Vampire Season - Kiss of the Vampire (1963)

1963 found both Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing unavailable for filming, so Hammer forged ahead on the next Dracula project. Sans the Count and Van Helsing, the script went through several rewrites, incorporating elements previously considered for Brides of Dracula. The result, Kiss of the Vampire, is once again a unique story line that may not have seen the light of day if it weren’t for the studio’s rebellious stars. 

The proceedings kick off in high gear with the usual funeral procession into a desolate cemetery. Before the parson can shovel dirt onto the casket, a grim faced fellow comes along and drives a shovel straight through the coffin lid and the screen bursts with a font of Technicolor blood.

The story then follows the trail of a pair of newlyweds, Marianne and Gerald Harcourt, who run out of petrol while honeymooning by motorcar in Europe. After seeking shelter from a sudden summer storm at a village inn, they are invited for dinner to the home of Dr. Ravna whose castle overlooks the village below. Our newlyweds are just as naïve as Marianne in Brides of Dracula, flies unwittingly drawn into the spider’s web.

Ravna has a lush daughter, Sabane, and son, Charles who knows how to hypnotize the ladies with his seductive piano playing. Along the way we learn that Ravna and his offspring are, of course, vampires who lured the innkeeper’s daughter into their cult, and would have the young girl buried in the opening scene as well if not that her father, Professor Zimmer had driven his shovel through her heart to keep her from rising from the grave.

Zimmer is a worthy stand-on for Van Helsing, a man tormented by drink and the loss of his daughter, but well versed in folklore and the ways of the occult. Wait till you get a load of the inside of his cottage.

Invited to a lavish masquerade ball at Castle Ravna, Marianne is soon waylaid to be inducted into the cult of the undead while poor Gerald wakes up with a hangover and a vast conspiracy to make him believe that his bride never existed. The ball is a stunning set piece, one of the most remarkable scenes of any Hammer horror film whose casts are notoriously sparse. Like its predecessor, Brides of Dracula, Kiss of the Vampire bursts from the screen in dazzling colors, turning the Hammer version of Transylvania into a kind of vampire storybook setting.

But the true piece de resistance of the film is the destruction of the vampire cult when Professor Zimmer unleashes a horde of bats, evil against evil. Some of the effects are cheesy, but the animation is outstanding and the scene will remind many viewers of the attacks in Hitchcock’s The Birds, released the same year.

Kiss of the Vampire comes with The Midnight Room Vampire Season Seal of Approval. 

Vampire Season - The Brides of Dracula (1960)

After an unrelentingly hot US summer that took its toll on this fair skinned red-head physically and psychologically (I am more acclimated to cold, dark places after all), Autumn kicked in full bore this past weekend with a cold snap that has me sleeping under mounds of blankets with the windows open… cause that’s how I roll. With the change in weather come the fragrant aroma of fallen leaves and the acrid smell of wood fires. Days are gloomy, nights are chilly, the dogs howl at sunset, and the bats are about – metaphorically, if not literally.

I’ve never actually put together a top ten list of favorite Hammer Films or favorite vampire movies for that matter, but Hammer’s 1960 The Brides of Dracula would rank high on either list. It’s probably sacrilege to say I don’t care for most of the Christopher Lee Dracula entries (the Peter Cushing Frankenstein series is consistently more creative and, if not frightening, at least disturbing), so what better way to kick off vampire season than with a repeat viewing of Brides of Dracula?

The story goes that Lee turned down the script, originally titled Disciples of Dracula, and that it was hastily rewritten in order to go before the cameras as scheduled. The final product shows some signs of dropped plot threads – but then, story continuity is not one of Hammer’s strong points.

What it lacks in story cohesiveness it more than makes up for with originality and some of the best set design, lighting, and cinematography of any of the Hammer entries thanks in part to the brilliant work of Director of Photography, Jack Asher.

A voiceover narration introducing the film informs the audience that Dracula is dead, but as the nineteenth century draws to a close, the cult of the undead is alive and well in Transylvania. Where else?

Our beautiful heroine, Marianne Danielle (played by “France’s newest sex kitten” Yvonne Monlaur) is traveling through the misty mountains by carriage when she is waylaid at a country village and meets the Baroness Meinster, a stiff shouldered aristocrat played to the teeth by Martita Hunt (Miss Haversham in the David Lean film version of Great Expectations). The Baroness convinces Marianne that she can’t possibly spend the night in the uncivilized country inn and whisks her away to her chateau in the mountains. Saucy French sex kitten, sinister Baroness, isolated castle – the stage is set for some vampire hanky panky.

The first act takes a surprising turn here with a brief detour into family psychodrama. It seems the mutton-sleeved Baroness has a son she keeps chained by the ankle in his tower room. To spice up the plot a bit, there’s an old family retainer on hand, Freda Jackson in a role as equally juicy as that of the Baroness. Scenes between these two women are some of the most dynamic performances in the movie, and Jackson as the young Baron’s nurse delivers a monologue that tells the back story of how the boy became a vampire.

Don’t blame me, mistress. It was none of my doing. Nay. I’ve always kept faith with you. Twenty years since I first saw you come to the castle here with the old Baron and your little son. A fine, handsome little imp he was, too. But you spoiled him. Oh, yes. He was always self-willed and cruel, and you encouraged him. Aye, and the bad company you kept, too. You used to sit and drink with them, didn’t you? Yes, and you laughed at their wicked games. Till in the end one of them took him and made him what he was. You’ve done what you could for him since then, God help you… keeping him here a prisoner, bringing those young girls to him keeping him alive with their blood.

There’s more than meets the eye in this three minute speech than is worthy of any Hammer horror flick. Just what were these wicked games, and why was the Baroness drinking with a bunch of vampires? To me, the implication is a deeper one, inferring that vampirism is a disease that is spread…well, the way diseases are spread… through, ahem…unprotected contact.

This theme of vampirism as disease was explored again in the 1963 follow-up, Kiss of the Vampire, and is what sets these two films apart from the Hammer Dracula series where Dracula is simply a vampire with no social commentary attached. If we look back at Stoker’s original novel, the fear of venereal disease was a palpable undercurrent… and it took more than 100 years for a film version (the 2006 Masterpiece Theatre version) to bring the theme literally to the forefront of the story.

There are some inventive moments in Brides of Dracula, particularly when old Greta lies atop a grave, coaxing the vampire bride to claw her way up through the fresh pile of dirt, and a shocking sequence where Van Helsing, after being bitten by the vampire, burns his throat with a fiery brand before dowsing himself with Holy Water.

The production values and unique story themes are strong enough to make up for the film’s weaker moments – an early, sinister character who follows Marianne to the village only to disappear from the movie altogether, and an embarrassing giant brown bat on a string. Whenever I watch this scene I am reminded of Nicholas Cage in Vampire’s Kiss: “Shoo, shoo.”

If you haven’t seen this entry, or haven’t seen it in a while, you’re in for a treat. If you’re into recreational psychedelics, the colors in this film just might cause you to burst a blood vessel in your eye, and that alone is worth the price of rental. It’s still easy to come by on DVD and is available from online streaming services. 

All Heads Turn When the Snake Woman Slithers By

Have you ever read a book that everyone is talking about, which everyone says you “have to read,” which is the latest international best seller soon to be a major motion picture, and you plunk down your hard earned cash and wind up wondering what all the hoopla is about? I’m not talking about 50 Shades of Grey, but an overblown piece of Southern Gothic reptilian nonsense hailed as one of the 100 Greatest Horror Novels of All Time.

And before you read any further, I must warn you this blog post contains spoilers.

All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By has been on my radar for years, but judging from the cover of the 1978 Popular Library paperback, it’s no wonder I passed this book up at the time.

My interest was really piqued in the past year when I read Will Errikson’s review at Too Much Horror Fiction. I usually feel in sync with Will’s recommendations, so I made a concentrated effort to get my hands on a copy. Starting bid on eBay for a hardback copy is $45.00 USD. Ain’t gonna do it.

Imagine my delight when I plucked it off the table at the local annual library book sale in June for one dollar. I even let out a book-nerd shriek. I dropped whatever I was reading at the time and dove right in.

Twenty-four pages later, I was ready to claw my eyes out with boredom and confusion. This is what I think happened in the opening "scene": During a swank military wedding, Clipper Bradwin takes complete leave of his senses and slaughters his bride and everyone in sight while the chapel bell silently strikes the walls of the bell tower causing the survivors of the massacre to believe they are in the middle of an earthquake. Sounds like an exciting start to a novel, doesn’t it? Farris’ writing is so lifeless and dry it took me days to get through this scene…and weeks to get through the remaining 300 some pages. After the initial excitement of finding my dream book for a dollar wore off, I couldn’t read more than three or four pages a day before my eyes would cross and I went off in search of something more gripping. Somewhere along the way someone declared this style of writing “literary” and the fanboys lined up. You call it literary, I call it boring.

The “action” (and I use the term loosely) was all over the globe but consisted mostly of ill-defined characters talking at length about pagan practices in darkest Africa. Hmmm, I wonder what the natives practice down there? Could it be…Voodoo? Of course! It’s a Southern Gothic about a family curse earned when some white guy took a wrong turn in Africa all those years ago and now the beautiful sexy Nhora turns into this sort of snake goddess and does things with horses that would incite all those soccer moms reading 50 Shades to cry “That’s disgusting!” Indeed, it is.

I have to admit that I knew going in how this book was going to end. It’s hard not to when a book is considered a “classic” and everybody and his brother has reviewed it on Goodreads. And you know what? I’m grateful for all those plot spoilers. Otherwise, if I had managed to actually finish the book without them, I wouldn’t have had a clue what I had just read. When all was said and done all we have is a book about a chick who turns into a snake wrapped up in pseudo-intellectual clothing. Literary my ass. Wasn’t this sort of thing already a cliché in the ‘70s?

This was done years early, better, and more entertainingly, by Hammer Films. The Reptile was shot in 1966, back to back by director Don Banks and utilizing the same sets as Plague of the Zombies. These two films find Hammer studios at their most Gothic and most meaningful. Both films explore the evils of British colonialism. Here, the theologian Dr. Franklyn had been snooping around the wilds of primitive places such as India, Borneo, and Jakarta. But arrogant “civilized” white men have a knack for sticking their noses in other folks’ business where they don’t belong. The primitives strike back in the form of a curse on Franklyn’s beautiful daughter, Anna.

Anthony Hinds’ script plays out as a traditional mystery, but the title and lobby card gives it away. Still, it’s a lot of fun when Jacqueline Pearce shows up in full reptile make up, hissing and fanging unwary folks in the jugular.

Hammer’s films, and The Reptile in particular, make no pretensions to be taken seriously. They’re all about over the top Gothic fun. And fun is what’s missing from John Farris’ All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By.

But don’t just take my word for it. Curious readers no longer have to drum their fingers waiting for affordable copies on eBay. Farris has just released the book in eBook format for a measly 3.99 USD. And you can’t beat that snake with a stick.

Mini Hitchcocks: Nightmare

Poor Janet. When she was a child, she witnessed her mother stab her father to death…on her birthday no less! Scarred for life, Janet has a rough time of it, with recurring nightmares of wandering through the darkened corridors of the local insane asylum only to encounter Mummy, a slobbering, strait-jacketed maniac with rats nest hair and bulging eyes, straight out of Nuthouse Lunatics 101.

So begins Nightmare, yet another entry in Hammer’s foray into the world of little Gothic psycho thrillers, where Jennie Linden proves her acting chops as Janet, screaming and running around the shadowed halls of High Towers, the ancestral home she will inherit when she turns eighteen (looking suspiciously like the castle set from Dracula: Prince of Darkness.).

Janet has been away at school, but her frequent nocturnal screaming fits aren’t good for the other girls. Accompanied by one of her teachers, she is sent home to rest. Janet has a guardian and executor of the estate, the playboy Henry Baxter, who is away on business and so has hired a psychiatric nurse to be Janet’s companion until his return. Things start to heat up when Janet starts having dreams and visions of the World’s Ugliest Woman (Clytie Jessup who also happened to play the ghost of Miss Jessell in 1961’s The Innocents) standing around looking uber-creepy. You can tell she’s uber creepy because she has a scar on her face. Whoever or whatever this woman is, her frequent appearance pushes Janet to the brink of hysteria. Soon, she too is ratting her hair and running around barefoot, brandishing that old psycho standby, the butcher knife, and periodically breaking into fits of spittle-spewing screaming. And that’s just the first twenty minutes.

In Nightmare, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster offers a more mechanical script than his other thrillers, and when the multiple Scooby-Doo endings start to roll out in waves, its enough to make even this die-hard Gothic fan roll his eyes. I guarantee you won’t be able to predict any of these endings, and you probably won’t buy them as plausible, either. But if you like stark black and white Cinemascope shot in old dark houses with lots of screaming and peeking around doorways, this one is another winner. 

Mini Hitchcocks: Paranoiac

This one’s my favorite of the bunch. Always has been. It’s Gothic to the core, from the opening imagery of the cliffs along the coast of Dorset, England, to Janette Scott’s histrionics as she teeters on the brink of insanity… and incest.

But I get ahead of myself.

Paranoiac is the story of a wealthy family with more than one skeleton in the family closet. Eleanor Ashby is a fragile beauty, a walking Petri dish of mental disturbance. But if Eleanor is a psychosis ready to happen, brother Simon is the full bore psychotic, an alcoholic playboy who threatens his foes with handfuls of darts and drives his Jaguar roughshod over Aunt Harriet’s rose bushes. Simon is played by a remarkably young Oliver Reed (here aged 25) at a fever pitch of mincing, smirking, staggering, and wide eyed horror when he realizes his brother Tony has returned from “the watery grave.” You’d be shocked too, especially if you thought you’d killed the boy ten years ago and were only waiting for dear sister to be carted off to the booby-hatch so you can inherit the family millions. Well, it’s only a half a million, but who’s counting?

Lovely Janette Scott holds her own against Oliver Reed as Eleanor, especially when she realizes she’s fallen in love with Tony Ashby. Dashing Alex Davion is serviceable as “Tony” who, understandably, has the hots for Eleanor, but forgets he’s actually an imposter and allows that fatal kiss. “OMG! Unclean!” cries our heroine and makes a mad dash for the nearest pair of scissors. Cue melodramatic crescendos.

Confused? You should be. You need a flow chart to keep up with the relationships… and we’re only talking about three characters. That’s because Paranoiac brings us more script gymnastics by the prolific Jimmy Sangster, this time loosely adapting the 1949 novel, Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. It’s all a bunch of good, dirty fun directed in widescreen black and white by the great cinematographer Freddie Francis. We get some great Gothic shots of Scott in wind-blown nightgown scampering barefoot among the terraced gardens, plenty of batty dialogue, and true to Hammer style, staccato bursts of violence, all wrapped up in a neat 80 minute package. 

This is a good one for a rainy Saturday afternoon, or late at night when you can't sleep. Or anytime you need a strong dose of Psychological Gothic, for that matter.

I've been drinking. And now I'm going to drink some more.

Mini Hitchcocks: Scream of Fear

Any serious fan of Hammer Films knows all about these juicy little gems, but for the more casual viewer who thinks of Hammer’s output as the Christopher Lee Dracula and Peter Cushing Frankenstein series, you’re in for quite a treat.

The film company itself coined the term “mini-Hitchcock” which had a two-fold meaning. These stories were modeled after the suspense films Psycho (and to a lesser degree, Vertigo), and were produced on an even lower budget than Psycho.

I’ve often compared these Women in Peril stories to some of the Gothic Romances of the same era. Scream of Fear (Taste of Fear in Britain) came out in 1961. Its mechanical plot twists borrow heavily from the aforementioned Hitchcock titles, but also from women’s suspense thrillers of the day. Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree comes to mind.

Scream of Fear is the first and arguably the best of the series (which also includes Maniac, Paranoiac, and Nightmare, among others). Jimmy Sangster’s script is chock full of red herrings and surprise twists, some of them less plausible than others. Props go to director Seth Holt for making it all look classy and believable.

Susan Strasberg plays Penny Appleby, a wheelchair bound, dark haired waif in oversized Foster Grant sunglasses, who returns to the home on the French Riviera she has not visited in more than ten years. Here she meets her new stepmother, Jane (Ann Todd), Robert, the handsome chauffeur, and Dr. Pierre Gerrard (Christopher Lee), her father’s physician. Papa Appleby, however, seems to be missing. Or is he? Penny talks to him over the phone – the day after seeing his corpse propped up in a chair inside the pool house. Is Papa dead? Is Penny mad, or is something more sinister going on?

I’m a big fan of psychological thrillers and mysteries with clever twists and turns. This sort of movie makes me giddy and I can pop one of them in the DVD player several times a year. Others may throw up their hands in despair crying, “Give me a break!” Whichever the case, if you are unfamiliar with these twisted little thrillers and have a pining for lovely old black and white suspense films, track this one down. And as always, thank me later.

Vintage Paperbacks: The Chronicles of Don Sebastian

Recently I ran across a message board post requesting recommendations for historic horror novels. The first thing that crossed my mind was Les Daniels’ Chronicles of Don Sebastian, a series of five novels published by Ace and Tor in the late 70s and early 80s. I have an old paperback book rack where I keep and display vintage paperback novels and after pulling out my copies realized I only had four of the five. I logged onto eBay and within a week I had a brand spanking new copy of Yellow Fog. $4.00. Gotta love eBay. It came at the right time. I was between books and ready to read something short and sweet so I dove right in, knocking off this 300 page paperback in a few days.

The vampire Don Sebastian de Villanueva first appeared in The Black Castle (1978) which takes place in 1496 during the Spanish Inquisition. 1979 saw the publication of The Silver Skull which finds our anti-hero in 16^th century Mexico. In Citizen Vampire (1981) he appears in France in 1789 during the French Revolution.

Like Hammer’s Dracula, you can’t keep a good vampire down, not even an evil one. Don Sebastian resurrects once again, this time disguised as spiritualist Sebastian Newcastle, in mid 19^th century London, England. Yellow Fog tickles my Gothic bone in more ways than one. Daniels’ writing is exciting and evocative, much like a Hammer horror film come to life. It is a heady brew of drawing room séances, grave robbing, necromancy, and the ever present fog which chokes the streets of London by gaslight.

Unlike the earlier novels, the final installment, No Blood Spilled, is a direct sequel to Yellow Fog, opening with a descriptive passage in a Victorian insane asylum before transporting the reader to Calcutta, India, where Sebastian joins forces with a cult of assassins who have sworn allegiance to Kali Ma, the Goddess of Death and Destruction.

Though long out of print, a recent survey of eBay showed a number of the books in the series readily available at affordable prices. Daniels writes assuredly about the various histories he explores, but his books never fail to be quick reads which chill and thrill and most of all entertain. Lovers of vintage Gothic Horror will not be disappointed.

Vertigo - Hitchcock's Gothic Valentine

“Do you believe that someone out of the past, someone dead, can enter and take possession of a living being?” Gavin Elster asks retired detective Scottie Ferguson at the beginning of the 1958 masterpiece, Vertigo, Hitchcock’s strange tale of obsessive love.

But is it Gothic? Of course it is, as much as that other classic of obsessive love, Wuthering Heights. Gothic doesn’t always require the histrionics of thunderstorms and old dark houses, though the Gothic eye candy is always appreciated. 

Vertigo has its fair share of Gothic tropes: the woman apparently possessed by an ancestor who committed suicide after a long battle with mental illness; the old dark house, the McKittrick Hotel, once home to the mad Carlotta Valdes; the mysterious portrait (Carlotta again), and a nifty bit of repressed Freudian symbolism with the metaphorically mpotent Scottie unable to save the beguiling Madelyn Elster when she makes her ascent into that juicy phallic symbol, the bell tower at San Juan Bautista.

Besides, Bernard Herrmann’s score is one of his best. I can’t imagine the film without it, and find myself listening to it repeatedly during writing sessions for my own Gothic fiction. It’s lushly romantic and appropriately punctuated by moments of mystery and sheer suspense.

It’s no wonder that Hammer Studios, inspired by the third act plot gymnastics of Vertigo and Hitch’s other masterpiece, Psycho, tried their hand at Gothic tinged psychological thrillers such as Scream of Fear, Paranoiac, and Nightmare with varying degrees of success.

If you’ve never seen Vertigo, or haven’t watched it lately, February 14^th is a great day to revisit this mesmerizing ode to obsessive love. Is there any other kind?

2012: Year of the Gothic

And it’s long overdue. There has been a renaissance among traditional horror creatures the past few years. Vampires, even the sparkly ones, are all over cinemas with that wretched teen romance series that shall not be named (call it Gothic Ultra Lite) and television with HBO’s deliriously hyper sexual True Blood; the zombie invasion continues unabated with the wildly popular AMC series The Walking Dead leading the pack; and 2010 saw Universal’s flawed but valiant effort at re-imagining The Wolfman as a lean, mean killing machine.

The first half of 2012 will see a trio of Gothic tinged releases from major studios, hopefully reviving the Gothic tradition at the movies for awhile so we may be seeing more lonely isolated houses, midnight rides through misty graveyards, and dysfunctional, agoraphobic families with enough skeletons in the closet to put Dynasty and Dallas to shame.

First up is the UK’s Hammer Films long awaited big screen adaptation of Susan Hill’s classic ghost story The Woman in Black. Yes, that Hammer Films. A stage production of The Woman in Black has been terrifying London audiences for more than twenty years. Hammer’s version offers Daniel Radcliffe his first adult leading film role which should bring the Potterheads out in droves. Watch for it in US theaters on February 3^rd.

March 9^th brings us John Cusak as Edgar Allan Poe in the action packed detective mystery The Raven, wherein the killer recreates scenes from Poe’s classic stories. Overall, this film may stretch the borders of Gothic a bit, but judging from the production design evident in the trailer, the Gothic eye candy appears to be in visual overdrive.

Dark Shadows fans are chomping at the bit to catch the first glimpses of Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins in Tim Burton’s version of the cult classic 1960s TV series, but the studio isn’t teasing with a trailer anytime soon. Fan boards have recently pointed out that Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland didn’t offer a trailer until close to that film’s release. In that case, we may not see anything until a few weeks prior to the Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows still confirmed May 11^th release. Until then we have to make due with this ensemble photo taken on the first day of shooting last spring.

As we all know, Hollywood has a hard time coming up with anything new, so I’m anticipating a slew of imitators to begin arriving during the second half of 2012, but for the sake of originality, might I suggest an adaptation of Diane Setterfield’s intriguing 2006 Gothic pastiche, The Thirteenth Tale?

Here’s to a very Gothic 2012!

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

For kids growing up in the US in the 1960s, Saturday night television was a thing of wonder when we were allowed to stay up late with a bowl of popcorn and a bottle of root beer, shivering with anticipation as the minutes kicked down to the start of our local fright show. In my city it was called Scream In and was hosted by a groovy hippie vampire named The Cool Ghoul. Week after week he brought us the best in (mostly Gothic) horror films from the 40s, 50s, and early 60s. We saw our first Hammer films on these programs, low budget shockers such as Francis Coppola’s Dementia-13, dubbed Italian imports, and of course, the Roger Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of mystery and imagination. Few things were scarier to me at that age than the bloodied hand of Barbara Steele rising from her tomb to stalk Vincent Price through the womb-like corridors of Medina Castle in 1961’s Pit and the Pendulum.

British film critic David Robinson accurately pointed out, "As in (Corman’s) House of Usher, the quality of the film is its full-blooded feeling for Gothic horror - storms and lightning, moldering castles and cobwebbed torture chambers, bleeding brides trying to tear the lids from their untimely tombs." Indeed, Pit and the Pendulum is so soaked in Gothic atmosphere that I have probably watched this film on VHS and DVD more than any other. On any rainy Saturday afternoon, sleepless midnight, and of course, the Halloween season, I find myself being drawn back to Castle Medina and the ravings of Vincent Price again and again.

To today’s younger audiences who have grown up with more graphic shockers, Pit and the Pendulum might seem too cheesy to take seriously. I have to admit that if Vincent Price was any more of a ham his performance might be mistaken for Christmas dinner. But when you drill down through the blood and thunder soundtrack by Les Baxter, the lashing rains and crashing waves, Daniel Haller’s art direction which fills the frame with an almost unparalleled Gothic atmosphere (watch for more about this guy in future posts), what we have left is a truly disturbing portrait of a mind on the brink of psychological collapse.

For those not familiar with the plot of Richard Matheson’s adaptation (spoiler alert), Don Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) is the son of Sebastian Medina, one of the Spanish Inquisitions most notorious torturers. At an early age, Nicholas witnessed the death by torture of his Mother and Uncle at the hands of his Father, accusing both of marital infidelities. Here we have what is unofficially known as Wicked Father Syndrome, a motif found in several of Corman’s horror films as well as a staple of 20^th century romantic Gothic fiction. This psychological fissure casts Medina as a true Byronic hero, making him a character to be both feared and pitied. The irony of this childhood trauma is that his own wife, Elizabeth (played by the ever ravishing horror film icon, Barbara Steele) has engaged in adultery with Nicholas’ best friend, Dr. Leon. The core of the plot revolves around an elaborate gaslight wherein Dr. Leon and Elizabeth fake her death, going so far as to bury another woman’s body in Elizabeth’s crypt. Nicholas, and the audience, have been led to believe that Elizabeth is dead, which brings us to the memorable scene of Elizabeth rising from her tomb, very much alive.

If Pit and the Pendulum were to be adapted today, the film would undoubtedly focus on grisly torture effects, much as it did in a 1991 version. With its music, art direction, atmospherics and emotional histrionics, Corman’s 1961 film remains one of Gothic cinema’s major milestones.  

“Neeeecholas!”

The Gothic Zombie

Zombies are taking over the world. AMC’s The Walking Dead is one of the highest rated series on cable television. In major cities around the globe, Zombie Walks and Pub Crawls are held annually in late October to the delight of participants and onlookers alike. Resident Evil, the video games, movies, novels, and comics franchise unleashed in 1996 shows no sign of being stopped. George Romero’s classic 1968 low budget drive-in shocker, Night of the Living Dead, is considered one of the seminal works in the zombie genre.

But another classic from the sixties, 1966’s British Gothic, Plague of the Zombies, often goes overlooked and uncredited for its contributions to the genre. Plague of the Zombies is a minor yet potent entry in the Hammer Horror Films oeuvre, the film company best known for bringing us the outstanding Dracula series starring Christopher Lee and the companion Frankenstein films featuring Peter Cushing. For my money, Plague of the Zombies is one of the studio’s best productions during their mid-sixties horror boom.

Where today’s zombies are a result of science gone horribly awry, Plague’s zombies are straight up old school, the result of a tyrannical landowner using Haitian voodoo magik to bring the dead back to life as a source of cheap labor for his tin mine.

Typical of the studio’s horror output, Plague of the Zombies boasts a period setting in the late 19^th Century, with exteriors shot in Berkshire, standing in for the Cornish moors. Combined with historically accurate costumes (no low-cut Hammer bodices in this entry), a superb back lot village set, and brimming with scenes of voodoo drumming, blood rituals, rotting corpses rising from the grave in misty graveyards, and doe eyed English lassies being chased by a pack of local rakes across the moonlit moor, Plague of the Zombies is sumptuous Gothic eye candy. Filmed in dazzling color by DeLuxe by Hammer’s Arthur Grant, the cinematography is appropriately dark and moody, using light and framing to maximum effect.

There may not be much brain munching here, but Plague of the Zombies deserves to be viewed by fans of zombies and Gothic films alike. Thankfully, the DVD is still in print, readily available for purchase from Anchor Bay Home Video via Amazon, or for rental through Netflix’s home delivery service.