By the early 1970’s at the time of The Abominable Dr. Phibes ‘ release, its star Vincent Price had already established himself as the larger than life charismatic characters that he presented in the horror genre.
In many ways this film and his portrayal of the titular Dr. Phibes is a tongue in cheek profile of his on-screen caricature and he relishes in the camp, Phantom-esque presence from the moment he rises from the depths playing an organ with relish, accompanied by the animatronic band, Dr. Phibes’ Clockwork Wizards.
It’s this exuberance and the dark humour, accompanied by a strong cast that all play it straight, elevating the dark comedy to the fore and establishing the film as a cult in its own right.
The central theme is a simple one about revenge on behalf of Phibes who feels that the surgical team that were operating on his wife, Victoria (Caroline Munro) were responsible for malpractice. Presumed dead from a fiery car accident, Phibes returns to carry out his dastardly plot using extreme measures that call upon the ten plagues of Egypt in order to satiate his vengeance.
These outlandish murders soon raise the interests of Scotland Yard headed by a typical bumbling Brit detective, Inspector Harry Trout (Peter Jeffrey) to track down the culprit. His investigations lead him to deduce that a connection surrounds the medical staff who worked with Dr. Vesalius (Joseph Cotten) and that there is inevitably someone out to kill him and his colleagues. The only trouble is that the prime suspect, Phibes, is supposedly dead.
All the performances are solid and on point, notably Terry Thomas as Dr. Longstreet and Aubrey Woods as the Goldsmith, who each hit their comedic notes perfectly.
The glory belongs to Price however, and part of the appeal to his character of Phibes is not only his deadly pursuit but also that he is no longer able to speak bar through his use of acoustic that allow his presence to be deliberately off-kilter, but you can also tell that he his having a lot of fun in his role.
There is a cracking ending too that plays to the hand of a sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, once again directed by Robert Fuest (And Soon The Darkness), possibly a pre-ordained plan on part of the producers, especially knowing that further scripts were bandied around called Phibes Resurrectus, The Bride of Dr. Phibes, and The Seven Fates of Dr. Phibes, but unfortunately would not see fruition. A shame as I would loved to have seen Price and Dr. Phibes enact more gloriously over-the-top grisly murders along the way.
I’m only just learning now that La Noche de Walpurgis, which celebrates 50 years since its release this year, is actually the fifth instalment of a 12-part series called The Hombre Lobo series about a werewolf called Waldemar Daninsky.
Supposedly, these movies have little to connect one another apart from the afore-mentioned lycanthrope and its star, Paul Naschy. So it’s probably a goog thing that I was unaware of this when I sat down to watch this instalment.
Naschy coincidentally picked up something of a cult following due to his numerous portrayals of classic horror movie characters, which earned him the title, The Spanish Lon Chaney.
Here though, Naschy sticks to the debonair Daninsky, a charismatic gent by day, hairy wolf by night.
Made for the paltry sum of $120,000 and it shows, especially the first scene which is incredibly camp and should not be judged for the tone of the rest of the film… kind of.
We witness two doctors examining Daninsky’s corpse and mockingly jest that the removal of the silver bullets that killed him would resurrect him once more. When this actually does happen, said doctors are shocked at the figure transforming before them, before being mauled to death.
This made sense now knowing that it followed on from the previous film in the series, The Fury of the Wolf Man.
Director León Klimovsky does his best to hide the obvious blemishes through stylised shots and creating an eerie atmosphere, which is typically European and predominantly shot in slow motion, which sort of works in places.
The crux of the film itself follows two students, Elvira and Genevieve who go in search of a tomb belonging to a medieval murderess, who happens to be a vampiress called Wandessa (Patty Shepard). Inadvertently Elvira resurrects Wandessa by bleeding onto the corpse. Wandessa then goes on a killing rampage in her wake to build her disciples of creatures of the night. The only thing that can stop them is the noble-hearted lycanthrope, Daninsky. But at what cost?
La Noche de Walpurgis is exactly what you expect from a low-budget European 70s film, but it was a hauntingly visual treat that actually boasted some decent effects considering.
Less She-Wolf of London and more She-Wolf in Sheep’s clothing as this 1946 feature from Universal Pictures attempts to pull the wool over their audience’s eyes.
The ruse is well implanted in the psyche by the antagonist, leading our heroine and us down a mythological lie born out of the fear and paranoia that the Allenby family has werewolf blood in its veins.
It may have served better to have called the film, The Curse of the Allenbys, (which is actually the title given to the feature for its UK release), but then this would not have put as many bums on seats and capitalised on the Universal backlot of Werewolf movies that starred Lon Chaney. It would also have been cool to have used the same plot but leveraged from the 1936 vehicle starring Henry Hull as Dr. Wilfred Glendon. Instead of using the Allenby family name, if they had used their bluff around Dr. Glendon, then there would have been more merit to the gaslighting component.
All this may sound a little harsh, because in truth, the film is incredibly strong in its delivery and using greed and power as its core theme for the subterfuge. Our lead character, Phyllis (June Lockhart) stands to come into the Allenby fortune, but standing in her way is either her Aunt Martha (Sara Haden) or her cousin Carol (Jan Wiley) who have lived in the mansion all their lives and could lose it all.
The fact that there has also been a series of murders near the estate and reported sightings of a she-wolf only adds fuel to Phyliss’ fears, forced to her bed and away from society in case she is the one responsible.
She-Wolf of London struggles to find an identity of its own as it attempts to prize itself free from the coat-tails of yester-year movies produced by Universal, but inevitably the film is slow and cumbersome with barely a ripple of fear to be seen.
Another cult film to have been released in 1981, and criminally escaped me was Happy Birthday To Me. In my defense, and I had to keep using this as my “Get Out Of Jail Free Card”, was the fact that it was lumped into the video nasties category, which meant that growin up in the UK, a lot of these movies were confiscated and hard to come by.
I do distinctly remember the video cover though, and finding the notion of death by kebab both, hilarious and intriguing.
Now that I’ve finally ticked it off my watchlist, I can see why it gained a cult following.
It’s not the most shocking or intelligent movie but it’s a hell of a lot of fun, plus it starred Little House On The Prairie’s Melissa Sue Anderson as its lead in a marked step away from her innocent portrayal of Mary Ingalls.
It’s most interesting premise was for Anderson to play Ginny, who suffered a brain injury when she was younger, and is now having blackouts. These temporary bouts of unconsciousness lead Ginny and the audience to question her actions when the bodies start to pile up and she has no memory of where she was at the time.
It doesn’t help that Ginny is part of the social elite called ‘The Top Ten’ that is made up of the most privileged students at the local high school, and that the members of this group appear to be the target of the killer.
There are plenty of twists and turns along the way to keep the audience guessing and the ending plays delightfully with the revelation, which pushes Ginny over the edge, with no hope of return. It would have been interesting to have seen how the original screenplay would have been received had it remained, as it played with the idea of possession, and sat more squarely with the original concept.
Having said that, I did like the off-kilter and downbeat ending that leaves the audience with little hope, despite the ending being neatly tied up. There are some admittedly bizarre deaths that the publicity team took no hesitation to promote heavily upon the film’s release with some nice effects at play. It also marked another triumph from the minds of My Bloody Valentine, John Dunning and Andre Link, who managed to package a solid movie and a decent premise, albeit a little shaky on the payoff.
By today’s standards, The Fan slips easily into mediocrity as it follows the tale of an obsessed fan who goes to extreme measures to win the heart of his centre of attention.
There is a notable exception though that boosts the appeal factor of the viewer to the subject, its stars.
As the object of affection is the simply brilliant Lauren Bacall, playing Sally Ross, an actress of the stage and screen. As you can expect, Bacall is magnificent in this role, amping up the moments that she’s in the spotlight, playing the catty diva at times in rehearsals, but showing heart with those closest to her, and a mixture of vulnerability and forelonging for the love she lost, her ex-husband Jake (James Garner).
It’s Michael Biehn though that steals the show as the deranged and cold-blooded psycho killer, Douglas Breen. He is suitably driven by his warped sense of reality and fascination with Sally and will stop at nothing to get closer to her. The pursuit itself is played out well and meticulously slow as he attempts to get closer to Sally, but often blocked along the way. It suddenly makes his casting of Kyle Reese in The Terminator by James Cameron, a stroke of genius. When we first meet Reese, the audience is unsure if he’s a killer/stalker out to get Sarah Conner. Of course when the reveal happens there, we realise he’s her saviour and the rest of cinema history is set. Here though, Biehn’s character of Douglas remains dark and deadly, where we’re only allowed a window into his soul through the narrated letters he sends to Sally.
By the films conclusion, admittedly The Fan comes across as a tired formula and predictable, but I have to admit that i still enjoyed the ride and it has a lot to do with watching both Bacall and Biehn’s performance, grounding them into reality and with that believability, so that despite the faults that Sally Ross bears, we do care for her and the journey that Douglas goes through is one we connect with. Albeit not quite as deranged, but the feeling of abandonment and confusion in a society where we don’t belong at times, is often resonant. I’d definitely recommend this if it hasn’t crossed your path before.
25 years ago, before Scream would reawaken the horror genre and generate a plethora of like minded movies came a film that tapped wholly into my adolescent brain. I’ll let you decide which part of the brain from which I am referring. Needless to say, Fairuza Balk’s Nancy stirred something inside me that yearned for and connected with females who drifted outside the mainstream of what was considered “normal”.
Recently, The Craftwas given new life in the public eye thanks to its sequel of sorts, The Craft: Legacyreleased by Blumhouse last year, but somehow it failed to ignite the same passion as the original.
Some of this could easily be put down to its strong, young cast with the afore-mentioned Fairuza playing the main antagonist to Robin Tunney’s white witch, Sarah in what is essentially a coming of age teen-drama. Joining these two are also Neve Campbell, Rachel True, Skeet Ulrich, and Christine Taylor, who all essentially lift what comes across as a medicroe tale when reviewed through today’s eyes.
It still however holds a strong place in my heart, despite its flaws and molded my love of 90s teen horror as a result. What can I say, it’s my achilles heel.
It helps that swiftly following TheCraft came the behemoth of Teen Slasher films… Screamdirected by the great, Wes Craven. It also boasted two of the movie’s stars in Neve Campbell and Skeet Ulrich whose careers were rightfully projected to stardom as a result.
Scream is now the stuff of legend with its meta representation of the horror franchise and again boasted an awesome cast with Courtney Cox, David Arqette, Matthew Lillard, Rose McGowan, Jamie Kennedy and let’s not forget that killer opening sequence with Drew Barrymore. Before the decade was out a sequel would also follow the following year and along with it a franchise and Ghostface’s interchangeable personna was born.
Chief among setting the tone for the decade and the success that followed in Scream’s wake was Dawson’s Creek scribe Kevin Williamson, who managed to tap into the pulse of those of my generation, eager to be understood and have those “deep and meaningful’ relationship discussions.
By 1997, Williamson was just starting to hit his stride with I Know What You Did Last Summerstarring Campbell’s fellow Party of Five alumni Jennifer Love-Hewitt.
Love-Hewitt stars as Julie James, who along with three other school friends (Ryan Philippe, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar, the latter was already on the rise thanks to a certain Buffy role) accidentally run down a stranger on the road and leave him for dead. It’s basically an elongated urban legend with the man with a hook hellbent on revenge. Like Scream it would also generate a franchise with a further two sequels to cash the cow.
Back to the Dawson’s Creek connection and another teen horror, Disturbing Behaviourthat would be released in 1998, the busiest year for the sub-genre, At the time, I more-than jumped on this band-wagon following Katie Holmes’ second feature film. This was a time when I, like Dawson, was undecided about the whole Joey/Jen thing, before realising in my case, that Michelle Williams was always the more interesting person to watch on screen, but more about her in a moment.
Disturbing Behaviour is probably the weakest in this line up of movies, but does boast James Marsden and Nick Stahl in the mix, in a tale of idyllic suburbia with a sour undertone in both its take of the American Dream and repressed teenage sexuality but it does still have the same beats and touches on the same wavelength that was being generated at the time.
Onto Holmes’ counterpart, Michelle Williams, who, again in my opinion, deserves greater praise for the work that she produces each year. In 1998, Williams would be cast in the support role of Molly in one of Horrors biggest franchises, Halloween.
Halloween H20: 20 Years Later would have Kevin Williamson on writing duties, so it’s no wonder that Williams would connect well with the screenplay. Aside from bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back for the first time since Halloween 2 to pit against Michael Myers, it also introduced us to the so fresh and hot right now, Josh Hartnett. Let’s not talk about that hair cut though, for in his other movie that year, The Faculty, he slipped easily into the bad boy, good heart character with a brooding presence. Oh and that guy Kevin Williamson is behind the screenplay again.
When I first watched The Faculty I had a strong negative reaction to it, as I wore my snobbery hat when I watched it and took all the homagees embedded within as rip=offs of the great films that preceded it. I was a huge fan of director Rober Rodriguez at the time, which I think added to my disappointment further.
I have since grown to love this film more though and recognise it for what it was, a love of sci fi horror and again had some great stars in Elijah Wood (pre-LOTR), Jordana Brewster, Clea Duvall (I had such a thing for her too – Apparently I have a type, just ask fellow Surgeon Antony Yee), Laura Harris, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Bebe Neuwirth, Robert Patrick, Shawn Hatosy, Jon Stewart, and Piper Laurie. It definitely warrants repeat viewing and holds up because of the fun energy and bold direction that Rodriuez alway brings to his movies.
Rounding out the quartet of movies for 1998 is Urban Legend which is a little forgotten despite generating a franchise in its own right and another strong cast considering with Alicia Witt, Jared Leto, Tara Reid, Rebecca Gayheart, Michael Rosenbaum, Joshua Jackson (Dawson’s Creek again), Robert Englund, and Danielle Harris into the fold. It captures the urban legend tales of horror well enough but can’t quite shake off the fact that it’s riding on the coattails of stronger movies and suffers a little with age.
My last notable film to mention however lifts the half-decade of teen horror back to higher standards with its clearly tongue in cheek tale, Idle Hands where a stoner, Anton (Devon Sawa currently seen in a cracking film, Hunter Hunter) who discovers his hands are possessed after waking up to find his parents murdered. A cool cast again with Jessica Alba and Seth Green, Idle Hands is great fun to watch and definitely not to be taken seriously.
Sawa would also go on to star in another cracking film at the turn of the next decade in Final Destination as the trend would dial down a little.
For those 5-6 years though, it would produce a number of movies, some to hold high and some probably best forgotten but for nostalgic reasons still resonate with me today. I can only blame Nancy. I should have taken the heed and bound her from harm… harm to others and harm to myself…
While 1981 proved to be a huge year in the name of horror, projecting some classic or cult films in the genre, The Nesting had not even clipped this reviewers radar. You could argue that a prime reason for this was down to it being quickly shafted into the video nasties category in the UK upon its release, subjecting the film into obscurity. However, I found upon watching the film which is currently available on Tubi, that obscure depiction may be a correct label to have been assigned to it. Not because of its graphic nature, but more for the curious tale that is told by writer/director Armand Weston. The story centres on Lauren Cochran (Robin Groves), a novelist who suffers from agoraphobia. So, on the advice from her doctor, moves to the country and rents out an old mansion, which she is strangely drawn towards, in the hopes that it will overcome her ailment. The oddity doesn’t reside there however, as a series of bizarre events occur once Lauren arrives, including the encounter she has with the mansion’s owner, Colonel Lebrun (John Carradine – House of Frankenstein) suffers a stroke the moment he lies eyes on her.
Compounding her troubles further, Lauren starts to experience some deeply unsettling dreams of women lounging around the house. It is when one of these women appears to her during the day, that Lauren’s world starts spiralling, throwing her into confusion over what is real or not. Is she losing her mind or is there more to her visions than they seem?
Not content on resting on her laurels, Lauren turns sleuth to uncover the secrets of the mansion, butin doing so, starts to unearth some unsavoury characters, and may send her over the brink of sanity.
The problem I have with The Nesting is that it struggles to be a certain kind of movie but it struggles under the weight of its premise. Agorophobia is a ripe subject that has potential to inflict a deep horror, drawn from the troubles that the human mind can produce. It’s a subject that has been done before and since, Repulsion and Copycat to name but a few.
It’s a muddled script that gets too clouded and surreal to follow, and with some tighter direction, could have been a better film. As such, it may continue to wallow in anonymity as a result.
Slasher films had been around through the 70s, although they were more commonly associated with snuff films, but when John Carpenter thrust Michael Myers and Halloween into the horror genre, the flame was struck. Two years later, Sean Cunningham teamed up with writer Victor Miller and stoked the fire further to propel slashers into the mainstream and a plethora of similar movies soon followed.
So, it was inevitable that Paramount Pictures would look at the film’s success and look at ways to spawn a franchise… but there was one big problem.
Let me make one thing perfectly clear, at the beginning of my movie, Jason is dead!
Victor Miller
When they offered me the script for Part 2, I got the script and Jason was running around and I said, “What are you doing?
Tom Savini
If you track that into any kind of timeline, it makes no sense whatsoever.
Sean Cunningham
If the original creators were puzzled, so were the fans, but it wasn’t just the script that was out of whack. There were a number of other conflicts that occurred behind the scenes. Most notably was the return and demise of the films original heroine, Alice played by Adrienne King. King wasn’t shy with her complaints about the production and the way that both her and her character were treated… killing her off in the opening scene supposedly without her knowledge. Those who had come to love her character and her strength in the climax against Jason’s mother Pamela, thought that it was dealt with rather too swiftly.
Another controversial component in-house came with the casting of Jason himself. Let’s forget about the whole sandbag over the head thing which was clearly a lift from The Town That Dreaded Sundown released five years earlier. Instead the issue centred on Warrington Gillette who was given the role of Jason when he failed to win the role of lead counsellor Paul, losing out to John Furey. The only problem was that Warrington at the time wasn’t a stuntman, so the producers had to call in Steve Daskewisz to perform the stunts and debate would strike over who the real Jason was.
Friday the 13th Part 2 was clearly trying to stitch the pieces back together on its path to create a franchise, and arguably were pulling from other movies to inspire or develop this world. Although the creators claimed ignorance, there is a striking similarity to one death scene in the movie to Mario Bava’s 1971 flick, Twitch of the Death Nerve, aka A Bay of Blood (The Surgeons will be taking a look at this movie in more detail for a podcast down the track).
Despite all this, some iconic moments were created.
The introduction of Ginny (Amy Steel) who not only kicked arse as the final girl, but was smart and managed to psyche Jason out by pretending to be dear old Mom. This also brought Betsy Palmer back to resurrect Pamela albeit in dream form.
Also returning from the original movie was Crazy Ralph (Walt Gorney) and with him the wacky old guy character that would become synonymous with the slasher films. Plus the iconic camp fire scares and young school counsellors getting busy before they get whacked, which is a key draw card for the sub-genre.
Speaking of kills, with the absence of Tom Savini in the makeup and effects department having signed on to make The Burning, another mastro Stan Winston stepped into the scene, only to also be called away for another commitment. Instead Carl Fullerton (Wolfen, The Silence of the Lambs) would more than step up to the plate and deliver some great effects sequences and some of the most memorable kills from the franchise.
It may have been built on some shaky ground with some questionable narrative decisions that are still debated today, but the final result pulled in $21.7 million at the box office. This wasn’t as successful as its predecessor but it was enough for Paramount to call it a win and from the wake of Pamela Voorhees came the birth of Jason. They were still finding their feet in who or what Jason would be and he is more in embryonic stage, but with Director Steve Miner returning again to helm the next instalment alongside producer Frank Mancuso Jr. history was being made and Jason would soon take great strides in the horror film industry.
Before he gripped the cinematic world with his realistic and harrowing depiction of the Salvadoran Civil War and Vietnam war with the movies Salvador and Platoon… Before he cast his views on the cold-hearted world of Wall Street where Gordon Gekko declared that “Greed is Good”…
You might be surprised to hear that the director, Oliver Stone turned his hand (pun-intended) to a psychological horror film that would sit perfectly well in the mind of Stephen King.
Stone’s sophomore outing in the director’s chair of a feature film production would cast Michael Caine as his lead. Caine by this stage had already established himself as the charismatic cocksure characters on-screen, most notably in the espionage or crime movies. Here Caine is equally as enigmatic as the brash, hard-headed comic book artist, Jon Lansdale. As we meet Lansdale, it is clear that his mannerisms have caused friction between his wife, Anne (Andrea Marcovicci) and daughter, Lizzie and that the strain may be too great. Anne is already hinting at a temporary separation and that she is thinking of taking Lizzie back to New York and leaving Lansdale in the country to continue with his work. The subject causes a heated argument between the two whilst driving in their car, which in turn leads to a horrific accident where Lansdale’s right hand is severed. In this one fleeting moment, a sudden change of character from both parties develops. Lansdale at first softens, his dominant male pride and ego is squashed and he is lost and vulnerable without the one tool that gives him power in his life… the hand from which he draws and creates and inflicts his amour propre into the world. Anne on the other…hand (ahem), equally becomes withdrawn and submissive as she feels guilty for what she has inflicted upon Jon. It’s not long however before the cracks begin to show once more as Lansdale becomes more erratic and uncontrollable with his behaviour. Lansdale is driven by fits of jealousy over Anne’s relationship with her yoga instructor and this mental breakdown consumes him to the point that he is fired by his agent and starts to have apparent delusions manifested around the hand of his former appendage. But is this a figment of his broken mind or has the hand actually formed a life of its own and is now wreaking havoc on the world that surrounds Lansdale?
Lansdale and Anne go through a separation, leading Lansdale to retreat to teach at a small community college, but is left to his own deranged and worrying thoughts, spiralling deeper into a world of torment.
Knowing what we know now about Stone’s fascination with the breakdown of the human mind when inflicted with a significant trauma, The Hand becomes incredibly significant in his canon of work as a director. Some may scoff at the ridiculousness of the subject and its delivery having a severed hand roaming around and killing people, but at its heart, is a powerfully poignant insight into the lengths and breadths that mankind will go to when subjected to a great deal of physical or psychological pain that sends them to the brink of humanity. This precipice is a tightrope between sanity and psychosis. When exposed to such drastic measures, is it really possible to claw our way back to stability? Or is the trauma too great a burden to bear?
From it release back in 1981, Cannibal Ferox, aka Make Them Die Slowly (US),aka Woman From Deep River (Australia), was instantly destined for the Video Nasties list for its brutal depiction of cannibalism and animal cruelty on-screen.
Much like the probably more well-known feature released the year prior, Cannibal Holocaust, the visual aim of hyper violence and bloody torturous designs were made to schock the audience. In places this is still the case with some scenes hard to bear as we bear witness to the slow and meticulaous torture of the central characters.
By today’s standards Cannibal Ferox struggles under the weight of a misogynistic gaze, which is doubled by the main antagonist, Mike (Giovanni Lombardo Radice), a drug dealer who not is not only driven by his own selfish means, but his actions draw the main group deeper into anarchy and the cannibals domain.
The film itself holds an interesting message beneath the surface of stupefaction and glorious sensationalism, following two siblings Rudy (Danilo Mattei) and Gloria (Lorraine De Selle), who are accompanied by their friend Pat (Zora Kerova) as they journey through the Colombian rainforest, ironically to disprove the existence of cannibals.
Director Umberto Lenzi (Eaten Alive!) then subjects these characters to all manner of horrors as they attempt to escape from their tormentors, the rainforest, and some sense of freedom. But you can’t help but feel that they deserve their comeuppance because if you go around poking a bear with a stick, you’re eventually going to get mauled, or have your male appendage severed, and then cauterised, so that you can later get scalped alive and have your brains consumed by said bear analogy.
It is Lenzi’s choice of ending that perhaps is the most numbing of all, when our sole survivor Gloria returns to western civilisation to launch her book, based on her theories, Cannibalism: End of a Myth, which essentially turns a blind eye to her ordeals and pushes down any indication that cannibalism exists. The social commentary seems to suggest that we as a human race continue to shut down or deny any deep issues.
Surgeons of Horror 