(1952)
Dir - John Gilling
Overall: WOOF
Several years before he made the outstanding The Plague of the Zombies and Reptile for Hammer Studios, John Gilling had the grave misfortune of directing a sure fire contender for the most abysmal thing Bela Lugosi was ever in. The Madea of England, there were no less than seventeen goddamn Old Mother Riley movies made since 1936, but thank the gods Mother Riley Meets the Vampire would be the last of them as actor Arthur Lucan died two years after making it. More fascinating than painful in how incredibly unfunny both the movie and especially the character of Riley truly is, Meets the Vampire is a bona fide trainwreck to watch. The story is amazingly simple enough that a child could have written it, but it is also nearly incomprehensible as it derails into a series of ridiculous pratfalls and fast motion gags equipped with cartoon noises. All the while, Mother Riley is the polar opposite of hilarious. Allegedly the movie was thrown together by producer Roger Gordon who got Lugosi all the way out to England to star in a this time disastrous Dracula run on stage and the actor legitimately needed money to get back to the states. Watching poor, poor Lugosi try and make the most of this strange, wretched movie is only for the most diehards of diehards. For the rest of us, let us continue to forget that Mother Riley was ever a thing in the first place.
(1958)
Dir - Arthur Crabtree
Overall: MEH
Noteworthy for its stop-motion effects and causing a mild ruckus at the time in its native England for its violence which only comes off as positively tame now, Fiend Without a Face is faulty yes, but just interesting enough to garnish a bit of an understandable following. There is an American military base set up in rural Canada, (though the entire film was actually made in England), that is trying to build a radar with enough juice to spy on Russia 24/7 and of course the radiation they are experimenting with creates the title fiends that begin killing everyone around. The story was adapted from Amilia Reynolds Long's "The Thought Monster" which was published in a 1930 issue of Weird Tales and the noticeably small budget does not quite do it justice. The monsters and stop motion effects, (though always preferable to bad CGI), cannot avoid coming off as a bit silly once they are finally on screen and it has a bit too cliche of a "scientist unwillingly unleashes a menace" premise overall. Plus there is a dopey love angle thrown in to likely appeal to the drive-in couples out on dates who would make up the audience for such a movie at the time. Similar to the Quartermass films from Hammer, Fiend is also a bit slow and falls just short of being a high-water mark for the type of sci-fi horror typical of the 1950s.
(1959)
Dir - Monty Berman/Robert S. Baker
Overall: GOOD
Scripted by prolific, Hammer screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, Jack the Ripper was directed and produced by Monty Berman and Robert S. Baker for their small Mid-Century Film Productions company and it is not a bad cinematic version of the often-filmed source material. Embellishing the theory by Australian journalist Leonard Matters that the real life Jack the Ripper may have been a doctor with some twisted revenge scheme, the film successfully leads us in incorrect directions. The twist may seem either slick or obvious depending on how much you see a twist coming in the first place, but the ending is satisfyingly gruesome and actually rather tense. Ripper is also a bit shocking for the time period with the small amount of nudity and the exploitative nature of a number of moments which mostly revolve around a backdoor brothel operation where some scenes take place. The familiarity of the story and structure may dull the experience somewhat, (the Ripper picks off women who are ill-advised enough to wonder alone at night, the angry townspeople grow paranoid, the cops come up with no leads, etc), but it is a decent enough thriller with some mild, scandalous merit.
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