Blueblood (1973)

Dir: ANDREW SINCLAIR

Country: UK-CANADA

1973 was a very busy and productive year for English actor Oliver Reed.  He began it in the Italian/French co-production Dirty Weekend, a crime/comedy directed by Dino Risi, which paired him up with Marcello Mastroianni.  He followed this with the historical drama Frenzy, an Italian/UK co-production exploring the class divides in pre-revolutionary Russia, in which he played Palizyn opposite Claudia Cardinale’s Anya. He continued his association with Italian cinema in his following film Revolver (US title Blood on the Streets) an excellent crime thriller directed by Sergio Sollima, which saw Reed and Fabio Testi make unlikely allies as they uncover a far reaching political conspiracy. Reed’s biggest success of 1973 was his following film, playing Athos in Richard Lester’s spirited and entertaining screen version of The Three Musketeers. Reed’s fifth and final screen credit of 1973 was in the obscure British film Blueblood, based on Alexander Thynne’s novel The Carry Cot. There are those who classify Blueblood as a horror film, but it is more of a class drama in the mould of the Pinter/Losey production The Servant (1962). The motivations of the respective butler’s in each film are pretty much the same, but their methodology differs. In Blueblood Tom, played with the hulking brutishness and barely suppressed rage that became Reed’s stock in trade, utilises witchcraft to secure his aims.

I Drink Your Blood (1970)

Dir: DAVID E. DURSTON
Country: USA

In the years since its release, the hysterically titled I Drink Your Blood (a bit of a misnomer as not a single drop is imbibed) has built a steady and resolute cult following. This is largely due to the fact that the film was the first to receive an X certificate from the MPAA for violence alone, and also due to the legendary double bill that paired it with Del Tenney’s largely forgettable zombie dross I Eat Your Skin (1964). This inspired double feature was the brainwave of exploitation producer/distributor Jerry Gross. A semi-legendary figure whose skill at creating alluring film titles (it should be noted that David E. Durston the director of I Drink Your Blood wanted the film to be called Phobia), eye catching posters, and outrageous promotional campaigns resulted in numerous commercial successes in the Grindhouses and drive ins. By and large the films Gross produced and distributed are exploitation trash, but the man deserves a place of importance in film history for producing one of the most significant films of the 1970’s – Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971). Another reason for I Drink Your Blood’s cult success is the resulting effect of the X certificate. In a desperate move to reap some kind of financial reward from the film, Gross gave permission for exhibitors to cut the film to their own liking. The resulting multitude of cuts meant that for decades what constituted the complete or director’s cut of the film was a matter for debate and conjecture rather than fact.

Celluloid Sounds - The Blood on Satan's Claw (1970)

From a purely personal perspective, the Tigon production of The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1970) represents the pinnacle of the British horror film. Of course an objectively dispassionate and critical eye is able to discern a myriad of plot deficiencies and narrative weaknesses, and one or two performances diminish the overall effect, but for me this is an insidiously perverse, eerie, and troubling piece of work, which evocatively renders the fears and superstitions of a rural 17th century community. In addition to its censor baiting visuals, and its various concessions to generic cinema, it is also a beautiful film about the English countryside. It is incredibly earthy, overflows with a rich autumnal palette, and possesses such a sense of pastoral isolation that at times the narrative takes on the mythical persona of a folk tale. The gorgeous Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire countryside was strikingly shot by cinematographer Dick Bush, and the natural lighting brings an exquisite rustic charm to its tale of a village’s children succumbing to the influence of Satan. Like the best examples of film art The Blood on Satan’s Claw works on an allegorical level, and its dramatic clash between a group of children realising and celebrating their freedom and sexuality, and the forces of patriarchal adulthood that seek to contain it offers a prescient message for the age of permissiveness.

Midnight (1982)

Dir: JOHN A. RUSSO
Country: USA

AKA:
John Russo's Midnight
Backwoods Massacre 

John Russo will be a familiar name to any self respecting enthusiast of cult horror cinema. He co-wrote the screenplay for Night of the Living Dead (1968), a film that turned out to be a clarion call for a new and vital form of modern horror expression. His contribution to this film and its resulting influence on the wider landscape of the horror genre affords Mr. Russo generic immortality; but what of his other contributions to cinematic history? I have to confess seeing the name John Russo attached to a film would not inspire me to watch it, in much the same way that George A. Romero’s wouldn’t either. For me this is a seal of mediocrity rather than excellence. I’ve always recognised the importance of Night of the Living Dead within its genre, and it is within the terms of generic discourse (or theory if you like) that the film signals its innovation and radicalism. But I don’t like the film - instead of going into the reasons here, check out my review. In Romero’s defence he has at least gone on to make a number of important additions to the horror genre; Mr. Russo has done nothing of consequence. His follow up (if you will) to Night of the Living Dead marked his directorial debut, and the movie was called The Booby Hatch (1976). I think the title alone tells you all you need to know about Russo’s post Night of the Living Dead credentials. In addition to a career as a screenwriter (sixteen credits to date), and director (nine credits to date) Russo was also something of a novelist, and one of his novels Midnight made it to the screen in 1982.

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

Dir: TERENCE FISHER
Country: UK

AKA:
The Devil's Bride

Of the three Dennis Wheatley properties optioned by Hammer The Devil Rides Out is by some margin the most enjoyable. It has steadily risen to a position of prominence within the annals of British horror, and can now be viewed as an exemplar of the gothic horror form. The other two Wheatley films The Lost Continent (1968) and To the Devil - A Daughter (1976) are interesting failures. The former is unable to escape the abysmal production values and incompetent direction to realise the promise of the concept, and the latter suffers from its obvious mimicry of The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976), and an incredibly uninterested lead performance from Richard Widmark. By contrast The Devil Rides Out possesses sumptuous production values, truly inspired direction from Terence Fisher, and dedicated displays from the principal players. It appeared at a precipitous moment in the development of the horror genre. A brief window of opportunity for Hammer to produce one last great gothic horror production before the mode became increasingly anachronistic and irrelevant. The film fed into a sub-set of movies dealing with the themes of occultism, witchcraft and satanic worship. In contrast to the US, British horror had a long tradition of engaging with these themes dating back to Night of the Demon (1957), with other examples such as Night of the Eagle (1962), Witchcraft (1964) and Hammer’s The Witches (1966) offering novel approaches. Tigon would take on the mantle and push boundaries even further with Witchfinder General (1968) and Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971). As excellent as all these films were, it is The Devil Rides Out that still leads the way.

Devil (2010)

Dir: JOHN ERICK DOWDLE
Country: USA

The stock of writer/producer/director M. Night Shyamalan couldn’t be much lower after a series of feeble and derisory films that have contrived to make his first two (The Sixth Sense [1999) and Unbreakable [2000]) seem half decent. The reality is that Shyamalan has yet to direct a good film, and a film that has his name attached to it is only fit for the trash collector. That is until the release of Devil, which was based upon a story by Shyamalan, and is refreshingly bereft of his normal posturing and pretence, and has a narrative which isn’t totally reliant on tricks. It is still recognisable as its authors work because of a central gimmick which entraps five total strangers in a malfunctioning elevator. If the claustrophobia, proximity, and fear of this situation isn’t enough, one of the occupants also happens to be the devil. This central proposition is intriguing enough to carry the whole film, and the film is blessed with a director who approaches the material with economy and a briskness of pace. I’m not sure how John Erick Dowdle got this assignment, because his previous film Quarantine (2008) was so appalling that new adjectives had to be invented to describe just how bad it was. But Dowdle emerges as the unlikely hero of Devil because of an efficient and smooth filmmaking approach that mirrors the simplicity of the story. The screenplay by Brian Nelson - the ‘brain’ behind moronic flotsam such as Hard Candy (2005) and 30 Days of Night (2007) offers levity to the restricted confinement of the elevator with two other narrative strands offering a police investigation, and the efforts of various professionals to free the unfortunates who are trapped. But Nelson does make one decision which almost destroys Devil before it has an opportunity to get going.

Race with the Devil (1975)

Dir: JACK STARRETT
Country: USA

Race with the Devil is a hugely enjoyable and interesting independent production which manages to conflate a number of the thematic preoccupations of 1970’s American cinema into its form. Firstly we have an exploration (albeit rather unsophisticated) of satanic cults. The most disturbing aspect of which is the lengths such sects will go too in order to maintain the anonymity of its members. This film appeared in cinemas before the commercial battering ram of The Omen (1976), and continued to prove that the devil had significant commercial draw in the 1970’s. The director Jack Starrett exploits Satan to the fullest, even though the horned beast fails to put in an appearance. The film also draws on a cinematic current which sought to find horrors within the alienated populations of rural America. These ‘rural horrors’ such as Deliverance (1972) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) set the trend by having the feeble faces of urban modernity facing primeval fights for survival against fellow Americans forgotten and rejected by modernity. With its wide open landscape, empty and desolate roads, and lifeless towns Race with the Devil fits smoothly into this thematic terrain. The film is also a road movie, it venerates the automobile as a gadget for masculine expression, but challenges preconceptions of motor vehicles as a conduit of pioneer spirit. Our protagonists do discover something in the American outback, but it is something terrible and nightmarish. This is a film with generic hybridity, and by expanding the generic remit it is able to put its finger on a number of the ‘phobic pressure points’ that Stephen King so eloquently described in his work of non-fiction Danse Macabre (1981).

The Car (1977)

Dir: ELLIOT SILVERSTEIN
Country: USA

aka:
DeathMobile

In the 1970’s the flip side to the primal ‘revolt of nature’ film heralded in by the blockbuster success of Jaws (1975) was a series of films that sought to interrogate questions of technology and the machines created by capitalist and industrial endeavour. Although these ‘revolt of technology’ films functioned within the parameters of the horror and science-fiction genres they also owed a great deal to the paranoid thrillers that arose in the wake of the Watergate scandal. In this respect they can be seen as the fantastical flip side to such thrillers as The Parallax View (1974) and All the President’s Men (1976). In those films and many others of that form an emphasis was placed on a shadowy and terrifying superpower manipulating events in order to maintain the status quo and whilst films of the ‘revolt of technology’ form reduced the emphasis on these qualities there was still the sense that they possessed a subtext which depicted the government and the scientific institutions in an unsavoury light. The automobile is so central to conceptions of the American dream that it only seems natural in an uncertain 1970’s that saw fundamental challenges to freedom and democracy that it too would become a device of subversion and fear. The screenplay of The Car by Michael Butler and Dennis Shyrack opts to relieve itself of much of the baggage of paranoid thrillers in favour of the supernatural, but the symbolic resonance of an automobile as a weapon of death feeds strongly into the fears of the day. Despite this The Car was a commercial (somewhat surprising) and critical (no surprise at all) failure. The spectacle this film offered simply paled in a year that saw Luke Skywalker and Hans Solo begin their adventures in a war torn galaxy far far away!

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

Dir: ROMAN POLANSKI
Country: USA

Rosemary’s Baby is a very important film in two regards. Firstly it confirmed the promise of Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski and proved that he was able to handle a large budget and the pressures of Hollywood. Secondly it became one of the keynote films in establishing a new modern horror, a type of horror that didn’t reside in distant gothic landscapes populated by sadistic aristocrats. The problem with the brand of gothic horror pedalled by Hammer and to a lesser extent Roger Corman was the very restricted and simplistic world view the films offered. Depictions of good and evil were strictly demarcated, with the latter overcome by the forces of faith and rationality to maintain a conservative status quo. This did not reflect the world as it was in 1968 and Gothic allegories became increasingly irrelevant. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) blurred notions of good and evil, more realistically offering shades of grey reflected in the monochrome cinematography. Ira Levin in his novel Rosemary’s Baby built upon this, by cleverly fusing soap opera/melodrama with witchcraft in a modern milieu that nevertheless paid lip service to gothic conventions with a suitably eerie apartment block.