HAMMER FILMS ARCHITECT ANTHONY HINDS DIES

We are very sad to hear of the passing of Anthony Hinds yesterday. A writer and producer, who was not only the backbone Hammer Films, but was the driving force behind the building of Bray Studios. How painfully ironic then, that the bulldozers start their work on the Bray Studios lot tomorrow...

CHRISTOPHER LEE: COME TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA: HAMMER FILMS GALLERY :

CAST:

Geoffrey Keen (William Hargood), Linda Hayden (Alice Hargood), Anthony Corlan (Paul Paxton), Christopher Lee (Count Dracula), John Carson (Jonathan Secker), Peter Sallis (Samuel Paxton), Ralph Bates (Lord Courtley), Isla Blair (Lucy Paxton), Martin Jarvis (Jeremy Secker), Gwen Watford (Martha Hargood), Roy Kinnear (Weller), Michael Ripper (Cobb)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Peter Sasdy, Screenplay – John Elder [Anthony Hinds], Producer – Aida Young, Photography – Arthur Grant, Music – James Bernard, Music Supervisor – Philip Martell, Special Effects – Brian Johncock, Makeup – Gerry Fletcher, Art Direction – Scott MacGregor. Production Company – Hammer.

SYNOPSIS:

Three Victorian men who lead upstanding and moralistic lives, sneak out to a brothel on the pretext of conducting charity work. Their pleasure is interrupted by the libertine Lord Courtley who offers to show them far greater pleasures. He takes them to an antique shop where he gets them to purchase Dracula’s cape, signet ring and a vial of his powdered blood. Courtley then conducts a black mass ceremony in an abandoned church. However, when he asks the men to drink the blood, they are disgusted. Drinking it himself, Courtley collapses. The men kick and beat him to death and then flee the scene. However, Courtley’s spilt blood revives Dracula who swears vengeance on the other men for killing his disciple. Dracula then seduces each of the men’s children, making them vampires and turning them against their fathers.

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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  

DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE: BEHIND THE SCENES AND ON THE SCREEN

CAST:

Christopher Lee (Count Dracula), Barry Andrews (Paul), Rupert Davies (Monsignor Ernst Muller), Veronica Carlson (Maria), Barbara Ewing (Zena), Ewan Hooper (Priest), Michael Ripper (Max)

PRODUCTION:

Director – Freddie Francis, Screenplay – John Elder [Anthony Hinds], Producer – Aida Young, Photography – Arthur Grant, Music – James Bernard, Special Effects – Frank George, Makeup – Heather Nurse & Rosemary McDonald Peattie, Art Direction – Bernard Robinson. Production Company – Hammer. UK. 1968.

SYNOPSIS:

A visiting Monsignor comes to visit the town beneath Castle Dracula. The Monsignor is disgusted to find that even after Dracula has been killed, the town still lives in such fear that the church is empty on Sunday morning. He drags the cowardly priest up the mountainside to Castle Dracula where they perform a rite of exorcism and he places a cross over the entrance to the castle. But the priest falls, hitting his head. The blood drips down and revives Dracula where he is imprisoned inside a frozen mountain stream. Enraged at what the Monsignor has done, Dracula follows him to his home town and plans revenge by turning his niece Maria into a vampire. 

COMMENTARY:

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave was the fourth Hammer Dracula films. The first in the series Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958) had made the Hammer name and birthed an entire English horror industry. Subsequently, Hammer had spun out the excellent The Brides of Dracula (1960), although this was without Christopher Lee who was trying to avoid typecasting. Hammer subsequently brought Lee back for Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1966). By the time of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Christopher Lee was firmly established in the role, although original director Terence Fisher, who had helmed the preceding three entries, had bowed out of the series and the reins were here inherited by Freddie Francis, who had similarly stepped into Fisher’s shoes on Hammer’s Frankenstein series with The Evil of Frankenstein (1964). (See below for Freddie Francis’s other genre films).  

Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is one of the entries made before creative drought had started to enter Hammer’s Dracula series and is an occasion where all parties involved turn out on good form. Certainly, there is a silliness to the plot. Screenwriter John Elder introduces some spurious business about Dracula being able to pull a stake out of his heart unless it is hammered in by somebody with faith. And one wonders why Dracula can’t simply get the priest that he puts under his control to remove the cross barring the door of his castle in the first place. And there is the whole petty revenge plot – in all their Dracula sequels, Hammer could never find much for Dracula to do so had to keep inventing petty revenge plots to keep him busy – somehow revenge seems something that would be beneath Dracula. Christopher Lee, as usual, is not given much to do other than stand around, look evil and let his eyes turn red. Nevertheless, the script provides for some effective characterization, creating an interesting debate between atheism and belief.

In his only entry in the Hammer Dracula series, Freddie Francis, one of the more underrated directors in the Anglo-Horror cycle, directs effectively. There is some silly business framing the edges of the lens in sepia tone. But there’s a surprising sexual element to this film – watch how perennial Hammer heroine Veronica Carlson opens her dress and passively awaits Christopher Lee’s arrival, or how Barbara Ewing (giving a spirited performance as a barmaid) pleads him to drink her blood instead of chasing after Veronica Carlson. 

The sets are particularly good – the exception being the frontispiece of the castle that looks like it is made of cardboard. Especially good are the rooftop sets, which are designed with a feel almost right out of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) with jagged, angular chimneys, boiling fogs and all lit virtually in monochrome. In fact, Dracula Has Risen from the Grave is almost the antithesis of Terence Fisher’s approach – Fisher’s sets are florid and sumptuously colourful, while Freddie Francis likes them washed out and stripped of all vividity to stark, neutral colours. It’s quite an interesting contrast. 

Hammer’s other Dracula films are:– Dracula/The Horror of Dracula (1958), The Brides of Dracula (1960), Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1966), 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), The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires/The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula (1974). 

Freddie Francis’s other genre films are:- Vengeance/The Brain (1962), Hammer’s Paranoiac (1962) and Nightmare (1963), Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1964), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Hysteria (1965), The Skull (1965), The Psychopath (1966), The Deadly Bees (1967), They Came from Beyond Space (1967), Torture Garden (1967), Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly (1969), Trog (1970), The Vampire Happening (1971), Tales from the Crypt (1972), Tales That Witness Madness (1972), Craze (1973), The Creeping Flesh (1973), Legend of the Werewolf (1974), Son of Dracula (1974), The Ghoul (1975), The Doctor and the Devils (1985) and Dark Tower (1987).
 
Review: Richard Scheib
Images : Marcus Brooks