(1970)
Dir - Robert Fuest
Overall: MEH
Though co-scripted by prolific Doctor Who writer Terry Nation, having Dr. Phibes director Robert Fuest behind the lens, and featuring Pamela Franklin, (The Innocents, The Legend of Hell House), all on board, And Soon the Darkness ends up being a sleazy bore. Emphasis on the word "bore". As was unfortunately commonly done in this era, monotony is a gargantuan problem here, a movie that once again makes up nearly its entire running time with scenes of people walking, running, and looking around two or three locations back and forth, over and over again. Fuest does not concoct nearly enough suspense to keep these endless moments of waiting for anything at all to happen come off as anything but laborsome. Now to the film's credit, the actual mystery as to what is going on is very successfully kept secret until the last possible second and there are numerous moments that cleverly misdirect the audience. The only problem again is that these moments are suffocated by a such a tedious pace and honestly the final reveal is a little dumb. Maintaining an effective slow burn is a delicate matter to be sure, but the movie does not pull it off in the least and is a bit of a near-miss, (or near-hit), judging on the handful of elements that otherwise would have elevated it into being one of the more unique thrillers of its kind.
(1974)
Dir - Pete Walker
Overall: GOOD
Following up the same year's House of Whipcord and once again teamed up with Shelia Keith who would go on to be featured in a number of his films, Pete Walker's Frightmare is arguably the director's most straight-laced horror movie. This is even taking into account that his very last movie would feature horror icons Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and John Carridine. Certainly exploitative though forgoing any nudity, the film has cannibalism, family dysfunction, some nasty murders. and even a gang of hoodlums beating a bartender to a most bloody pulp as part of its makeup instead. This would go on to become a lauded role for Keith who portrays a type of mania that hits several different beats, often in the same scene and never venturing too far into schlock terrain. In fact most of the film keeps a lid on it as far as going too far over the top with some very well-staged moments that appear more natural than one would expect from the genre-ripe script. This is both in part of the entire cast playing it straight and Walker controlling the jolts very attentively. It is this type of fine line control that would make Walker a well-respected name in his field, Frightmare proving that he had the skills to keep his outrageous scripts reasonably in check.
(1974)
Dir - José Ramón Larraz
Overall: GOOD
Missing for several decades due to the original prints being mishandled and simply circulating in bootleg form for the time being, José Ramón Larraz's Symptoms was finally located and re-released in 2016. This is fortunate not only from a film preservation standpoint, but also because it is a rather sufficient bit of psychological horror to be sure. There are some pacing problems as it boils perhaps a bit too long on the kettle, but Larraz has an aptitude for exhibiting very subtle, creepy moments usually in a "blink and you'll miss them" fashion. When these moments do transpire, they successfully grasp the viewer back into it all and there is just enough of them to not crawl everything down. Rare for a horror film, the shocks are actually rather shocking here, being mostly attributed to the patience Larraz has in revealing them. Donald Pleasence's daughter Angela not only looks exactly like him, but her skeletal, odd, and unkempt appearance is matched perfectly to her abnormal performance. It is obvious to see the comparisons one can make to Roman Polanski's top-notch Repulsion, which took a far more visually striking, avant-garde approach to similar subject matter. Yet Symptoms is a unique and more low-key enough beast on its own merits.
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