OUR MOTHER'S HOUSE 1967

 

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"We know a secret...We won't tell. For if we tell, we'll go to hell"

After spending years in the British film system director Jack Clayton appeared to be on quite a roll in the first half of the sixties. After ROOM AT THE TOP in 1959, followed by the great THE INNOCENTS in 1961 and then 1964's THE PUMPKIN EATER he seemed destined to become one of the leading figures of British cinema, and then in 1967, he directed this adaptation of Julian Gloag's novel of the same name. A failure at the box office, the film was saddled with a wholly inappropriate ad campaign that attempted to sell it as a Hammer-type PSYCHO-inspired psychological horror complete with lurid one-sheets along with a spoiler-laden trailer that managed to pack every bit of perceived salacious & violent content into its brief running time. With its blend of old-fashioned Gothic ambiance combined with a very dark (this film truly goes into some shadowy & disturbing places) storyline along with a very creepy and unsettling blend of religious hypocrisy and dark sexual undertones (all of which involve children) it no doubt was a tough sell.

 In the London suburb of Croydon, the seven Hook children (with the name of "Hook" perhaps being a reference to Peter Pan) live with their sickly bed-ridden & deeply religious mother in a large rambling Victorian house. Ranging in age from pre-school to middle teen they tend to their mother and with their only outside contact being school and a visit from an occasional housekeeper they live isolated in the home which the mother has festooned with crosses and biblical verses. One night right before "bible story time" the mother dies suddenly and faced with the prospect of being sent to an orphanage the children conspire to secretly bury her in the garden.

Building a makeshift shrine to their mother in a shed, they dismiss the suspicious housekeeper Mrs. Quayle (Yootha Joyce), and set about to carry on as before. At first, all seems to go reasonably well with the older siblings Elsa (Margaret Brooks) and Hubert (Louis Sheldon Williams) taking charge with Elsie playing the mother role as she cooks and sends the younger children off to school. Hubert suggests to Elsie that they might want to bring an adult or authority figure into the situation but is chastised for this. The stuttering and shy Jiminee (a pre-OLIVER Mark Lester) shows an aptitude for forgery which is put to good use in the form of replicating their mother's signature on the monthly relief checks.

Things begin to get darker however when they begin to hold candlelit seance-like "mommy time" sessions in the dark garden shed with the coming-of-age Diana (in a wonderful performance by Pamela Franklin) rocking back and forth in their mother's rocking chair while quoting biblical verses, intoning advice from "mother" and doling out punishment. In the film's most horrifying sequence perky young Gertie (Phoebe Nicholls) is punished for accepting a ride from a stranger on a motorcycle by having her hair cut off while she terrifyingly shrieks and the other children scream "harlot!" at her.

Into this increasingly dark environment arrives the smiling and affable Charlie Hook (Dirk Bogarde) the children's absent father who arrives just in time to help pacify an inquiring school teacher and later the returning and nosy housekeeper Mrs. Quayle. At first, Charlie seems to fit in with the children well. He accepts their story of the mother's demise and subsequent garden internment without an afterthought. Taking the children for outings in some of the few sequences where we are not in the increasingly claustrophobic house, he initially seems to be the adult figure needed but underneath there is something devious lurking in him. The older Elsie quickly grows suspicious of him while Diana seems enamored of him and although it is initially left ambiguous as to who (if any) of the children he is the actual biological father of, his attraction to Franklin's Diana is very queasily disturbing. 

With a sly glint in his eye, Charlie befriends Jiminee when he learns of the latter's forgery skills and soon begins to bring the outside world into the up till then cloistered home. This includes pop music, Playboy magazine, liquor, and women with which he carries on sexual relations within full view of the children. This all turns the then swinging 60's on their head by having the adult figure indoctrinate the children into the changing trends and morals. However, it seems that along with the strict religious upbringing the children also have in them a sense of biblical retribution which plays out in the film's terrifying and somber climax.

As he demonstrated with ROOM WITH A VIEW and especially in THE INNOCENTS Clayton was a master of mood and here, he is helped immensely by Larry Pizer's shadowy cinematography that shows off the films gorgeous, muted brown, and autumnal color palette along with Georges Delerue's spare musical score who's gently descending & ascending chords suggest a child's lullaby. The book was adapted for the screen by Jeremy Brooks and Haya Harareet (who played Esther in 1959's BEN HUR and was Clayton's wife). 

Although Clayton had a reputation as a taskmaster on set, he seemed to have a special gift for working with children as evidenced in THE INNOCENTS and here he conjures up a wonderful ensemble performance from the children letting each show a distinct personality while still behaving like children and not "little adults" which was a common trait in films of the period. Pamela Franklin (whom Clayton had worked with previously in THE INNOCENTS) is magnificent here. Her role as the child Flora in THE INNOCENTS followed by the young teenage Diana here and then the troubled adult medium Florence Tanner in THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE in 1974 form a wonderful symmetry.

Dirk Bogarde who started out in light comedies for Rank brings that easy-going charm to our initial impression of the wayward father and later turns to a darker complex personality more related to his roles in THE SERVENT and THE VICTIM.  In his memoir, Bogarde related that he “loved every second of the film,” and upon his first day on the already in production film he found a note in his dressing room which read “Let us hope you’re as good as you’re cracked up to be" and it was signed "The Children". It was his work in this film that brought him to Luchino Visconti's notice and cast him in THE DAMNED and DEATH IN VENICE. 

The British Board of Censors slapped the film with an "X" rating (the rough equivalent of an "R" today) and its failure at the box office led to a downturn in Clayton's career and he did not direct again until the somewhat messy version of THE GREAT GATSBY in 1974 and later Disney's SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES in 1983 which suffered from post-production tampering by the studio. Regulated to the occasional late-night TV showing and later sporadic scheduling on TCM, OUR MOTHER'S HOUSE was finally given a release on bare-bones DVD release by Warner Archive in a soft but serviceable 1.66 transfer. However, this film screams out for a beautiful new restoration and packed Blu-ray edition from Criterion and/or Indicator. 

I did some exploring on Google Maps in the Croydon area hoping to find the house, but the entire area seems to have been redeveloped. 

AND SOON THE DARKNESS 1970

"Two beautiful girls...a bright summer day... trapped 

in a terrifying web of shock and suspense"

    One of the more underappreciated and underseen thrillers of the '70s and taking the unusual tact of unfolding almost entirely in the bright sunshine of the French countryside, AND SOON THE DARKNESS, takes a simple economical plot concerning two women alone on a biking holiday who slowly come to the realization that they're being stalked by an unseen perpetrator with the universal fear of being isolated in a foreign country where you don't speak the language. 

    Two young English nurses Jane ( Pamela Franklin THE INNOCENTS)  and Cathy (Michele Dotrice THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW) are on a holiday bicycling through the French countryside of the Lorie Valley. Although obviously "work friends" it's apparent straight away that the two women are opposites in what they expect out of their vacation. The dark-haired Jane is the more practical one wanting to stick to a schedule while Cathy just wants to spend time relaxing and meeting men. The film neatly sets up the premise that neither girl is at fault for their strained relationship or is a bad person, they are simply two people who probably shouldn't be traveling together. 

    Stopping at a roadside cafe they catch the eye of a young man astride a moped (Sandor Elès COUNTESS DRACULA) who seems to be following them in a roundabout fashion as they continue their journey. Cathy and Jane begin to squabble with Jane wanting to press on to the next village while Kathy would lay about in sun and (hopefully) meet up with the stranger on the moped. The pair decide to split with Jane pedaling onward while Jane stays behind for a nap and some sun. Laying about in the woods Jane put her laundry out to dry and soon ominously finds a pair of her panties missing, her bike disabled and in a wonderful shot, we see a shadow quickly pass over her face.              Becoming concerned Jane returns and not finding Cathy she makes inquires at a small hotel run by an elderly woman (Hana Maria Pravda) who while not speaking English does project a sense of dread as Jane (and us the viewer) are only able to catch the words "bad road". The film cleverly does not use subtitles so we immediately can empathize with Jane and only are able to gleam the same small snatches of information that she does. She eventually finds an ally in the form of a visiting English schoolmistress (Clare Kelly GEORGY GIRL) who informs Jane that a local young woman was murdered along the same stretch of the road the previous year (and who bears a striking resemblance to Cathy).

     Directed by Robert Fuest (THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES) and written by Brian Clemens (DR. JEKYLL AND SISTER HYDE) both of whom had worked on THE AVENGERS TV show, this couldn't have been farther from Fuest's Art Deco horror of the Phibes films or the futuristic sci-fi spy-vibe of THE AVENGERS. Set almost enterally along a long stretch of lonely road and making wonderful use of the sunny countryside it makes use of a deceptively simple premise which unfolds in realtime after Cathy's disappearance. Without his art-deco flourishes, Fuest instead relies on lighting and composition along with the sights and sounds of the French countryside all of which in spite of the bright sunshine hint at something forbidding lurking just offscreen. The film also conjures up a suspenseful feeling of isolation and dread as the wide-open countryside although green and sunny provides no sanctuary for Jane. The film's advertising really played up the Hitchcock angle, name-dropping him in some of the taglines, and his name was featured prominently on the poster artwork.   

     Throwing up red herrings with every character introduced the film has a distinct Giallo-like feel to it with Sandor Elès's mysterious sort-of "detective" character astride a Vespa and always lurking in the background could have come right out of a  classic Italian Giallo along with the unknown sense of dread and ambiguity. Fuest doesn't throw out bunches of jump scares but instead relies on a slowly amping of dread to fuel the viewer's unease. The scene with Cathy alone in the woods and being slowly stalked is a textbook example of how to unfold a suspenseful sequence by resorting to screaming and bloodshed. Even though unfolding almost entirely in bright sunlight the sense of desolation and isolation is quite palpable with the longs miles of empty country roadway with no other person in sight. The location filming helps immensely with the lone process shot of Jane and the schoolmistress driving in a car sticking out. 

    The cinematography by Ian Wilson (CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER) is also very evocative with subtle uses of changing lighting and framing that gives a sense of something or somebody lurking just off-screen. The trick here is that it would be easy for the film to fall into repetition with its basic story and shots of an empty road, but director Fuest & co-writer Clemmens (along with cinematographer Wilson) do keep the film moving along with their inventive use of the space and locations. But there does feel like about 15 min. or so could have easily been cut as Jane's many meetings with the kind-of-crazy locals/red-herrings do drag a bit with one in particular with a fidget inducing drawn-out encounter.

     As the two leads both Pamela Franklin and Michele Dotrice are excellent with Franklin especially fine in the latter half of the movie where she literally carries the entire narrative alone often time with long stretches of no dialogue using just her body language and facial expressions to carry the narrative. A very gifted actress Franklin had first come to notice in Jack Clayton's superb THE INNOCENTS in 1961 and would later appear in THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE in 1974 with her career winding down with TV work later in the decade before retiring in the early '80s. In 1967 she appeared in the sadly underseen OUR MOTHER"S HOUSE which is a film ripe for rediscovery.

     Dotrice appeared in two of the better British folk-horror entries with BLOOD ON SATAN"S CLAW from 1971 and Hammer's THE WITCHES in 1966. She continues to work on the BBC quite regularly. 

     In 2010 in a version best avoided, AND SOON THE DARKNESS was remade transporting the plot to South American with two American women is the object of peril. 

All screencaps above are from the Kino Blu-ray

THE NECROMANCY 1972

Bert I. "Mr. Big" Gordon's take on ROSEMARY'S BABY

 and all things Satanic 70's with Orson Wells and Pamela Franklin !

"Life To The Dead And Death To the Living...."

    During the 1970s when he wasn't appearing on Johnny Carson or shilling on TV commercials for wine that's located on the bottom shelf in chain grocery stores Orson Welles lent his presence and distinctive voice to a wide-ranging slate of projects including this 1970 effort from Bert I. "Mr. Big" Gordon (THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN & EMPIRE OF THE ANTS). Gordon who leading up this seemed to be attempting a "throw everything against the wall and see what sticks" style of film as his output included family matinee fare, a (very bad) sex comedy and thrillers before jumping on the 70's Satan bandwagon with this project.
   Written, produced and directed by Gordon it was shot in 1970 but legal wrangling kept it unreleased until 1972 when Cinerama released it often double-billing it with their Euro imports such as the 1972 version of BLUEBEARD with Richard Burton. In 1983 it was re-edited with additional nude scenes shot (by persons unknown and a bit from the original shoot) in a satanic orgy with the original lopped off and Fred Karger's invocation score replaced by a cheesy 70's synthesizer where it was released under the title THE WITCHING. There are some surviving stills that show that Gordon originally filmed a harder cut before trimming it down.

 I love phone shots in movies !

    After their baby boy is born dead Lori Brandon (Pamela Franklin THE INNOCENTS and LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE) and her husband Frank (Michael Ontkean TV's THE ROOKIES & TWIN PEAKS) decide to move from Los Angeles to the small town of Lilith where Frank has accepted a position at a toy factory owned by Mr. Cato (Orson Welles). While driving there the couple witness a fiery car crash where at the scene Lori finds a creepy rag doll with fingernail clippings in the doll's pockets (which would seemingly send any sane person screaming straight back to the big city). After they inexplicably run out of gas Frank hikes to a station and Lori is drawn by the sounds of chanting to a strange funeral overseen by folks in black robes who all suddenly disappear and the returning Frank insisting she dreamt it all.
    Upon arriving in Lilith the find everybody nice & friendly in a Stepford Wives and/or satanic cult sort of way and while at dinner with Mr. Cato he strangely explains that his workers create "magic rather than toys". Paying special interest in Lori. Mr. Cato encourages her to read a black arts book entitled Grande Grimore while at the same time she begins to noticing disquieting things about town as they are no children or adults over the age of 30 besides Mr. Cato. She also befriends a strange young woman & coven member (Lee Purcell MR. MAJESTYK) who runs a local store filled with mysterious bric-a-brac.

     Drawing on many tropes from various movies as anyone whose seen ROSEMARY"S BABY can guess the motives of husband Frank (although compared to Cassavetes Broadway aspirations in ROSEMARY'S BABY, Frank and his desire to be a big wig in toy factory seems a bit trivial). NECROMANCY doesn't break a whole lot of new ground but Gordon does maintain an atmosphere of slowly encroaching dread along with parading a checklist of an occult movie set pieces including flashes of a goat-headed demon, images mysteriously appearing on tarot cards and in goblets along with robed figures chanting. There's also a WTF rat attack that suddenly appears out of nowhere as well as a bizarre pre-credit sequence with Franklin floating through space. Awash in bright sunshine it has a definite post-Manson 70's hippie California vibe to it (it was filmed in Los Gatos) and would make an excellent double feature with 1971's BROTHERHOOD OF SATAN.
     Pamela Franklin who had appeared as a child actress in Jack Clayton's classic THE INNOCENTS in 1960 and Hammer's THE NANNY from 1965 was one of few genre actors who moved easily into adult roles such as the sadly fallen through the cracks AND SOON THE DARKNESS from 1974 and the outstanding THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE in 1973. Franklin (who's never looked prettier) has an odd accent here as it floats from British to American (sometimes in the same sentence) but does an admirable job with Gordon's sometimes head-scratching dialogue. She meant her husband Harvey Jason (COLD TURKEY) on this film and they remain married to this day and he owns the Mystery Pier bookstore in West Hollywood.
    Wells with a large prosthetic nose reads his lines with all the somber tones of a Shakespeare tragedy and seems to be trying to channel Vincent Price in one of his Corman/Poe roles. Although obviously slumming it here he brings a sense of nobility to the proceedings.
     Code Red's Blu-Ray release of Gordon's original theatrical version oddly has an MPAA PG rating card at the beginning of the film but then finishes with an R card. Featuring some topless nudity (courtesy of Sue Bernard from FASTER,PUSSYCAT KILL ! KILL !) and some fleeting Pamela boobies it was one of those 70's movies that as released straddled both ratings and could have very easily carried a PG in spite of the bare flesh.

"We'll sell no wine before it's time"