The Beast Must Die (1974)

The horror movies made by Amicus in the 60s and 70s have never impressed me all that much and their 1974 offering The Beast Must Die does little to change that judgment although it has its entertaining moments.

This one is best described as a cross between The Most Dangerous Game and Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, but with werewolves.

Tom Newcliffe (Calvin Lockhart) is an eccentric millionaire big-game hunter. Eccentric is perhaps not the right word. Completely deranged would be closer. He’s hunted everything that can be hunted, and no he wants to hunt the most dangerous game of all. No, not man. Werewolves. But how do you find a werewolf to hunt? That’s simple. You just pick half a dozen people who sound like they might be werewolves, invite them to your country house for the weekend (a weekend when there’s a full moon naturally) and the odds are that one of them will turn out to be a real werewolf. You just wait for the transformation to happen.

Tom isn’t taking unnecessary chances though. He has engaged brilliant Polish engineer Pavel (Anton Diffring) to instal an ultra-sophisticated security system. He has cameras and super-sensitive microphones everywhere. He tests the system by getting Pavel and four commando-type guys to use it to hunt him. This is by far the best part of the movie and it’s unfortunate that it comes right at the start.

The problem with werewolf movies is making the transformation scenes convincing. This movies doesn’t even bother with transformation scenes. It just cuts from the actor to a dog made to look like a wolf. This turns out to be even lamer than the lamest transformation scene and the dog basically looks like a dog. Not even a very scary dog. At one point it has a fight with the family Labrador and the Labrador looks fiercer than the supposed wolf.

This highlights a really big fault with this film. It isn’t very scary. Tom has an assault rifle loaded with silver bullets and a helicopter at his disposal so really the odds are stacked too much against the werewolf. The movie then has to fall back on that old standby of having people do stupid things in order to put themselves in danger.

The cast is interesting. Calvin Lockhart had done several blaxploitation movies and in his shiny black outfit he looks more like a big-time coke dealer than a big-game hunter. He gives the role everything he’s got, and at times overdoes it a bit, but he’s generally entertaining.

Peter Cushing would seem to have been a natural for a role as a werewolf expert (and possible werewolf) in a movie like this but he affects an incredibly irritating and unconvincing Swedish accent that makes him seem ridiculous rather than sinister. Charles Gray and Michael Gambon are effective as other possible werewolves.

Director Paul Annett spent most of his career in TV and that’s not surprising. His direction is less than inspired. The pacing is excellent but the inherently silly plot falls apart badly and the ending is disappointingly unexciting.

There was an art to making low-budget horror movies without making them look cheap but this movie all too often just looks cheap. There’s also a rather silly gimmick where the film is stopped about fifteen minutes before the end and the audience is invited to guess the identity of the werewolf.

Optimum’s Region 2 DVD is fullframe and includes no extras and cannot be recommended at all. There are apparently better DVD releases but unless you can pick up a copy very cheaply I’m not sure it’s worth the effort. There’s a very simple reason Amicus were overshadowed by Hammer - Hammer’s movies were a lot better than Amicus’s.

Metropolis (1927)

Almost any excuse will do for yet another “definitive” reconstruction of Fritz Lang’s strange and notorious 1927 masterpiece Metropolis but this time there is a real justification for such an attempt - the unexpected discovery in Argentina of a nearly compete print that includes almost half an hour of footage previously thought to be lost forever.

The basic plot is probably familiar to most film fans. The futuristic city of Metropolis is a city of machines, and it is also two cities. The upper city is a playground for the rich. The lower city, deep beneath the earth, houses the workers who tend the machines. The city was the creation of the single-minded will of Joh Fredersen, although it took the genius of the inventor Rotwang to make it a reality. Joh Fredersen’s son Freder has fallen in love with a kind of prophetess/populist leader from the lower city, a woman named Maria, and at the same time he has discovered the true conditions under which the workers labour. She preaches non-violent resistance.

Rotwang has created a robot and has given it the form of Maria. This sham Maria incites the workers to destroy the city.

This was the most expensive of all German silent movies, costing Ufa Studios an estimated 5 million Reichsmarks. It took just 75,000 Reichsmarks at the box office. This catastrophic commercial failure proved ruinous for Ufa but the movie’s legend has subsequently grown steadily year by year.

The screenplay was co-written by Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, one of the most controversial figures in the German film industry of that era.

Ufa had hoped this movie would give them a major foothold in the US market but Paramount, who distributed the movie there, were horrified by its inordinate length and cut the movie by about half an hour. Ufa, responding to the film’s poor performance box office, subsequently released the edited version and destroyed the additional footage. The original version survived only in an unbelievably poor quality 16mm copy languishing in a Buenos Aires film museum.

Much of the newly discovered missing footage is inconsequential, representing merely the trimming of scenes that were in truth overlong. It does restore a subplot that had ben almost entirely eliminated, a subplot involving the search for the hero Freder by the character variously described as The Thin Man and Slim. In all honesty this subplot is not vital to the film. There is however one absolutely crucial element that the missing footage restores to the movie, the material relating to Hel, the mother of Joh Fredersen.

Hel had been Rotwang’s wife. Joh Fredesen had stolen her from him, only to see her die giving birth to his son Freder. The character of Hel provides Rotwang’s motivation for creating his robot - he wants revenge on Joh Fredersen and he wants to recreate Hel.

Metropolis is a movie that had been persistently misunderstood. It was attacked by both the nazis and the communists at the time of its original release. On the commentary track by film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum accompanying the Blu-Ray release by Eureka he says that he originally saw the movie in Marxist terms but now believes it’s best understood in Freudian terms. I suspect he’s wrong on both counts. While modern film critics are happy, indeed overjoyed, to interpret any movie in either Marxist or Freudian terms, they’re much less happy when they encounter a movie which demands to be interpreted in religious terms. That’s not an acceptable method of analysis in the world of the film school.

But you only have to watch Metropolis to realise that it’s overloaded with religious symbolism. Maria is both the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. And Rosenbaum to his credit recognises this, but he seems reluctant to push the religious interpretation to its obvious conclusion. Freder is clearly a Christ-figure, Joh Fredesen is God the Father and Rotwang is Lucifer. What makes the film so interesting is that there is layer upon layer of religious symbolism. Hel can be seen as Eve, and as a Virgin Mary figure. Lang was raised as a Catholic and continued to identify himself as a a Catholic throughout his life.

While Thea von Harbou’s novel (written concurrently with the screenplay) stresses the religious themes even more strongly than the movie it is likely that the themes of the movie derive equally from Lang and von Harbou. Luis Buñuel in the 60s began the practice by which critics have tended to attribute everything they approve of in the movie to Lang and everything they disapprove of to von Harbou (and they apply this to all the collaborations between Lang and von Harbou). It’s a practice that Lang himself deplored.

The original intention was apparently also to stress the conflict between the technological and the magical, with Rotwang being more explicitly a magician (as in von Harbou’s novel) . Lang admits that he lacked the nerve at the time to fully develop the mystical and magical themes, something he later came to regret.

Of course the lasting popularity of Metropolis can be attributed not just to its visual brilliance (which is undeniable) but to the fact that it lends itself to multiple interpretations. I have little patience with Freudian interpretations but if you’re a devotee of such mumbo-jumbo you can certainly interpret Metropolis that way. Metropolis is in fact a movie that is so overloaded with ambiguous symbolism that you can simply add your own meaning to it. If you’re a Marxist it can be a Marxist film; if you’re a political reactionary then it’s an ultra-conservative and elitist film; if you’re a follower of Ayn Rand it can be a proto-Randian film; if you’re a Freudian it abounds in mother symbolism.

However you want to interpret it the one inescapable fact is that in purely visual terms it’s a staggeringly brilliant achievement.

The Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-Ray release includes a commentary track and an excellent German TV documentary of the reconstruction of the movie, plus an illustrated booklet with various articles on the movie. The previously missing footage is of atrocious quality (it was so badly damaged that a proper restoration was simply not possible) but the rest of the movie looks absolutely superb. It’s also been released on Blu-Ray by Kino in the US but the Eureka edition seems to be generally regarded as the better of the two releases.

Note: the screencaps are not from the Blu-Ray.

Sandok (1965)

Sandok (La montagna di luce) is a fairly entertaining 1965 adventure flick directed by journeyman Italian genre director Umberto Lenzi.

The first thing that needs to be cleared up is the matter of the title. Lenzi made a series of movies based loosely on the Sandokan books of popular 19th century Italian author Emilio Salgari, one of the masters of swashbuckling adventure fiction. This particular film was the fourth and last and being an Italian genre movie was released under many different titles. Mya DVD have chosen to release it on DVD as Sandok which is a slightly confusing choice. It might have been less confusing to have released it under one of its alternative titles such as Temple of a Thousand Lights or to have simply given a literal translation of the Italian title, Mountain of Light. Especially given that there’s no character called Sandok in the film.

Alan Foster (played by American actor Richard Harrison) is an American bank robber on the run who is hiding out in India. The time period is never specified but one assumes it’s the early 20th century. His attempt to do a little card-sharping at the expense of the local Maharajah (played by Daniele Vargas) backfires rather badly. The Maharajah is trying to manipulate him into stealing the fabulous diamond known as the Mountain of Light. The diamond resides on the forehead of a gigantic statue of one of the Hindu gods.

Alan acquires an unlikely accomplice in the person of a remarkably dishonest fakir named Sitama (Wilbert Bradley). He’s so dishonest that he and Alan make a perfect team. The theft seem impossible. The temple is heavily guarded. But Alan has a plan.

There are some reasonably clever plot twists as the various parties involved try to double-cross each other, with Alan taking time off to fall in love with a beautiful dancer named Lilamani (Luciana Gilli).

In some ways it could be seen as a heist movie in an Indian setting. It was actually filmed in Malaysia but there’s some reasonably decent location photography. There’s also not a single Indian actor - the entire cast is either American or Italian.

Lenzi wasn’t a very exciting director but the action sequences are adequate. The big problem is that at 87 minutes the movie is just a touch too short. The ending seems very rushed, almost as if there’s something missing, but this does seem to be an uncut print so it appears to be the fault of the film-makers rather than the work of distributors. On the plus side the pacing is brisk and it doesn’t waste any time getting us into the action.

The acting is quite good by Italian genre movie standards. Richard Harrison is a reasonably engaging rogueish hero. For the robbery he disguises himself as an Indian - it’s probably the most feeble and unconvincing disguise in movie history but in this type of movie it doesn’t really matter. Wilbert Bradley has a lot of fun with the role of Sitama.

Mya DVD have copped a lot of flak for the quality of some of their releases. There’s no real cause for complaint this time. The movie is presented in the correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio and it’s a fairly good print. As is customary with Mya’s releases there are no extras.

This is lightweight fun that should appeal to fans of adventure movies in exotic settings.

Fangs of the Living Dead (1969)

Fangs of the Living Dead (AKA Malenka) was an early directorial effort from Amando de Ossorio. He went on to make some reasonably entertaining horror flicks so it’s not altogether fair to judge him on the basis of this particular film.

A woman who is about to be married receives a letter, informing her that she has just inherited a title, and a gloomy gothic castle. Arriving at the castle she meets the young count, and spots a portrait of her grandmother Malenka, to whom she bears an uncanny resemblance, on the wall. At the nearby inn she encounters a barmaid suffering from a mysterious wasting illness, an illness that appears to be a form of anaemia. You can pretty much fill in the blanks from there.

It’s difficult to judge this movie based on the DVD from Dollar DVD. Yes, I know, the company name doesn’t inspire a great deal of confidence, does it? The transfer is terrible, it’s fullscreen, and the English dubbing is bad beyond belief.

Even the packaging is spectacularly cheap and nasty - a flimsy cardboard sleeve is all you get.

I’m inclined to think that the whole thing was intended as a parody, but that may simply be the effect of the outrageous English dubbing. And the music! The music has to be heard to be believed.

Anita Ekberg plays a dual role as the new countess and as her grandmother Malenka. She seems stunned for most of the movie, which is understandable. The acting is extraordinarily hammy, although again it has to be said that the dubbing doesn’t do the actors any favours. There’s no suspense, and there are no thrills or chills. There is an attempt at a twist ending.

If you like your horror with very large helpings of extra cheese then there’s some bad movie enjoyment to be had out of this one. The voice actress doing Anita Ekberg’s part redefines one’s understanding of the term hammy.

Had it been possible to see this movie in a sub-titled version it may have been a completely different experience, so it’s possible I’m being much too hard on it.

This film was an unforgettable experience, although definitely not in a good way. But since the DVD cost me a dollar I can’t really complain.

Hip, Hot and 21 (1967)

Hip, Hot and 21 is sexploitation Texas style, but there aren’t any ten-gallon hats in evidence. There’s also a decided lack of plot coherence but that pretty much goes with the territory in the crazy world of 1960s American sexploitation.

This one was made by Dale Berry in 1967, and his cinematic style could best be described as deranged incompetence. Of course if he’d been a French director of art-house movies with a Marxist slant this level of filmic incoherence would have had him hailed as an avant-garde genius (this movie in fact makes marginally more sense than, say, Godard’s 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her ). Sadly though Dale Berry was just a skin-flick director so he missed out on being lionised by the film school crowd.

Hip, Hot and 21 starts out as hicksploitation, with Diane Darcel being forced in to marriage by her toothless alcoholic hillbilly daddy. We’ll find out later that her new husband paid her daddy $50 for her. Now she’s off to the big bad city to start married life, but married life ends for her on her wedding night. Her husband walks out on her.

Luckily she has someone to turn to, a friend of her new husband’s who lives upstairs. Although perhaps a lesbian junkie with criminal connections isn’t the ideal person to turn to for good advice. Pretty soon the movie has moved into the sleazy underworld of bars, hookers and drug deals. What connection her husband had with these people is never made clear, but then very few things in this movie are clear.

There’s a German dope lord named Al who runs a bar. There are assorted lesbian junkies. And there’s Ernie. Ernie is one sick puppy, with a taste for S&M and a tendency to cry a lot. OK, we all have our quirks, but Ernie has a tendency to let his S&M fantasies get out of hand. Badly out of hand. Then somehow our heroine hooks up with another lesbian junkie dope pusher but I have no idea where she came from. She’s just suddenly there.

What little plot there is stops at regular intervals for gratuitous go-go dancing. Mind you, gratuitous go-go dancing is one thing I will never complain about in a movie. Go-go dancing is like a guy in a gorilla suit - it invariably improves any movie. As an added bonus one of the gratuitous go-go dancers is none other than Lorna Maitland, star of several early Russ Meyer movies from his redneck gothic phase. One might also consider it as an added bonus that one of these dance sequences is a topless gratuitous go-go dancing sequence, something which adds a touch of class to any film.

If you think I’m focusing too much on the go-go dancing that’s because it’s really the only justification for this movie’s existence.

After these interruptions we get a bit more of what almost qualifies as plot development. The police are after Al, he’s after some money of his that has gone missing, and finally we get a chase sequence that ends the movie.

The acting is about on a par with the scriptwriting, although I have to admit that Diane Darcel gives it everything she’s got. She has no acting ability but she sure has enthusiasm.

There’s not a huge amount of nudity. The sexual violence almost qualifies it as a roughie although it’s not comparable to excesses you get in, let’s say, a Michael Findlay roughie.

Something Weird (and I’m sure by now it’s not going to come as an earth-shaking revelation that this is a Something Weird DVD release) usually manage to find remarkably good prints of obscure sexploitation flicks but this one is a bit on the rough side. Not that it detracts anything from the movie - the cinematography on this movie is pretty much limited to having the camera pointed in approximately the right direction and (mostly) in focus.

Not exactly a classic from the vaults, definitely not one of Something Weird’s better offerings, but one can forgive a movie for many faults if it includes no less than three go-go dancing sequences.

Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)

Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb has always been one of my favourite Hammer films and watching it for the third time I find myself liking it as much as ever.

This is in fact the best of Hammer’s mummy films, and with the exception of the original 1932 Universal classic it’s arguably the best mummy film ever made.

It’s based on Bram Stoker’s best and most interesting novel, The Jewel of Seven Stars (yes I really do think it's better than Dracula). Christopher Wicking produced a fine screenplay and Seth Holt directs with considerable flair. Sadly Holt died before the movie was completed and Michael Carreras had to finish the shoot.

A couple of decades before the film opens Professor Julian Fuchs (Andrew Keir) had led a team of British archaeologists on an expedition to find the tomb of a mysterious unnamed Egyptian queen. His interest is more than just archaeological - he has found references to this queen in ancient and medieval manuscripts and he had become convinced that she had discovered the secrets of life and death.

The tomb is found, along with the perfectly preserved body of Queen Tera (for that turns out to be her name). Tera had made bitter enemies of the priesthood of her day. After her death they attempted to destroy all references to her, to expunge all record of her existence. And they feared her so much they cut off her hand, believing that with her body incomplete she could never return to life. Without that precaution they considered this eventuality to be a real possibility.

And the priests had been right to fear that Tera could conquer death, but their precautions were in vain.

At the exact moment that Fuchs opened Tera’s tomb his wife back in England died in childbirth. The child was apparently born dead, but then started to breathe and survived. This child, his only daughter Margaret (Valerie Leon), is now a beautiful young woman. Her birthday is approaching, an event that is infinitely more significant than one might suppose.

All this is revealed in flashbacks occurring during Margaret’s troubled dreams. Margaret dreams of other things as well. She dreams of Queen Tera’s life and death.

Margaret has never been allowed into the basement of the Fuchs home. When she and her boyfriend Tod Browning (yes, Tod Browning) finally do gain access to the basement they make two alarming discoveries. The first is the apparently lifeless body of Professor Fuchs. The second is the perfectly preserved body of Queen Tera, and she is (as the audience already knows) the exact double of Margaret.

The Professor is not dead but in an extreme coma. He has left instructions for his old friend Doctor Putnum, indicating that he expected this to happen.

The very smooth and very sinister Corbeck (James Villiers), who had been a member of the Fuchs expedition, now appears on the scene. Corbeck clearly has his own agenda and it’s likely to be a selfish one but Margaret has nowhere else to turn for help - Corbeck at least knows what is going on. The other members of the expedition are dying one by one in unexplained circumstances. Queen Tera may be dead, but she’s been busy. Margaret’s destiny is indissolubly linked to hers, but the link may well prove to be a fatal one.

There’s moderate gory and very brief nudity in this movie but really it’s a very old-fashioned horror movie. Old-fashioned in the best possible way - a horror movie that relies on the building up of an atmosphere of dread and does it in a quite subtle way. Queen Tera is terrifying not because she’s violent but because she threatens to undermine the very order of nature, because she had gained access to powers in her lifetime that no mortal should possess, and these powers did not die with her. And since these powers gave her control over life and death can Tera be said to have ever truly been dead?

This kind of horror has always seemed to me to be far more effective that knife-wielding maniacs. It’s the kind of horror that suggests that there really are fates worse than death.

Tera is also a slightly ambiguous monster. We’re not quite sure what her ultimate agenda might have been, nor can we be certain exactly what her intentions are if she succeeds in reuniting her soul and her body. Perhaps she is somewhat akin to Hammer’s other great monster, Baron Frankenstein - not precisely evil but horribly dangerous because she recognises no limits to her ambitions and regards any means as justified in order to achieve her ends.

There are no major stars in the cast, but there are some very fine actors delivering very effective performances. Andrew Keir as Professor Fuchs is a strangely ineffectual figure, a man who was once himself prepared to dare anything but who was badly frightened by what took place twenty years ago and who has lost his nerve. James Villiers is delightfully malevolent, a smiling but deadly cobra. Valerie Leon is a perfectly adequate heroine. Aubrey Morris is wonderfully creepy as always as Dr Putnum.

Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb has style, atmosphere and a genuine sense of horrifying forces being unleashed and it all adds up to a superb horror movie.

The Great Silence (1968)

While it’s not Sergio Corbucci’s best-known spaghetti western (that honour goes to Django) there are many who believe that his 1968 movie The Great Silence (Il grande silenzio) is his greatest. Unfortunately those people are wrong.

The movie concerns bounty hunters at the close of the 19th century. A large group of criminals is holed up in mountainous snowbound terrain waiting for a government amnesty. Before the amnesty arrives though they have to survive the attentions of a gang of bounty hunters. The most notorious of these is a man known variously as Loco or Tigrero (the subtitles on the Region 4 DVD insist that he’s called Tigrero). Either way he’s played by Klaus Kinski. He’s the movie’s chief bad guy (although his occupation happens to be hunting down criminals).

The bandits have a champion however, a mysterious stranger known as Silenzio or Silence. We later find out that his nickname comes from the fact that he’s mute as the result of having his vocal cords destroyed by wicked bounty hunters when he was a child. The bounty hunters had killed his father. Silenzio is now a crusader for the rights of criminals sought by bounty hunters. He pursues his crusade by taunting them into drawing first and then shooting them with his nifty machine pistol. He’s the hero of the movie (although his occupation happens to be defending criminals).

When a black woman’s husband, a thief, is shot by Tigrero she employs Silenzio to avenge him. She and Silenzio fall in love.

While this is happening a new idealistic sheriff has arrived in the town of Snow Hill. He doesn’t like bounty hunters and he wants to see Tigrero behind bars. The fact that Tigrero is actually pursuing a perfectly legal if rather unpleasant occupation doesn’t trouble the sheriff too much. He’s sympathetic to the rights of the poor and downtrodden, and he clearly considers that criminals fall within that category.

There’s also a wicked capitalist oppressor, Pollicut, who is in league with the bounty hunters.

With both Silenzio and the sheriff against him you might think that Tigrero would be in trouble, but in fact he’s a whole lot smarter than either of his antagonists.

The Great Silence has strong claims to being the most miserable spaghetti western ever made. Its famously downbeat ending is part of the film’s problem, but not for the reason you might suppose. The fact that it’s downbeat isn’t the problem but the fact that it lacks any dramatic punch certainly is. The whole plot just doesn’t quite develop the necessary dramatic tension. Silenzio is just too inept, too helpless. You really have to buy the naïve political message if you’re going to enjoy this movie.

Jean-Lois Trintignant plays Silenzio. His performance is presumably intended to be moody and intense. It doesn’t quite come off. As a deadly killer he is less than entirely convincing.

The movie’s saving grace is Klaus Kinski. He’s magnificent. He’s gloriously wicked, a man who really loves his job, especially the part that involves shooting people.

Technically the movie is an odd mix of brilliance and incompetence. There’s some stunning location photography, and the mountains and the remorseless snow create a superb atmosphere. But then there are scenes where Corbucci couldn’t even be bothered to make sure the camera is in focus.

This is a movie that the film school crowd will adore. It has the kind of heavy-handed political message that they love so much. And it has those moments of technical incompetence that will have them talking excitedly about cinéma vérité.

A film worth seeing for Kinski’s terrific performance, and for some impressive visuals.

The Region 4 DVD from Force Video is in Italian with English sub-titles.