Coming Attractions - Die, Monster, Die! (1965) / Planet of the Vampires (1965)

Guest Review - Dracula (1958) - The 2012 Restoration

Dir: TERENCE FISHER
Country: UK

AKA:
Horror of Dracula

A long time ago I watched a horror movie on television. I had seen a few horrors before and was beginning to develop a preference for the genre. There seemed to be one on every Friday night and occasionally if you were really lucky a double bill. It wasn’t long before one such Friday Fight Feature on Night Time TV was Hammer’s production of Dracula starring Peter Cushing as a dashing, determined, younger Van Helsing and Christopher Lee as a full-blooded and sexually charged Count Dracula. It was directed by Terence Fisher who is now rightly regarded as an auteur. The only detraction to this stunning production it seems has been the passage of time. The colour fading, and dulling of light which can often hide the detail in a film recorded originally with an emphasis on set design and colour photography. As well as a deterioration of the sound quality through regular cinema screenings and copies of copies made for distribution around the world. General ageing and wear and tear have all played a part in lessening the impact of a once vibrant and visceral rendering.

Guest Review - Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)

Dir: ALAN GIBSON

Country: UK

This film desperately needs to be restored and transferred to the digital medium. I have the DVDs which are to my mind in the wrong ratio and the colour is fading. And I completely accept that Christopher Lee had less and less to do as the films went on. All this said; I think that attempting to remake the 1958 Dracula would have been an even greater folly. Aside from an attempt to put the novel on screen, which would have been a great idea, it makes perfect sense to me to keep the Count in the shadows and build up gradually to his appearance. To focus on the other characters and allow the audience to get to know them, to care for them and to allow the audience to get involved. So that when they finally meet their peril it is more disturbing. By the time the final ‘period’ movie of the Dracula series Scars of Dracula was released in 1970 most of the possible scenarios had been played out. A new direction, setting and indeed drive was sought to re-vamp the vamp. And so in the early 70’s Hammer decided to move their Dracula movie cycle from the 19^th Century villages of Europe to the swinging London of the 20^th.

Dracula (1931)

Dir: TOD BROWNING
Country: USA

For me one of the most eagerly awaited releases of 2012 was the eight disc Universal Monsters blu-ray box set. It was indeed a joy to discover that this would be one of the titles put out to celebrate Universal’s 100^th anniversary, and a further joy to be able to experience Dracula (and its Spanish language variant, both 1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Wolf Man (1941), Phantom of the Opera (1943) and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) in high definition. Though I must spoil Universal’s horror party somewhat by asking what on earth were they thinking including their lacklustre and tedious second attempt at Phantom of the Opera? Surely the sublime dark brilliance of The Black Cat (1934) would have been a more contextually satisfying inclusion, not to mention a damn site more entertaining. That aside the collection is pretty much faultless (the plethora of special features is almost overwhelming) and over the next few weeks I will slowly work my way through it, and hope to bring you reviews of all the films. So we begin with the film that gave commercial impetus to Universal’s appetite for horror, the lukewarm and rather monotonous Dracula.

Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

Dir: JOHN D. HANCOCK
Country: USA

Despite being hamstrung by a misleading and inappropriate title that conjures up the muted chills of The Cat and the Canary (1927) and Gaslight (1944), Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is in fact one of the most insidious and disconcerting horror pictures of the 1970’s. This is no small feat in a decade awash with some of the most important and influential films to ever grace the horror genre. One obvious inspiration for Jessica was George A. Romero’s keynote speech for a new type of modern horror film Night of the Living Dead (1968), but where Romero’s film utilised schlock and sensationalism, John Hancock’s debut effort instead opts for an unassuming and inconspicuous subtlety, an approach to the material that almost certainly had negative consequences on the films box office potential. It’s abundantly clear from the films descent into obscurity, lessened somewhat by its regular showings on late night television, that co-financier Paramount Pictures either didn’t have the desire or the knowledge of how to sell such a distinctively offbeat picture. The failure of Jessica to resonate with a substantive audience, in a decade which saw a number of dreadful films clean up on 42nd Street and in the drive-ins, is one of the more depressing chapters in the annals of horror history. But with the likes of Stephen King and Kim Newman championing the cause, a decent DVD from Paramount (put out in 2006, and badly in need of a re-issue), the movie has steadily built up a loyal and appreciative cult following.

Lobby Card Collection - Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

For your viewing pleasure - a selection of lobby cards for the under-appreciated Hammer horror production Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)

Dir: TERENCE FISHER
Country: UK

Dracula: Prince of Darkness was Hammer’s third Dracula film and the second to feature the sartorial talents of Christopher Lee in the lead role. Because of Lee’s reluctance to become too firmly associated with the role of Count Dracula Hammer had to wait eight years before Lee was willing to accommodate a repeat performance. Unfortunately it wasn’t worth the wait, though the public at the time embraced the film and made it a commercial success. Lee was united with other key personnel from the 1958 production; Jimmy Sangster provided a screenplay based on an Anthony Hinds story, stalwart gothic horror director Terence Fisher was on hand to bring the film to visual life, James Bernard provided another memorable score, and Bernard Robinson endowed the film with his customary lavish production design. However the absence of Peter Cushing as Dracula’s nemesis Dr. Van Helsing leaves a void in the proceedings that Andrew Keir’s savant Father Sandor is unable to fill. Keir does a professional job, but his brusque and boorish manner lacks the air of intellectual dignity and physical vulnerability of Cushing’s more subtle and nuanced character.

Vampire Circus (1972)

Dir: ROBERT YOUNG
Country: UK

Thanks to the efforts of the DVD distributor Synapse Films Vampire Circus (1972) became the second Hammer film to be released in the High Definition Blu Ray format. It joins Paranoiac (1963) which was released on Blu Ray last year by Eureka Entertainment. These are unlikely titles perhaps, but Vampire Circus has over the years built itself a steady cult following, largely based on its unusual and offbeat approach to the clichés of gothic horror. By 1972 Hammer were willing to take greater risks in order to reverse their fading fortunes, and although Vampire Circus has plenty of conventional and predictable moments, it also possesses a sensibility, structure, and tone that makes it a unique entry in Hammer’s vampire lore. It is not an experimental film as such - but perhaps the relative inexperience of key personnel such as the director Robert Young (this was his second film) and the screenwriter Judson Kinberg (this was his first screenplay) and the producer Wilbur Stark (who had never produced a horror film before) led to a freshness of approach that accidentally created moments of peculiarity that at times border the modes of art cinema narration. However this isn’t entirely a fresh slate - the name of George Baxt as an uncredited contributor to the story is an important one. Baxt had a long history in the genre - providing uncredited additional dialogue for The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), and screenplays for City of the Dead (1960), and Circus of Horrors (1960). In front of the camera we do at least have Thorley Walters and Dave Prowse to offer a link to past Hammer's.

The Last Man on Earth (1964)

Dir: SIDNEY SALKOW
Country: ITALY/USA

aka:
L'ultimo uomo della terra
Naked Terror
Night People
Wind of Death

Richard Matheson’s apocalyptic tale of contagion, holocaust, and vampirism I am Legend (1954) has assumed a position of major influence within the horror genre (even though the novel itself is arguably science fiction), but its adaptation to cinema has been fraught with failure. Almost immediately Matheson’s novel was destined to endure setback and frustration. Matheson wrote a screenplay for Britain’s Hammer Film Productions under the title Night Creatures, but the project was halted before filming began by a squeamish censor that was only just becoming accustomed to Hammer’s gothic horror. It remains one of the most tantalising missed opportunities of horror history. Its release would have come at the pinnacle of Hammer’s gothic horror cycle and would have offered a fascinating contrast to the trappings of gothic period settings. The next attempt at least made it to the screen when Matheson’s screenplay was picked up by Robert L. Lippert. The title was changed to The Last Man on Earth and was produced in Italy with distribution in the US handled by AIP. Matheson’s dissatisfaction with changes made by William F. Leicester, Furio M. Monetti and Ubaldo Ragona led to his decision to receive credit through the pseudonym Logan Swanson. The most risible screen version came in 1971 with Warner Bros’ Charlton Heston vehicle The Omega Man. A mindless action film that made wholesale changes in order to indulge Heston’s gun fetish and vile macho posturing. The 2007 version starring Will Smith could only improve on the absolute nadir that The Omega Man represented, but fell to prey to another fetish - that of CGI. Although Matheson expressed a negative view of The Last Man on Earth it does actually emerge as the most faithful rendering of the text, and in my view still remains the most accomplished screen outing for I am Legend.

The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)

Dir: ALAN GIBSON
Country: UK

aka:
Count Dracula and his Vampire Bride

Dracula Is Alive and Well and Living in London

The Satanic Rites of Dracula was Hammer’s seventh outing for the cape wearing fiend Count Dracula, and the last to feature Christopher Lee in the role. The Count would appear for one final time in a Hammer film in 1974 when John Forbes-Robertson put in the fangs for The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. This particular entry is a direct sequel to the risible cinematic disaster Dracula A. D. 1972 (1972), and I’m relieved to say is a vast improvement on that embarrassing offal. In the main the same team were retained from A.D. 1972, with Alan Gibson directing and Don Houghton writing the screenplay. It beggars belief that they were given a second chance, but fortunately this time the filmmakers manage to concoct an enjoyable and tightly paced film. However as a finale to Hammer’s series of Dracula films it is something of a feeble and half-hearted whimper and does not bear any kind of comparison to some of the earlier films. The producers were clearly determined at this point to make Count Dracula succeed in a contemporary setting, and in large part here they do well. The failure of A. D. 1972 is that Dracula is not allowed too engage with modernity and spends the whole of the film within the gothic walls of a deconsecrated church. In Satanic Rites, Dracula has utilised capitalism and property development in order to create a smokescreen in front of his real identity. He has acquired the resources and influence in order to put forward a more coherent plan of vengeance, and is able to manipulate greed and avarice to control those disciples he needs to carry out his plan. In many ways Dracula is more like a Bond villain here, and although the character features little in the running time, he is still given far more than in the previous entry.

Dracula A. D. 1972 (1972)

Dir: ALAN GIBSON
Country: UNITED KINGDOM

aka:
Dracula 1972

Hammer’s seventh outing for Count Dracula is a curious entry which is never able to transcend embarrassment. By this point Hammer were literally and figuratively flogging a corpse, and their gothic horror films were tired, anachronistic, and only fleetingly lightened by lesbianism and nudity. Hammer’s horror films needed a new direction and after the surprise success of Count Yorga - Vampire (1970), which transplanted its vampire aristocrat into a modern setting Hammer clearly thought they had the answer. Much of the success of Count Yorga, Blacula (1972) and The Night Stalker (1972) rested on the manner in which the bloodsucker actually interacted with his surroundings. How Count Yorga (Robert Quarry) is able to manipulate the rationality and logic of modernity in order to cover his tracks is part of the films self-conscious appeal. He has integrated himself so successfully in modern society because of such things as cinema and literature, and the strong association between his kind and the world of fiction. This is a layer of meaning which Don Houghton’s screenplay for Dracula AD 1972 completely, and in my view catastrophically, omits. Instead when Dracula is resurrected in a black mass ceremony (almost a complete replay of a similar sequence in Taste the Blood of Dracula [1970]) he is not allowed to interact in any way with the modern world. He spends the film (when we are allowed an all to rare glimpse of him) stuck in an abandoned and deconsecrated church. This is a location that aesthetically at least could have worked in any of Hammer’s Victorian set Dracula films, so the inevitable question arises; what on the earth was the point?

Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)

Dir: PETER SASDY
Country: UNITED KINGDOM

Taste the Blood of Dracula was Hammer Film Productions’ fifth film to feature Transylvania’s favourite son, and the fourth to feature the sartorial talents of Christopher Lee as the eponymous bloodsucker. I’ve always had a great fondness for this Hammer film, and in comparison to the other Dracula pictures produced by Hammer I rate this as second only to their 1958 production. By this point Bray Studios was a distant memory and much of the studio bound sequences seen here were shot at Elstree Studios. Later Hammer films had a cheap tackiness about them, but Taste the Blood…was one of the last to maintain a lushness and vitality, a visual presentation that far exceeded its modest budget. The film benefits tremendously from some impressive location work in the Hertfordshire countryside, and several exciting and stylish scenes mounted in Highgate Cemetery. Just a scant few months after the release of this film, Hammer put out their sixth Dracula film Scars of Dracula, and the aesthetic difference between the two films is incredible. In many ways this was the last great gothic horror film produced by Hammer, and distilled with economy and brilliance the class message that is visible throughout their films.

Daughters of Darkness (1971)

Dir: HARRY KUMEL
Country: BELGIUM/FRANCE/WEST GERMANY

aka:
Les lèvres rouges
Blood on the Lips
Children of the Night
The Promise of Red Lips
The Red Lips

The traditions of the horror genre and those of art cinema are not the mutually opposed spheres of representation that one might at first glance think. Both horror and art films share an interest in transgression. These transgression’s might be political, social or cultural, but the form they normally take is through expressions of violence and sexuality. Art films sometimes use this thematic trajectory for a grander metaphysical or philosophical vision, whereas horror films enjoy the mess. The horror film takes pleasure in the breakdown and revels in the gooey stuff, but ultimately there is recuperation and conservatism. Radicalism and challenges to taboos are far more common in art films. But this is not to say that horror films cannot highlight a political or social anxiety, they just very rarely offer ideas to remedy the problems that have arisen - aside from the mindless destruction of the threat. These distinctions and commonalities are important things to consider when discussing Harry Kumel’s 1971 film Daughters of Darkness, because this is one of the few films that successfully cross pollinates the two forms.

Hammer Vampire Films Poster Gallery

"I am Dracula and I welcome you to my house. I must apologize for not being here to greet you personally, but I trust you've found everything you needed." - Dracula (1958)

Dracula aka Horror of Dracula (Terence Fisher, 1958) - US poster

Dracula #2 -  UK poster

The Night Flier (1997)

Dir: MARK PAVIA
Country: USA/ITALY

aka:
Stephen King's The Night Flier

The short story The Night Flier by Stephen King first saw the light of day in the 1988 horror anthology Prime Evil: Stories by the Modern Masters of Horror which was edited by Douglas E. Winter. King later chose to include the tale in his patchy 1993 collection Nightmares and Dreamscapes. It remains one of King’s pulpiest and most self aware stories, full of the usual post-modern intertextual tricks one has become accustomed too in his work. However it does cleverly combine vampirism and sensationalist journalism and offers an implication that the two are closely linked. Generally speaking King’s short stories do not make for good movies. The shorter form is more usefully suited to the anthology television series format - but as this type of programming has pretty much died a death in the last twenty years we have to endure heavily padded movies. The Night Flier is no exception and does drag and meander along, but fortunately it never does so aimlessly. There are scenes of repetition (the journalist Richard Dees in unconvincing flight for example) and there one or two notable scenes that do not further the narrative at all (Dees encountering a car accident and ghoulishly moving the corpses in order to get a better photograph). This scene is particularly superfluous because by this point the film has rammed it down our throats that Dees is a rotten bastard.

A Truly Vampiric Collaboration

I have to bite into my Werner Herzog retrospective to bring you news of another collaboration I was invited to take part in. For those of you who have put up with my scribblings over the last few months you'll know that myself and Franco over at  the superb blog The Film Connoisseur have been partaking in a series of Top 5 movie countdowns (like NASA space shuttle launches but without the tense guys in sweat stained shirts!), well we are back to bring you a monster post dedicated to our favourite cinematic bloodsuckers - the vampire! This time we are joined by Venoms5 who runs the excellent Cool Ass Cinema blog. This is easily one of the most informed and entertaining blogs I have come across and I urge you all to check it out and lend your support. So follow the link and read up on the 16  most fascinating and blood drenched Vampire flicks we could come up with. 

 Monster Blog Post! 16 Unusual Vampire Movies!

The Living Dead Girl (1982)

Dir: JEAN ROLLIN
Country: FRANCE

aka:
La morte vivante
Lady Dracula
Zombie Queen

The Living Dead Girl is a curious and unusually accessible entry into the filmography of the French master of the surrealist macabre Jean Rollin. In comparison to prior outings this is something of a bloodbath, and the camera is strangely unflinching in its presentation of the red stuff. It would seem that wider trends within the horror genre had finally forced Rollin in this direction, but fortunately his is able to accommodate this without compromising his strange, ethereal, poetic and arty vision. This time Rollin and his co-writer Jacues Raif conflate the mythologies of the vampire and the zombie to create a haunting piece which still retains a freshness, and would certainly have seemed refreshing in 1982. Instead of the grey faced automatons of Romero, or the rotting cadavers of Fulci here we have the stately vision of Francoise Blanchard as the eponymous reanimated corpse. Her dependence and hunger for blood creates a shattering moral dilemma for this corpse - because as she begins to slowly reclaim the sensations, emotions, and pleasures of life her slavery to blood begins to repulse her. Her addiction is all consuming and few horror films articulate with such poetry and despair the self-revulsion of an addict.

Scars of Dracula (1970)

Dir: ROY WARD BAKER
Country: UK

Continuity was never the strongest of suits for the various scribes that had the task of writing for Hammer’s Dracula and Frankenstein cycles. However the first four Dracula adventures did at least try to follow on from one another (usually with a rushed pre-credits sequence). Scars of Dracula completely does away with series continuity to such a degree that it almost feels like a prequel. The screenplay by Anthony Hinds makes no efforts to link with past films in the series which is very surprising when one considers that Scars of Dracula was released mere months after the Count’s previous instalment Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970). Where that film explored the hypocrisies of Victorian patriarchy to good effect, Scars explores…well, nothing!

Blood of the Vampire (1958)

Dir: HENRY CASS
Country: UK

Although totally obscure and almost completely forgotten to modern audiences Blood of the Vampire has the dubious honour of being the first major attempt to imitate the colourful gothic horror of Hammer. Released mere months after Hammer had scored a major success with Dracula (1958) the screenplay was written by Jimmy Sangster who had also penned Hammer’s early gothic successes. Where Sangster had shown himself to be adept in the skill of adaptation for the purposes of Hammer’s low budgets, his skills as an original writer are found wanting here. Sangster is on firmer ground when his screenplays call for derivation (the series of black and white psychological thrillers he wrote for Hammer in the 1960’s are a good example of this). Blood of the Vampire is derivation of the highest order - one of the worst types of cash ins - unfortunately the horror genre is most susceptible to this. Part of the reason why this can be rated as one of the worst imitations is a deceptive title and a deceptive pre-title sequence.

Dracula (1958)

Dir: TERENCE FISHER
Country: UK

aka:
Horror of Dracula

The commercial success of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) established a number of vital ingredients that would go on to form the basis of much of Hammer’s gothic horror. The lurid use of primary colour, the opulent and lavish set decoration and design, the bombastic and strident musical scores, and the tongue in cheek black humour. The film firmly set the small British producer down the rutted and overgrown pathways into the sublime universe of the gothic and their 1958 production of Bram Stoker’s famous novel would arguably become their finest aesthetic and narrative achievement. For all of its stylistic innovation The Curse of Frankenstein now seems a bit stately and stiff. The Hammer artists had created a dandyish and talky world of drawing rooms and parlours. By contrast Dracula still ripples and crackles with energy. It has a tone and economy of pace and design that remains exhilarating and exciting. The elements of Hammer horror reach a remarkable state of synthesis (some might say the only time they all genuinely did) and the result is a landmark in British cinema.