Past Misdeeds: The Scarlet Blade (1964)

aka The Crimson Blade

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


The English Civil War is in its last throes. The remaining Royalists, the Cavaliers - who are pure as angels I'll have you know - are fighting a guerrilla war trying to enable the former king Charles to escape from the - satanically evil wouldn't you know - Roundheads.

Despite the Royalists' best efforts the men of Colonel Judd (Lionel Jeffries) - officially a traitor to the royal cause himself - manage to capture the king. Now it's only a matter of holding on to the arsehis former royal majesty until he can be transported to the tower, which is supposed to happen in a few weeks time.

Fortunately or un, a group of especially potent Royalist guerrillas (among them an especially scenery-hungry Michael Ripper in embarrassing brownface as "the gypsy Pablo") led by Edward Beverley (Jack Hedley), calling himself "the Scarlet Blade" is operating in the area. These guerrillas are of course doing everything in their power to decimate the enemy troops in the area, and find a way to rescue the ex-king.

What Judd doesn't know is that his daughter Claire (June Thorburn) has been helping Royalist refugees for quite some time, even though she isn't exactly subtle about her loyalties; from there, it's only a small step to involve herself in the conspiracy meant to save the king. Ironically, Judd's right hand man, the deeply cynical Captain Sylvester (Oliver Reed) sees quite a bit more clearly what Claire is up to, but instead of denouncing her, blackmails himself into the Royalist conspiracy too. For Sylvester has fallen in love with Claire and has decided that the best way into a woman's heart is threatening her with exposure and then helping her out with the things she's afraid of being exposed for. He is a smooth ladies man, Sylvester is.

Alas for poor Sylvester, once Claire lays eyes on the prime middle-aged woodenness of Beverley, her heart is forever lost to him. Of course, being played be Oliver Reed in a very sneering mood, Beverley is not the kind of guy who takes these things on the chin, and again the cause of saving one mass-murdering asshole who is being replaced by another mass-murdering asshole is threatened by the vagaries of love.

The deeper I dive into the pool of non-horror movies Hammer Studios made parallel to their horror output, the more impressed I am by the non-horror movies' general quality.

John Gilling's The Scarlet Blade may not be the second coming of the historical adventure movie, seeing as it uses a period not often seen in this sort of film in a bit too shallow a manner, doing a bit more violence to actual history than seems necessary for the kind of film it is. It's one thing to decide on one side of the English Civil War to be the moustache-twirling bad guys, but it's quite another one to basically have the angels sing on the soundtrack whenever fucking Charles I., who deserves the word "tyrant" the film uses for Cromwell quite well too, appears on screen.

However, whenever the film decides to explore the more complex loyalties and motivations of its characters, and relegates actual history to the attractive background like most modern swashbucklers do for a reason (we're a long way from Weyman, for better or worse), it becomes less annoying, and more believably human. In fact, the strained loyalties all of the film's major characters except for its nominal hero Beverley have give the handful of scenes of actual physical violence much more poignancy than they otherwise would carry, and give the film's melodramatic scenes quite a bit of power. Beverley, on the other hand, is and stays the sort of boring, wooden romantic lead you've come to expect from this sort of film (the times of Errol Flynn alas being over, too), a man whose moral certainty is not based on an ability to work through his doubts and fears, but on a lack of imagination and personality, which makes him pretty difficult to cheer for, even when he puts love before duty.

It doesn't help our theoretical hero's case that Jack Hedley's performance is so neutral it sometimes becomes difficult to remember he's there, nor that his main rivals for screen time are Lionel Jeffries and Oliver Reed, both doing their best to outdo each other in intensity, nor does it improve matters that the script doesn't bother to give him much of interest to do.
June Thorburn's character is quite interesting for an adventure movie of this period (and especially one from Hammer, who weren't exactly front runners when it comes to active female leads) in that her character is actually allowed to have some agency as well as a backbone. In fact, Claire seems a much more heroic character than Beverley to me, because she actually understands the implications of what she is doing, and decides doing it despite of these implications because she thinks she is doing right. I just wish Thorburn were a little better at projecting the force of personality the script suggests her character to have; while she isn't as lacking in screen presence as Hedley is, she's never quite convincing enough, which is a bit of a shame.


Other reviews of The Scarlet Blade on the 'net tend to come down hard on the action scenes. However, I don't think that's particularly fair. It's true nothing Gilling presents here is truly spectacular, but the film's emphasis lies more on its character-based melodrama of loyalties, with the action only meant to provide the story with enough spice to keep it moving. This, I think, the action does quite well.

Past Misdeeds: The Pirates of Blood River (1962)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


At the end of the 17th century, a group of Huguenots fled France and settled on the tropical, piranha-infested Isle of Devon somewhere in the tropics. Now, two generations later, what once was supposed to be a colony providing freedom from persecution has become the tyranny of a handful of older men with impressive facial hair under the leadership of Jason Standing (Andrew Keir, as intense as always, even though the script doesn't provide him with much to work with here). The bible-wielding elders sentence people to death or life in their own little penal colony for breaking that obscure set of religious laws known as "the ten commandments" (or something of that sort). The less bearded classes aren't too happy with the political state of affairs, yet they're still too respectful of their elders and their elders' leather-vested henchmen to openly rebel.

Standing's own son Jonathon (Kerwin Mathews, one of the better romantic leads for this sort of film) is especially dissatisfied with life on the island, thinking his father lets himself be manipulated into a cruelty that is quite against his nature by his colleagues. Rather lacking in holiness himself, Jonathon's also in love with a married woman who is mistreated by her husband, and plans on fleeing the place together with her. Alas, before the couple can realize their plans, the elders are catching them in the act of rubbing their cheeks together, provoking the poor woman into running into a river full of piranhas.

Graciously, the elders don't sentence Jonathon to death for his unbiblical behaviour, but rather to spend some time in the colony's penal colony, which, as it turns out, is just as much of a death sentence, just a slower one.

Things at the colony are rough, and Jonathon's background makes him not exactly well-liked by the warden, but eventually, the young man escapes. Only to run right into the arms of the pirate band of Captain LaRoche (Christopher "I'm French, no, really" Lee) which counts among its members some beloved Hammer mainstays like young Oliver Reed and Michael Ripper. For a pirate, the Captain seems civilized enough, and claims to be willing to help Jonathon out with peacefully getting rid of the rule of the elders if the younger man only agrees to let the pirates stay in the Huguenot village for rest and recuperation whenever they need it.

In a turn of events that only surprises Jonathon, the pirates are really in it for the raping and the pillaging. LaRoche is convinced that the founders of the colony have hidden away a treasure of gold somewhere (he might even be right), and he's willing to do absolutely anything to get it. Of course, hoping for gold and actually finding it are two things, especially when some of the Huguenots turn out to be quite competent guerrilla fighters.

John Gilling's The Pirates of Blood River is the least among Hammer Film's handful of seafaring averse pirate movies, slightly hampered by a script that sets up conflicts for its first thirty minutes it will then not bother to resolve later on by anything else but hand-waving.

The whole religious oppression angle is very much side-lined - except for two or three wavering dialogue scenes - once the pirates arrive at the colony, and is only ever resolved by the fact that LaRoche kills off the elders one by one, which sure is a solution, but not one that's thematically satisfying. On the positive side, pirates.

Said pirates are a bit sillier than in the other Hammer pirate movies, too, for some genius (Gilling? Anthony Keys? Jimmy Sangster?) decided it would be a bright idea not just to camp up their appearance, but also to let them all - except for Michael Ripper, whose dialogue instead tests out how often a man can use the pirate-appropriate word "matey" without giggling - speak with painfully fake accents. Reed - in an unfortunately minor role - and Lee - doing his evil glowering shtick with some enthusiasm and thanks to that to very good effect - seem to be trying to outdo each other in the badness of their "French" accents. Though this aspect of the movie clearly has camp value (too bad for me I abhor the concept), it's standing in stark opposition to the film's earnest dramatic tone and makes it quite a bit more difficult to take certain scenes seriously.

This isn't to suggest there's nothing enjoyable at all about the movie if you're not into pointing at especially silly pirates; this is, after all a Hammer production made in the early 60s, a time when the high professional standards of the studio and the people working for it made it quite impossible for them to produce a bad movie. Gilling - who directed two of my favourites among the studio's non-series horror movies with The Reptile and Revolt of the Zombies - may have his problems with the film's pacing in the early scenes, but once the final half hour arrives, he milks a lot of excitement out of the guerrilla warfare between the Huguenots and the pirates trying to get away with their ill gotten gains. At that point, there's little left of the silliness of the film's earlier scenes. High camp is replaced by a certain grimness that makes up for a lot of what came before.


My true disappointment isn't so much with the film's problems at the beginning anyway but rather with the idea how fantastic the film could have been if it had been quite as good as those last scenes right from the start. As it stands, the sympathetic viewer needs a bit of patience and the ability to ignore a problematic set-up to enjoy The Pirates of Blood River, but with that patience, the film is still very much worth seeing.

On WTF: The Scarlet Blade (1964)

aka The Crimson Blade

As you know, Jim, there aren't many adventure movies set during the English Civil War, but fortunately, the glorious people of Hammer did at least provide us with John Gilling's The Scarlet Blade, a film that features a comparatively active female lead, Oliver Reed and others glowering with all their might, and an incredibly boring hero.

If that adds up to something good or something rather bad I'll tell you in this week's column on WTF-Film.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,adventure,john gilling,lionel jeffries,oliver reed,jack hedley,june thorburn,michael ripper,other places

Assignment Naschy (Slight Return): La Cruz Del Diablo (1975)

aka Cross of the Devil

Some time in the 19th century. English writer Alfred Dawson (Ramiro Oliveros) suffers from a bit of writer's block. One may make his love of his hashish pipe responsible for that, as his girlfriend Maria (Carmen Sevilla) clearly does. Be it as it may, Dawson's publisher is getting rather cross with him.

So it's quite useful - if certainly disturbing - when a letter from Alfred's sister Justine (Mónica Randall), who lives with her husband Enrique (Eduardo Fajardo) in his native Spain, arrives, in which she tells him about having had a miscarriage and now being quite at odds with her husband who'll "never forgive her". As a devoted brother, Alfred decides to travel to Spain at once; as a devoted girlfriend and being of Spanish heritage herself, Maria decides to come with him.

Once the couple arrives in Spain, they find Justine dead, supposedly murdered by a vagrant who will all too soon hang himself while in jail. Alfred is not convinced of the man's guilt, suspecting Enrique and his incredibly shady secretary Cesar del Rio (Adolfo Marsillach) of having murdered his sister. In fact, if Alfred were aware of a short scene between Justine and Cesar that reveals she had an inexplicable affair with Cesar and suggests "unnatural experiments" committed by the secretary, he'd be even less convinced of the official story.

Justine wasn't killed close to home, but at something called the "Mountain of Souls", supposedly a place cursed by having been the location of the final stand of the ever evil Templars. Alfred feels so drawn to the place he convinces Enrique and Cesar to travel there with him, possibly in the hope of provoking the true killer to reveal himself. But what Alfred learns there when he and his traveling companions arrive is much stranger than he could ever have expected.

Hammer veteran (among other things - he's also responsible for Mother Riley Meets the Vampire, but it's better not to think about that) director John Gilling's final film after some years working exclusively on British TV shows was produced in Spain, shot in Spanish, and was cast with Spanish actors.

I had expected it to be a piece of Gothic horror in the Hammer tradition, just shot on a lower budget and with less lavish looking sets, but La Cruz Del Diablo is standing with both feet in the tradition of the continental cinema of the fantastic, eschewing the comparatively logical dramaturgy of British horror in the Hammer style for a languidly paced narrative that's so ambiguous it never becomes clear how much of what happens in it only takes place in its protagonist's rather drug-addled mind (I know hashish doesn't work that way, exactly, but the film pretends it does) and how much is truly supernatural horror.

I'm pretty sure Paul Naschy, co-writing under his Jacinto Molina name, is in part responsible for the film's not always logical progression and its dream-like mood, for that's the sort of thing Naschy included in most everything he did with more personal involvement too. I also suspect that it was, at least in part, Naschy's idea to make a film based on themes and motives of Spanish post-romanticist/romanticist (whichever website you want to believe - I'm not knowledgeable enough about Spanish literature to have an opinion here; I only know that the little I read of the writer reminded me of the sensibilities of German romanticist E.T.A. Hoffmann, if clearly coming from a different cultural background) Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, putting the film into a place far from any interest in realism.

Surprisingly enough, Gilling, whom I usually see as a competent professional with moments of greatness (he did direct two of my favourite Hammer films with the Cornish duo, after all) acquits himself very well in the unfamiliar surroundings and makes a film as fog-shrouded, confusing and strange as any native Spaniard. Even though Gilling's direction isn't flashy, he manages to imbue the slow proceedings with exactly the kind of macabre and decrepit mood they need to suck a viewer in. There may be little happening for most of the film, but it does that with such a weight I found myself quite excited by La Cruz.

But then I do have a weakness for films more interested in building a strange and dreamlike mood than in telling a clear and linear story, so if anyone not quite as in love of mood for mood's sake will be as excited as I was while watching La Cruz Del Diablo is probably doubtful.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,horror,gothic,reviews,john gilling,carmen sevilla,ramiro oliveros,eduardo fajardo

On WTF: The Pirates of Blood River (1962)

Ah, Hammer Film and their landlubber pirates. The Pirates of Blood River may not be the best movie coming from that particular sub genre, but it does recommend itself with the usual awesome cast (including Christopher Lee, Oliver Reed, Andrew Keir, Michael Ripper and Kerwin Mathews) and some Huguenot guerrilla fighting.

So click on through to my column on WTF-Film for some raping and pillaging.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,adventure,reviews,john gilling,kerwin mathews,christopher lee,oliver reed,andrew keir,michael ripper

Fury At Smugglers' Bay (1961)

The 18th century. An area of the Cornish coast under the dominion of country squire Trevenyan (Peter Cushing) has been invaded by the band of shipwreckers of Black John (Bernard Lee), who are sending many a ship to its doom.

The local honest smugglers - your usual poor bastards trying to survive over-taxation by breaking the law - under the leadership of Francois Lejeune (George Coulouris) are quite disturbed by the development, chiefly because smuggling's one thing, but murdering people quite another one. Yet there's also a - quite correct - fear the 'wreckers' activities will provoke Trevenyan into an aggressive response against crime that'll hit the smugglers just as hard as the wreckers.

In fact, Trevenyan's response will only hit the wreckers, for Black John turns out to be a former servant of the man carrying around a bagful of documents to blackmail Trevenyan with. Trevenyan's son Christopher (John Fraser), also the lover of Lejeune's daughter Louise (Michele Mercier), is quite distraught by his father's curious concentration on the smugglers instead of Black John's gang, distraught enough to get into a bit of violence that ends with the death of one of Black John's men.

That's a good enough reason for the squire to send his boy away "for his own safety". And once the boy's away, it's a good time to round up a few of the smugglers (I'm sure Lejeune being among them has nothing at all to do with Trevenyan's obvious dislike for his son's love for the man's daughter; it's a classist thing) and sentence them to deportation.

Fortunately, Lejeune has a good friend in the local honourable highwayman only known as The Captain (William Franklyn) who will move heaven and earth to help his friend and get rid of the wreckers in the process, too. Perhaps with the help of a returning Christopher, or even a late repentant squire?

Hammer-regular John Gilling - later to be director of the excellent The Reptile and The Plague of the Zombies, among others - was working under his own production company's name when he was making Fury at Smugglers' Bay.

As is probably clear, this is an adventure movie/swashbuckler of that particular British sub-genre concerning the exploits of smugglers and pirates who never seem to actually leave the land. Curiously, films of this sub-genre (for which there should be a better descriptor than "landlocked pirate movies") tend to be among my favourite adventure movies. Fury will, unfortunately, not become part of that exclusive club, not because there's much that would be particularly wrong with the movie, but because there's too little that's particularly right with it.

Although the script has its interesting moments (there's for example a somewhat complicated - very typical of UK cinema - argument about class and the dangers of a classist society running through it), Gilling's direction is solid with moments of actual class, and the acting's perfectly alright, Fury suffers from a lack of playfulness and passion that would not necessarily be as much of a problem in a film of a different genre as it is in a swashbuckler, but that leaves a film is this genre feeling somewhat lifeless and slightly bland.

I think this lack of charm is all too well embodied by William Franklyn's character, who is supposed to be a charming rogue, but never feels all that charming or rogue-ish, going through all the motions of his job description, yet never actually convincing me of being more than a guy who grins a lot and knows how to rob people. Bland Franklyn's casting is quite typical for a film that's too professionally made to be bad, yet lacking in feeling and a sense of excitement, the things that actual make an adventure movie an adventure movie instead of a movie about people discussing the weather.

Fury at Smugglers' Cove suffers from taking characters and situations that should be (at least slightly) larger than life, but treats them as if it all were just visits to a tea party.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,john gilling,reviews,adventure,swashbuckler,peter cushing,michele mercier

Shadow of the Cat (1961)

With the help of the two servants of the house, Walter Venable (Andre Morell) murders his wife Ella (Catherine Lacey) after thirty years of trying to get at her money in vain. It seems marriage impostors in the olden times were much more patient than today. The killers dig a (quite shallow) grave for their victim in the nearby woods, and report her as missing in the conviction that Ella's reputation as being a bit of an eccentric will be enough to not make the police look into her disappearance too closely.

Walter and his cronies haven't counted on various complicating factors, though. First and foremost, Ella's death has not gone without a witness. Her cat Tabitha has seen everything and his highly displeased by losing her favourite food-bearing monkey. The harmless looking cat begins a reign of terror by doing lots of spring-loaded catting and throwing evil glances at the trio. It's also not too good for anyone's peace of mind that Walter might have been able to press his wife into writing a new testament that makes him the sole heir of her fortune, but her original will that gives everything to her favourite niece Beth (Barbara Shelley) is still hidden away somewhere in the house. For some reason, Walter invites Beth into the house as soon as Ella has "disappeared". Despite stealing her inheritance, the old bastard seems to be rather fond of her.

Neither the local police, nor Michael Latimer (Conrad Phillips), the young owner of the local newspaper who was quite friendly with Ella, are convinced by the supposed circumstances of the old lady's disappearance either. Latimer can't prove anything, but that surely isn't going to stop him from snooping around, especially after he and Beth begin to look at each other with the proper romantic lead expressions on their faces.

Soon the cat terror is getting to Walter so much that he's suffering a minor heart attack and decides to send for some of his low-life, untrustworthy relatives to help him find the will and - most importantly - kill the cat. Alas, this is going to escalate the cat terror into outright murder, and also brings further people without scruples but with a desperate need for money into the house.

Shadow of the Cat was produced by "B.H.P. Productions", which was a label Hammer Films used for co-productions in which they provided other firms with studio room and (as in this case) creative talent. In fact, some of the film's sets were earlier seen in one of the Frankenstein films, if in colour and not in black and white; director John Gilling was of course part of Hammer's talent bullpen, as were actors Shelley and Morell.

Mostly, Shadow does play out like a lower budget version of a mainstream Hammer film, with sensibilities a bit more old-fashioned than those shown by productions made under the mother label at the time, but still feeling very Hammer nonetheless.

The old-fashionedness is probably the Shadow's most problematic aspect. The film's script might just as well have been written in 1936 as in 1961, with not much of it hinting at a film with gothic inclinations made after Corman's House of Usher.

However, that doesn't necessarily make Shadow of the Cat a bad film. What it does is make it a film trading in any sort of daring for competence and professionalism and the decided refusal to actually be of its own time. Fortunately for the film and its viewers, the professionalism of everyone involved is large enough to provide for a slightly creaky, yet very entertaining little movie if one is not going in expecting anything original.

Gilling's direction is at least decent; from time to time, his use of shadows hints at the influence of Universal Horror, and it is in these moments the film's balancing act between thriller and outright horror film does pay off.

George Baxt's script does have its problems, obviously. I found it a little difficult to actually buy into the cute little tabby cat at a ruthless mastermind provoking people into their deaths. It's also not necessarily easy to buy into all of the film's villains going into hysterics about the animal. Sure, a guilty conscience could play its part in a case like this, but accepting half a dozen people in mortal fear of a tabby seems a bit more work than my suspension of disbelief should be doing.

On the more positive side, Baxt provides most of the villains (except for the servants, whose exemption from being actual persons is - I suspect - based on the mortal sin of being members of the working class) with at least a second dimension. I quite appreciated the script giving most everyone a motive for their being so greedy as to go to murder (although I would have loved an explanation why Walter waited thirty years to go through with his murder plans). It's also quite nice to see a semi-Gothic movie heroine with a bit of backbone like Shelley's Beth. I wouldn't exactly say she has agency, but at least she's not the fainting kind who is only there to be menaced and kidnapped.

Some of my objections might make the film sound worse than it actually is, I'm afraid. When you're able to pretend it was made in 1936 and not 1961, you'll probably find Shadow of the Cat to be an entertaining little film. At least it was to me.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,horror,thriller,reviews,john gilling,barbara shelley,andre morell,gothic