(1961)
Dir - Sidney J. Furie
Overall: WOOF
Grievously, the second color film on record to depict the modern day, badly decomposed, rotting corpse-like zombie is very lousy. This is despite it featuring renowned scream queen Hazel Court and being directed by the man who would make the amazing The Entity two decades later. Doctor Blood's Coffin was produced on the cheap and shot largely on location in the Cornwall county of South West England, both details of which are more exciting than anything that happens in the actual movie. The script has deservedly been scrutinized as bordering on idiotic, but the real mishap is how boring of an experience this mad scientist playing god, lazy hodgepodge is. There are no twists and even less suspense, plus the main title character, (the very manly shouldered Kieron Moore), behaves so obnoxiously self-centered that it is hardly believable that anyone acts surprised when they find out what he is up to. Watch him go on romantic walks with a clueless, smiling nurse and try not to laugh at how he barely lets her get a word in as he endlessly rattles off his life story and how much he really, really cannot stand being told what to do. Nice guy to date. You will also have to wait until the very last five minutes to get any kind of a horror movie pay off, which is so little, so late, (and so lame), that it does the opposite of saving the previous eighty-seven minutes from providing you with an utterly pointless ordeal.
(1962)
Dir - Sidney Hayers
Overall: GREAT
With one other adaptation before it, (1944's Weird Woman, with Lon Chaney Jr.), and a comedy version in 1979, (Witches' Brew, with Teri Garr), Fritz Leiber's novel Conjure Wife found its ideal, on-screen envisioning with 1962's Night of the Eagle. Prolific horror screenplay writers Richard Matheson, (I Am Legend, The Devil Rides Out, several Edgar Allan Poe/Roger Corman vehicles), Charles Beaumont, (Premature Burial, The Haunted Palace, The Masque of the Red Death), and George Baxt, (Circus of Horrors, The City of the Dead), all collaborated on this version and the result directed by Sidney Hayers is one of the best "skeptic verses the supernatural as premise" psychological horror excursions probably ever done. Hayers' direction is particularly superb, with various subtle to not so subtle camera tricks, sound cues, and visual suggestions liberally splashed around everywhere. By giving us virtually no details, the script expertly works on the viewer's psyche just as it does on the lead protagonist's Norman Taylor, (a perfectly cast Peter Wyngarde). Even the usually annoying, stating the obvious voice-overs work in this context as they further convey his desperate, growing doubt. Everything is feverishly brought up to the type of conclusion that clashes all logic with a bombardment of the uncanny, not one minute of which is wasted with any cinematic padding.
(1967)
Dir - Roman Polanski
Overall: MEH
On the very impressive list of Roman Polanski's paramount works, (which also happens to include three other reputable horror films), his first in color The Fearless Vampire Killers, or Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck really is not one of them. Written by Polanski and French screenwriter Gérard Brach, this is a premeditated farce of the Hammer horror films and one where the humor more often than not falls flat. There are a couple of clever scenes, humorously hammy performances, and adept costumes and set design, but only a very small amount of chuckles to be had. The slapstick is not so much tedious as it is awkward and dull, and the page-long, (at most), plot is not playful enough with its cliches to enthuse much laughter. The main characters, (Polanski himself as a bumbling, whimpish sidekick and Jack MacGowran as the trivially goofy professor and self-proclaimed vampire hunter), are just kind of aimlessly inept and no opportunity is taken to even give a sprinkling into their mentor/pupil relationship. Of course viewed today, the brash yet soft sexual overtones unfortunately come off as incidentally creepy what with Polanski's real life, infamous sexual misconduct scandal. Though at the time, these are clearly meant to be yet another send-up ingredient to the Gothic Hammer films that reveled in displaying copious amounts of cleavage. Ultimately there are better vampire, comedy, and Polanski movies out there though.
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