(1961)
Dir - Seth Holt
Overall: GOOD
Well-regarded director Seth Holt made only a handful of films before dying suddenly at the age of forty-eight and the one that Christopher Lee himself considered "the best film that I was in that Hammer ever made" was the topsy tervy thriller Taste of Fear, (Scream of Fear in the US since the word "Taste" was not tasteful enough, har, har). While Lee's generous praise is not necessarily agreed upon by many, Taste is indeed well done from the director's chair. The twists in Jimmy Sangster's script hit hard due to how methodically Holt plays with the audience's expectations. Cliches such as doctors giving out sedatives to women who have over-active imaginations when we the viewer know damn well that there is nothing psychological going on at all can very easily be tiresome to endlessly sit through with so many similar films. Holt makes these standard plot devices work in spite of themselves though and even the ending which goes off the rails with double and triple crosses, truly exposing the crater-sized holes in the script, still manages to pack quite a wallop. While the whole movie may appear to come apart if you think about the story too much, it cannot be argued that it does not do exactly what the best suspense films are supposed to do, at least while you are watching it.
(1965)
Dir - Silvio Narizzano
Overall: MEH
Taking on the similar ingredients that Pete Walker would more relentlessly explore the following decade, (namely an old crone/religious lunatic kidnapping and tormenting a young woman to "cleanse her soul"), Silvio Narizzano's theatrical debut Fanatic also doubles as the final film appearance for Tallulah Bankhead's, (Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat). The wildly prolific and even more wildly consistent screenwriter Richard Matheson was on hand as well and his script is brimful of manic, biblical dogma for Bankhead to just as manically dive into. The film and particularly Bankhead's performance are over the top in many places they should be, but the overall tone is way off. The frequent comedic touches, (whether with inappropriate musical cues or jokey lines of dialog), jive rather poorly with the serious and horrifying plight of a woman held against her will while being helplessly tortured. Matheson's script unfortunately is also rather formulaic and riddled with inconsistencies involving some of the sloppily-written secondary characters as well as showing us more than a handful of moments where Patricia, (Stefanie Powers), could have easily escaped. Some might be amused to see Donald Sutherland as a dim-witted handyman though.
(1967)
Dir - John Gilling
Overall: MEH
What could be seen as the weakest in Hammer's Mummy series was the third entry The Mummy's Shroud. Though it is both directed and co-scripted by John Gilling who was hot off of the one-two punch of the extraordinary The Plague of the Zombies and The Reptile, Shroud is generic in nearly every possible way. The film is unable to resist the urge to recycle the same plot, (again), from the previous two films not to mention several Universals a few decades prior. It is yet another run-through of a mummy who comes back from the dead due to some fanatical ancestor to act out a curse on those who desecrating its grave. Because of this, the story could not be more boring, having seen it so many times before. Worse yet, Gilling cannot muster enough gruesome or spooky set pieces to spice it up. Roger Delgado is always a treat and he is perfectly suited to play the vengeful Egyptian pulling all of the strings, yet again though, there is a character like him in all of these movies so he is still rather stock. Worse yet, the mummy itself, (played by Christopher Lee's regular stunt double Eddie Powell), is pretty lame looking, but to be fair, his demise is the one visually striking image in the whole movie as he crumbles into a powdered skeleton before our eyes. Unfortunately, that one pleasantry does not happen until the last minute and a half of the movie.
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