(1968)
Dir - James Hill
Overall: MEH
Taking its cue from Village of the Damned with a group of sinister children who are psychically linked together, share each other's artistic gifts, and can cause people to hallucinate, "Paper Dolls" is an adaptation of L.P. Davies' novel of the same name. These particular evil youngsters are identical siblings who were fathered by a less than agreeable brute under less than agreeable circumstances. The four brothers are all split up in relative proximity to each other which is convenient for the plot, and the strongest one of them lives in the woods and seems to be pulling the strings with a maniacal plan that consists of mind controlling anyone around them. Everyone's favorite Hammer bit player Michael Ripper shows up as a barkeep as he is wont to do, but besides an unintentionally funny opening scene where a school bully is manipulated into spontaneously jumping out of a window, nothing much else memorable goes down here.
(1968)
Dir - Peter Sasdy
Overall: MEH
Adapting a short story of the same name by author and screenwriter Charles Beaumont who worked on a handful of seminal horror films, Journey to the Unknown's "The New People" is also notable for featuring a slew of Hammer regulars, as well as Mr. Brady Robert Reed in the lead. Unfortunately, it is one of those stories where the twists and turns are easily forecast, leading to a meandering watch. Besides a fetching opening where several people are casually enjoying themselves at a dinner party while one of the guest's dead bodies swings from a noose, nothing else undeniably sinister happens until the final three minutes. Until then, we witness our hapless main characters get wooed over by their extra friendly new neighbors, (never a good sign in a horror tale), whose ringleader plays an unnecessarily long con on them until the running time has fulfilled its duty. Spotting the guest cast members is fun, but the rest of it plays to a formula that does not justify its weak and preordained climax.
(1968)
Dir - Noel Howard
Overall: MEH
An equally unremarkable and predicable installment in Hammer's Journey to the Unknown, "One on an Island" has a self-explanatory premise where someone is shipwrecked and gradually loses their mind. The fact that Brandon deWilde's protagonist with mommy issues fails to be likeable in the first place is a problem, and he quickly starts to exhibit the usual bouts of mania by talking to himself, naming a pet goat, and eventually falling head over heels in love with another shipwrecked woman who just so happens to have the same names as his crashed boat and is obviously too good to be true. Each plot turn has a preordained outcome, and Oscar Millard's script, (based off of a story by prolific writer Donald E. Westlake), slams home the point that deWilde's character is hellbent on proving himself in order to win the fancy of a beautiful woman. This clashes with some of his latter actions once crippling jealousy is introduced to his psyche, and with no surprises anywhere, it just runs through the castaway motions.
(1968)
Dir - Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Overall: MEH
The only Journey to the Unknown episode to be directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg of The Beatles/The Rolling Stone music video and documentary fame, "Matakitas Is Coming" finds Vera Mills locked in a library against a Satan-following serial murderer who just so happened to have died several decades prior. There are even more supernaturally-charged details to Robert Heverley's script, (like Hogg, likewise his lone contribution to the series), and thankfully the viewer is kept in the dark throughout most of the time to enhance the creepiness of the scenario. Some scenes are wonderfully played out to eerie silence, which amps up the tension as Mills slowly begins to realize the otherworldly predicament that she is in. Oddly, other moments are awkwardly handled, as if somebody inserted in the bombastic soundtrack to another program and the editor was trying to make a deadline and just haphazardly threw a bunch of cuts together. It also has some predictable plot beats, but it still gets by to a point on atmosphere alone.
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