Circus of Fear (1966)

Circus of Fear seems to have been an attempt to combine a gritty crime/mystery thriller with some horror elements, with Christopher Lee included in the cast to make sure horror aficionados got the point. It doesn’t entirely work, despite the undoubtedly charismatic presences of both Lee and Klaus Kinski. The movie might have worked better if they’d played up the horror elements a bit more, but it’s still an interesting hybrid. I must admit that my enjoyment of the film was hampered by the extremely poor DVD picture quality. Since I only paid a couple of bucks for the DVD I shouldn’t really complain though.

Circus of Fear does have the creepiness that a circus background always gives to a movie. There are two parallel plots, one being a revenge plot and the other involving the hunt for the loot from a daring daylight robbery on the Tower Bridge. The film does have some camp value, and it’s decent entertainment if you like low-budget 60s British movies.

Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965)

Dr Terror's House of Horrors, made in 1965, was the first of the horror anthology films made by Amicus Studios in Britain in the 60s and early 70s (although there had been earlier British films of this type such as the superb 1945 Dead of Night). Five travellers on a train encounter a mysterious stranger who tells their fortunes using a deck of tarot cards. The five segments that make up the movie are the stories of these five men. That the movie succeeds at all (and it was very successful at the time) is mostly due to the stylish and lively direction by Freddie Francis and the fact that each segment is so short there’s simply not enough time to get bored. In fact the material is pretty thin. The only story that is really memorable is the one featuring Christopher Lee as a pompous art critic. It has some genuinely effective twists, and Lee’s performance is odd but amusing. The other segments involve a very standard werewolf story, a vampire tale that just doesn’t work at all despite a fairly decent performance by a young Donald Sutherland, a killer plant story (the highlight of which is Bernard Lee’s absolutely deadpan delivery of some stupendously embarrassingly dialogue) and a story of a musician who falls foul of a voodoo god. Peter Cushing is very sinister as the mysterious stranger on the train, and the framing story works moderately well. The idea of the anthology film was a good one, and some of Amicus’s other efforts in this vein are a lot better – especially Asylum which I think is one of the most underrated of British horror movies. Dr Terror's House of Horrors is entertaining enough as long as your expectations aren’t too high.

The Island of Dr Moreau (1977)

The 1977 version of The Island of Dr Moreau doesn’t have an especially high reputation, but it’s one of those movies that I found myself pleasantly surprised by her. Although made in the same year as Star War it’s very much representative of the pre-blockbuster type of science fiction film. It’s not trying to be a cinematic landmark and it’s not trying to include as many explosions and as much mindless action as possible. It’s a small-scale rather unimposing sort of film, relying more on the strength of its ideas than on special effects. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is Burt Lancaster’s performance as Dr Moreau – he doesn’t play him as a crazed mad scientist, or as a monster or a vicious sadist. His Moreau is calm and rational. He may inflict suffering, but it’s not his intention to do so. It’s just in the nature of the things he does. He’s in the business of creating life, and life brings pain – you can’t have life without it. He doesn’t rule his miniature world by fear so much as by awe, and by sheer force of personality. His creatures obey him because he is, after all, their god. As the Sayer of the Law reminds them, his is the hand that makes and heals as well as the hand that hurts. His intentions are noble, and he genuinely wants his artificial humans, created from animals by manipulation of the very basis of life itself, to achieve lives of dignity and purpose. All too often he fails, and his failures entail suffering, but he regrets this. It’s a fascinating and rather powerful performance. Michael York as Braddick, the sailor marooned on Moreau’s island, adopts the opposite approach. Instead of playing Braddick as a calm, noble and brave hero he plays him as a person who always seems likely to topple over the edge of hysteria and madness. This works better than you might expect, and when he becomes one of the victims of Moreau’s experiments it makes his struggle to maintain his hold on his personality more interesting. And it’s entertaining! Nigel Davenport as Moreau’s bodyguard and Richard Basehart as the Sayer of the Law give good support. Barbara Carrera is there mainly as eye candy, and to provide a love interest, but her performance is at least competent. Her main problem is that her part is underwritten and her struggle with her own nature (which isn’t explicitly stated but is obvious enough) isn’t given enough stress. The makeup is fairly effective, and the lack of modern CGI effects does the movie no harm at all. Although it takes considerable liberties with the plot it captures the spirit of the original novel by H. G. Wells fairly well, which of course is far more important than a rigid adherence to the details of the book. It’s not a great movie by any means, but if you approach it with realistic expectations it provides decent enough entertainment without insulting the viewer’s intelligence, which is more than can be said for many of the big-budget science fiction films of more recent years.

Some Girls Do (1969)

Some Girls Do is a 1969 British spy spoof, and it has all the ingredients you’d expect in such films – a moderate amount of action, lots of beautiful girls, exotic locations, gadgets, and a plot that is inconsequential, convoluted but reasonably entertaining. In this case the spy is Bulldog Drummond, although this version of the character is rather different from the 1930s original. He’s mutated into a kind of cut-rate James Bond. The plot revolves around a gang of glamorous female spies who are trying to sabotage a new supersonic airliner. Robert Morley steals the film as Miss Mary, head of a cookery school, whose involvement with the plot is obscure but he’s so entertaining it scarcely matters. Sydne Rome is breathless and enthusiastic as a blonde female spy who changes sides fairly regularly. Richard Johnson makes an adequate hero. The sets are great, there’s a reasonable quota of action and it never gets boring. And you get glamorous girl robots. It’s very lightweight, but it has a nice 60s vibe to it, so if you like that sort of thing it’s recommended.

Castle of Blood (1964)

Castle of Blood (Danza macabra), directed by Antonio Margheriti, is a fine piece of Italian gothic horror dating from 1964. The story isn’t terribly original – a writer makes a wager that he can survive a night in a spooky castle on the Night of the Dead. The claustrophobia of the film, and the feeling of entrapment you get in a nightmare, more than makes up for any shortcomings in the plot. Plus there’s a wonderful performance by Barbara Steele. The Synapse DVD version was compiled from several sources, so it’s partly in English and partly in subtitled French! It was apparently (according to the liner notes) made to cash in on the success of the Roger Corman Poe films in Italy, which is why the framing story involving Poe is there. Other interesting snippets in the liner notes – it was filmed using a three-camera setup, as used in television but very seldom in film; and Margarete Robsahm, who played Julia, was so embarrassed by her lesbian love scene with Barbara Steele that she retired from acting! It was also heavily cut on its initial US release. The liner notes compare it to Mario Bava’s 1973 masterpiece Lisa and the Devil, a comparison which actually makes sense. The black-and-white cinematography is extraordinarily moody and the whole film has the logic of nightmare. An impressive film, more atmospheric than scary but all the better for it. A must for Barbara Steele fans, or for anyone who likes subtle horror, or has a decided taste for the gothic.

Vampyr (1932)

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey is truly one of the most disturbing films ever made. It’s totally unlike most modern horror movies – there are no sudden scares, there’s no gore, there’s almost no plot. What it does have is a succession of images of isolation and alienation and dread, images that are more unsettling because they’re so mysterious. Nothing is clear-cut, the line between dream and wakefulness and between delirium and reality isn’t just blurred, it’s completely erased.

The picture is incredibly fuzzy and washed out but this isn’t because the film has deteriorated, it’s how Dreyer wanted it. The story goes that the film camera they were using had a small hole in it which resulted in the film being partially exposed so that the picture had huge areas that were completely washed out, huge patches of vivid whiteness. Dreyer was delighted, and decided the whole movie would be shot that way! And he was correct – it doesn’t seem like a gimmick, it just seems totally right. As well as the blotches of intense whiteness the movie has shadows everywhere, shadows which might be the shadows of people or maybe they’re shadows without people.

Satan’s Blood (1978)

Ana and Andres are on their way to the park with their dog when they encounter another couple, Bruno and Berta. Bruno claims to be an old college friend of Andres’ although, oddly enough, Andres just can’t recall him at all. When Bruno and Berta invite them back to their house for drinks they see no harm in accepting. After all, what’s the worst thing that can happen? I mean, they seem like a nice couple and they’re not likely to be devil-worshippers or anything like that, are they? But of course this is a horror movie, so they most certainly can be devil-worshippers! Satan’s Blood (Escalofrío) is an intriguing 1978 slice of Spanish erotic horror released on DVD by those fine folks at Mondo Macabro. And like most of the offerings from this company that I’ve encountered, this movie is a lot better than you might expect.

Ana and Andres are offered some unusual wine, and some rather odd cigarettes, and pretty soon Bruno suggests that they give the old ouija board a spin, just for amusement. This certainly gets things happening, and pretty soon Ana and Andres are joining their hosts for some naughty bedroom fun (although in this case it’s naughty living-room fun). So far it’s been an entertaining evening, but from this point on things start to get unsettling, with disturbing psychological games involving suicide and a series of unexplained and upsetting events. The evening starts to take on the logic of nightmare, and the coming of daylight brings only terror and confusion, as our innocent young couple find themselves in an escalating waking nightmare. Director Carlos Puerto does a fine job in slowly building an atmosphere of the weird and the uncanny. The acting is competent, and the effects aren’t fantastically ambitious but the ones that are used are used effectively. There’s a staggering amount of nudity, but it would be difficult to describe it as gratuitous nudity – it is after all a movie about terrifying sexual and emotional games (among other things) so any coyness about sex would have weakened the film considerably. There’s a certain amount of gore but it isn’t overdone. It’s a movie that relies more on a slow developing of an atmosphere in which the protagonists feeling increasing trapped and out of control rather than on overt scares. In this it succeeds very well. Recommended for eurohorror enthusiasts. The DVD transfer is extremely good, and the extras include an interesting short documentary on Satanism.