Our rabbits need a new patch, and this seems the best place.
Hopefully the old BHF crew will find their way here over the coming days and we'll have some chat about tonight's screening of The Strange Door and Blood From The Mummy's Tomb.
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In my humble opinion, for we are Legion, if it's a tosser between doing it or not doing it, it's gorra be do it. We need a porpoise in this insignificant life of mine. What say the Soothmakers?
Any ideas on doing the 1975 season....?
We ought to have a plan. I watched Denholm Elliott as Roddy Usherette in a Mystery and Imagination. Before I had time to think of a logical strategy, YT took me to a 1976 Short Story Theater of the Poe tale. It's cheap as muck but quite....how you say...literary? No romance. 30 minutes long. The music is familiar. Oh lordy, it's recycled from Superbeast!
That will be my double bill for today. Better ideas are welcomed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRJby3PCfbo
Confirmation that that double bill was part of the season: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/32cf79fa9ac444c98428e65125d7358d
Something seems to have gone a bit wrong with the Genome listing there though. See if you can spot the mistake...
It's a really mixed season, with the middle four films not being horror at all.
Wasn't there always some doubt as to whether or not ONE MILLION B.C. (or MAN AND HIS MATE as "we" know it) plus the silent NOAH'S ARK actually constituted part of the '75 season? Slap bang in the middle, but they don't appear on all lists. Maybe they weren't billed that weekend as "Fantastic Double Bill" in the Radio Times... Where is that man when we need him?
But yes sir, I would love to watch all those again. I might not have actually seen the Vic Mature lizard epic since 1975. And certainly not NOAH'S ARK. As regards THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI, there are so many different tints and music scores of that one out there that I'm not sure if I've rewatched the "right" one since. I don't think I've seen THE TELL TALE HEART since then either, or THE MAZE.
"The '75 season (which we haven't covered - yet) was mind-blowing for me as a 14-15 year old. I was absolutely amazed by the silent CALIGARI, plus QUATERMASS II, THE TELL TALE HEART..."
Indeed, Graham. I think it was the first time I'd seen ein deutscher Stummfilm and I was gobsmacked as the kids say (or said fifty years ago). I think we should do the 1975 Season, perhaps in the 1982 hiatus or maybe another time (possibly around Halloween time this year?). It would give me an excuse to finally watch One Million B.C. which has been sitting unseen on my hard drive for about ten years.
Next year's prep is to listen to The Secret History of Hollywood's utterly magnificent series of podcasts on Val. Shadows: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-secret-history-of-hollywood/id965023632
And at the end of that final round, I see that moodie has coincided with me on absolutely nothing. But wait - there's an additional twist to come....
In the most "Pointless" part of this useless endeavour, I have calculated The Pleasure Factor across the Bored. Our "best" film can't get a 0, but it could get a 4 (4 multiplied by 1 point equals 4 points, do you see?). It didn't - it got an almost pointless 7. The worst of the lot got an embarrassingly huge score of 75. And here they are, this time in order of our otorgated levels of greatness/ enjoyability -
1) NIGHT OF THE DEMON
2) DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS
3) LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF
4) THE GHOUL
5) THE BEAST MUST DIE
6) FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
7) CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER
8) THE SKULL
9) THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS
10) PARANOIAC
11) (Joint place) THE MAD GHOUL/ CHAMBER OF HORRORS
12) CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
13) THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS
14) (Joint place) THE DEVIL-DOLL/ TOWER OF LONDON
15) NIGHT OF THE LEPUS
16) THE BAT
17) DAUGHTERS OF SATAN
Thank you and goodnight!
I think my list would look something like this:
1. Night of the Demon
2. The Beast Must Die
3. Legend of the Werewolf
4. From Beyond the Grave
5.The Ghoul
6. Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
7. Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter
8. The Beast with Five Fingers
9. Curse of the Werewolf
10. Paranoiac
11. The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
12. Chamber of Horrors
13. The Bat
14. Night of the Lepus
15. The Mad Ghoul
16. The Devil Doll (1936)
17. The Skull
18. Tower of London
19. Daughters of Satan
And mal coincides with me on two titles! DR T in 5th place, and PARANOIAC in 8th! Don't forget - it's up to you individually to note and corralate (sp?) the snaps and bingos of other viewers. I'm only snapping and bingoing my own coincidences. Stay tuned, it can only get better.
But as an "interesting" global aside, looking at the bills and remembering my reaction to them, I can almost trace my childhood going into adolescence and later dotage. The '75 season (which we haven't covered - yet) was mind-blowing for me as a 14-15 year old. I was absolutely amazed by the silent CALIGARI, plus QUATERMASS II, THE TELL TALE HEART... The '76 season was stunning as well, so much so that I had my first and only published works eh published about the films in a fanzine. Michael Stotter's... Horror Appreciation Society? FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN! I was Marty Scorsese even before he was!
The '77 season... the big long Drac, Frank and friends... Loved them all. The '78 season didn't quite do the same for me. KING KONG then SUPERBEAST? My world was falling apart. I was 16-17 and had probably started boozing, looking for fleshy pleasures away from the telly...
The '79 season - We watched that just last year! I was still obsessed by the synthetic flesh of Blackpool's Pleasure Beach. I missed DR X because of her. But I got back on the rails shortly afterwards. And despite having said that, and despite 1980 being the year that the doublers made the cover of the Radio Times, I was once more slightly distracted from the films at the time - I can't recall why. Maybe it was that transvestite surprise in Calella. It was an odd season that one, the one we just watched.
1981 will be next year if we're still here. All those Val Luton-Bus films totally rekindled my love for those things. But that's another past, waiting to be told - in the future.
1) FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
2) THE SKULL
3) NIGHT OF THE DEMON
4) THE BEAST MUST DIE
5) DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS
6) THE GHOUL
7) LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF
8) PARANOIAC
9) CHAMBER OF HORRORS
10) CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
11) THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS
12) CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER
13) THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS
14) NIGHT OF THE LEPUS
15) TOWER OF LONDON (39)
16) THE MAD GHOUL
17) THE DEVIL-DOLL (36)
18) THE BAT
19) DAUGHTERS OF SATAN
Interesting that Night of the Lepus is in nobody's bottom two so far, given its reputation. I guess its minimal entertainment value at least bumps it up over what we think of as snoozefests. I'd put it below ToL if the latter was actually a horror movie.
Hey man Crazy Man, I also positively rated the '36 DEVIL DOLL - in fact we both put it in 7th place. Our other bingo was NIGHT OF THE LEPUS in 17th! LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF went up considerably for you this time. Same with me - in fact I put it in 4th place compared to your 6th. The real surprise though for me - and everyone else in the world - was THE MAD GHOUL. 3rd place in my list!
Still hundreds of results to come in before we can start talking about tendencies.
This was my 'provisional' list before seeing the films again:
1 Night of the Demon
2 Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
3 The Beast with Five Fingers
4 The Ghoul
5 The Beast Must Die
6 Tower of London (1939)
7 From Beyond the Grave
8 Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter
9 Paranoiac
10 The Devil Doll (1936)
11 The Mad Ghoul
12 The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
13 Curse of the Werewolf
14 Legend of the Werewolf
15 Chamber of Horrors
16 Night of the Lepus
17 Daughters of Satan
18 The Skull
19 The Bat
This is my definitive list (for the time being) having watched them all again:
1 Night of the Demon
2 Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
3 The Beast with Five Fingers
4 The Ghoul
5 The Beast Must Die
6 Legend of the Werewolf
7 The Devil Doll (1936) / Tower Of London (1962)
8 Chamber of Horrors
9 Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter
10 From Beyond the Grave
11 The Mad Ghoul
12 Paranoiac
13 Tower of London (1939)
14 The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
15 Curse of the Werewolf
16 The Skull
17 Night of the Lepus
18 The Bat
19 Daughters of Satan
So no change in the Top 5. At the bottom, The Skull moves up two places because it looks nice although it's about as dull and unengaging as the last three. The biggest surprise was Legend Of The Werewolf went up considerably in my estimation. I seem to be the only one to positively rate the 36 Devil Doll but it's fun in its way, and I think Vincent Price could have been good in the Barrymore role in a hypothetical remake. I can't imagine The Cush or Sir CLee in drag, though.
Right then, after having thought out a complicated points system to review this season's fillums, I have decided to abandon the idea and just do a list of my personal best to worst. This is very similar to what CMM published on July 5, the difference now being that we have now seen (most of) the films recently. How much did you enjoy them? The truly interesting part of the game is that you can't rate two films equally. Nineteen films, nineteen degrees of enjoyabilty. Funny to see that CMM put THE BAT as the worst of the lot, going on memory. It's my worst of the lot too, below NIGHT OF THE LEPUS and DAUGHTERS OF SATAN. But without any more fannying around, I give you -
1) THE SKULL
2) NIGHT OF THE DEMON
3) THE MAD GHOUL
4) LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF
5) DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS
6) CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER
7) THE DEVIL-DOLL
8) PARANOIAC
9) THE GHOUL
10) THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS
11) TOWER OF LONDON (39)
12) CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
13) FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE
14) THE BEAST MUST DIE
15) THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS
16) CHAMBER OF HORRORS
17) NIGHT OF THE LEPUS
18) DAUGHTERS OF SATAN
19) THE BAT
I mistookably watched the '62 TOWER OF LONDON instead of the right old one. That would come in quite high up the list, around the 5-and-a-half mark. CMM may choose to insert it wherever he likes, and moodie can do the same with the '64 Shonty DEVIL DOLL. I didn't see the correct DEVIL-DOLL this year, but my rating is based on a vague memory of a rabbit I did about it on Ye Olde Bored.
I can see gallons of giggles and fun to be had comparing ratings here. Anyone else put THE SKULL at the top and THE BAT at the bottom? Just think of the excitement when we see that someone has given the same rating for some films around the middle of the chart! In my case, if someone else gives a 12 to CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, I'll be literally dancing on the ceiling with amazement.
Let the fun commence!
I didn't join in the re-watch this weekend having been unable to resist popping TBMD into my player as soon as the disc arrived. My orgasmic reaction to that is on the BD thread. I've always loved this film. I recorded the 1980 screening and watched it lots of times and have since bought it on DVD and BD (twice). The idea of mashing up Agatha Christie, the action genre and the horror genre still seems very fresh to me and, like Kim Newman, I'd be happy to see a remake.
As an aside, I once had a (Marvel?) comic that contained a who-is-the-werewolf story in which the werewolf hunter identified the werewolf by drawing a pentagram in the palm of his hand. The only suspect who did not remark on the pentagram was the werewolf who thought that only he could see it since he always saw the mark on the hand of his next victim. When I showed this to my school chum he annoyed me by guessing the identity of the monster ... based on the colour of his trousers.
Tower Of London (1962)
If this had been made in colour, as was intended before the penny pinching producer decided it would be shot in B/W to save money, it would probably be as well regarded as the Corman/Price/Poe cycle of films.
It's an engaging and enjoyable low brow mix of Richard III and Macbeth, with Price in fine fettle in another 'tormented nobleman' role heading a larger cast than was usual in his AIP films of the time. Daniel Haller does his customary magic in upping production values on a budget (plus a nice touch to add slime to the walls of the underground passages) and there's an effective score alternating between regal and courtly and creepy and sinister, which does wonders in heightening the effect of various scenes. The horror content is considerably greater than in the 1939 film, with ghastly tortures, ghostly manifestations and sorcery galore. The bloody weals on the back of Mistress Shaw after being whipped and her torment on the rack made me squirm and the rat-in-the-box punishment must have made many a stomach turn. The mid section of the film is fairly suspensefully handled. It all moves along at a good lick and the pace never flags. Aussie genre regular Michael Pate is Price's confederate in treason, essaying a sort of reprise of his evil aristo from The Black Castle (1952) in which he played alongside Karloff - thirty years later he'd appear in maestro of madness Philipe Mora's The Return Of Captain Invincible starring Christopher Lee.
The Beast Must Die (1974)
Amicus' last horror outing was one of their most entertaining genre efforts. Luckily for me, I never remember the identity of the werewolf between viewings - same with Howling V: The Rebirth (1989) which follows a similar plotline. Having recently seen Marlene Clark's terrific work in Lord Shango (1975) during my Voodoo Cinema season, I felt it was a shame she didn't get more to do here. When the 'twist ending' came I felt perplexed - what do you mean it wasn't any of the guests after all? And he'd never even suspected? But I'd forgotten (again) that the real twist was that there were two werewolves. Even when Cushing explained I still couldn't remember who the real culprit was apart from knowing it wasn't him. For some reason I'd always suspected it would turn out to be the other girl. Maybe because of all the 'hormone' business. Anyway, it's all very silly but enjoyable with it. I do like Anton Diffring and he's very good in this. The Cush plays it all in deadly earnest and I was glad to see he actually had much more screen time than I'd remembered. Poor old Charles Gray on the other hand didn't get much of a look in. Calvin Lockhart was just sort of there, not very good but not very bad. He were alright. A couple of things I noticed - the 'suspense music' is from the 'Vampire' segment in the previous year's Vault Of Horror (and probably some other Amicus stuff) and I recognised the bridge and riverside shack from Daleks - Invasion Earth 2150 AD.
Just finished watching The Beast Must Die. But now it's time for a quick slurp, a gasper and grilled scallops. I won't be back....but my rabbits will.
I have rather shot myself in the foot over the last couple of weeks by not watching two films around the midnight hour....if the whole idea was to recreate the experience of forty years ago. So this morning I watched Tower of London in instalments while cooking the lunch, leaving TBMD for siesta time.
THE RABBIT MUST DIE
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Blu-ray? The copy that's up on YouTube looked great, and for free it's cheap at half the price.
Interesting establishing shot during the titles - That looks to me very like the coast of the North-West Highlands of Scotland. In a "seamless" cut, we see the high shot of the car then a close-up of the jeep in Shepperton. Different car I imagine. I suppose that the crew didn't actually go to Scotland to film that title sequence and thus I'm, guessing that it's stock footage...maybe from a Scottish travelogue documentary or something? I'm also assuming that the idea of filming the title sequence "off the coast of Shepperton" was jettisoned.
And all this is acompanied by Douglas Gamley's awful opening music. Sorry moodie! To me it's trying to jump on the Blaxploitation soundtrack bandwagon, but it sounds so light and...gay...that it would be more appropriate for a holiday programme like "Wish You Were Here". The music gets better after that, especially when it's just doing a kind of contemporary beat - that stuff really reminded me of Roy Budd. Then we're onto dodgy music ground once more with some rip-roaring jazz solos... Good jazz, but entirely incongruous. Gamley was then much more congruous and effective when going back to just the spooky atmospherics.
So already we're seeing what I detect as being old men's ideas of what's hip. We'd seen that before in DRACULA A.D. 1972, with the unconvincing hippies and the unconvincing-but-real Marsha Hunt. I suppose all this was kind of in the wake of SHAFT, but cobbled together by a bunch of hopelessly square trad geezers. I also see a connection with THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA. That's the one which people often cite as being like an episode of "The Avengers", but THE BEAST MUST DIE is even MORE like an episode of "The Avengers".
Ha! I've just noticed that the film was released on video in the USA under the title BLACK WEREWOLF. That's either very clever or incredibly dumb... Think about it. Anyway, is the film any good? No, it isn't. Did I enjoy it? Up to a point but not sufficiently so. The actors mostly sit in a midrange of effectiveness. The best performances come from Pete Cush and Charles Gray, but regarding the Cush I found myself incapable of following his gobbledygook about werewolf lore, instead concentrating on his Edward Van Sloan.... hairpiece. Was that a one-and-only?
The worst are those who are supposed to be young and hip, so Tom Chadbon and Marlene Clark are already at a disadvantage because their lines are dreadful. The worst of all though is Calvin Lockhart, truly pathetic as the lead.
Oh yes, the gimmick... I didn't even bother thinking about who the werewolf was, because when absolutely everybody could be "it" due to their "acting strange" scenes and "I-wouldn't-trust-them-in-my-house" past, the revelation is hardly that. Although I have to give credit for the attempted double-twist, it still hardly made me raise an eyebrow in amazement.
Very middling on the entertainmentometer. I still have to think of my "end-of-season game". It seemed a good idea the other night, but I'll have to perfect it. Having said that I might just ask you list your faves from this year's season, and the ones you didn't like much. But wait - I may need your collaboration in polishing things up. I'll decide once the final rabbit is in.