Hocus Pocus

A 1966 Hammer Horror "ripe for rediscovery" AND an even more delirious Eurotrash farrago ...

THE WITCHES. Believe it or not this 1966 Hammer Films farrago is another of those being restored and screened at the London Film Festival. I had not seen it since its 1966 release, but remember my pal Stan and I finding it hilarious. It suddenly cropped up over the weekend on a minor cable channel devoted to horror films. It is of course Joan Fontaine’s last cinema film and I understand she set up the project herself – only to find herself out-acted by her co-star, Kay Walsh (Nancy in Lean’s GREAT EXPECTATIONS among other great roles). 

Joan is Gwen Mayfield, a graciously genteel teacher who has a breakdown while teaching in Africa as she falls foul of a local witchdoctor. Back in England she gets a new position as headmistress of a school in an ideal quaint Olde English village run by local author Stephanie Bax (Walsh) and her sometimes vicar brother Alec McEwan. Walsh takes command of the picture and seems to come on like a predatory lesbian - perhaps she thought the only way to play this preposterous material was to camp it up to the limit? Gwen settles in but begins to notice odd things and the villagers and pupils seem odd too, and there is that black cat … plus the flock of sheep who obliterate telling footprints, knocking over Gwen in the mud. Before long Joan’s raised eyebrow works overtime as she begins to realise there is a coven of witches in the village and they are planning a human sacrifice: the still virginal teenage girl (Ingrid Boulting). Gwen though is hospitalised by doctor Leonard Rossiter, and we have to wait until she escapes for the over the top climax. 

Enter Stephanie, boss witch supreme, in her witch robes and that curious head-dress with antlers and little birthday candles lit on it – how did she manage those doing that long campy dance of hers? The villagers (including Duncan Lamont, Bryan Marshall, and the boy from THE INNOCENTS Martin Stephens - now that was a real chiller, as per label) have a very British orgy as they writhe, cover themselves in slime, and the the virgin is brought out. Quick thinking Gwen realises how to stop the ceremony and turn the evil back on Stephanie (who foolishly had told her what to do earlier..).Need I go on? This is a delirious farrago, a totally enjoyable piece of nonsense, from Hammer Films, written by Nigel Kneale (of QUATERMASS fame) and directed by Cyril Frankel. It really should have been marketed as a comedy rather than a Hammer horror. The Film Festival brochure describes it as a film “that is ripe for rediscovery” – it is certainly ripe!

FANGS OF THE LIVING DEAD. More comic thrills in this 1968 Eurotrash vampire saga, also known as MALENKA. Model Sylvia Morel (Anita Ekberg – several years after her glory period) inherits an old castle somewhere in Central Europe, so of course she goes to see it, arriving at the inn in a fetching orange pantsuit with matching cape. At the mention of the castle and her connection to it the yokels freeze and fall back as a carriage arrives to take her there. So far, so BRIDES OF DRACULA …. Who is the strange nobleman who only appears at night, and that bevy of beauties she suspects are vampires …. 
She changes outfits in her room and emerges with a totally different hairstyle complete with ringlets. This is daft Eurotrash of the highest, or lowest depending on your view, order. Anita seems to be enjoying herself while going through the motions. Malenka of course was the original vampire, killed some centuries ago, who turned all her family into vampires and they now want Sylvia, who looks just like her, to join them … As a reviewer said on IMDB, it plays like “a Mel Brooks parody of a Gothic horror movie”. Directed by Armando de Ossorio.

Summer Repeats: Movies I Absolutely Love

Summertime and TCM (UK) are finally showing some interesting afternoon double-bills, so its a case of laying out some cold drinks and snacks and enjoying once more items like Minnelli's LES GIRLS followed by Tashlin's ever-delirious THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT. Logically speaking as I have the dvds I can watch these any old time, but if they are on television I simply have to watch them again. There was also a nice double bill of two I don't have and have not seen since I was a kid: BELOVED INFIDEL and THE LIGHT IN THE PIAZZA. INFIDEL is one of the 3 Kerr made in '59, all very unseen now - I like THE JOURNEY (as per Kerr label), but will we ever get to see again COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS? Deborah and Peck should have been a dream team in '59 (like Greg was with Jean Simmons, Sophia Loren, Lauren Bacall, Ava Gardner) if only the film had been worthy of them.
But it got me thinkiing on all those movies I love and can see any time: not only my top 25 or so movies (Top 50+ movies label) but choice items like: THE RELUCTANT DEBUTANTE, WOMAN'S WORLD, DESIGNING WOMAN, THE OPPOSITE SEX, JUPITER'S DARLING, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, WILD RIVER. Then there's those recent (re)discoveries of mine like I WAS HAPPY HERE (Sarah Miles label), THAT MAN FROM RIO (Belmondo, Dorleac labels), Visconti's SANDRA or OF A THOUSAND DELIGHTS (Visconti, Cardinale, Sorel labels), THE SEA WALL or THIS ANGRY AGE (Mangano label), and Jayne in the delirious THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT - it will be on to WILL SUCCESS SPOIL ROCK HUNTER? next!



So,just a few images to remind ourselves of Lady Wren (Kay Kendall label) in court in LES GIRLS, Jimmy Dean in EAST OF EDEN, Lee Remick in WILD RIVER, Kay and Rex and Angela in DEBUTANTE, Sarah back in Ireland in I WAS HAPPY HERE, Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac in THAT MAN FROM RIO, Silvana and Tony Perkins dancing in THE SEA WALL, Jean Sorel and Lilli Palmer in ADORABLE JULIA, Kate in SUMMERTIME, and those striking images from Visconti's SENSO and SANDRA (Sorel, Cardinale, Alida Valli, Visconti labels)...

Then there's all those other favourites, commented on here, like ALL FALL DOWN, THE CHAPMAN REPORT, QUENTIN DURWARD, MOONFLEET, THE PRODIGAL, THE EGPYTIAN, THE WAY TO THE STARS, NOW VOYAGER, OLD ACQUAINTANCE, PLEIN SOLEIL, THE LION IN WINTER, THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE, PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, SOME LIKE IT HOT, BLACK NARCISSUS, I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, LA LOI, THE LEOPARD, AMERICAN GIGOLO, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, and those Lorens, Hitchcocks, Von Sternbergs ... quite a few more "Movies I Love" to write about then!

Goodbye to all that

Here where I live, just outside London, we have a local litte art cinema run by the local council, a plush 68 seater, which has been ideal in recent years since I discovered it for seeing the best of recent releases [like UNCLE BOONMEE, THE KING'S SPEECH, ANOTHER YEAR, NINE, THE HISTORY BOYS, BROKEBACK etc and revivals [PANDORA!] in comfortable surroundings. I don't think I could go back to the multiplex with kids texting and using their mobile/cell phones .... but all good things come to an end. This little cinema - grandly titled The David Lean Cinema [he was a local boy] closes in a few weeks, due to the current economic climate and cuts imposed on councils. The cinema though is part of the town hall, so it is not like it is a separate building which has to be maintained, so I dare say it cannot save that much, but if libraries and drop-in centres are being cut back, so too are cinemas!

I was there last evening actually, as their closing programme is running some classics and old favourites. It was great to see THE INNOCENTS again then on the cinema screen so one can really appreciate those wide vistas - as per my review at label from last year. I will be popping along again before it closes for my favourite musical THE BANDWAGON on the big screen - bliss with Fred and Cyd and Jack Buchanan - and that new Woody Allen YOU WILL MEET A TALL DARK STRANGER. The closing day appropriately finishes with GOODBYE MR CHIPS and THE LAST PICTURE SHOW!

The Innocents

THE INNOCENTS was a key movie for me in 1961, being all of 15 at the time. It was the scariest thing since PSYCHO. Over the years its subtle pleasures have increased and its certainly for me the best version of the Henry James Story.

Jack Clayton's direction, the screenplay by John Mortimer and Truman Capote and Freddie Francis's camerawork [he also shot Lynch's THE ELEPHANT MAN] all create this masterwork of eerie suspense. Deborah Kerr delivers one of her best performances as Miss Giddens, the governess persuaded by Michael Redgrave’s Uncle to take on the task of looking after his two charges who live deep in the country. Bly, the estate, becomes an eerie, mysterious place with all that lush vegetation and that lake. Mrs Grose, the house-keeper (Megs Jenkins) is pleased there is a new governess, and the two children Miles and Flora initially enchant Miss Giddens. Miles has got himself sent home from school. The power of suggestion is perfectly utilised here as Miss Giddens begins to suspect that her charges are far from innocent, and the apparitions of Quint and Miss Jessel become bolder. But is it all in her fevered imagination? There are two logical interpretations: the governess is slowly going mad, or the estate is haunted and if it is are the children in on it? Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin are both brilliant as the precocious Miles and Flora [Stevens had already played Kerr's son in a very forgettable 1959 comedy COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS]. Sound is used brilliantly too with that song that Flora sings and that first ghostly appearance by the lake (below).

There was a new version [“The Turn of the Screw”, the title of Henry James’ story] last year from the BBC, one of their “re-imagining the story for a new audience” adaptations (like their recent laughably inept, radically changed and widely derided remake of “The 39 Steps”), that firmly suggested the Governess imagined it all, with those naked all too physical ghosts copulating in the bedrooms, and it begins and ends with her in a mental hospital telling it all to doctor Dan Stephens. This was updated to 1920 which didn't work at all - it needs that Victorian Gothic ambience - but was presumably to show her frustrations due to the lack of young men after the great war. It seems to play it both ways though with a more knowing, sly Mrs Grose (Sheila Johnston) and suggesting the demons win at the end as a new governess arrives....

Forty years on though the original is the one to see and it will keep on enthralling us (unlike that silly BBC version). There is enough evidence in the film to suggest that Miss Giddens is not just imagining things or has lost her mind, unlike the more ambiguous Henry James novel. There is now a good dvd transfer from the BFI.