HAMMER FILMS PRESENTATION CARDS: DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS

QUICK GLANCE REVIEW: FRANCIS MATTHEWS AND ANDREW KEIR: DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS:

QUICK GLANCE: DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS: HAMMER FILMS 1966

CAST:

Andrew Keir (Father Shandor), Christopher Lee (Count Dracula), Francis Matthews (Charles Kent), Barbara Shelley (Helen Kent), Suzan Farmer (Diana Kent), Charles Tingwell (Alan Kent), Philip Latham (Klove), Thorley Walters (Ludwig)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Terence Fisher, Screenplay – John Sansom, Story – John Elder [Anthony Hinds], Producer – Anthony Nelson-Keys, Photography – Michael Reed, Music – James Bernard, Music Supervisor – Philip Martell, Special Effects – Bowie Films Ltd, Makeup – Roy Ashton, Production Design – Bernard Robinson. Production Company – Hammer/Seven Arts. 

SYNOPSIS:

Two English couples holidaying in Transylvania are abandoned on the roadside after their coach breaks down. They are picked up by a driverless black coach and taken to Castle Dracula where they are granted hospitality by Dracula’s manservant. During the night, one of the men is attacked and gutted by Dracula’s manservant and his blood used to revive Dracula. Two of the group manage to flee the castle. In the village below, they join a local priest in standing up to destroy Dracula.

OUR STILLS GALLERY AND FULL REVIEW: HERE 

BARBARA SHELLEY: THE SHADOW OF THE CAT: LOBBY CARD

Gallery and Review of The Shadow of the Cat : Just click: HERE

RASPUTIN, DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN AND BRIDES: PUBLICITY STILLS.

CHRISTOPHER LEE: DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS: PROMO STILL.

CHRISTOPHER LEE RETURNS : BARBARA SHELLEY : SUZAN FARMER : DRACULA PRINCE OF DARKNESS : KEY STILLS GALLERY AND REVIEW

CAST:

Andrew Keir (Father Shandor), Christopher Lee (Count Dracula), Francis Matthews (Charles Kent), Barbara Shelley (Helen Kent), Suzan Farmer (Diana Kent), Charles Tingwell (Alan Kent), Philip Latham (Klove), Thorley Walters (Ludwig)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Terence Fisher, Screenplay – John Sansom, Story – John Elder [Anthony Hinds], Producer – Anthony Nelson-Keys, Photography – Michael Reed, Music – James Bernard, Music Supervisor – Philip Martell, Special Effects – Bowie Films Ltd, Makeup – Roy Ashton, Production Design – Bernard Robinson. Production Company – Hammer/Seven Arts. UK. 1966.  

SYNOPSYS:

Two English couples holidaying in Transylvania are abandoned on the roadside after their coach breaks down. They are picked up by a driverless black coach and taken to Castle Dracula where they are granted hospitality by Dracula’s manservant. During the night, one of the men is attacked and gutted by Dracula’s manservant and his blood used to revive Dracula. Two of the group manage to flee the castle. In the village below, they join a local priest in standing up to destroy Dracula.

COMMENTARY:

Dracula - Prince of Darkness was the third of Hammer’s Dracula films. Unlike the first sequel The Brides of Dracula (1960), Prince of Darkness brings back Christopher Lee who had refused to return to the series until he had established himself as a serious actor first.

The Brides of Dracula worked well despite the absence of Christopher Lee but Prince of Darkness achieves somewhat less successfully despite Lee’s return. It is a film that never coheres or gets fired up despite a great deal of potential to do so. A large part of the problem is Christopher Lee who, while he returns, gets no dialogue (although Lee claims this was his own choice because the dialogue he was given was so awful). Reduced to merely hissing and dilating his red contact lenses, this has the effect of making Lee much more animalistic – something that Lee conveys most effectively – but the net result is that the central threat in the film is like a tiger in a cage, prowling and roaring, but never getting to pounce.

Certainly, many of the other elements come together well. The opening of the film – warnings to avoid the castle; villagers refusing to acknowledge its existence even though it sits in front of their eyes; travellers abandoned in the middle of nowhere and then the appearance of a mysterious black coaches harnessed to horses that have wills of their own; and the castle, which is conversely shown to be welcoming with dinner laid out and a fire stoked up, even luggage placed in their respective rooms – builds an increasing sense of unease. 

 

This erupts in a shock sequence where Charles Tingwell is stabbed and his body is hoisted upside down over the catafalque containing Dracula’s ashes and the throat slit to spill his blood, which brings the ashes to life. It is a conceptually remarkable sequence – one that created considerable controversy at the time, blasphemous inversions of The Crucifixion being seen in it and all – although today seems tame. 

Thereafter, Dracula - Prince of Darkness becomes more a series of set-pieces, loosely connected by the overall plot of Dracula trying to seduce Suzan Farmer while husband Francis Matthews sets out to rescue her. There are a number of good sequences interspersed throughout – notably the climax where Dracula runs out onto the ice and Andrew Keir shoots into it around him, causing it to crack and Christopher Lee to be swallowed up by the running water (although the sequence is betrayed by cramped sets – the ice-pack being only several yards square. It is a problem shared in other parts of the film too – the castle corridor where most of the skulking takes part is about 20 feet in length and contains only two doors). The film is also happy to swipe the Renfield character out of Bram Stoker – calling him Ludwig – with Thorley Walters giving an amusingly doddery performance in the role.

 

The most remarkable sequence in the film is the scene where Barbara Shelley is held down on a table, hissing and writhing, as a stake is hammered into her heart by the dispassionate priesthood. It is perhaps the most potent image of sexual repression in all of British horror cinema. Indeed, Dracula - Prince of Darkness, more than any of the Hammer Draculas, embodies the recurrent image of sexual repression threatening to emerge to tear Victorian society apart and its dispassionate elimination by men of reason. 

The travellers are deliberately set up as representatives of English genteel in order to be torn apart – the strongest image of this polarity is the turning of the prim, uptight and anxious Barbara Shelley into a voluptuous vampire, begging Francis Matthews “Give us a kiss.” The sexual overtones in the scene where Christopher Lee causes Suzan Farmer to kneel and drink from the cut he opens with his fingernail in his chest are incredibly vivid.

Hammer’s other Dracula films are:– Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), Scars of Dracula (1971), Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972), The Satanic Rites of Dracula/Count Dracula and His Vampire Bride (1973) and The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires/The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (1974). 

 

Terence Fisher’s other genre films are:– the sf films The Four-Sided Triangle (1953) and Spaceways (1953), The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958), The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), The Mummy (1959), The Stranglers of Bombay (1959), The Brides of Dracula (1960), The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll (1960), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), The Gorgon (1964), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), The Devil Rides Out/The Devil’s Bride (1968), Frankenstein Must be Destroyed (1969) and Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973), all for Hammer. Outside of Hammer, Fisher has made the Old Dark House comedy The Horror of It All (1964) and the alien invasion films The Earth Dies Screaming (1964), Island of Terror (1966) and Night of the Big Heat (1967).
 
Review: Richard Schieb
Images: Marcus Brooks  

KB ZORKA ON THE LIFE AND CAREER OF PRUDENCE HYMAN: DEAR PRUDENCE : THE GORGON HAMMER FILMS 1964

"No living thing survived and the spectre of death hovered in waiting for her next victim."

  -'The Gorgon,' (1964)

It's only natural that when we think of the ladies of the classic Hammer Horror films, we think of the countless, beautiful women that will forever be as associated with the studio's name as that of Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing. We think of names such as Ingrid Pitt or, First Lady of Hammer: Hazel Court. However, the first woman to become anything but beautiful for the studio, was the unknown, Prudence Hyman. Subsequently, it was after the release of The Gorgon,  that Hammer would begin a long legacy of these dangerous females. And all of it began with an ex-ballerina and ENSA performer named, Prudence Hyman.

Long before she would become Hammer's Gorgon, 'Megaera,' Prudence Hythe was born in London, England on February 2, 1914. She was a classically trained ballerina who studied in England and  Paris and made her dancing debut at the age of seventeen in 'Twelfth Night.'  Between 1934-1935, she toured with various ballet companies, and during the second World War, she was a member of  ENSA; a traveling group of artists whose purpose was to entertain the troops. It was while she was a member of the ENSA group, that Prudence and her fellow members were once flown to safety during a harrowing adventure through a horrible storm. The group's hero was a young, Royal Air Force Lieutenant that, interestingly, she would manage to meet-up with many years later: None other than Christopher Lee.

In 1960, Prudence played a small, uncredited role alongside the once brave pilot in Hammer's, The Two Faces of Dr Jekyll. She played the part of a tavern woman, while Paul Massie took on the dual role of the mad scientist. However, it would be four years later that Prudence Hyman would make horror history: She would be the first female monster in Hammer's long, Gothic-style film legacy.

The Gorgon was one of the last films to have been produced by Hammer during their six-year distribution deal with Columbia Pictures. Seeing as their last two films had been shelved by the distributor, the studio needed something new and exciting that would bring audiences back to the theater. To do so, they went straight to the public itself. An advertisement was placed in 'The Daily Cinema' magazine, in which the film company was soliciting stories from anyone with a good idea.The last line of the advertisement read as follows: "Because good, compulsive selling ideas with the right titles are what Hammer are looking for right now." Of the many submissions, a story by J. Llewellyn Divine was selected. It was a rather involved and lengthy story. But, after a bit of re-writing and initially naming the script, "Supernatural", the script was rewritten a second time and given the name, The Gorgon.

Shooting began in December of 1963 at Bray Studios,where The Evil of Frankenstein had just wrapped production. Due to budget and time constraints,as well as to give the set the look and feel of 1910, many of the same interior sets from The Evil of Frankenstein were redressed and used for The Gorgon. The film starred Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Hammer's most famous female star of the time.The "First Leading Lady of British Horror," Barbara Shelley. On board as director was, in my humble opinion, the man who made Hammer Horror what it is: The legendary Terence Fisher (February 23, 1904-June 18, 1980). 

In the role of 'Carla Hoffman', Barbara Shelley had wanted to simultaneously play the role of the title character. As the film's possessed, amnesiac heroine, she felt that the dual role would make the storyline more sensible and fluid; that it should be she who "gorgonized" the film's victims. She also had a few ideas for producer Anthony Nelson Keys on how to make Megaera more frightening and realistic as well. Her idea consisted of using real garden snakes, and to find a way to humanely weave them into a special wig. However, due to the film's budget and short production schedule, Nelson rejected her idea, and chose instead to use another actress to play the part: Prudence Hyman. Nelson also felt that with a different actress playing the part, it would help to conceal the Gorgon's alternate, "human" identity. Although, after seeing The Gorgon herself on screen, the producer had regretted his decision about Shelley's wig idea. It's difficult to say if it was Hyman herself, or the costume which disappointed Nelson. Nonetheless, Christopher Lee's opinion of Megaera was also less-than-flattering: "The only thing wrong with The Gorgon, is The Gorgon!" Fortunately, fans today are less forgiving.  

To create the look of The Gorgon and her snakes, makeup man Roy Ashton applied the hideous skin and makeup to Hyman, while special effects engineer, Syd Pearson, had a bit more of a challenge by creating the snakes themselves. Pearson had twelve plaster moulds made, and from each mould he cast latex rubber snakes. Cables were then placed through each of the snakes' bodies for movement, and were then woven through the actress' wig. Each snake was then individually attached to cables which ran down Hyman's back. The cables trailed approximately twenty-five feet behind her where they were controlled by a large contraption which contained pegs. As the pegs were turned, the tension gave the effect of each snake moving individually.

The Gorgon finished production in January, 1964, and was double-billed with Curse Of The Mummy's Tomb. Although we only see The Gorgon herself for less than twenty minutes throughout the entire film, each shot of Prudence Hyman's 'Megaera' is a treat, to say the least. The cinematography of Michael Reed is simply superb and, in true Hammer form, the sets are gorgeous. Hyman herself moves with a grace and elegance that one would expect from a former ballerina. Incredibly, she went back to playing uncredited roles for the studio. She was given small parts in Rasputin: The Mad Monk, and The Witches, which were both were released in 1966. 

It is truly interesting to know that an unknown actress with no starring roles, or major parts, made horror film history as one of it's first female monsters; and the first for Hammer. Sadly, the name Prudence Hyman remains rather unknown, and The Gorgon has only recently become appreciated as one of Hammer's lesser known and hidden gems. Very little has been written about Prudence Hyman, or her incredible contribution to the horror genre. As is normally the case with so many important people throughout history, it is not in their lifetimes that they are appreciated, or even understand what they have accomplished while they're alive: such was the case with Prudence Hyman. She died at the age of 81 on June 1, 1995 and was put to rest in her birthplace of London, England. 

FEATURE: KB ZORKA @http://theoblongbox10.blogspot.co.uk/ 

IMAGES: MARCUS BROOKS

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