The She-Beast (1966)

Having now seen The She-Beast (La Sorella di Satana) I can confirm that the picture quality on the Alpha DVD is indeed every bit as atrocious as I’d heard it was. Still, it only cost me four dollars, so I guess I can’t complain. And what is the actual movie like? If you only know Michael Reeves from his 1967 masterpiece Witchfinder General you’ll find the tone of The She-Beast rather surprising. It’s a kind of horror farce. Very fast-moving, and very entertaining, but certainly nowhere near as good as his two later films. Barbara Steele was only available for three days’ shooting so her part is fairly small, and it’s odd seeing her in modern dress. She and Ian Ogilvy are Veronica and Philip, British tourists in Transylvania, but instead of vampires they encounter a long-dead witch in a lake. They do meet the Count von Helsing though, who explains there are no vampires there any more because his family wiped them out. Unfortunately there are still plenty of supernatural nasties, including the aforesaid aquatic witch. Almost as disturbing is the lecherous and drunken inn-keeper. In fact von Helsing himself is a little on the disturbing, or at leat wildly eccentric, side. After a motoring mishap Philip finds himself fished out of the lake, but where is Veronica? It turns out that only von Helsing can help him to get his missing wife back.

Reeves directs with plenty of energy and style. Ogilvy and John Karlsen (as von Helsing) give spirited and rather frenetic performances. Barbara Steele hasn’t much to do, unfortunately. All in all though it’s fairly amusing and quite diverting, and it has an odd flavour of its own. It’s enjoyable as long as you don’t expect too much from it.

The Legend of Hell House (1973)

The Legend of Hell House is arguably the last of the classic haunted house movies. A team of psychics, scientists and paranormal investigators are paid a fortune to investigate the “Mt Everest of haunted houses”, the infamous Belasco House. Belasco, who built the house, and mysteriously disappeared, was notorious for his cruelty and depravity. Dr Lionel Barrett has with him a machine of his own invention, which he claims can clear the house of the residue of psychic energies which are really a form of electro-magnetic radiation. .

The Legend of Hell House boasts high production values and (by 1973 standards) good special effects. It also benefits from a script by Richard Matheson, from his on novel. Matheson has probably written more good horror scripts for TV and movie than just about anyone else you can name. It also boasts stylish direction, and lots of gothic atmosphere. The result should be a sensational film, but somehow it doesn’t quite work out that way. Roddy McDowall overacts outrageously. The rest of the cast do a reasonably good job, including Gayle Hunnicut as Dr Barratt’s ex-obsessed wife. It’s still a good movie, though, and solid entertainment. The combination of spooks and science fiction-style gizmos is amusing.

The Innocents (1961)

The Innocents released in 1961, is based on the classic Henry James novella The Turn of the Screw. Conveying the uncertainties and ambiguities of the story on film would seem to be a daunting task but director Jack Clayton has done a superb job. If anything the movie is perhaps even better than the book. I realise that that is a very ambitious claim, but this is a very fine movie indeed. Much of the credit for the film’s success goes to Deborah Kerr in what is possibly the greatest performance of a long and distinguished career. .

The story involves a governess (Kerr) who believes the children in her charge to be menaced by ghosts. But what is really going on? Kerr is always finely balanced on the edge of hysteria, but without ever becoming annoying and without ever losing the viewer’s sympathies. This film also looks superb. I can’t recommend this movie highly enough.

Hairspray (1988)

I’d forgotten just how delightful John Waters’ Hairspray was. The plot is corny and lightweight but the film more than makes up for this in sheer good humour and campy outrageousness. I’d also forgotten how good Ricki Lake was as the heroine. Add to that some truly awesomely camp sets and wonderfully excessive costumes and of course hairdos (not to mention fabulous dance numbers) and you have a movie that you just have to love. Divine is divine as Tracy’s mother. Among the supporting players Sonny Bono and Debbie Harry are particularly good as the parents of Tracy’s arch-rival Amber von Tussle. Like his slightly later Cry-Baby it’s Waters indulging himself in nostalgia for an era he obviously regards with mingled horror and affection, and a great deal of amusement. It’s all fabulous fun.

Zardoz (1974)

What can one possibly say about John Boorman’s Zardoz? Yes folks, this is the infamous Sean Connery in a pony-tail and bright red loin-cloth movie. In the far future there are three classes of humans. At the bottom of the heap are Brutals, assumed to be more or les sub-humans. Then there are Exterminators, whose job it is to keep down the numbers of Brutals. At the top of the pile are Eternals, who live in the Vortexes, sealed off from the lower orders. Sean Connery is an Exterminator, an Exterminator who starts to doubt his god, Zardoz. So he stows away in a the huge floating head that contains the god, and finds himself in a Vortex. He discovers that The Eternals, despite their powers and their immortality, are unhappy. Without death life seems to lose its savour. And with death banished sex is also banished (yes I know that doesn’t really make much sense but hey I didn’t write the movie). The Eternals live too much the life of the mind, cut off from the elemental passions and from the life of the body. At least I think that’s what the film is trying to say. The arrival of Connery, an unruly barbarian still very much in touch with the life of the body, provokes a crisis among the Eternals.

Generally speaking I like pre-Star Wars science fiction and I find pre-CGI sci-fi more visually interesting than the modern species. Unfortunately Zardoz suffers from extremely silly costumes and mostly fairly uninteresting and often absurd sets and this makes the movie difficult to take seriously. This is a problem because it’s a movie that really only works if you do take it seriously - it’s just so self-consciously philosophical. The special effects certainly represent an intriguing attempt to do something innovative and original on a limited budget, and some work very well – such as the images projected on bodies in the sequence where Zed is absorbing the knowledge of the Eternals. Sadly some of the other effects fall very flat. I’m becoming more and more convinced that this sort of thing can only be done effectively by European film-makers. They seem to have the ability to translate surreal images and dream-scapes and disturbing visions of the past and future onto the movie screen, while British and American attempts to do the same often end up being rather embarrassing (with the possible exception of a certain Terry Gilliam). A Fellini or a Herzog or even a Jean Rollin might have got away with this one. And I’m not sure the philosophical and intellectual content is really meaty enough to justify this film, although it’s certainly nice to be reminded of the days when science fiction movies did have philosophical and intellectual content. Connery and Charlotte Rampling manage to look good despite their very dodgy costumes, and they do try to treat the material with the seriousness it demands. Zardoz is one of those interesting failures that is still worth seeing, and it’s still worth a hundred George Lucas movies.

The Grapes of Death (1978)

By the late 70s Jean Rollin, one of the true visionaries of the horror genre, was finding himself forced to adapt to changing public tastes. The vampire film, his first and greatest love, was no longer fashionable. And gore was increasingly coming to be an essential ingredient of any horror movie that was to have a chance of commercial success. So Rollin abandoned the vampire movie, and turned to directing zombie movies. I happen to dislike zombie movies intensely, but I have to admit that Rollin’s are most definitely a cut above the average zombie flick. In fact his 1982 entry in this sub-genre, The Living Dead Girl, is an excellent little movie. The Grapes of Death, made four years earlier, is a much more conventional zombie film, and for someone like Rollin to make conventional movies is a tragic waste of a unique talent. Within the limits of the type of movie it is, he does however manage to make it reasonably interesting. There are moments of characteristic Rollin visual poetry. It’s beautifully shot, and the settings (in some glorious French countryside) are stunning. He is even able to sneak in the occasional hint of the surreal, something that has always been a crucial element in his movies.

The plot is fairly simple – a young woman finds herself in a rural district that seems to be overrun by zombies. In fact they’re victims of contaminated wine (hence the title), and they’re not actually risen-from-the-dead zombies. And although they’re murderous, they don’t feed on human flesh. Rollin never allows you to forget that they’re still human beings, however tempting it might be to treat them simply as monsters. The moral dilemmas facing the handful of people unaffected by this plague are more forcefully presented than you generally expect in a zombie film. It delivers some genuine chills and plenty of tension, and the ending works well and is quite affecting. My feelings about this movie are very conflicted. Judged as a straightforward horror movie, it’s very good. Judged as a zombie movie it’s extremely good indeed. But judged as a Jean Rollin movie, it’s a disappointment. Whether you’re going to enjoy this one or not very much depends upon what your expectations of it are.

Hands of the Ripper (1971)

In 1970 and 1971 Hammer Films turned out a series of remarkably interesting horror films. Countess Dracula is an interesting account of the career of the infamous Elizabeth Bathory, and it’s a reasonably good film. The Vampire Lovers, based on Sheridan le Fanu’s novella Carmilla is a very fine film indeed. Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb is one of the more intriguing of Hammer’s Mummy movies. Twins of Evil is an immensely entertaining vampire yarn. And Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde is perhaps the most interesting of the lot, and original and offbeat and very effective reworking of Stevenson’s classic novella.

Yet another noteworthy 1971 Hammer movie is Hands of the Ripper, directed by Peter Sasdy. It’s another fascinatingly original reworking of a clichéd idea, this time Jack the Ripper. It has a strong cast, headed by Eric Porter as a turn-of-the-century medico who is an early disciple of Freud and wants to use Freud’s ideas to cure violent criminals. Derek Godfrey is very good as a slightly sinister Member of Parliament who may or may not have some involvement in a violent murder. Angharad Rees plays Anna, a somewhat disturbed young woman who may also be involved somehow.

The plot is intelligent, the story moves along at a good pace, the acting is good, and there’s some excellent cinematography which towards the end even gets a bit arty and gets away with it. This is a clever and original horror movie.