Vincent Price plays a beloved horror icon attempting to restart his acting career after a stint in a mental institution recovering from a nervous breakdown. Bizarre occurrences and suspicious shenanigans soon have Price's character wondering if he is, in fact, truly stable.
I have only seen Madhouse once and, if memory serves, I spent most of its running time vacillating from feeling sympathy for Price's sad sack character and being frustrated that he could not see the obvious.
While it was not all that surprising to discover the film was based off a novel, because Amicus co-founder Milton Subotsky was an avid reader of all manner of genre fiction. I was tickled to learn that this film's 1969 source novel had been penned by Angus Hall, who would wrote the novelization of Scars of Dracula. Cool beans.
While Amicus would produce a great many more, and quite a few better, anthology films. Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, the company's first such offering, is a nostalgic favorite of mine. It is one of those movies I grew up watching. Back when the proliferation of English and European genre films on the various late, late shows, as well as any and all syndication stations, made it seem as if Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing had starred in every horror movie made between 1957 and 1977. This one even had Donald Sutherland in it! I also recognized character actor Michael Gough.
My childhood favorite segment was The Creeping Vine, because a monster plant just seemed weird and cool to me. That segment also featured Bernard Lee. An actor best known for playing M in every James Bond film from Dr. No (1962), the first, to his final appearance in 1979's Moonraker.
As an adult I think my favorite segment just might be Werewolf. Maybe. But I do reserve the right to change my mind at any time.
The distributor looks to have dusted off the 1959 Hammer offering The Man Who Could Cheat Death to keep Dr. Terror company, whilst touring with his diabolical deck of terrifying tarot cards.
The seventh, and final, anthology film from Amicus Productions ended the cycle on a high note. Although the film's source material was a selection of stories by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, the thematic core of moral retribution for wrongdoing (lying, cheating, stealing, et al.), makes it feel like a continuation of the E. C. horror comic adaptations (Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror) that had preceded it.
This might be my favorite one of the entire run, though. It is just a rock solid 'little movie' that works and is well worth seeking out.
Considering the amount of pre-release tampering that is alleged to have been done on Frankenstein Must De Destroyed, I was surprised to read that, when asked which of his own films were his favorites, Terence Fisher (in an interview in Vol. 4, Issue 3 of Cinefantastique magazine) said this was one of them. That, of all his films, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed was the one he most enjoyed making.
As far as that supposed tampering goes, I heard there was a "last minute" decision it "spice up" the film with a sexual assault that, according to an interview with Veronica Carlson that appeared in (I think) Fangoria magazine, had both Cushing and Fisher apologizing to the actress throughout the filming of the scene.
Another ill-advised "last minute" inclusion was the comedic investigating carried on by Inspector Frisch (Thorley Walters). One could excise both the assault and Frisch scenes from the film and be left with a tighter, leaner, and far better paced movie, I think.
My favorite hammer Frankenstein's remain The Revenge of Frankenstein and Frankenstein Created Woman.
Double-billed with Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed is Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, the middle section of Hammer Film's trilogy of direct sequels to [Horror of] Dracula. While an interesting and entertaining enough follow up to Dracula Prince of Darkness, picking up more or less where that film ended, and leading directly into Taste the Blood of Dracula, I have to say that I prefer and enjoy both Prince and Taste a great deal more than Grave.
It is not bad, I just find it a tad slow and, because of that, it has tested of my patience at times. Other times, not so much.
The San Francisco Examiner/Chronicle's Sunday TV Week supplement had this modest promo for an episode of Creature Features featuring Hammer Film's third Frankenstein movie, 1964's The Evil of Frankenstein. This would be one of two entries in the famed company's series of Frankenstein films the was not directed by Terence Fisher. Nope, this one was helmed by Freddie Francis. The other would by the 1970 Jimmy Sangster helmed horror-comedy The Horror of Frankenstein.
This episode aired on Saturday, January 12, 1974 and, being all six or seven years old, I would not have been allowed to stay up and watch it. So it goes.
Although the poster for this retitling of The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973) promises that 'The King of the undead marries the Queen of the Zombies" at some point, it would not be in this movie. Not that anybody would have cared, or noticed, at this point in time.
This would be Christopher Lee's final performance as Dracula for Hammer Film. Lee, when embellishing the reasons for Dracula having no dialogue in Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966), would often cite terrible lines, such as, "I am the Apocalypse!" Silly trash that the character from Stoker's novel would never have uttered, according to Lee.
The thing of it is, this line is from The Satanic Rites of Dracula. The movie that 'convinced' Lee to stop, step away, and distance himself from the role that had grown to define and shackle him.
American International Pictures made another admirable and exploitative money grab by re-releasing its biggest moneymaker of 1976 (The Food of the Gods) on a double-bill with another feature that made them some blessed coin (At the Earth's Core).
This is quite the double-bill, I think. Seeing as how the authors of the films respective source materials were contemporaries, it is also kind of perfect.
Wells' The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth was first published in 1904, while Burrough's At the Earth's Core was first serialized in All-Story Weekly in 1914 and later published as a novel in July of 1922.
The success of both films resulted in a slew of low-to-mid-budget film adaptations of other titles by Wells and Burroughs being made and released throughout the late 1970s and very early 1980s. Good times, fun stuff.
Bryan Senn, in his book Twice the Thrills! Twice the Chills! Horror and Science Fiction Double Features, 1955 - 1974, describes The Mummy (1959) as being, "Tightly plotted, efficiently directed, superbly acted, sumptuously dressed, and featuring a number of tense and exciting action set-pieces..." [P. 168] I whole-heartedly concur.
Although The Mummy shares its title with the classic 1932 Karloff feature, its plot elements were taken from the plodding programmers that Universal Pictures released in the early-to-mid 1940's. Unlike those repetitive and patience testing outings, Hammer Film's version contains an attention holding amount of energy and ferocity. Which is why this particular entry remains an all-time favorite of mine.
Coupled with The Mummy is the vampiric weird western Curse of the Undead. Although it began as a silly lark of writing practice for the husband and wife team of Edward and Mildred Dien, a producer saw its potential. So the joke was reworked into something a tad more serious and a minor classic was born.
Curse of the Undead is one of a trio of weird westerns that I remember watching on television as a youngster. The other two were the infamous Billy the Kid Versus Dracula (1966) and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1966).
I have no idea as to the order I first saw them, but Curse of the Undead is the best of them, by far.
John McCarty, in his seminal book Splatter Movies Breaking the Last Taboo of the Screen, shared how his "young, monster-movie addicted eyes were quick to spot a series of starkly lettered handbills that had been tacked to the trees and telephone poles." [Splatter Movies, Pg. 16]
Those handbills were hyping the imminent release of today's subject du jour, a double-bill of two terrific, top tier Hammer Film productions: The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and X the Unknown (1956).
Going in order of production, 1956's X the Unknown, the 'B' feature of this double-bill, began as a sequel to The Quatermass Xperiment, a moneymaker for the company. Only there was one small detail Hammer Film had not factored into the equation. Screenwriter Nigel Kneale, who had created the character of Bernard Quatermass and retained the rights, refused to have his creation appear in anything that he himself had not written.
Even with any and all marketable connections and/references to The Quatermass Xperiment excised, X the Unknown is able to stand on its own as a cracking good monster movie.
First-time screenwriter Jimmy Sangster, having penned a sturdy and reliable script for X the Unknown, was then entrusted with scripting Hammer Film's first color film, 1957's The Curse of Frankenstein.
Curse took a very different approach than the 1931 Universal film and its sequels, for reasons that were both legal and artistic. In this film Baron Victor Frankenstein turns out to be every bit as dangerous and deadly monster as his witless creation.
Audiences ate it up and Hammer Film, seeing that it had struck gold, proceeded to mine the Gothic Horror genre for every penny it could uncover.
I was gestating in my mother's womb when this double-bill featuring what would become one of my all-time favorite monster movies began unspooling across the San Francisco Bay Area.
Bryan Senn, in his comprehensive and entertaining book "Twice the Thrills! Twice the Chills! Horror and Science-Fiction Double Features, 1955 - 1974, describes The Projected Man as "a dull, dull, dull entry in Britain's sci-fi/horror sweepstakes of the 1960s." [Pg. 285] Which makes this particular gap in my genre viewing sound like something that is better left unfilled. Who knows.
Senn does share my fondness for Island of Terror, though. He lavishes praise, calling the film "one of the more entertaining sci-fi/horror hybrids of the 1960s." [Pg. 285] Points out "the film's literate script and intelligent acting" and how director Terence Fisher crafted "some eerie set-pieces - particularly early on when the creatures are kept largely unseen." [Pg. 285] I heartily agree, on all points.
The Solano Drive-In still exists and is open for business. I saw Tenet (2020) there, back when drive-ins were getting a pandemic fueled boost in business.
"As far as I can tell, the body doesn't have any bones."
We went to the Galapagos Islands this year, which scratched another destination off of our world travel bucket list. While on the island of Santa Cruz we visited the El Chato Giant Tortoise Reserve, where we got to walk amongst a whole lot of giant tortoises.
A handful of the giant tortoises we saw.
And there were a lot of giant tortoises there. I mean it. Those things were everywhere. A sight that got me perseverating about 1966's Island of Terror, of course. What else would an aging horror geek like myself think about while standing in a wooded area filled with giant tortoises?
Which meant that, after returning home, I had the compulsion to pluck my Scream Factory blu-ray off the shelf and give it yet another watch.
Because Island of Terror holds a special place in both my monster loving heart and my childhood memories.
My heart adores it because, first, the silicates are really effective monsters, albeit ones that a contemporary audience might dismiss as a tad too goofy looking. But one does that at their own peril. Second, there is Peter Cushing's energetic and delightful turn as an avuncular bone specialist. Third, and perhaps most important of all, is the energetic and economical direction from genre stalwart Terence Fisher.
Observations that allow me a pitch perfect segue to my childhood memory of Island of Terror, because Scream Factory was kind enough to post the very scene that scared me out of both the living room and my skin.
The blessing and curse of my reality altering childhood memory embellished the moment Dr. Landers (Eddie Byrne) fell atop the silicate with an image of him wheezing "Help me" as his body deflated. But even without the embellishment that death scene is a hard one to sit and watch. Not only because Landers was a likable character, but also because of the creepy and nauseating sound effect of the voracious silicate dissolving and slurping up his bones. I hope the audio department earned a bonus for creating that potent sounding nightmare fuel.
That scene also put me off of chicken noodle soup for a short while.
What's funny about it now is that I had my younger brother finish the movie, so I could know how it ended. Which he was kind enough to do. But what I did not know was that this would be the one and only time Island of Terror would air on our local station(s).
I came to know the bitter frustration of finding and reading the synopsis in a TV Guide listing, which read, "Bizarre turtle-like creatures menace an isolated island community." Only to learn the movie was being broadcast on Channel 40, which was a Sacramento station we did not get.
So the movie eluded me until I was able to find a bootleg at a convention. By that time my only fear was that the movie would not live up to my traumatized childhood memory of it.
I was happy to find that it did live up to that memory, though. Sure, Island of Terror was nowhere near as terrifying to adult me as it had been to child me, but I could still admire the solid performances and Fisher's deft hand at creating an aura of mystery, tension, and outright menace on what had to be a tissue-thin budget.
Despite my growing up on a semi-regular diet of assorted Hammer and Amicus films broadcast on television, coupled with my burning through all the Robert Bloch novels and short stories I could get my hands on in the late 80s and early 90s, a viewing of The Skull has eluded me.
The source material for the film was a short story by Bloch titled The Skull of the Marquis de Sade, which was first published in the September 1945 edition of Weird Tales. While I have read the story twice - first in Final Reckonings, the first volume of The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch, and again in the 1963 anthology Bogey Men - I have zero recall of it.
The Skull was first released on a double-bill with The Mad Executioners, a German 'Krimi' film from 1963. It appears to be one of a very few to receive wide distribution in the United States. If the IMDB is to be believed, that is.
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