1970s British Horror Part Nineteen

ENDLESS NIGHT
(1972)
Dir - Sidney Gilliat
Overall: MEH

The last film directed by Sidney Gilliat was the later-era Agatha Christie adaptation Endless Night.  Christie's works generally was not brimming with horror elements and this is no exception.  The, (very), few times something approaching macabre happens, it is jarring due to how vaguely non-confrontational the actual story is.  The characters are likeable and outside of a mildly eccentric old crone who only has one scene of dialog spouting some general warning about a curse, nothing antagonistic seems to be afoot.  Naturally, this ultimately does not last as there would be no movie without some sort of plot jolt, but the twist comes off as brutishly abrupt.  The way that the film is presented is more interesting and ultimately satisfying than how unpleasantly the story is resolved.  Clues are given as to the main character's deficient psyche as he confuses what he sees and hears, plus we are never shown who he is talking to off camera until the end.  Yet by that point, it has treaded too weak on the thrills and chills that it needed all along.

DON'T LOOK NOW
(1973)
Dir - Nicolas Roeg
Overall: GREAT

One of the most influential and renowned psychological horror films ever made, Don't Look Now, (A Venezia... un Dicembre rosso shocking), was the third effort from cinematographer turned director Nicolas Roeg.  Based off the short story of the same name by English author Daphne du Maurier, few horror films if any make grief such a primary focus.  Understanding that the mere concept of losing one's child is about the most traumatic and ergo horrifying thing that a couple can experience, Roeg forgoes any cheap genre pandering altogether.  Examining the concept of supernatural premonitions, both the characters and the viewer become disoriented with an almost aggressive use of motifs shown via flashback and flash-forward editing techniques.  A sprawling, labyrinth-like Venice is purposefully used to this advantage, creating a complex barrier where both the language and physical location itself is frustratingly foreign.  Every creative component, (direction, editing, cinematography, performances), cooperates, and the film's patience with its subject matter never comes off as laborious.

SPECTRE
(1977)
Dir - Clive Donner
Overall: GOOD

One of a handful of failed 70s pilots by Star Trek creator/producer Gene Roddenberry, Spectre is an occasionally clashing and odd, occult-themed detective property that is reminiscent enough of others from the era.  Kolchak; The Night Stalker naturally comes to mind.  Falling short of being picked up as a series in the US, an extended version was released in the UK with nudity added to exploit it up.  There is a of a charm to the hodgepodge of supernatural details frequently used, and the skeptic vs. believer relationship between the two main characters, (American actors Robert Culp and Gig Young, respectively), mirrors that of agents Mulder and Scully in The X-Files some seventeen years later.  The editing is occasionally a bit harsh and the added ingredient of random, near-sex scenes gives it clumsy, unfocused feel.  Of course no occult movie worth its weight in pentagrams would be complete without a showstopping black mass and the Asmodeus-praising one here makes good with the crimson and black robes, the screaming, and the crazy make-up.  Goofy business yet still kind of fun.

1970s British Horror Part Eighteen

DIE SCREAMING, MARIANNE
(1971)
Dir - Pete Walker
Overall: WOOF

Pure, laboriously dull nonsense from beginning to end, Die Screaming, Marianne was Pete Walker's first minor foray into horror and it is as unremarkable as they come.  Calling it a horror film is as misleading as the title, but if one uses their imagination, they can almost see it as a thriller of sorts.  The plot is equally convulsed and uninteresting which is an insurmountable obstacle to overcome.  Whether or not the characters here meet through convenience or contrived scheming is as inconsequential as how they come to their end.  Worse yet, Leo Genn mumbles his lines so obnoxiously that almost none of his dialog is even decipherable.  Never once along the way is anyone's relationship to anything that is happening fleshed out anyway.  With such a murky, barely present story to work with, absolutely no tension arises throughout.  By the ending, you are likely to be as confused and as bored as you were at any other point before that.  Being a Walker film might make it of passing interest to those familiar with the director's more notable works, but this is assuredly, (and rightfully), an obscure one.

FRENZY
(1972)
Dir - Alfred Hitchcock
Overall: GOOD

Alfred Hitchcock's return to London after having spent decades in Hollywood resulted in his penultimate film Frenzy.  A typically violent murder thriller for the director, (after his previous two works Tom Curtain and Topaz were espionage themed), it was based on the Arthur La Bern novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square.  The hallmarks of an innocently accused man being on the run where the smallest details of course end up being particularly important are both present, though the director breaks new ground for himself by including nudity for the first and last time in his career.  It is also a bit heavy on the humor both dark and light, such as how the script delves out important information via a police inspector eating insufferable gourmet cuisine from his chipper, naive wife.  Being a Hitchcock movie, there are naturally a handful of long takes and a couple of nerve-wracking scenes that are as memorable as any from the master of suspense, (an extended and almost ridiculous one taking place in a potato truck being particularly memorable).  It is often easy to take Hitchcock's work for granted, but even with so many legendary films under his belt, this one is easily still a high-note to nearly go off on.

DOMINIQUE
(1979)
Dir - Michael Anderson
Overall: MEH

An adaptation of Harold Lawlor's 1948 short story The Beckoning Ghost, Dominique, (Dominique Is Dead), has an interesting enough if not that singular of a premise where a scumbag husband drives his rich wife insane to the point of suicide, only to have the tides turned on himself in a pretty elaborate way.  It stops way short of being gruesome, but still has the proper, EC Comics comeuppance angle of spending almost the entire movie waiting for the bad guy to get his.  The wait is occasionally annoying as said bad guy, Cliff Robinson is awkwardly stiff, giving a performance that unfortunately borders on poor.  Both he and the wife also see a generous handful of seemingly unexplained, logic-defying things in a short time, yet neither barely utters a word to anybody about them and of course predictably look like fools when they do.  Anderson adapts a leisurely, deathly still pace for his numerous, tense set pieces which in fact take up nearly the entire movie, though most are rather decent.  The twist is as convoluted as one would assume and naturally rather unsatisfying, but it still gets by enough for what it is.

1970s British Horror Part Seventeen

SCREAM...AND DIE!
(1973)
Dir - José Ramón Larraz
Overall: MEH

Originally screened as Please Don't Go in the Bedroom, but more commonly known as Scream...and Die! or The House That Vanished in U.S. markets, this was the first entirely British production directed by José Ramón Larraz, (likewise being the first where he went under the anglicized name "Joseph Larraz").  A proto-slasher of sorts yet lacking in the more lurid style of Italian giallos that were still in their prime, it is mostly concerned with dark, slow, drawn-out scenes that inevitably get interrupted by some form of a Lewton buss.  An incense sub-plot and plenty of boobs aside, the eerie pacing at least is not without its charm, but the script from sexploitation screenwriter Derk Ford has some logical shortcomings.  A woman witnesses a murder, the culprit of which begins clearly stalking her, and her friends advise her to sit back and wait it out, calling her foolish for wanting to go to the police.  While everything else from there goes for a tense atmosphere first and foremost, it is also then on flimsy footing story-wise, which regrettably undermines it.

SCHIZO
(1976)
Dir - Pete Walker
Overall: MEH

By 1976, naughty horror filmmaker Pete Walker was on a roll and Schizo marks yet another slasher outing that walks that careful line of blood, boobs, and mild bad taste.  While this is noticeably a comparatively less over the top offender of Walker's usual, aforementioned shtick, it does maintain yet another variation of his fundamental violence against youth theme as the killer here is a older gentleman targeting his former stepdaughter.  Sadly, the more serious approach wields rather mundane results as the script, (authored by Walker's frequent collaborator David McGillivray), brings virtually nothing unique to the table and has a twist that comes off as a cockamamie groan.  Many of the scenes are adequately suspenseful, but they are also very formulaic in the way that the killer toys with his primary victim and predictably does away with others.  It is even less impressive that once again no one takes a woman seriously who claims multiple times that someone is stalking her.  Instead, her husband, friends, and the cops all believe that she is most likely imagining everything, even though she has positively identified who her pursuer is.  Is there a more aggravating cliche?  Likely not.

THE LEGACY
(1978)
Dir - Richard Marquand
Overall: MEH

Flawed yet not without some weird, supernaturally pleasing ingredients at its disposal, The Legacy was the debut and only horror movie from future Return of the Jedi director Richard Marquand.  Co-scripted by Hammer screenwriter and director Jimmy Sangster, it is one of the many adequately funded, occult-themed genre films from the decade and a typically mediocre one.  For one, the musical score by Michael J. Lewis occasionally embellishes in dated and terrible romantic disco music and has an opening song sung by Kiki Dee which is equally appalling as well as positively mood killing.  The dialog gets clumsy from time to time with Sam Elliot and Katharine Ross, (in the movie that the real life married couple met on), suffering the most from it.  The script ultimately blows its chance to make for a satisfyingly creepy ending, but that said, the central mystery is sufficiently curious and finds room for some gruesome death sequences that break up the rest of its "people politely stuck in a house that they can't leave" monotony.  There is also Roger Daltrey and a cat with two different colored eyes in it for whatever that is worth.

1970s British Horror Part Sixteen

THE FIEND
(1972)
Dir - Robert Hartford-Davis
Overall: MEH

British filmmaker Robert Hartford-Davis occasionally mingled with horror throughout his decade and some change career, never to any overtly successful degrees.  The Fiend, (Beware My Brethren), is no exception in this regard.  It is another example of religious nutjobs whose zeal crosses over into villainy, except with a serial killer on the loose angle thrown in to provide some extra gore and naked female bodies.  The story is basically a snore and tries one's patience with the amount of characters begging for repentance and finding repugnant sin in every possible activity.  Never one to shy away from chomping at the bit when it is available, Patrick Magee makes for a "good" fanatical Minister and character actor Tony Beckley, (The Italian Job, Doctor Who's "The Seeds of Doom"), cannot come off as anything but a villain even if it is a pathetic, partly-sympathetic one.  The movie is more dull than anything though and also has some positively clashing and embarrassing musical numbers included for reasons probably better left unknown.

I DON'T WANT TO BE BORN
(1975)
Dir - Peter Sasdy
Overall: MEH

An unintentional trainwreck that developed a well-warranted "so bad it's good" reputation since its dismal release, I Don't Want to Be Born, (The Devil Within Her, The Monster, Sharon's Baby), has all the inane hallmarks that one would expect to be present.  Ridiculous fake Italian accents, ridiculous expository dialog dumps, ridiculous dialog in general, ridiculous performances, ridiculous sound effects, and a generically unoriginal devil baby plot that comes closer to parody than anything else.  Not that it is particularly easy to make a serious movie about an unnaturally growing newborn with superhuman strength and malevolent superpowers such as putting a dead mouse in an old woman's tea.  More curious yet is the familiar, respected names on board such as Donald Pleasence, Ralph Bates, Joan Collins, Caroline Munro, and Eileen Atkins.  Also director Peter Sasdy whose career in the genre may have been uneven, but his work on Countess Dracula, Taste the Blood of Dracula, and others certainly does not resemble the embarrassing nonsense that is on screen here.  Say what you want about how awful it is, (which cannot be denied), but it is mostly not boring and makes for a worthy "bad movie night" entry to be sure.

PREY
(1977)
Dir - Norman J. Warren
Overall: MEH

The middle installment in Norman J. Warren's narratively unrelated 70's horror trilogy, Prey, (Alien Prey), is a robustly odd, Freudian ordeal.  Shot at a lone, isolated manor house with only three characters on screen for almost the entire duration, it is a noticeably low-budget affair with outrageous performances and heavy-handed hetero and homosexual themes co-mingling rather violently.  It is also a mess, though difficult to tell how unintentionally so.  Tedious pacing, (lots and lots of long, uninterrupted shots of characters walking from one place to another), behavior that is so erratic that it frequently crosses over into comedy, a random crossdressing scene that probably means something, and even a fatal pratfall are all cause for well warranted head-scratching from the viewer.  There is also an underlying B-movie worthy plot thread of an alien takeover with its own version of silly "So and so reporting back to base with my report on the humans" jargon.  Not to mention the alien makeup that is nothing more than a regular looking dude with a dog nose and some red eyes.  In any event, it is pretty steadily unpleasant with all of the screaming, arguing, and resentfully cruel sex scenes afoot.

1970s British Horror Part Fifteen

TROG
(1970)
Dir - Freddie Francis
Overall: WOOF

With respected cinematographer and occasional director of notable horror films Freddie Francis, screenwriter and Hammer director John Gilling, Joan Crawford in her final film appearance, horror mainstay Michael Gough, and even a lifted stop-motion sequence from Ray Harryhausen's work on The Animal World documentary all joining forces, it just goes to prove that sometimes a reliable crop of talent is not enough to stop a trainwreck.  Trog is one of the most famously bad movies ever made.  While there are moments of pure, utter ridiculousness leisurely sprinkled throughout, it all gets off to a trudgy start with a snore-inducing first act.  The camp eventually does go a long way, from Crawford's surprisingly professional performance amongst such nonsense, to Gough's cartoonishly forced villainous one, to every single moment that the title character wearing half of an ape costume from 2001: A Space Odyssey is on screen.  It cannot be stressed enough how atrociously hilarious said troglodyte looks.  Scenes of him walking around in broad daylight as the musical score whimsically tries to make him sympathetic just defines schlock.  There are ultimately too many boring moments to warrant it as a hall of fame anti-classic, but it comes close enough at times, that is for sure.

FRIGHT
(1971)
Dir - Peter Collinson
Overall: MEH

Formulaic yet occasionally successful, Fright was one of the many straight thriller entries in director Peter Collinson's filmography.  Scripted by Tudor Gates, (Barbarella, The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, Twins of Evil), it plays to familiar tropes such as a babysitter being targeted in a remote house, the phone lines being cut, women being told that they are imagining things, and an escaped mental patient fulfilling the proto-slasher killer role.  We have all seen these patterns utilized to greater effect elsewhere and the way that they blandly pile on here is really the movie's only undoing.  Elsewhere, there are some tense moments and solid performances even if none of it ultimately elevates the vanilla presentation.  The way the sociopath uncontrollably confuses two of the characters really does not say much beyond "he's crazy".  Similarly, the more sexually charged nature of the movie, (the boyfriend gets a bit pushy in the pants, the babysitter randomly stops to admire her body in a mirror, and the killer inevitably forces himself on her), are more there as scandalous ingredients to make it a bit more edgy, which was becoming more common for the era.

THE UNCANNY
(1977)
Dir - Claude Héroux
Overall: MEH

The same year that he stared as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars, Peter Cushing lent his name and talents to this unofficial Amicus anthology The Uncanny.  Actually a British/Canadian co-production between Cinévidéo and The Rank Organization, (though Amicus founder Milton Subotsky was on board as producer), it has all of the hallmarks of any other omnibus horror films made in that country, thankfully so.  Well, all the hallmarks except being good.  It is difficult enough to get each individual entry in an anthology movie to measure up to each other in quality when they can all pick from wildly different subject matter.  It is even more problematic to have them pigeonhole a sinister feline element into them.  Thus is the case with The Uncanny which features a fear of cats as a linking thread, never managing to make such a premise anything except laughably lame.  Not that it is really presented as anything to be taken that seriously.  While having a ghoulish, knowing charm is a commendable trait for such fare, the enjoyment factor is regrettably amiss here.  Poor Mr. Cushing.  There is a reason people talk about Star Wars more.

1970s British Horror Part Fourteen

DORIAN GRAY
(1970)
Dir - Massimo Dallamano
Overall: MEH

Italian director Massimo Dallamano, (who penned a number of giallos before and after this), also co-wrote what would be the eighth The Picture of Dorian Gray movie, here titled simply Dorian Gray, (or not so simply, also The Sins of Dorian Gray and A God Called Dorian translated in different markets).  The film is a textbook example of late 60s, early 70s mod cinema in which filmmakers became daring with what was allowed to be depicted due to the sexual revolution being in full swing, where more explicit subject matter in general was given liberal sway over the medium.  In this regard, the movie is inescapably dated, with the setting being switched to then present day swinging London.  Even as Gray ages however many decades he does, everyone is still dressed as if the 1970s just started. Austrian actor Helmut Berger looks plenty the part, but he is too despicable in the title role, lacking the cold, unemotional charm of say Hurd Hatfield in the novel's best cinematic adaptation from 1945.  It fits the more decadent aspects of Oscar Wilde's original story and obviously goes further in sexual debauchery than any previous version, but this fails to make it enjoyable.

THE NIGHT DIGGER
(1971)
Dir - Alastair Reid
Overall: MEH

The sophomore effort from British television director Alastair Reid, (with a score from Bernard Hermann no less), was this adaptation of Joy Cowley's Nest in a Fallen Tree novel.  Here titled The Night Digger, (The Road Builder in the U.K.), it is a mess and for a thriller, hardly thrilling.  There is no suspense built up since we are only treated to a scant few malicious set pieces in the first place, with the movie routinely forgetting to figure out what kind of story it is supposed to be telling.  Everyone's behavior comes off as arbitrary and nearly every plot point seems underwritten, often astonishingly so.  From the relationship between a blind doting mother and her adopted daughter, said daughter's romantic inclinations towards a young drifter handyman, and said handyman's drastic personality flipping, each character's dynamics with each other are so vaguely defined that it feels like there are huge chunks of necessary information being left out.  The ending comes laughably out of nowhere, almost making the whole movie seem like a farce.  It fails then to be properly engaging, instead becoming unintentionally confusing.

COUNT DRACULA
(1977)
Dir - Philip Saville
Overall: GOOD

By 1977, Dracula films had been regularly in production since the silent era, and this version made by the BBC was not the first or even the last from England during that decade, let alone anywhere else in the world.  Since the story can go on auto-pilot for virtually any viewer at this point, we are only left to bask in the performances, technical aspects, and overall presentation, all the while comparing it to every other take on the source material that we have seen.  In such a regard, Count Dracula offers the usual crop of good and sub-par components.  Its length may be intimidating, but at a hundred and fifty-five minutes, it is no wonder that this is considered one of the most faithful adaptations ever filmed, as that provides ample enough time to cover a whole lot from Bram Stoker's novel.  There are some curious, odd, poor, and dated special effects, and video quality that was common of the BBC suffers the film visually.  French actor Louis Jordan's polite demeanor and Caucasian looks make for an unorthodox choice as the Count, but his performance remains committed at least.  Frank Finlay and Jack Shepherd make a fine Van Helsing and Renfield respectively but try not to bust out into hysterics over British singer Richard Barnes' Southern drawl as Quincey, which is even more pathetic than Keanu Reeves' infamous, forced accent in Francis Ford Coppola's version.

1970s Foreign Horror Part Ten

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE
(1970)
Dir - David Cronenberg
Overall: MEH

This sophomore effort from David Cronenberg follows a similar structure as Stereo, his debut from the year before.  Featuring no dialog yet instead a commentary by actor Ronald Mlodzik, (who also started in Stereo), and running for just over an hour in length, Crimes of the Future is certainly not a horror film, but it is also not particularly good either.  Focusing on a post-plague, dystopian future, you would not necessarily pick up on this as it is mostly just a weirdo going into medical clinics and doing things like looking at organs in jars, licking people's feet, smiling at them as they take women's underwear out of bags, and pretending to be crippled while someone else tries to bend his knees.  He is apparently musing about or looking for his mentor, talking very slowly about it the whole time.  This all might mean something or it might instead just be a lot of pretentious, art movie nonsense.  While the pacing is insufferable, Cronenberg, (who also shot and edited the film), is juggling some ambitious ideas and it is occasionally engaging from a visual standpoint.  It is a shame that the film is rather dull and half-baked, but it is still a mildly interesting, disturbed watch for fans of one of the genre's most renowned filmmakers.

FANTASTIC PLANET
(1973)
Dir - René Laloux
Overall: GOOD

This Czech/French co-produced science fiction animated film from René Laloux was his first of three full-length ones and remains the most famous.  Co-scripted by Laloux and illustrator Ronald Topor, themes of animal and human rights as well as racism are explored via a highly advanced, gigantic, meditating blue race of beings called Draags who keep primitive humans, (called Oms), as pets.  While it all unfolds perhaps too gradually in some places, the bizarre, hugely stylized visual design of Fantastic Planet, (La Planète sauvage, Divoká planeta), keeps it endlessly fascinating.  Each race that the story has put at odds with each other are equally sympathetic to the viewer and all the way through, the movie connects its allegorical ideas in a rather unambiguous way.  At the same time, the hip, wah-wah guitar heavy soundtrack from jazz musician Alain Goraguer and computerized sound effects augment the extraordinary and singular animation.  It makes for a highly imaginative whole; dark in some places, slow in others, positively weird in most, and anything but forgettable.

LAND OF THE MINOTAUR
(1976)
Dir - Kostas Karagiannis
Overall: WOOF

For reasons that may never be properly explained, Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence both started in a rare Greek horror film with none other than Brian Eno providing the score.  That is not necessarily the weird part.  The weird part is that Land of the Minotaur, (The Devil's Men), is an embarrassing, insultingly boring mess that no one would probably remember if not for the aforementioned personnel inexplicably being involved.  Cushing could not make a mockery out of any of his performances if he tried, but thankfully the production did not work him too hard, instead leaving more scenes for Pleasance to yell at a guy driving a car to hurry up and go faster.  As far as Eno is concerned, the music is barely noticeable and it is not like he got a trip to Greece in the summer time like the cast did so again, his reasons for participating are questionable.  As far as everything else, there is a cult that worships a statue, a priest trying to stop them, women disappearing, and other stuff that you will immediately forget about after it happens.  No mystery, no suspense, nonsensical everything.  The sacrificial altar looks OK though.  Still, it is probably best to just move on and assume that this was never made.