Maud Adams as a Bond girl. She’s suitably glamorous. By this time Desmond Llewelynn as Q had become an institution in the Bond films and despite being nearly 70 he gets a fairly active role this time around, even getting to pilot a hot air balloon.

This was the first Bond movie made after Bernard Lee’s death so we get a new actor as M, Robert Brown. Sadly he makes very little impression.

Octopussy is not my favourite of the Moore Bond films but it’s still a delightfully entertaining movie, and it’s still classic Bond.

Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (1963)

Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (Maciste, l'eroe più grande del mondo) is a rather good example of the peplum genre, and (rather unusually for this genre) with a very satisfactory DVD presentation, from Retromedia.

The people of Neffer were defeated in war by the Babylonians, and have paid a high price for their defeat. Each year they must send thirty of their most beautiful virgins to Babylon as tribute. as you might expect they’re not terribly happy about this situation.

Actually doing something about it is another matter. The young men of Neffer are brave and willing to fight, but as anyone who has ever watched one of these movies knows they will have little chance of success unless the have the services of a bona fide hero. Luckily, just such a hero happens to be available, in the person of Goliath (given the original Italian title of the film it’s pretty obvious that the hero is actually Maciste, but one muscle-bound hero is as good as another).

Director Michele Lupo provides us with some impressive action sequences, and we also have a worthy action hero star in the person of Mark Forest.

The sea battle scenes and the chariot races are quite spectacular. This is a movie that certainly looks more expensive than it was.

Most importantly, the movie is presented in the correct Techniscope 2.35:1 aspect ratio. It’s not a perfect print, but it’s pretty good, and definitely qualifies as one of the best DVD transfers I’ve seen in this sadly neglected genre.

The English dubbed soundtrack is acceptable if not fantastic.

Retromedia have included a second movie as a bonus feature. Sadly this one is a fullscreen transfer but since it’s a bonus feature one can’t complain too much.

Goliath and the Sins of Babylon is enormous fun and is really a must-buy if you’re a fan of this genre.

The Dunwich Horror (1970)

Despite his immense cult popularity H. P. Lovecraft has tended to be avoided by horror film-makers. And for obvious reasons. Translating the horrors described so memorably in his gloriously purple prose into visual images entails an incredibly high risk that the results will look silly and unconvincing and will provoke laughter rather than chills.

A.I.P.’s 1970 Lovecraft flick The Dunwich Horror sounds at first like an incredibly bad idea. Combining Lovecraft with psychedelia in a contemporary setting will surely end up looking very very silly indeed. Even worse, they were going to try doing this on a very low budget, with Roger Corman as executive producer keeping a very tight hold on the purse-strings. In fact it not only works remarkably well, it’s probably the most satisfactory movie adaptation of Lovecraft ever made.

A rather disturbing young man wanders into the Miskatonic University library and announces that he’d like to borrow their most prized possession, the famed (or rather infamous) Necronomicon. The most evil and dangerous book ever written. His interest in the book seems even more worrying when it’s discovered that he is Wilbur Whately (Dean Stockwell), of the notorious (and feared) Whately family. His great-grandfather had been lynched, ostensibly for a murder but in fact he had been trying to bring back the Great Old Ones, ancient and malevolent creatures from another dimension who had ruled the Earth aeons ago.

Could Wilbur be planning something similar? And what of the stories of Wilbur’s mysterious birth, the alleged still-birth of his brother, the madness of his mother and the terrifying possibility that Wilbur’s father was not exactly human. The townspeople are very much afraid of Wilbur, and of his crazy grandfather (Sam Jaffe). No girl from the town would ever go out with Wilbur. So it comes as a surprise that pretty young student Nancy Wagner (Sandra Dee) should not only offer to drive Wilbur home to Dunwich, but that she should decide to stay for the weekend.

Dr Henry Armitage (Ed Begley) is the university’s resident expert on the Necronomicon. He knows all about the Great Old Ones, and he knows all about the Whatelys. He has his suspicions as to Wilbur’s intentions towards Nancy, and those suspicions don’t involve romantic walks on the beach. They involve sinister rituals and sexual congress with tentacled aliens.

Nancy has in fact been drugged by Wilbur, but even without this he appears to exert a strange hold over her. Other women find him creepy but she is oddly fascinated, a fascination that may well involve some kind of occult mind-control. She starts to have dreams, psychedelic dreams with sexual overtones (and Nancy is clearly not a girl who is especially comfortable with the subject of sex). Dreams of being pursued by hordes of half-naked hippies (and surely there can be no horror to equal the horror of half-naked hippies). Nancy’s friend Elizabeth, Dr Armitage and the town doctor are all determined to save her from a fate that will clearly be a good deal worse than death, but will they be too late? Can Wilbur be prevented from bringing back the gods of old?

The movie works to a large extent because director Daniel Haller had been Corman’s art director for years. He was accustomed to finding ways of producing striking visual images on the cheap. He had a fine sense of visual style. And he’d absorbed valuable lessons from working with Corman - he understood the importance of keeping things moving, of always having something interesting happening.

The effects at times rely too much on solarisation but mostly they are remarkably effective. The wind effects are especially good. And the truly frantic cutting not only provides the right level of disorientation, it also cleverly means we never see an image for long enough to notice how cheap it is or how unconvincing the monsters might be. Haller only ever allows us the briefest glimpses of the monsters so we can readily believe they’re a lot more terrifying than they actually are. This is always a sound method in low-budget films and Haller does it superbly.

The movie also benefits from a truly inspired piece of casting. Dean Stockwell’s absolutely flat delivery of his lines, the extreme creepiness he brings to the character, and the sense that he’s not really part of our universe at all, that his mind is off somewhere else, a long way off - all this adds up to a brilliantly effective performance.

Sandra Dee is quite good. This is a long way from Gidget but she comes across as a repressed virgin which makes it quite plausible that she’s exactly the type of woman Wilbur would be looking for. Ed Begley is great fun, and Sam Jaffe is wonderfully crazed.

Even the decision to add sex, which at first seems rather un-Lovecraftian, works surprisingly well. There might not be sex in Lovecraft but there’s certainly perversity and the sexual elements added to the story help in this regard. They make the townspeople’s horror of the Whately’s much more comprehensible. The movie definitely has a genuine Lovecraftian feel.

Modern audiences who expect CGI and gore won’t understand this movie at all. But if you value atmosphere and weirdness more than gore you’ll love this one. Lovecraft and psychedelia certainly works for me.

The Hunger (1983)

The Hunger was a movie that sharply divided both critics and horror fans at the time of its release. It was accused of being a triumph of style over substance. Perhaps it is, but with this much style who needs substance?

Tony Scott, like his brother Ridley Scott, had a background in TV commercials and it shows. The Hunger was criticised for its supposedly MTV-style cutting, and was also seen as a filmic manifestation of 80s excess. So negative was the movie’s reception that it was several years before Tony Scott could get another director’s gig.

There is some truth in all of these criticisms, but what really matters is - does the film work? The answer to that has to be yes. In fact in retrospect the idea of combining the decadence of vampires (blood-sucking parasitical creatures who never age) with the decadent excesses of the 80s (and what were the yuppies if they weren’t blood-sucking parasitical creatures desperately trying not to age) was a stroke of genius.

And if Tony Scott leant his craft making TV commercials, who cares? If that industry can produce people with as much visual flair as Scott displays in this film then more power to the TV commercial industry.

And to be honest the accusation of lack of substance is really not very fair. This is an unconventional vampire movie packed with more good ideas than most 80s horror movies. And while the plot is sometimes overshadowed by the visual extravagances it does most certainly have a plot.

Miriam (Catherine Deneuve) and John (David Bowie) are a rather arty and very sophisticated couple living in New York. They teach music, but clearly they don’t need the money. They do so for the love of music.

Miriam is also a vampire. One of the strengths of this move is that doesn’t try to over-explain the characters’ backstories or the particular variation on the vampire mythos that forms the basis of the story. It avoids lengthy and cumbersome exposition. We are given hints, and that’s enough. One thing that is clear is that Miriam is almost unimaginably old, that she has probably survived since the days of ancient Egypt. She appears to be effectively immortal. She is a very beautiful woman in her late 30s, and she has been
a very beautiful woman in her late 30s for several thousand years.

Of course being immortal has its downside - loneliness. If you are immortal and you fall in love with a mortal you must watch your lover grow old and die. For Miriam there is a solution to this, but it’s only a partial solution. She can create new vampires to provide her with companionship, but there’s a problem. While Miriam is immortal, these vampiric creations of hers are not quite true vampires. Like her they feed on human blood, and they are immortal in a sense. But Miriam is not just immortal - she is entirely immune to the ageing process. These creations of hers are only partly immune to ageing. They remain young for centuries, but then they start to age and they age very rapidly indeed. But the true horror is, they age but they don’t die.

John has been her companion since the eighteenth century. He had been a beautiful young man, she had fallen in love with him, and she had offered him her gift - the gift of living for centuries and remaining as beautiful as ever, but with the knowledge that it might not last forever. As was the case with all her other lovers Miriam prayed that this time it might really last forever.

Now Miriam believes science may hold the answer. Dr Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon) and her team are working on the theory that ageing is a disease and it’s potentially curable.

Miriam’s tragedy is that while she might be some strange not-quite-human creature who must kill in order to survive, emotionally and sexually she is a completely normal woman. What she wants is a love that will fast forever, and while it seems impossible she must still keep trying. If John cannot be saved she must find a replacement, because Miriam is a woman who cannot live without love. Now she has a eye on Sarah Roberts as a replacement (Miriam being a bisexual vampire).

While David Bowie was probably the big box-office draw in this film it’s Catherine Deneuve who is unquestionably the star. She manages to make Miriam both subtly other-worldly and yet still very much a woman.

That’s not to say that David Bowie isn’t good. In fact he’s superb, but his role is more of a supporting role. What I like about his performance is a certain formality about his manners, very subtle done but it makes it believable that he really is a man of the eighteenth century. It’s little touches like that show just how good an actor he is.

The weak link is Susan Sarandon. Apart from the fact that her acting simply isn’t in the same league as Deneuve’s or Bowie’s the character of Sarah Roberts is not all that interesting. It’s easy to understand why a woman as cultured and sophisticated as Miriam would want to spend centuries with John Blaylock (Bowie). He’s a man who is obviously worthy of her. But it’s difficult to understand why she’s want to spend ten minutes with Sarah Roberts. Susan Sarandon just doesn’t have the class to make Miriam’s obsession convincing.

That’s a minor quibble. This is still one of the most interesting and stylish of all vampire movies, and I recommend it very highly indeed.

I should also mention the opening sequence, with Bauhaus performing their classic Bela Lugosi’s Dead. It’s also worth pointing out the influence that photographer Helmut Newton had on the style of this movie. Another nice touch is that their are no fangs in evidence - these vampires use rather elegant little knives in the shape of an Egyptian ankh.

3 Bullets for Ringo (1966)

3 Bullets for Ringo (3 colpi di Winchester per Ringo, AKA Three Graves for a Winchester) won’t appeal to all spaghetti western fans. The key to enjoying this movie is to release that although it certainly looks like a spaghetti western that’s not quite what it is.

The hero of this movie, Ringo, isn’t really a western hero. He’s more akin to the heroes of an Italian Hercules or Maciste movie. Like the heroes of peplums he is in effect a superhuman hero, someone with powers beyond those of ordinary mortals.

It takes a while to figure this out, but then you notice that twenty bad guys just fired at Ringo and they all missed, then he drew his two six-shooters and shot all twenty bad guys. Without reloading. In fact even though he fires literally thousands of rounds during the course of the movie Ringo never once reloads his guns. Of course six-shooters with unlimited ammunition supplies are seen in some early B-westerns and western serials, but this movie takes it to an extreme. It could be annoying, but then the penny drops that realism plays no part in this movie and that it’s really more like a fantasy film.

Director Emimmo Salvi actually started his brief career making peplums and when you find that out it pretty much confirms the suspicion that what he’s doing here is a peplum with six-guns.

The plot is also filled with absurdities which make more sense if you treat it as part spaghetti western and part heroic fantasy. Ringo Carson (Mickey Hargitay, best known today for having been married to Jayne Mansfield) and Frank Sanders (Gordon Mitchell) are gunslingers on the wrong side of the law.

The difference between them is that Ringo is basically good and it’s his destiny to become a True Hero. Frank on the other hand is much more tempted by the Dark Side of the Force. Their partnership breaks up over a woman. Jane Walcom chooses Ringo and Frank rides off into the sunset but their paths are destined to cross again. Ringo becomes the town sheriff and establishes law and order but the peace is threatened by the machinations of the corrupt and generally wicked banker Daniels who wants to get his hands on various parcel of land that he suspects contain gold. Among the people whose land he wants to steal is Ringo’s mum. There’s also the complication that Ringo’s father-in-law is a shady businessman who is involved in Daniels’ scheming.

In a battle with renegade soldiers Ringo is struck a blow on the head that leaves him blind. The doctor tells the family that the only possible way he could recover his sight would be by being dealt another blow on the head. This medical pronouncement will prove to have major Plot Significance. This battle also results in the return of Frank Sanders who takes over as sheriff, but he is the evil sheriff as opposed to Ringo’s good sheriff. Somehow the blind Ringo must find a way to stop the triumph of evil.

It’s all very silly, with outrageous coincidences and impossible feats of gunslinging prowess and more-than-human bravery. You’ll either find this too ridiculous to bother with or you’ll find a way to not only accept but to embrace the silliness. If you can do that then it’s an enjoyable enough romp. And the six-barreled dynamite cannon is fun.

The acting is two-dimensional but it hardly matters. Mickey Hargitay at least seems to be enjoying himself. There’s an enormous amount of action, all of which is very cartoonish. This is a movie that makes no concessions to realism. There’s no gore at all. The body count though is incredibly high, another clue perhaps that what we’re seeing is not meant to be taken at all seriously.

As an added attraction there’s a voodoo ceremony that makes no sense whatever in the context of the plot but gratuitous voodoo ceremonies are something I have no problem with.

The DVD from Wild East Productions presents the movie in its correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio and generally looks pretty good.

Definitely not one of the classics of the spaghetti western genre but while it’s a bad movie when judged by any conventional standards it’s kind of fun if you’re in the mood for some slightly tongue-in-cheek action fun.