The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

It was of course inevitable that having produced their own very successful versions of Frankenstein and Dracula Hammer would eventually turn their attentions to Universal’s other classic monster subject, the wolf-man. Rather than just remaking The Wolf Man they decided to do something a little bolder - adapting Guy Endore’s interesting and original 1934 novel The Werewolf of Paris. Unfortunately the themes of the book would probably not have lent themselves to Hammer’s approach to gothic horror and the screenplay by Anthony Hinds ended up having almost nothing in common with Endore’s novel.

The screenplay does however come up with a couple of reasonably effective twists on the werewolf idea. Director Terence Fisher was always attracted by stories that presented a conflict between good and evil and Hinds’ screenplay gives him plenty of scope to explore this conflict.

Universal's The Wolf Man established the werewolf as a tragic monster, doomed through no fault of his own. The Curse of the Werewolf follows the same pattern. A serving girl (played by Yvonne Romain) is raped by a beggar in prison. That’s bad enough, but the resulting child is born on Christmas Day, a circumstance that always involves the danger that the child will be exposed to evil influences (the idea being that a child born on the same day and at the same hour as Christ is an insult to Heaven).

The evil influences in this case go back before the conception of the child. It was the brutality and lust of the Marques Siniestro (Anthony Dawson) that began the chain of unfortunate circumstances.

The child is adopted by the kindly Alfredo (Clifford Evans) who gradually becomes aware that there is something amiss with young Leon. A wise and sympathetic priest explains the workings of the curse - a werewolf is a man with a human soul and a wolf spirit constantly at war with each other. The outcome of the struggle is always uncertain, with both damnation and redemption being possible. This is an idea that allows Fisher to explore the good/evil dichotomy in a single individual.

To add to the tragedy, even as a boy Leon is not unaware of the struggle for dominance between good and evil being waged within him. As he grows up he, and everyone around him, tries to pretend that somehow the evil has been averted.

There are plenty of promising ideas here and Fisher makes the most of them.

Oliver Reed plays Leon as a man and of the various rôles he played for Hammer in the early 60s this is the most demanding, and the most rewarding. Reed could be menacing and he could be very dark indeed but he could also be very sympathetic and this part gives him the opportunity to show his full range as an actor. Most importantly Reed has that indefinable quality that makes a true star - the ability to dominate the screen.

While I don’t wish to take anything away from Lon Chaney Jr’s fine performance in The Wolf Man there’s no question that Oliver Reed was the better actor and he adds extra layers of complexity to the doomed hero. One cool thing about this movie is that to play Leon as a boy Hammer found a child actor who looks exactly like a child version of Oliver Reed!

Fisher knew that the problem with any werewolf movie is that even the best werewolf makeup can look a little silly so he wisely refrains from revealing the werewolf until very late in the picture. Most of the horror is portrayed indirectly and as so often this has the effect of making it all the more effective. Suggested rather than overt horror is always more frightening, especially when you’re dealing with a tragic monster. The fact that we don’t see Oliver Reed in the full werewolf makeup until the end helps us to regard Leon as a man and not a mere monster. The makeup effects aren’t spectacular but they do have the advantage of allowing Reed to express emotion. Fisher has enough sense to know that poorly executed transformation scenes have ruined many werewolf movies so he achieves the transformations in stages using cutaways rather than taking the risk of showing them directly.  

Fisher demonstrates his sure touch with the pacing of the film - it starts slowly but gradually accelerates until towards the end it becomes relentless. He also knows that some horror movie clichés should not be avoided - a villagers with flaming torches scene is not a cliché but a much-loved horror movie convention, so he includes one.

This movie was made by Hammer’s A-Team - Terence Fisher directing, Arthur Grant doing the cinematography and Bernard Robinson doing the production design. The result is a classy and stylish gothic horror movie with a fine sense of tragedy. Highly recommended.

Universal have done a good job with the DVD transfer (from their Franchise Collection Hammer Horror Series boxed set). The lack of extras is a little disappointing but the set is excellent value for money.

Burnt Offerings (1976)

Burnt Offerings is a 1976 horror movie that stars Oliver Reed, Karen Black an Bette Davis. Now is that a dream cast for a horror movie or what? And did I mention Burgess Meredith plays a supporting role? With a cast like that you can be sure that scenery will get chewed.

Marian (Karen Black) and Ben Rolf (Oliver Reed) are a nice couple with a 12-year-old son named Davy. They’re looking for a house to rent for the summer and when they find one it almost seems to good to be true (always a dangerous thing when you’re a character in a horror movie). The house is huge, old and gorgeous. And the slightly dotty brother and sister, Arnold and Roz Allardyce, who own it are asking for a ridiculously low rental. The only thing is their elderly mother won’t leave the house so they’ll have to share it with her but they assure the Rolfs that she’s really no trouble at all. They’ll hardly even know she’s there. There’ll be plenty of room for the Rolfs and for Ben’s aunt Elizabeth (Bette Davis) who lives with them.

Marian has fallen hopelessly in love with the house already, although Ben is a little suspicious. When they move in they find the brother and sister gone. They don’t actually see the old lady. Everything seems fine though. Although one or two odd incidents do occur. The house suddenly looks slightly different. And some rough-housing in the pool between Ben and Davy gets out of hand. In fact Davy is almost drowned.

Ben eventually decides that perhaps it would be better if they left. But Marian (who has changed both her hairstyle as well as her style of dress) will not leave, even after further rather frightening incidents. She spends an inordinate amount of time upstairs in old Mrs Allardyce’s room. Ben still hasn’t set eyes on the old lady. He is increasingly worried. What is to become of them?

Burnt Offerings looks good. The house is terrific. Dan Curtis’s direction is workmanlike but reasonably effective. The big problem is the script, by Curtis and William F. Nolan. The ideas have potential but they don’t really do much with them. And at 116 minutes the film is just a touch too long and just a little on the slow side.

But all is not necessarily lost. All it needs is a couple of outrageously over-the-top performances and it can still work. And that’s where Karen and Ollie come in. Can they produce sufficiently over-the-top performances to save the movie? You bet they can.

Karen Black is superb. A lesser actress would have played Marian as a perfectly ordinary woman who slowly gets drawn into the weirdness of this house. But Karen Black’s acting, even when she’s not playing psychos, always bristles with manic nervous energy and suppressed hysteria. And that makes her particularly effective in this role because it overcomes the suspension of disbelief problem. You don’t have any trouble believing that this is a woman who is going to be sensitive to any weirdness in her environment. And black gives the character a vulnerability that ensures that she never loses our sympathy.

Oliver Reed is just as good. His big asset is that he’s Oliver Reed. He could always do subtle and restrained acting if that was what was called for, being being Oliver Reed you know that at any minute that restraint could be throw out the window.

Bette Davis lands the most thankless role. Her character is underwritten and doesn’t serve all that much purpose. She has her moments, but she’s completely overshadowed by the two leads.

Not a great movie but if (like me) you’re a big fan of Oliver Reed and Karen Black then it’s definitely worth a look.

Ken Russell’s The Debussy Film (1965)

The Debussy Film is one of the Ken Russell BBC-TV films made for the Monitor arts documentary series. Made the same year as the Rousseau film, this one is much more ambitious, much more interesting and much more successful.

It’s actually a film about someone making a film about Debussy, and added to the very strong Nouvelle Vague flavour of the piece it invites the obvious comparison - Godard’s Le Mepris (Contempt). But it’s actually closer in feel to the more exuberant Godard of Band of Outsiders, with a strong admixture of absurdism and even a hint of Richard Lester’s A Hard Days’ Night. It’s an odd mix but it works. Compared to the Rousseau movie this is also much more obviously a Ken Russell film.

It focuses quite a bit on Debussy’s troubled relations with women (two of his girlfriends attempted suicide) and on his influences. Not his musical influences - what made Debussy so interesting was that he was so heavily influenced by painting and by literature. The film gives the impression that he never really sat down and wrote a piece of pure music - all his music was about something, and mostly it was about a painting or a story or a poem that appealed to the composer. This blending and cross-influencing of different arts is both fascinating in its own right and makes for an interesting film.

The early influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, and especially Rossetti, is stressed. The Symbolist writers were of course immensely important to Debussy’s music, as was one of my favourite decadent writers, Pierre Louÿs (who was effectively Debussy’s patron for a number of years). There’s a considerable dose of fin de siècle decadence, juxtaposed with some Swinging 60s decadence!

I hadn’t realised that Debussy spent years on a musical adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, and that he was quite obsessed by Poe.

Oliver Reed might might not have been most people’s first choice for the role of Debussy, but Ken Russell had great faith in the actor and Ollie never let him down. Reed is in fact extremely good - his natural sensuality makes him perfect casting.

Unlike Always on Sunday, this one has a proper feature-length running time of 82 minutes and it has much more of a real feature film feel to it, albeit on a limited BBC budget! Given the subject matter it’s perhaps just a little unfortunate this one was made before the BBC switched to colour, and the black-and-white cinematography (although very well done) doesn’t quite have the necessary lushness and excessiveness, or the necessary sensuousness.

This is still an intriguing and generally rather satisfying little film. It has the classic Ken Russell stye, not quite as over-the-top as it would later become and on a smaller scale, but it’s still a movie that could only have been made by Ken Russell.

Revolver (1973)

Revolver is a rather cynical 1973 Italian crime thriller with political overtones, not the sort of movie I’d normally watch except for the presence of Oliver Reed in the cast.

Reed is prison governor Vito Cipriani who becomes unwittingly involved in a complex web of political and criminal intrigue. Someone wants one of his prisoners out of gaol, and kidnaps his wife to force him to arrange the escape. Milo Ruiz is a petty criminal and he doesn’t know himself why anyone would want to go to such lengths to free him from incarceration. Vito is determined not just to get his wife back, but to make the kidnappers pay. He forms an unlikely alliance with Milo, and increasingly they discover that they’re both victims, and both pawns in a very big game.

Vito’s hunt for the kidnappers will take them both to France, and to the home of pop star Al Niko, whose connection with plots involving political assassinations seems even more unlikely than Milo’s. Both Vito and Milo will find themselves questioning their assumptions about each other and about themselves. Director Sergio Sollima was most interested in the idea that there are no clear-cut good guys and bad guys, and as he says in the accompanying featurette, it’s often the good guys who do the most harm.

The strange friendship that develops between these two mismatched characters provides the most interesting moments in the film. Oliver Reed and Fabio Testi (as Milo) deliver powerful and surprisingly subtle performances.

The plot is heavily laced with paranoia, and is formidably complex. There’s plenty of action and quite a bit of violence, but the violence is used effectively to underscore the increasingly anomalous position that Vito finds himself in, a lawman unable to turn to the law for help and having as his only reliable ally an habitual criminal.

Sergio Sollima’s direction is assured and very stylish. Ennio Morricone provides a memorable and effective score. The scenes involving pop star Al Niko include some of the most unforgettable fashion catastrophes of the 1970s.

The Blue Underground DVD includes a very short but reasonably interesting making-of featurette. Sollima remembers Oliver Reed with fondness, although he admits that after his 26th bottle of wine for the day he could become a little difficult, while Reed’s co-star Fabio Testi seems to have enjoyed working with him.

Revolver is a very dark and very pessimistic little movie, offering little hope for the triumph of justice or for ay worthwhile human ideals. Corruption is inescapable and all-pervasive. It’s entertaining and engrossing, and it’s a must for fans of Oliver Reed.

These Are the Damned (1963)

You don’t really expect to find Joseph Losey directing a movie for Hammer Studios, and you don’t expect Losey to be doing a science fiction movie either. But Losey was surprisingly versatile (as evidenced by his wonderfully camp spy spoof Modesty Blaise) and These Are the Damned (also released as The Damned) is an interesting and challenging science fiction film.

Simon (Macdonald Carey) is an American tourist in Britain who tries to pick up a young English girl. Joan (the girl) is acting as bait for a motorcycle gang led by her brother King (Oliver Reed) and the hapless Simon gets beaten up and robbed for his trouble. Joan isn’t happy with her life and finds herself drawn to Simon. She seeks him out on his boat, and makes a kind of apology. King and the gang show up again and King orders her to come with him. She makes a split-second decision and instead joins Simon on his boat. With King and his gang after them they hide out in the remote house of an eccentric female artist, and when pursued they find themselves inside a secret military establishment. And there they meet The Children.

The Children are more or less kept prisoner. There is something decidedly odd about them. For one thing, their body temperatures are abnormally low, very very low indeed. In time we discover they were created as the result of an accident, and are being raised in secret and in captivity by the military as the future of humanity after a nuclear war. They are adapted to extreme levels of radiation. Simon, Joan and King now find themselves as unlikely allies recruited by The Children as a possible means of escape.

The movie works by presenting us with a series of apparent oppositions and parallels. King is an outsider, the leader of a gang of hoodlums. But the leader of the secret military establishment, a senior civil servant and an ultra-respectable pillar of the establishment, has his own gang - the soldiers who follow his orders as blindly as King’s thugs follow his, but these soldiers and civil servants are in effect hoodlums on a global scale, making their plans for nuclear war. Both have rejected life and chosen death. King has never had a girlfriend, and is determined to stop his sister from having a boyfriend. He is angry and frightened. The leader of the project has also rejected life in the form of the woman artist with whom he has obviously had some kind of romantic attachment, and he has chosen death. He is as fearful as King, and in both cases this fear causes them to turn away from life and embrace death.

The crimes of King and his gang are violent, but small-scale. They pale into insignificance compared to the crimes against humanity being perpetrated by the government an the military. The cruelty of the treatment of The Children is something that King, for all his faults, would never stoop to. If we can countenance such acts, and if people can carry out such acts in the name of duty, then perhaps we as a society have also rejected life.

It all sounds very serious, and it is in fact a rather bleak film. It makes its political points with a certain subtlety though (especially compared to heavy-handed efforts such as On the Beach) and there’s a human story there to keep our interest.

Macdonald Carey is adequate, Oliver Reed is, well he’s Oliver Reed so you know what to expect. Shirley Anne Field is impressive as Joan. The child actors portraying The Children manage to be both moving and strangely chilling.

As so often with Hammer films the real star is production designer Bernard Robinson, ably assisted by some superb black-and-white cinematography by Arthur Grant. The look of the movie is superb. The secret military establishment is a textbook example of capturing the right atmosphere without spending a lot of money on elaborate sets. The place has a look that is both creepily sterile and very modernist, with The Children’s accommodation being the bureaucratic mind’s idea of a cheery home for captive children. A kind of combination of modern prison and play centre.

This is the kind of intelligent science fiction movie that Hammer were very god at doing in the 50s and 60s and for which they don’t really get sufficient credit. Losey makes his points without preaching, and the result is a movie that is emotionally effective without being excessively manipulative. An interesting little movie, well worth seeing.

Royal Flash (1975)

Harry Flashman is a coward, a cad, a liar and a bully. His principal interests in life are gambling and whores. He is also a certified military hero, the only survivor of the gallant defence of Piper’s Fort in Afghanistan in 1842. At the time the relief column arrived he was in fact desperately trying to save his own skin by surrendering the fort, but when his unconscious body was found wrapped in the British flag appearances suggested that here indeed was a Noble Manly Hero. While still basking in this totally undeserved glory Flashman encounters an up-and-coming German politician named Bismarck in the company of the notorious courtesan Lola Montez, with fateful consequences both for himself and for the history of Europe. Royal Flash, the 1975 film based on the second of George MacDonald Fraser’s immensely successful series of Flashman novels, seemed to have most of the ingredients required for a hit movie – director Richard Lester was riding high after the enormous success of The Three Musketeers and its sequel, the movie’s cast included a galaxy of British acting talent, the locations were simply gorgeous, it was photographed by the great Geoffrey Unsworth, and it offered a combination of adventure, comedy and romance. Alas, it was not to be, and the movie failed at the box office. I suspect it failed partly because in order to really enjoy the Flashman novels the reader requires at least a cursory knowledge of 19th century history, and mainstream cinema audiences were likely to be left somewhat perplexed by the plot. If you don’t have at least a rough idea of Bismarck’s historical significance and the course of German unification, and if you’ve never heard of Lola Montez, you’re going to miss much of the fun, which relies on the skilful and witty way in which Fraser (who also wrote the screenplay) weaves together historical facts and the career of his mythical anti-hero. It’s also a slightly quirky movie, with lots of odd but delightful little visual flourishes and in-jokes (there are some wonderfully fanciful Victorian gadgets that give the movie almost a steampunk feel at times). And it’s also possible that movie audiences simply couldn’t accept the idea of an adventure film with such an outrageous scoundrel as its hero. Be that as it may, the elements that ensured the movie’s commercial failure are the very elements that make for cult success and Royal Flash has over the years accumulated a small but devoted following.

Malcolm MacDowell is fun as the unscrupulous and unapologetic rogue Flashman, Alan Bates is delightfully villainous, Florinda Bolkan is glamorous and charismatic as Lola Montez and Oliver Reed gives one of his most memorably sinister performances as Bismarck. Bob Hoskins, Alastair Sim, Michael Hordern and Lionel Jeffries give great support in minor roles, and even Britt Eckland is surprisingly good as the ice princess Flashman finds himself forced to marry. Royal Flash is highly entertaining and looks glorious, and the recent DVD release from Fox (which comes with some very tempting extras) should do much to rescue this movie from undeserved oblivion.

The Devils (1971)

Ken Russell’s The Devils was one of the most controversial movies of the 1970s, and its power to shock has been diminished by time. Russell was often accused of setting out to shock just for the sake of shocking, which I think is nonsense. His purpose in this movie was extremely serious. It’s a very angry movie, the anger being directed at those who mix religion and politics, and use religion for corrupt and dishonest and mercenary purposes, and those who use religion to destroy those who stand in the path of their pursuit of power.

The movie is based on real events in the city of Loudon in 1634. A popular priest who had made powerful enemies was accused of bewitching the nuns in a Ursuline convent. Oliver Reed gives the performance of his career as the priest, Father Urbain Grandier. Vanessa Redgrave is truly terrifying as the Mother Superior of the convent whose sexual frustration overpowers her and leads her to actions with horrifying consequences. The sets, designed by Derek Jarman, are quite simply superb, and the combination of Russell’s extraordinary visual imagination with Jarman’s is electrifying. The impact of the film comes largely from the images – this is a very cinematic film. It’s a powerful film, and it’s a very great film.