Hammer House of Horror: Rankings & Wrap up.

If only to distract myself from the fact that the flaming jalopy which is the western world just failed to clear the chasm jump which might have kept the wheels rolling a while longer, here is a little post to celebrate the fact that, after three consecutive Octobers, I’ve finally managed to watch, and write something about, every episode of the 1980 ‘Hammer House of Horror’ series.

Not exactly a world-beating achievement, I’ll grant you, but given my long-standing failure to finish anything related to this blog, I think it deserves a very subdued toot of triumph.

Anyway. One of the pleasures of watching ‘Hammer House of Horror’ via the Network blu-ray release (which looks lovely, but is entirely devoid of contextual extras) is that I went into each episode cold, with no idea at all of what to expect. Due to its being a TV series, HHoH receives no coverage in any of the horror movie reference works I habitually consult on uch matters, and, prior to viewing, I deliberately avoided seeking any discussion / reviews online.

As a result, I remain entirely uninformed about the behind the scenes deal-making which shepherded this series into existence, about the influence exerted upon it by any individual personalities, or any of that standard issue ‘making of..’ type stuff.

Given that most of the series’ scripts were one-offs credited to professional TV writers though, my assumption is that they must each have been commissioned to deliver a story based on a pre-existing brief, and at least some of the ground rules set down by the producers / script editors are clear to see.

Most obviously, all of the episodes utilise a contemporary, southern English setting. With only a few exceptions, the majority of them also feature a young male-female couple or nuclear family as protagonists / audience identity figures. Further to this, each episode seems to have been obliged to include some mild sexual content or brief nudity (framed in a manner which listeners to the Chart Music podcast will immediately recognise as ‘dadisfaction’), along with some equally mild gore.

Beyond this basic ‘house (of horror) style’ though, my overriding impression is that there were essentially two competing visions in play re: deciding what this series should actually *be*.

On the one hand, we have the idea of a ‘Twilight Zone’-style affair, offering high concept, ‘twist in the tail’ stories which aim to disturb and unsettle. This approach seems to have ultimately been the more successful one; as well as giving rise to the most highly regarded episodes [see below], it also laid the groundwork for the subsequent ‘Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense’ series, which followed in 1984.

At the same time though, there also seems to have been an opposing voice in the room, advocating for the idea that ‘Hammer House of Horror’ should incorporate the kind of content which fans of Hammer’s earlier gothic horror films might have reasonably expected from a televised continuation of their favourite brand. Thus, the series seems to have been obliged to deliver a vampire episode, a werewolf episode, a Satanic cult episode, and so on.

Broadly speaking, the episodes which veered in this pulpier direction seem to have been less well received, but personally I really enjoyed them, which is reflected in my ranking of the episodes below.

Irrespective of whether or not my vision of two battling producers had any basis in reality though, one of the things which I feel makes the series to consistently interesting is the tension created by these two conflicting approaches - particularly when the requirement to drag the more trad / gothic tropes into a present day setting leads to things getting thoroughly mixed up.

We can easily see for instance how a number of ‘mid-table’ episodes (‘Charlie Boy’, ‘Witching Time’, ‘The House That Bled To Death’ ) benefit greatly from the extremely peculiar directions in which their writers have to take the material, in order to reconcile old school horror fare with both a more contemporary TV drama aesthetic and a short story-style ‘surprise ending’ format.

By my reckoning in fact, the only purely straight-forward gothic tales offered up by HHoH are ‘Guardians of the Abyss’ and ‘Children of the Full Moon’; and, whilst I thoroughly enjoyed them both, it’s easy to imagine more critical / mainstream viewers finding their comforting, old fashioned brand of Dennis Wheatley-esque horror a bit of an anachronism by the dawn of the ‘80s, however much the ‘monster kids’ and sundry weirdos in the audience may have thrilled at the rare opportunity to see some full-blooded genre content beamed directly into their family living rooms.

For the most part though, I tend to believe it is the clash between these conflicting agendas which allowed the series to remain so consistently surprising and enjoyable throughout its tenure.

Of the thirteen episodes counted down below, I would say that the top ten all fall broadly within the ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ categories, and of the remainder, even #11 and #12 manage to include some eccentric / amusing elements which make them worth a watch, leaving only the dismal ‘Growing Pains’ as a total write off - which stands as a pretty remarkable hit rate, given how wildly variable the series is in terms of tone, execution, production values and objective dramatic quality.

Without further ado then, here, finally, is my HHoH chart run-down, complete with links to the posts in which I originally wrote about each episode.

 

1. The Silent Scream

 

Peter Cushing’s last great performance? Nuff said, I should think.

 

2. The Two Faces of Evil

Relentless, disorientating and flat out bloody terrifying. A great example of what TV horror can achieve.

 

3. Carpathian Eagle

 

Gets about 50% of the way toward becoming ‘The Sweeney vs Dracula’.

 

4. Guardian of the Abyss

 

Like a pilot for the ‘80s ‘The Devil Rides Out’ spin-off series nobody asked for, but that everyone secretly wanted. (Or: that insane episode of ‘Lovejoy’ which some kid told you about in the playground in 1987, and which you were *sure* they just made up… until now.)

 

5. Rude Awakening

 

Neon meat dream of a Surrey Estate Agent, as a lady in a succession of, shall we say, attention-grabbing outfits leads Denholm Elliot through the tormented depths of his sub-conscious mind.

 

6. Children of the Full Moon

 

Diana Dors, creepy Victorian children and some splendid locations all add up to what (given the dearth of competition) still probably ranks as one of the best British werewolf things ever.

 

7. Charlie Boy

 

Admirably full-on yuppie voodoo doll mayhem.

8. The Mark of Satan

 

Nasty, squalid, mad, uncomfortable - and that’s just how I felt by the time I hit the end credits. Still not entirely sure how to take this one, but it certainly makes an impression.

 

9. The House That Bled To Death

The haunted pebble-dashed semi which lurks deep in my repressed childhood memories… OR DOES IT? Etc.

 

10. Witching Time

 

Time travelling witch! Jon Finch with a mullet, on keyboards. The campiest episode by quite some distance, but deliriously enjoyable all the same.

 

11. The Thirteenth Reunion

 

A pretty glum business on the whole, but elevated by an absolutely berserk ‘twist’ ending and a fine supporting performance from Warren Clarke.

 

12. Visitor From the Grave

 A staggeringly inept load of toss from old hands Peter Sasdy and Tony Hinds - but it at least has the decency to be unintentionally amusing in places.

 

13. Growing Pains

What was this one even about again? I’m not sure I even care to remember, but I do recall some unpleasant business involving rabbits and dogs, just to add insult to injury. The pits.

 

October Horrors # 9: Hammer House of Horror: The Mark of Satan (Don Leaver, 1980)

And so, my three year odyssey through the corridors of the Hammer House of Horror concludes with this final, 13th episode - and, on reflection, I think we should probably compliment the series’ producers on deciding to bid farewell to their viewers with the televisual equivalent of a painful kick in the cobblers.

Despite boasting a name suggestive of pulpy gothic horror pleasures, ‘The Mark of Satan’ actually follows the pattern set by the preceding The Two Faces of Evil episode, easily beating it to the prize for the grimmest and most uncomfortable instalment of the series, even though it can’t quite match its predecessor in terms of dramatic power or overall quality.

Eschewing the bucolic Home Counties charm of most earlier episodes, Don Shaw’s script instead presents a grimy, impoverished and morally / emotionally stunted vision of working class England, wherein a weak-willed trainee hospital orderly (Edwyn Rord, played by Peter McEnery) suddenly finds himself afflicted by what we’re forced to assume is a sudden, catastrophic descent into paranoid schizophrenia.

Possibly reacting to the pressures of his overbearing mother, his absent father and his transfer to a gruesome and rather stressful new role in the hospital morgue - or possibly not - we join Edwyn as he becomes obsessively fixated on a series of synchronicities involving the number ‘9’, and, after being put to work on the corpse of a patient who seemingly died on the operating table after subjecting himself to a bit of DIY trepanation, he also begins to believe that he has contracted a “virus of evil” from the dead man.

Crackly police radio messages which Edwyn apparently receives from the weather vein above the hospital car park certainly don’t help, and in short, he is soon nursing one monster of a persecution complex, becoming convinced that his colleagues (including theatrically-minded Welsh pathologist Dr Harris, played with Pleasence-esque relish by Emrys James) are involved in an elaborate Satanic conspiracy against him - orchestrated, of course, by his nagging, rude and relentlessly abusive mother back home.

Things go from bad to worse for Edwyn once he becomes involved in the machinations of the family’s lodger Stella, played with truly bone-chilling, ‘10 Rillington Place’-esque understatement by Ken Russell regular Georgina Hale. A coldly self-serving single mother with a new baby and a psychopathic streak a mile wide, Stella sets about using Edwyn’s delusions to her own advantage in a horribly banal, small-minded fashion (she just wants her landlady out of the way so that she can sit in the front room, basically), exhibiting no recognisable human emotion whatsoever as the ensuing carnage plays out.

Managing to incorporate autopsies, surgical grue, old lady killing, self-trepanation and implied baby-eating, this is the probably the only episode of HHoH which I can really imagine incurring the wrath of whatever censorious bodies oversaw the content of ITV back in 1980, which is perhaps why they left it until last on the broadcast schedule for the series.

Certainly, it’s easy to imagine Mary Whitehouse and her ilk spontaneously combusting as soon as they got a load of this shit, callously pumped into the nation’s living rooms under the guise of family entertainment, but in tone as well as content, ‘The Mark of the Devil’ is some dark, mean-spirited business.

Full of lurid, fisheye-lensed psychotic freakouts, writhing tormented faces and other such OTT visuals, it is baroque, clammy, claustrophobic and nasty; curiously in view of Hale’s presence, it all feels a bit like the work of some pound shop Ken Russell substitute, letting loose in a really bad mood.

Plot-wise, Shaw’s churning brew of unappetising weirdness soon settles down into a ham-fisted and thoroughly exploitative take on the perils of mental illness which, in its own weird way, is probably about as close as anything on British TV ever came to the nihilistic spirit of the ‘70s American grindhouse.

Whether or not you choose to take any of this as a recommendation of course, is entirely down to you and your… aesthetic sensibility? (Doesn’t sound quite as good as ‘conscience’ that, does it, but no frowning judgement from me in these pages.)

So, er, thanks for that, Hammer House of Horror! See you all down the pub for a celebratory, post-series drink? Or, uh…. perhaps not?

October Horrors # 7: Hammer House of Horror: The Two Faces of Evil (Alan Gibson, TV, 1980)

The 12th, and penultimate, episode of the ‘Hammer House of Horror’ may not necessarily be the best, or most entertaining, of the series - but it is almost certainly the most unsettling, rivalled only by The Silent Scream (also directed by dark horse Alan Gibson, who arguably offered better proof of his talents here than in the theatrical features he made for Hammer during the early ‘70s).

Ranald Graham’s story begins in what by this point has become conventional HHoH fashion, with a well-to-do family (mother, father and one young child) driving through rural Surrey on their way to a holiday cottage. (Location freaks and aficionados of provisional British oddness will delight in the prominence afforded to a battered signpost specifying the distances to Aylesbury, Stoke Manderville and High Wycombe.)

In the midst of a rainstorm however, whilst traversing what looks very much like the same dark stretch of woodland road previously seen in the Children of the Full Moon episode, they pick up a tall hitchhiker, his face obscured by an over-sized yellow rain mac. Alarmingly, the stranger immediately attacks the father, throttling him and and stabbing him with a sharpened fingernail, causing the car to crash and overturn in the process.

Awakening in a suspiciously clean and idyllic country hospital, the mother of the family (Janet, played by Anna Calder-Marshall) learns that her son has survived unharmed, but that her husband (Gary Raymond) has sustained a number of injuries, and is recuperating following an emergency operation to remove fragments of glass from his throat. The evil hitchhiker, seemingly, is dead, following what the police tell Janet appears to have been an extended struggle with her husband following the accident.

Immediately, the ostensibly quiet and orderly world into which Janet has reawakened is painted by Gibson’s direction as treacherous and threatening. In a Polanski-like manner, perfectly innocent supporting characters (nurses, doctors, policemen) appear sinister and untrustworthy.

Seemingly innocuous dialogue (eg, several unrelated characters making reference to “foxes and badgers”) begins to imply a conspiratorial undertone, whilst a sense of Janet’s post-traumatic shock is very effectively conveyed, as she is assailed by momentary flashbacks to the accident and the violence which followed. This culminates in a harrowing sequence in which - dragging her son behind her - she insists on laboriously collecting the ruined remains of the family’s possessions into overstuffed plastic bags, dragging them back to the holiday cottage and burning them, as if to erase the memory of the accident and the inexplicable assault which caused it.

Subsequently, Nightmare Logic takes hold, as the identity of Janet’s “husband” becomes confused with that of the deceased “hitchhiker”, whose facial features, in defiance of all reason, appear to be identical. Other distinguishing features seem split unevenly between the two bodies, with neither quite matching the characteristics of the husband, and, when the surviving man - bandaged and still unable to speak - is discharged back into her care, Janet notices his sharpened fingernail…

Eventually taking a full on supernatural turn (although gratuitous ‘explanations’ are wisely avoided, allowing the sense of irrational nightmarishness to remain undiminished), ‘The Two Faces of Evil’ is a visceral and uncompromising update on the theme of the doppelganger. Evidently inspired to some extent by ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’, it proceeds to add a more psychotic/barbaric edge to the material, anticipating Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’ by four decades as it disturbingly fuses the disintegration of personal identity with an imminent threat of bloody violence.

Brief, minimally staged and seemingly made with a somewhat lower budget than many of the other episodes in the series, it nonetheless makes for memorable and uncomfortable viewing.

October Horrors # 4: Sexo Sangriento (Manuel Esteba, 1981)

As the foundations of Franco’s fascist regime in Spain gradually disintegrated through the late 1970s following the dictator’s death, the restrictions governing on-screen content in the previously censorious nation correspondingly collapsed, flooding Spanish screens with an unprecedented backlog of smut, eventually culminating the early ‘80s hey-day of the hastily codified Classificada ‘S’ certification for “adult” (but not quite porn) features.

Soon to be celebrated in a new documentary from Severin Films, the possibilities for low budget filmmaking opened up by this era not only saw ex-pat directors like Jess Franco and José Larraz returning home to produce some of their most distinctive work, but also encouraged a brief outburst of one-off sex-horror films, including the likes of Mas Alla Del Terror, the more widely seen Satan’s Blood, and - delving further into the depths of obscurity - films like ‘Sexo Sangriento’ (I don’t need to translate that for you, do I?), which at the time of writing remains available only as VHS-sourced bootleg.

Interestingly, ‘Sexo Sangriento’ explicitly acknowledges this political context, at least to some extent. Set in 1975, it begins with its characters listening to (and pointedly ignoring) a radio announcement reporting the Generalissimo’s death, as they motor on toward the snow-capped mountains of (we assume) a sparsely populated rural area somewhere on the country’s Northern border.

Despite this curious touch of historical verisimilitude though, real world concerns are soon forgotten (at least for a while), and this is in fact one of the few early ‘80s Spanish horrors which immediately harkens back to the genre’s more escapist golden age a decade beforehand, presenting us with a trope unseen since the glory days of Paul Naschy - namely, that of a group of beautiful young ladies who share a passionate interest in parapsychology and medieval witchcraft, getting way out there on a field trip to a remote, mountainous locale!

Helpfully for the film’s exploitation quotient, two of the girls also share a passion for intense lesbian lovemaking, whilst the third prefers to spend her nights hanging out in abandoned castles with a tape recorder, capturing what she calls ‘psychophonies’.

By which point, long-term readers will appreciate, I was pretty much already sold on whatever happens next.

Before long of course, the girls’ car breaks down (“the distributor is useless,” exclaims the driver, in what I’m going to assume is a movie industry in-joke), and right on cue, a sinister older lady (Mirta Miller, essaying the ‘sadistic/domineering mature woman’ role less than a decade after she was doing her ‘glamorous female lead’ bit in Naschy vehicles like ‘Count Dracula’s Great Love’ and ‘Vengeance of the Zombies’) emerges from the woods and invites them to stay the night at her place.

After a hot night in the sheets, some nude posing for Mirta’s suitably creepy, blood-drenched paintings (she is a reclusive macabre artist, it transpires) and a few strolls around the local ruins, strangely nobody seems terribly concerned about getting the car fixed anymore.

A more threatening note is struck by the presence of Mirta’s lumbering, mute housekeeper, whom she cheerfully declares is “gradually turning into a beast”, but you know, I suppose you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth in this kind of scenario, right?

Truth be told, there’s not much of a story to this one, and things are pretty slow-moving, but with frequent elegiac softcore interludes, plus an equal amount of time spent exploring some of those truly incredible, evocative, derelict locations so unique to Spanish horror, who’s complaining?

During the final act however, things take a considerably darker turn, as the expected supernatural shenanigans are entirely bypassed in favour of gory crotch violence, revelations of historical child murder and some pointed commentary on the trauma suffered by Northern rural communities during the years of fascist oppression. Hmm, didn’t see that coming.

In its currently extant version, this film’s photography has an unappealing Shot On Video kind of look to it, but it’s easy to imagine that a more filmic texture (plus widescreen framing?) might be salvageable, if someone were able to get hold of the original elements. (I’m looking at you Severin - fingers crossed.)

A more intractable problem however is presented by the soundtrack which primarily consists of poorly chosen and poorly synchronised needle-drops on cheesy rip-offs of well known pieces (Goblin’s ‘Zombie’ theme, ‘Star Wars’, ‘Air on a G String’ etc); it’s all very distracting, and far too high in the mix.

Despite these drawbacks though, ‘Sexo Sangriento’ is as sexy and bloody as its title promises, and delivers a respectable dose of palpable gothic atmosphere into the bargain; dedicated Euro-horror devotees should find it well worth tracking down. 

 

October Horrors # 3: Hammer House of Horror: Visitor From The Grave (Peter Sasdy, TV, 1980)

In spite of a solid pedigree connecting it back to Hammer’s theatrical era (director Sasdy, plus a script by Tony Hinds under his John Elder pseudonym), this 11th episode of ‘Hammer House of Horrors’ sadly ranks as one of the series’ absolute worst.

The story here concerns a mentally fragile, just released-from-the-nuthouse heiress Penny (‘Dark Shadows’ veteran Kathryn Leigh Scott), who, left at home one night by her boyfriend in the remote commuter belt cottage they apparently share, is menaced and assaulted by a stranger, whom she kills with a shotgun blast to the face (providing the episode’s requisite split second of gore in the process).

When Penny’s obviously caddish BF (Simon McCorkindale) returns to find her absolutely freakin’-the-fuck-out and scopes the mess, he insists they cover up the killing and bury the body in the woods, in order to avoid a return to the institution for her, and charges for owning an unlicensed gun for him. But, before long, Penny finds herself tormented by apparitions of her gory-locked victim, and is driven in desperation to seek the assistance of a stereotypical gypsy fortune teller and an even more stereotypical Indian yogi, in an attempt to exorcise the unquiet spirit of the dead man who is apparently pursuing her.

Aaaand, if you’ve got through that synopsis and/or about ten minutes of this episode without clocking that some gaslightin’ is a-going on here, well… I envy you, to be honest. Watching badly scripted movies must be so much fun for you.

All in all, this is a drab, dispiriting sort of affair with precious little to recommend it. Hinds’ script is hackneyed, predictable and tired, offering none of the shock or surprise which a story like this traditionally demands. I suppose you could credit Sasdy with trying to bring a bit of atmos to proceedings from time to time, but he doesn’t get very far with it to be honest, and also probably also needs to bear a degree of responsibility for the fact that the acting is terrible across the board.

I don’t want to be unduly unkind, but it must be said that Leigh Scott’s attempt here to portray a mentally ill woman is just plain excruciating, comprising largely of flapping about in hysteria and emitting bursts of incomprehensible shrieking. In particular, the moment when she seemingly forgets how to speak midway through attempting to pronounce the word ‘rape’ is unbearably uncomfortable - and probably not in the way she or the filmmakers were intending.

Even she takes second place though to Gareth Thomas, who appears here in full brown-face as the Indian mystic guy, bellowing away in what sounds like a Welsh accent as he attempts to drown out a super-imposed floating head during one of the most unintentionally hilarious séance sequences in screen history.

To avoid needing a file a wholly negative review however, here are a few notes on some minor redeeming features which entertained me along the way:

1. The shot towards the start of the episode showing McCorkindale parking his Jaguar XJS alongside a white Range Rover outside his all-mod-cons thatched cottage nails HHofH’s distinctive “home counties yuppie gothic” aesthetic just way too perfectly [see screengrab above].

2. Likewise, McCorkindale’s thoroughly dodgy character makes a fine addition to this series’ rogues gallery of truly horrible male protagonists, strolling around in a cricket jumper and apparently purporting to enjoy country pursuits and (unlicensed) pigeon shooting, when he’s not disappearing overnight to hang out in Soho wine bars on ‘business’, covering up murders, and getting into disagreements over gambling debts with violent, heavy-handed geezers.

I particularly liked the bit where haughtily declares that he’s been out shooting birds, “to make a pigeon pie for dinner”. I mean, who the hell was making pigeon pies in 1980?! Not this bloke or his pill-popping, neurotic missus, that’s for sure. What an absolute tool.

3. There are also some really cool music cues used in this episode, featuring adorable ‘War of the Worlds’ type fuzz guitar stings and laser gun ‘phew phew’ noises. Marc Wilkinson of ‘Blood on Satan’s Claw’ fame is credited as composer, and I wish his work (assuming that’s what we’re hearing) was higher in the mix.

Unfortunately, ‘Visitor From The Grave’ breaks a long run of really good episodes of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ (the preceding four or five episodes were all absolute bangers - try clicking through to the ‘Hammer’ label below and scrolling down if you’d like to catch up with my thoughts on ‘em). Only two more episodes to go now, before my three year October odyssey finally concludes. Let’s hope they can go out on a high.

Lovecraft on Film Appendum: The Evil Clergyman (Charles Band, 1987 / 2012)

As anyone familiar with his work will be aware, H.P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Evil Clergyman’ is a brief, half-formed fragment, obviously written in haste, perhaps extrapolated from a bad dream, and presumably never intended for publication in its extant form. Nonetheless, it saw print several years after Lovecraft’s death, in the April 1939 edition of ‘Weird Tales’, and - rather irksomely - it has formed part of his accepted canon ever since, seemingly more by accident than design.

As such, it seems appropriate that the story’s movie adaptation should take the form of an orphaned, 28 minute short, originally intended for inclusion in a 1988 Empire Pictures anthology flick named ‘Pulse Pounders’ which never saw the light of a projector at the time, remaining unreleased due to (it says here) circumstances arising from the company’s bankruptcy.

Furthermore, it appears that the original film elements for ‘The Evil Clergyman’ were subsequently misplaced or destroyed, leaving the footage presumed lost until, a quarter century later, Charlie Band found a VHS work print knocking about in his attic and smelled a quick buck to be made.

A bit of a clean up, a new credits sequence and a newly commissioned score from brother Richard later, and ‘The Evil Clergyman’ finally premiered, streaming on Band’s Full Moon Features website, in 2012.

I’m unfamiliar with the back story re: how exactly those film elements ended up disappearing, but I can only assume it must have been the result of some terrible and unprecedented freak accident, as any other explanation would frankly beggar belief given the breadth of talent involved in creating this segment, and the relatively lavish budget obviously invested in this thing.

With the exception of an AWOL Stuart Gordon in fact, ‘..Clergyman’ is effectively a ‘Reanimator’  reunion, with Dennis Paoli providing the script, photography by Mac Ahlberg, effects by John Carl Buechler, and a cast comprising Barbara Crampton, Jeffrey Combs and David Gale, with the ever wonderful David Warner (R.I.P.) thrown in for good measure.

In the grand tradition of Poe/Lovecraft adaptations through the ages, the film’s narrative has pretty much nothing in common with the supposed source story whatsoever. Instead, Paoli’s script sees Crampton taking centre stage, playing a woman returning to the attic chamber of a medieval castle which she had previously shared with her lover (Combs), a lapsed priest and alleged black magician who has recently taken his own life, prompting her to flee and leave the room vacant.

This ill-stared chamber is apparently still up for rent from the castle’s acid-tongued landlady (Una Brandon-Jones) however, and, once ensconced within it (ostensibly to “collect her things,” although the room looks bare), Crampton begins to experience a series of increasingly hair-raising manifestations related to her deceased partner, and reflective of the unholy depredations the pair apparently got up to prior to Combs’ decision to sling a noose slung over the high beams, and depart this mortal coil… temporarily, at least.

Along the way, Warner pops up as the revenant spirit of another dead priest, who pops up to warn Crampton of the error of her ways, whilst Gale is in full effect as Combs’ familiar, a chittering, man-faced rat-thing straight out of ‘Dreams in the Witch House’.

And... it actually all works really well. Paoli’s story is weird, memorable and unnerving, leaving plenty to the imagination, whilst the production design and performances are excellent.

Though she’s not really called upon to do much more than act terrified, confused and distraught here, Crampton achieves this quite brilliantly. Always a good few rungs up the ladder from yr average ‘80s ‘scream queen’, the sheer intensity scruff of the neck and drags us through this compressed ghost train ride of a viewing experience very effectively.

By contrast, we get a relatively low-key turn from Combs, but there is still a hell of a lot to enjoy in his sleazily sinister presence. His introductory “hi” at the moment his character first takes on corporeal form is a delight in itself, and the spectral love scenes he shares with Crampton take on an appropriately fevered quality, drawing us further into the odd story being told here.

Warner meanwhile seems a bit surplus to requirements here in terms of the narrative, but it’s great to have him along for the ride, and he’s clearly having a fine time regardless. In the midst of a seemingly endless series of rent-a-villain / mad scientist roles at this point in his career, the old boy knows exactly how to pitch a high-handed spectral priest, managing to deliver lines like “I’m a bishop, from Canterbury, sent to expel your lover from our church” entirely straight, without eliciting laughs from the peanut gallery.

As for the long-suffering David Gale meanwhile, one shudders to imagine the indignities he must have been subjected to in the process of realising Buechler’s man-faced rat effects - an inspired mixture of puppetry and facial prosthetics which is actually extremely effective, allowing Gale’s face and voice remain present, even when seemingly attached to a repulsive, ankle-high critter capering about on the castle floor.

Essentially functioning as a foul-mouthed, perpetually enraged manifestation of the Combs character’s id, Gale manages to deliver a memorable performance under what we might reasonably assuming were challenging circumstances; his spittle-flecked delivery of words like “WHORE” and “SLUT” in particular are imbued with an old world, puritan gusto which I very much enjoyed.

Shot, inevitably, amid the imposing environs of the swanky Italian castle which Charles Band inexplicably ended up owning in the late ‘80s (also see: ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ (1991), ‘Castle Freak’ (1995)), ‘..Clergyman’ benefits greatly from the location’s in-built atmosphere, adopting an almost abstract / fairy tale-like vibe which slips further into delirium as Crampton’s visions take told, and the world outside her lofty chamber effectively ceases to exist.

Moodily lit by Ahlberg in a none-more-80s manner, with deep shadows and shocks of blue-tinged moon light drifting in across the ancient brick-work, this is certainly one of the more accomplished efforts I’ve seen bearing Charles Band’s name as director. As is often the case, it’s perhaps questionable to what extent creative decisions here were actually taken by Band, but for what it’s worth, everything here is very solidly done. (I particularly liked the striking use of vertiginous high and low angles, reflecting the constant presence of both the swinging noose above, and the skittering rat-thing below.)

Even Richard Band’s retrospectively recorded orchestral score goes over gangbusters, really classing up this murky VHS-sourced work-print, much like his similarly bombastic/melodic work on Gordon’s ‘80s films, hovering just on the precipice of Elfman-esque parody, but never quite taking the plunge, or overpowering the action on-screen.

Given how strong this short is overall, it’s easy to see why a few elements ended up being recycled in other productions during the years in which the material shot for ‘Pulse Pounders’ remained unreleased.

Most notably, the effects used to create the human-faced rat creature were repurposed pretty much in their entirety for the creation of Brown Jenkin in Gordon’s 2005 TV adaptation of Lovecraft’s ‘Dreams in the Witch House’, whilst the “erotically charged predatory haunting” conceit of Paoli’s script also strongly reminded me of another Gordon-adjacent film, Danny Draven’s 2002 ‘Deathbed’ (not to be confused with the late George Barry’s outsider masterpiece of the same name), an interesting obscurity, also shot by Ahlberg and executive produced by Band, which saw release on DVD under the rather niche banner of “Stuart Gordon presents…”. (Were there any other entries in that series, I wonder? I don’t recall ever seeing any...)

In summary then, ‘The Evil Clergyman’ stands as something of an unexpected minor miracle for fans of the Empire/Full Moon/Stuart Gordon milieu. Alongside this year’s Suitable Flesh, it offers encouraging proof that the spirit of Gordon’s Lovecraft movies could live on and flourish, even in circumstances in which the man himself was unable to call the shots. Well worth making a small amount of time for if (as is understandable) it passed you by upon its belated release in 2012.

Hammer House of Horror: Guardian of the Abyss (Don Sharp, 1980)

The HHoH’s hot streak continues into episode # 10, as Don “Razor” Sharp (‘Kiss of the Vampire’, ‘Psychomania’) directs this positively ripping Wheatley-esque black magick yarn.

Like Children of the Full Moon, it’s a bit of a “does exactly what it says on the tin” kind of episode, but what can I say? It’s bloody good tin, and I’m happy to see them getting some more use out of it.

So, we’re treated here to some rousing adventures in the home counties antiques trade, as Tina (Caroline Langrishe), a shop owner and astrologically-minded associate of tweedy man-about-town Mike Roberts (Ray Lonnen), inadvertently takes possession of Dr John Dee’s original scrying glass, bought as part of a cut price job lot at an auction.

Soon thereafter, the pair both find themselves in the sights of the malevolent Chronozon Society, after Mike narrowly avoids running down one of their fleeing sacrificial victims, as he roars past the grounds of their high priest's stately home in his Mercedes convertible.

Like any good Englishman, Mike greets the sight of a distressed and disorientated young woman standing in the middle of the road with a spirited “WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”, before immediately inviting her back to his gaff for a brandy, thus allowing her the opportunity to make off with the cursed mirror (which he has borrowed from Tina on the pretext of getting its value professionally appraised), at which point the game is very much afoot.

It must be said, this episode is not exactly over-blessed with gothic atmosphere, and its supernatural elements do get a bit silly in places, especially vis-a-vis the Chronozon cultists’ rather hackneyed use of voodoo dolls to target their enemies, and the highly questionable make up used to represent the manifestations of their bull-faced deity.

But, for the most part, the ritual scenes still hit the required clichés dead-on (Baphomet pentagrams, deconsecrated church, hooded celebrants, inverted crucifixes, infernal chanting, and a nice, neat cupboard where they keep their roosters), and they are considerably elevated by a superbly imperious performance from John Carson (‘Captain Kronos’, ‘Taste the Blood of Dracula’) as the cult’s aristocratic high priest Charles Randolph.

Meanwhile, Sharp keeps things fast-paced and eventful, as the story rattles onward with a good, pulpy velocity. For his part, screenwriter David Fisher clearly spent an enjoyable afternoon or two boning up on the best occult lore his local library had to offer, meaning that his script is chock full of at-least-distantly-truthful exposition concerning Dee & Kelley, Aleister Crowley, the Thule Society and the exacting detail of the notorious Chronozon Working, as historically attempted by at least some of those august gents - albeit, not exactly in the considerately TV friendly form depicted here, with the sacrificial victims given strips of anointed fabric to preserve their modesty.

Aside from the obvious Wheatley comparisons, ‘Guardian of the Abyss’ also reminded me of Ralph Comer’s absolutely fantastic 1969 occult novel The Mirror of Dionysus - not only with regard to the use of the mirror / scrying glass as a plot point, but also the conscious attempt to drag the aesthetic of Wheatley’s black magic tales kicking and screaming into the more socially liberal 1970s, and the tendency of both stories to take an ‘info dump’ approach to communicating the fruits of the writers’ occult research.

Did you know for instance, that if you invite a black magician into your home, you must NEVER allow them access to wine, bread and salt? Well, you do now!

This handy life tip reaches us via an absolutely splendid reinterpretation of the memorable ‘Mocata comes to visit’ / attempted hypnotism sequence from Hammer’s ‘The Devil Rides Out’, which constitutes the highlight both of the episode as a whole, and of Carson’s commanding performance. Though perhaps not quite equalling Charles Gray's inimitable take on this particular character-type, he definitely puts his own unique stamp on it.

Elsewhere, the slightly Kate Bush-like Rosalyn Landor makes for a very striking presence as the aforementioned sacrificial victim / love interest / willowy femme fatale type character - which is convenient, as IMDB reminds me that she actually played the little girl in ‘The Devil Rides Out’ twelve years earlier, at the age of ten! So, rest assured, someone was clearly putting some thought into this stuff.

And, I even rather liked Lonnen’s hero character too. Though he would have been considered a mere oik within the refined, aristocratic universe of Wheatley’s novels, we’re at the dawn of the socially mobile 1980s here chaps, and Mike Roberts represents a distinctly English, none-more-middle-class pulp protagonist of the kind you just don’t see anymore.

A dashing, clear-headed fellow who’s just as comfortable assessing the value of military brasses and undertaking genealogical research as he is with car chases, proffering brandy to stray young ladies and the occasional bit of fisticuffs, he could easily have come straight from the pages of a Brian Lumley or Guy N. Smith book, and is all the better for it in my view. (It’s a shame he doesn’t smoke a pipe, but - you can’t have everything.)

Actually, I was lying about the car chases and fisticuffs - sadly, both are notably absent from ‘Guardian of the Abyss’, despite multiple opportunities for their inclusion (although, I’m confident Mike Roberts could still have proved himself pretty handy in both scenarios, given half a chance).

This absence is a real shame given Sharp’s proven track record as an action director, and lord knows, this tale could surely have benefitted from at least a few scenes of hooded cultists getting walloped and tripping over their cassocks and so on. But, I fear this lack of choreographed action probably speaks to a regrettable degree of haste and budgetary constraint in this episode’s production, which is also very much evident in its ending.

With the best will in the world (which I certainly had by this point), the conclusion of ‘Guardian of the Abyss’ still feels rushed, sloppy and confusing, leaving things on a rather unsatisfactory note. But, no matter - I had such a grand old time on the way to it, I'm happy to let things slide.

Hammer House of Horror: Carpathian Eagle (Francis Megahy, 1980)

So we’re up to episode #9 here, and, whilst there were undoubtedly a few clunkers earlier in the run of ‘Hammer House of Horror’, by damn, they’re really hitting their stride by this point! The two preceding episodes were perhaps my two favourites to date, and this one is definitely a strong contender too.

Largely ditching the ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ / “bad things upset the life of a blameless contemporary couple” formula used by most of the earlier episodes, this one (co-written by Bernie Cooper and director Megahy) plays out more like a spec script for a prospective Halloween episode of ‘The Sweeney’ which was ditched for being too weird. (And if that description’s not enough to reel you in… you’re probably reading the wrong weblog, to be honest.)

Anchored around a gritty police procedural framework, ‘Carpathian Eagle’ finds world weary / soft spoken Detective-Inspector Cliff (Anthony Valentine) investigating the exploits of an erotic murderess who, in true Jess Franco style, has been preying upon a succession of outrageously shabby would-be playboys in the dark hinterlands of the Home Counties commuter belt, harvesting their hearts with a curved ceremonial dagger.

A radio interview overheard whilst he’s making his tea n’ toast in the morning leads our detective-hero into the midst of a somewhat Bathory-inspired gothic horror back story, involving the legend of a heart-extracting Hungarian countess whose alleged last living descendant (played by Siân Phillips) is still hanging around in good ol’ blighty, and subsequently also the travails of her nephew, a haughty, Rudolf Nureyev-type character who has defected to the west in order to escape the persecution he faced behind the iron curtain whilst plying his trade as a renowned female impersonator. (1)

All of which you’d think would be more than enough to keep DI Cliff busy, but the lonely lad also finds time to cultivate a budding romance with the be-permed author (played by Suzanne Danielle, star of ‘Carry On Emmanuelle’) whose interview publicising her book on the heart-gouging countess led him to make the connection in the first place, and whose taste in pattern-framed glasses and garishly mis-matched print dresses proves more obscene than any of the kinky outfits donned by the murderess during her seductions.

Indeed, one of the great pleasures for me personally in going through these Hammer House of Horror episodes has come from noting the highly specific fragments of period detail, unique to that peculiar period in UK social history in which a hangover from the flares n’ sideburns ‘70s was gradually blending into the cruel dawn of the Thatcherite yuppie era - and, in addition to having a really odd, interesting story, it is here that ‘Carpathian Eagle’ really shines.

Just about every scene provides an absolute riot of horrendous fashion choices, exquisitely dated interior decor, flashy motors, sexist / homophobic attitudes, nostalgia-swathed branded products and shabby, deadzone suburban locations, the like of which fairly boggles the mind.

The sequences involving the succession of hapless murder victims prove especially remarkable in this regard, painting such a repulsively fascinating picture of life in these isles circa 1980, I could probably write an extended essay about each one.

The first victim is none other than Barry Stokes (the man-shaped alien from 
Norman J. Warren’s ‘Prey’, here sporting an unflattering pencil moustache), who is tooling around the country lanes in his vintage Jag when he picks up a provocatively dressed, rainbow-hued young lady and carts her straight back to the ‘secret’ bedroom he keeps hidden from his wife, where he lies, resplendent and smug, upon a bed of furs, awaiting his bloody comeuppance.

Then, perhaps most memorably, we have ‘Randy Andy’ (“Andy’s the name, and randy’s my game”), a loathsome, lime-green shirted middle-aged singles bar crawler who resembles a local radio breakfast show host, and who bombards his statuesque conquest with a whole pamphlet’s-worth of the world’s worst pick-up lines before dragging her back to a Stone Age Bachelor Pad which must be seen to be believed.

Even more direct in his approach though is no less a personage than Pierce Brosnan(!), who turns up as a tracksuited jogger, latching on to his pink nylon-clad prey in an overcast public park. “I fancy you, you fancy me… why mess about?”, he ventures, before creeping back to his bed-sit and attempting to smuggle his would-be shag-partner (whose luminous gear can probably be seen for miles around) past the eyes of his watchful landlady, who, revisiting a comedy cliché you’d hope would have died out at the end of the 1950s, “has got a bit of a thing about visitors”.

Though it’s difficult not to imagine him transmogrifying into Jon Thaw at times, Anthony Valentine certainly proves a sympathetic male lead in comparison to this lot, a worthy addition to the pantheon of down-at-heel British horror cops alongside Ian Hendry in ‘Theatre of Blood’ and Alfred Marks in ‘Scream and Scream Again’, and to the script’s credit, his character actually seems to grow and become more open-minded as the strange events of the story unfold.

During Valentine’s investigation of the first crime scene, we bear witness to a sterling example of ‘70s style police work. “Any sign the geezer was bent?,” he demands to know - the plod’s logic apparently being that the killing was clearly sexual in nature, but that no mere female would have had the physical strength to carry it out.

Later on though, once things have gotten a bit weirder, we start to see a different side of DI Cliff, as he sticks up for the effeminate nephew character, expressing apparently genuine admiration for his artistry, and cutting off his boorish colleague’s queer-baiting jibes, telling him, “you’re thinking in clichés old son - Tadek’s a hard lad, he’s just very nervous, that’s all”. Which is considerate of him, given that he’s talking about a bloke who’s ostensibly the prime suspect is series of brutal murders, but…. no spoilers here, readers.

Loosely plotted and rattling along at a fearsome clip ‘Carpathian Eagle’ represents a colossal improvement on Francis Megahy’s previous directorial outing in this series (the woeful Growing Pains). 

Throwing in more ideas and imagery along the way than it really knows what to do with, and packed with memorably off-the-wall performances from a host of lesser known character players and TV pros, it in fact constitutes an almost overpowering conjuration of the exact moment in British culture which saw my birth, refracted through a distorting mirror of sketchily-plotted, sex n' violence-drenched cross-genre weirdness.


And, needless to say, I loved every minute of it - just a staggeringly entertaining 50-something minutes of television, which I've not really fully recovered from or properly assembled my thoughts on yet, some 24 hours later. 

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(1) As a curious side note, the nephew character is played by an actor named Jonathan Kent, whose only previous screen credit was in an impossible to see, quite possibly lost, 1976 BFI-financed adaptation of the Marquis De Sade’s ‘Justine’ by director/producer Stewart MacKinnon. Quite a thread for some inquisitive cultural historian to tug on there I suspect…

Hammer House of Horror: Children of the Full Moon (Tom Clegg, 1980)

Up to this point in the series, the otherwise disparate episodes of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ have been united by their complete avoidance of the kind of gothic horror tropes with which the titular studio had become synonymous over the preceding decades.

True, we’ve had a witch episode, and a haunted house episode, but both have taken a rigorously quotidian approach to their subject matter, emphasising their present day settings and prioritising attention-grabbing narrative twists and the disruption of everyday life over the pulpy, escapist grandeur which defined Hammer’s glory days.

Like those episodes (and most others in the series, to be honest), ‘Children of the Full Moon’ centres around the travails of a recently married, contemporary British couple - in this case, smarmy young corporate solicitor Tom (Christopher Cazenove) and his wife Sarah (Celia Gregory), a possessor of no other immediately obvious character traits.

Whilst roaring around the West Country in their BMW in search of a holiday home belonging to Tom’s even-smarmier boss (the great Robert Urquhart, a veteran of ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ (1956), no less), the young lovers fall victims to a supernatural joy-riding incident which leaves their swanky motor wrapped around a tree in what is, evidently, the middle of bloody nowhere.

This time around however, the fateful misadventures which befall our characters as they stomp off into the forest in search of help bring us such easy pleasures as creaking wrought iron gates surrounded by banks of spot-lit ground fog, dim lights burning in the windows of an imposing gothic revival manor house (Hampden House in Buckinghamshire, location fans may wish to note), shadowy cinematography, ominous howls in the night, axe-wielding folkloric woodcutters, creepy pale-skinned children in Victorian garb, and - as the episode’s title so subtly implies - some honest to goodness werewolves.

All of which proves a hell of a lot of fun, needless to say, even as Murray Smith’s knocked-off-in-a-weekend script remains sloppily predictable throughout.

In particular, it’s an absolute delight to see Diana Dors popping up here as the homely matriarch of the lycanthrope brood, giving it her all as usual, gradually dialling up the glassy-eyed malevolence behind her ingratiating smile and ‘Archers’-worthy Somerset drawl as things become increasingly hairy (pun intended) for our not-especially-likeable yuppie protagonists, perhaps adding a touch of ‘city vs country’ social tension to the thin subject matter in the process.

Sadly, we don’t get to see Diana experiencing a full-on werewolf transformation, but her opposite number (played by Jacob Witkin) eventually does the honours instead, and, in view of the TV drama level production budget and notorious difficulty of achieving decent werewolf effects, I think it must be acknowledged that the make up team here did a fair job.

Nonetheless, regular series director Tom Clegg was probably wise to minimise screen time for the werewolf, keeping the stalking beast safely confined to the darkened woods until the finale, whilst meanwhile allowing the bulk of the episode’s creepitude to instead fall upon the shoulders of wolf-family’s brood of creepy, carnivorous children.

Given that one of them plays the flute, that they have ‘suspicious’ foreign names like Tibor and Eloise, and that they wear incongruous Victorian costumes, M.R. James’ ‘Lost Hearts’ (or more likely, Lawrence Gordon Clark’s 1973 ‘Ghost Stories For Christmas’ adaptation thereof) would seem to be a prime influence here, which is certainly no bad thing.

As noted above, even casual horror fans will find very little to surprise them in the way this story pans out, but in a sense, the very predictability of Smith’s script serves to move the series away from the twist-heavy ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ type yarns which have tended to predominate in earlier episodes, and more towards something approaching good ol’, no nonsense gothic horror (albeit, a contemporary-set variation with a touch of ‘70s b-movie nastiness thrown in for good measure) - a change which I, for one, welcome with open arms.

In fact, if ‘Children of the Full Moon’ had been a segment of an Amicus anthology film from the preceding decade, it would have ranked as a pretty damn good one, which is high praise in this context. Definitely one of my favourite episodes so far in terms of pure entertainment value, even if its artistic merits may be questionable at best.