In the late 1950s the British film production company Hammer acquired the rights to Universal’s gaggle of gothic monsters: Dracula, the Frankenstein monster and the Mummy. The stalwarts of the European gothic tradition were thus returned to their homeland and given a revivifying jolt of cinematographic juice.
Tod Browning’s Dracula, James Whale’s Frankenstein and Karl Freund’s The Mummy are all classic films of their day, each in their own way reimagining a European past through a lens darkly, and all influenced by the cinematographic innovations of German Expressionism. Freund in particular brought his expressionist vision—he had been the cinematographer on Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Wegener’s final version of The Golem—to bear on his films The Mummy, Mad Love and Browning’s Dracula for which he was the uncredited co-director.
By the early 1950s Universal’s proprietary ownership of Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula, Mary Shelly’s monster and the lovelorn Imhotep had run out of scare power: each monster had been reduced to playing walk-on comedy-horror cameos in such films as Abbot and Costello meet Frankenstein (1948) and Abbot and Costello meet the Mummy (1955).
This all changed when Hammer films released their Curse of Frankenstein (1955) and Dracula (1958), both directed by the brilliant Terence Fisher. These two films alone made both Peter Cushing (Frankenstein) and Christopher Lee (Dracula) international stars almost overnight and established the hallmarks of the Hammer Horror brand: an investment in a kind of dark sexuality and a crimson Technicolor fascination with blood.
Following the international success of these first two ‘Hammer Horrors’, the company set upon an ambitious program of developing their own stable of monsters, each project inevitably testing the British censors to their limits, and each successive film inclining more and more towards the ‘boobs and blood’ formula for which they are fondly remembered by all fans of gothic cinema.
No doubt prompted by the recent renewal of the Hammer Horror brand that has produced such recent films as Let Me In (2010), The Resident (2011) and the well-received Woman in Black (2012) starring Hogwarts alumnus Daniel Radcliffe, Shock Entertainment have recently released seven Blu-Ray and DVD sets of original Hammer classics. Each of these films were produced in the period when Hammer was establishing its vision of Gothic cinema, the 1960s, and therefore manage to avoid the genre excesses of the 1970s when the aforementioned boobs and blood were at their titillating height.
The Reptile
In 1965 Hammer films began a bold experiment. Four films were to be shot back-to-back, sharing locations, sound stages and cast. It was, of course, a cost cutting, financial decision, but for producer Anthony Nelson Keys it paid off big time. The Reptile, Rasputin the Mad Monk, A Plague of Zombies and Dracula, Prince of Darkness were all shot one after the other and released internationally in two double bills: A Plague of Zombies and Dracula, Prince of Darkness and The Reptile with Rasputin the Mad Monk. In this way the use of pretty much the same cast, sets and locations was disguised by pairing two films which did not obviously share the same properties. The directorial vision of two of the films, The Reptile and A Plague of Zombies was that of John Gilling, so releasing his films in different double bills also served to hide their shared provenance.
The Reptile opens in some Edwardian-like era in Cornwall. I say ‘Edwardian-like’ because, as one of the commentators on the accompanying documentary, The Serpent’s Tale notes, one is often never quite sure when most Hammer Horrors are supposed to be set. The costumes are often slightly anachronistic and the set design ambiguous. The films seem to exist in a ‘Hammer World’.
Nevertheless, we are in Cornwall, and young Harry Spalding (our very own Ray Barrett) and his young wife Valerie (Jennifer Daniel) are intending to live in Spalding’s late brother’s cottage. Spalding and his bride are met with suspicion by the townsfolk and only the local publican, played by the great Hammer stalwart Michael Ripper, befriends the young couple.
Something is rotten in Denmark…er, I mean Cornwall…and the local folk are dropping like flies from the mysterious ‘black death’. Except in this case, owing to the spectacular make-up effects, it is more like Technicolor opalescent death, with two bite marks on the throat to seal the deal. Spalding and his wife are drawn into this sinister mystery through their encounter with the aloof Dr. Franklyn (Noel Wilman) and his beautiful daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pierce) whom he treats with incomprehensible cruelty. Dr. Franklyn and Anna have recently returned from a sojourn in Indonesia. Anna is attended by her Malay servant—a wonderfully febrile performance by Marne Maitland—who seems to have a powerful influence over both Anna and Franklyn.
In trying to get to the bottom of the black death mystery, Spalding and the publican Tom indulge in a bit of grave desecration and dig up Spalding’s recently deceased brother Harry. Poor harry apparently died of the same cause—and there are the bite marks to prove it. Spalding is called to Dr. Franklyn’s house where he is attacked by a horrifying reptilian creature, but manages to find his way back to the cottage. Valerie shoots off to Dr. Franklyn’s house where she witnesses, in quick succession: the sinister doctor try and murder his daughter, a violent struggle between Anna’s Malay servant and her father and the transformation of Anna into—you guessed it—a venomous reptile.
All ends happily however in a giant conflagration which sees Spalding (who has recovered from the potentially lethal reptile bite) and Valerie fleeing Cornwall for their very lives…Yes, a few spoilers there, but it is not as if the intricacies of narrative are handled with the utmost subtlety in Hammer Horror films, as I am sure you will have guessed.
According to the accompanying documentary The Serpent’s Tale, in which a number of Hammer Horror authorities offer fascinating insights into the production of the film, director John Gilling and producer Anthony Nelson Keys were often at loggerheads on set, but this clearly did not faze Gilling in the execution of his directorial duties. The Reptile, like A Plague of Zombies, is an assured film with many idiosyncratic, almost hallucinatory sequences. Sure, the make-up for the reptilian Anna is not all that convincing (actress Jacqueline Pearce is interviewed in The Serpent’s Tale and it turns out that as a consequence of this film she refused to be subjected to prosthetic makeup ever again), and the performance of our hero (Barrett) lacks the intensity and conviction of his co-stars Pierce, Maitland and Ripper, but overall The Reptile is a unique contribution not only to Hammer’s oeuvre, but the cinema of the uncanny in general.
A Plague of Zombies
Gilling’s second film in his so-called “Cornwall Duology”, A Plague of Zombies, takes place in the mid-1800s, or at least a semblance of the period. Hammer was always a little cavalier with the concept of period authenticity, as I have suggested.
Local doctor Peter Thompson (Brook Williams) is puzzled by a series of mysterious deaths in the village. To help him find the cause of the deaths he calls upon his former teacher Sir James Forbes (André Morell, who had played Britain’s first television hero Bernard Quatermass in the third BBC installment, Quatermass and the Pit at the end of the 50s) who dutifully arrives in the village accompanied by his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare).
Travelling by coach to the village, Sir James and Sylvia are harassed by a gang of foxhunting ruffians (imagine a bunch of droogs in red coats and riding gear) who are only dispersed when Dr. Thompson shoos them off with an authoritative flourish. All this and a corpse falling out of its coffin as Sir James and Sylvia arrive at their destination.
As in The Reptile, Sir James and Dr. Thompson indulge in a bit of grave desecration at night where they discover that all the graves are empty of their deceased inhabitants. Pursuing their investigations further, they call on Squire Clive Hamilton (played by John Carson at his seductive, sadistic best) who has recently returned from Haiti where he was engaged in a study of Voodoo. Not only that, but the foxhunting ruffians Sir James and Sylvia had encountered on their way to the village appear to be Hamilton’s henchmen. Squire Hamilton owns a tin mine (as you apparently do, in Cornwall), and it is very productive. Sir James becomes suspicious of Squire Hamilton’s workers — where are they? Who are they? After discovering the empty graves, Sir James suspects locals are being transformed into zombies…
A Plague of Zombies has some wonderful set pieces. Jacqueline Pearce transforming into a zombie is one. Another is the frightening, delirious scene in the graveyard, where the dead rise from their graves, their hands pushing through the earth like some kind of deathly flower. This is a dream experienced by Denver (Alex Davion), boyfriend of Pearce’s character, and the scene possesses a hallucinatory power that rivals any similar sequences in more recent efforts.
The accompanying documentary, Raising the Dead, begins with an interview with John Carson who not only has some wonderful insights into the production of A Plague of Zombies, but he also has a few words to say about being an actor in a genre films. Mark Gatiss, writer, actor, director—most recently writing for and acting in Dr. Who—is apparently a huge fan of Hammer Horror and here offers a fan’s appreciation of the film; that is, a detailed knowledge not only of the production exigencies but also the sociological and, indeed, political resonances of Gilling’s film. Jonathan Rigby, author of English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema, suggests that A Plague of Zombies has a ‘Doylian’ quality (by which he means an affinity with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories) in that it pits the hyper-rational Sir James Forbes against an unfathomable evil (as in The Hound of the Baskervilles, one supposes). He also suggests that the film is “the most faithful version of Dracula that Hammer ever produced.” This too is a fascinating idea, but I will not recount the details of this at first startling suggestion here—you will have to watch the documentary to get those. Raising the Dead, like The Serpent’s Tale that accompanies The Reptile Blu-Ray, is an indispensable source of insight and anecdotes about the film. In fact the documentary films that were produced for this series of Hammer rereleases are almost worth the price of admission alone.
Rasputin the Mad Monk
As author Jonathan Rigby has it in the documentary, Tall Stories on this Blu-ray, Rasputin the Mad Monk is “history retooled as Hammer Horror.” More to the point, Hammer’s Rasputin is portrayed as a kind of Slavic Dracula: piercing eyes, all-powerful and “fatal to women” as Rigby notes. And who better to play Rasputin than the definitive Dracula, Christopher Lee?
The film was loosely based on the disaffected White Russian émigré Felix Yusupov’s book, Lost Splendor in which he recounts how he was instrumental in killing Rasputin. But as Andrew Cook, author of To Kill Rasputin states in Tall Stories, Rasputin was neither mad nor a monk, but a “holy man” who had inveigled his way into the Czars’ court, thus gaining the ire, it turns out, of the Allies’ secret services. Sadly, the well-known story of the “unkillable” Rasputin who was first poisoned, then when that failed to work, shot, then when that failed, beaten, and when that failed, thrown into a river, is all a myth of Yusupov’s devising. Rasputin was in fact simply dispatched by a single bullet from a British secret service agent’s pistol.
But do not let these disappointing facts dissuade you from watching Rasputin the Mad Monk. The full mythic version of the story is given the Hammer treatment, culminating, of course, in the prolonged execution of the mad monk. More importantly, Rasputin the Mad Monk undoubtedly has given us Christopher Lee’s finest performance on the screen.
The film begins in the Russian countryside, where a disheveled Rasputin enters a tavern in search of a drink, but then proceeds to cure the innkeeper’s wife of a deadly malady, thus beginning the folk rumor that he possesses mysterious healing powers. After hitching a ride on a local troika, Rasputin arrives in Moscow where he promptly begins his seduction of Sonia (the always beguiling Barbara Shelly), attendant to the Czarina, drawing her away from her aristocratic brother, and using her to set himself up in the court of the Czarina.
In one wonderful scene, Francis Mathews as Ivan (a character perhaps based on Felix Yusupov) produces a star turn where he adopts a foppish demeanor in order to draw Rasputin into the plot that will see his eventual ghastly demise. As Rigby notes, it is as if Rasputin is entertaining a Slavic Bertie Wooster in his parlor.
Barbara Shelly as Sonia is spectacular. Luckily for fans of the actress she appears in three of the Shock Blu-Ray re-releases, and as a bonus is interviewed in several of the accompanying documentary films. In Rasputin the Mad Monk Shelly and Lee also give us a star turn in a scene where Sonia, hysterical and overcome with her sexual rejection by Rasputin, physically attacks him. Rasputin responds by using his hypnotic powers to convince her to leave and kill herself. It is a powerful scene, utilizing expressionist chiaroscuro lighting and directed with considerable aplomb by Don Sharp.
Francis Mathews is interviewed extensively in the documentary Tall Stories, revealing his admiration for actor Robert Donat (of Thirty Nine Steps fame) and his joy in working with Donat’s wife, Renée Asherson, in Rasputin the Mad Monk. Both Shelly and Mathews recount their admiration for Christopher Lee, and of his particularly powerful performance in this film.
Dracula, Prince of Darkness
As film historian Marcus Hearn states at the very beginning of the documentary, Back to Black found on this Blu-Ray: “If anyone was to ask me what exactly is a Hammer Horror, I imagine
the film I’d show them would be Dracula, Prince of Darkness. It’s not among the best of the Hammer Horrors, but it is the quintessential Hammer Horror.”
Hearn then lists the characteristics, the tropes, of Hammer Horror at its best: very English characters lost in a central European country (usually unnamed); the coachman who abandons our heroes in a forest just before nightfall; the foreboding castle on the hill; a manservant loyal to his undead master; a hint of lesbianism and sexual perversion; and of course Christopher Lee as Count Dracula. What more could you ask of a film, I say.
Mark Gatiss remarks that the Techniscope shooting aspect of the film produces the effect of a remove from the action of the film, but in my opinion this just allows director Terence Fisher to create a very different film, a different vision, from his earlier triumph with Hammer’s Dracula of 1958.
Four British tourists, the Kents, find themselves lost and abandoned by their coach driver on their way to Karlsbad. Luckily for them a driverless carriage arrives to take them to that castle atop the hill…
There they meet the oddly named Klove, servant to his now long dead master, Count Dracula. Klove informs them that it was his master’s dying wish that unexpected guests be treated to every old country hospitality. After providing the somewhat flabbergasted guests with refreshments, Klove encourages them to retire for the night. Alan Kent (played by another Australian, Charles “Bud” Tingwell) investigates strange noises coming from somewhere deep inside the castle and, as inevitably happens when you leave your bed at night to investigate strange noises in an apparently empty creepy castle, comes to a sticky end at the hands of faithful, weird Klove. In point of fact Alan is hung upside down above the crypt of the dead Count Dracula and has his throat slit, whereupon “all that Kensington gore” (as Rigby notes in the documentary) rains down into the yawning maw of the grave and the Count is resurrected. It is a scene that was designed to shock in 1966, and it is still quite shocking today. Barbara Shelly relates that when she walked onto the set to play her part in this scene, she really was genuinely frightened by Fisher’s grand guignol mise-en-scene for Alan’s sacrifice.
As with nearly all Hammer productions, there are some standout scenes. The newly created vampire Helen Kent (Barbara Shelly) tapping at the casement windows so that Diana (Suzan Farmer) will allow her in, and then endeavoring to seduce Diana is one such scene. Andrew Keir as Father Sandor, a kind of substitute Van Helsing, has some great moments, particularly where he stakes Helen through the heart, sharing the scene with a heaving, violent but sexy Barbara Shelly. The denouement on the frozen lake, where Dracula meets his icy end, is yet another of the inventive ways in which Dracula is killed off in the Hammer franchise (death by sunlight, and by the shadow of a windmill that forms a cross had already been used to great effect in earlier productions).
Fisher’s mastery of colour is to the fore here, as is his seemingly effortless construction of character dynamics within a scene, coupled with an expertly crafted narrative drive. Mathews says that he was the ‘genre king’ in whom all the actors on the production of Dracula, Prince of Darkness had absolute faith. Dracula, Prince of Darkness proves (if any further proof were needed) that Terence Fisher is one of the great, unheralded directors of British cinema. The fact that he often worked for Hammer is no doubt responsible for the almost criminal neglect of his work by film scholars.
In a late interview (not included in Back to Black), when the interviewer enquired about Fisher’s association with the horror film, Fisher replied that he had never made a horror film, he had made fairy tale for adults. Dracula, Prince of Darkness is a very good place to appreciate the truth of this statement.
The Devil Rides Out
Released in 1968, The Devil Rides Out was adapted from the Dennis Wheatley novel of the same name by Hollywood screenwriter Richard Matheson whose own SF/horror novel, I am Legend has been adapted for the screen at least three times so far (including once by Hammer in the late 1950s), and whose prodigious output in the science fiction and horror genres should need no introduction for genre fans reading this review.
As scholar Denis Meikle notes in the making-of documentary Black Magic on this disc, the novels of Wheatley were experiencing a renewed interest in the mid-to-late 60s, principally due to the counter culture’s interest in all things esoteric. It comes as no real surprise then to find that Hammer, looking for new inspiration outside of their franchise investment in Dracula and Frankenstein, would see in Wheatley’s novels another source for the Hammer treatment. As Phil Baker, Wheatley’s biographer, says in Black Magic, the so-called “occult revival” of the late 1960s essentially saved Wheatley’s career.
The problem for Hammer in adapting Wheatley’s work was religious sensibility. The British censor was always vigilant in regards to any hint of blasphemy in film (they had excised entire scenes depicting satanic rites from Roger Corman’s The Masque of the Red Death for example), but by the late 60s public opinion in these matters had changed, and Hammer was able to get the screenplay of The Devil Rides Out past the censor without too much trouble.
Helmed by the quiet genius of Terence Fisher, The Devil Rides Out is set in England in 1929, and as Matheson notes in Black Magic, Fisher went all-out to make the film as convincing in its period details as possible. Indeed, it is one of the few Hammer productions that remains convincing in its evocation of a particular time and a particular place.
Even though Matheson had considerably streamlined the novel to pick up the pace for the film, the plot is a little too complicated for me to describe in this review, but suffice to say that this time Christopher Lee plays the good guy: Duc de Richleau, an aristocratic gentleman who discovers that the son of a friend has become involved in a satanic cult. As Mark Gatiss says in Black Magic, Lee brings all his natural regal bearing to the role, and one is readily convinced of his power as a white magician.
Richelieu and an old friend, Rex van Rijn (played amiably by opera singer Leon Greene), set about rescuing the young man, Simon (Patrick Mower), and another initiate-to-be, Tanith Carlisle (played by the intriguingly named Nike Arrighi), from the clutches of the cults charismatic leader, Mocata.
Charles Gray as Mocata gives a quietly seething performance, reeking of mendacity in every scene in which he appears. As Jonathan Rigby notes in Black Magic, Gray has to be the equal of Lee’s stately, powerful Richelieu, as both represent two opposed forces: one of darkness, one of light. Fortunately both Lee and Gray really take care of the business end of the film: both give ‘titanic’ performances, as Gatiss says, and both take the film where you want it to go. And both are nicely counterpointed by the fey Nike Arrighi, who brings an evanescent, otherworldly presence to the charged-with-palpable-evil narrative.
Unfortunately, as Wheatley’s biographer Baker notes, in streamlining Wheatley’s novel for the screen—which he admits is an improvement over the original novel—Matheson has lost the entire 1930s subtext about the looming war and the rise of Nazism in Europe. In the novel the Satanists are trying to start a world war, and it is the Duc de Richleau who destroys their plans for a war with Germany. All this is missing from Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out, and one wonders how much better the film would have been if Matheson had saw fit to include this subtext. I have no doubt that Terence Fisher would have been up to it.
The Mummy’s Shroud
Another John Gilling effort, The Mummy’s Shroud was the third in Hammer’s series of mummy films that would culminate in the (to my mind) far superior Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb of 1971.
The film opens with an extended prologue in which we learn the fate of the boy pharaoh Ka Ta Bey, rescued from a palace massacre by his faithful servant and taken to the desert for safety. The young pharaoh does not survive the journey, and is buried in the desert along with his servant, Prem.
Cut to the fictitious Egyptian city of Mezzera. It is now 1920 and Sir Basil Walden (Andre Morell) and entrepreneur Stanley Preston (John Philips) attend the opening of the ancient tomb of Ka Ta Bey. Ignoring the pleas of a local Bedouin not desecrate the tomb, they remove the body of Ka Ta Bey and the mummy of Prem, along with the “sacred shroud” of the young Pharaoh. When entering the tomb Sir Basil is bitten by a serpent—a kind of teaser for the dire events that follow…
Yep, you have seen this all before. In fact you will have seen the basic storyline not only in Freund’s 1930s The Mummy for Universal Studios, but also Hammer’s The Mummy of the late 50s. Yet as with nearly all genre fictions, it is not the repetition of plot elements that draw us back to such films, it is the deviations and filigree embellishments, the traces of an individual sensibility that is aware of the clichés of the genre, and therefore tries to add a little spice to the old gumbo that keeps us coming back for more.
So it is with Gilling’s take on the ‘revenge of the mummy’ schtick. In this case Gilling turns the film into an ensemble piece, concentrating on the characters and their foibles, their frailties and heroic moments, rather than the predictable series of assassinations executed by the vivified mummy of long-dead Prem.
Because of Gilling’s investment in his actors, there are some memorable performances here. Michael Ripper in particular steps out of his usual Hammer role as barkeep (see The Reptile) or country plod (A Plague of Zombies) to play a sympathetic Cairo expat who is double-crossed by the reprehensible Stanley Preston at the fateful hour. David Buck delivers a strong performance as Preston’s son, but the really standout players are Roger Delgado as Hasmid, the custodian of the ancient tomb, and Catherine Lacey as the truly scary Haiti. The scenes where Haiti, bent over her crystal ball, cackles maniacally at Claire (Maggie Kimberly in a thankless role—thank heavens she doesn’t exert herself too much here) are really quite bizarre and unnerving.
The accompanying documentary, The Beat Goes On is a hoot, and includes an interview with John J. Johnston, the Vice-Chair of The Egypt Exploration Society of London and a nice tribute to Australian composer Don Banks who scored the film.
Quatermass and the Pit
Directed by Roy Ward Baker who would go on to direct such Hammer classics as The Vampire Lovers (1970) and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde (1971), Quatermass and the Pit was, like so many Hammer films, a relatively low-budget production that looks a million dollars. It remains one of the few great British science fiction films, nearly of all of which tend to evince a unique mixture of science fiction with a Gothic sensibility. Hammer’s Quatermass and the Pit is no exception, with screenwriter Nigel Kneale’s narrative evoking both ghost story and alien invasion tropes to spectacular effect. In this manner it was tailor-made for the Hammer imprimatur.
The film is based on Kneale’s own teleplay for the BBC television series that was broadcast in 1958-59. This was the final television series featuring Professor Quatermass, following The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass II. All of these television series were adapted for film by Kneale from his TV scripts, and were produced by Hammer Films.
By general critical consensus, Hammer’s film of Quatermass and the Pit is the stand out adaptation. It adheres to the original television script closely, with only slight changes such as moving the action from an urban archaeological dig to an unused Tube station, the fictional Hobbs’s End.
The film opens with workers toiling underground at Hobb’s End, preparing an extension of the London Tube. Amongst the rubble they discover what appears to be a human skull, but a strangely deformed one. Soon after they find what appears to be an unexploded bomb. The bomb squad is called in, but they find it is unlike any bomb they have ever encountered. In fact, it seems to be impervious to any form of drill or cutting device, and appears to be much bigger than they had thought. Two scientists attend the excavation, much to the dismay of the British military. Dr. Matthew Roney (James Donald) and Professor Bernard Quatermass (Andrew Keir) examine the skulls and the mysterious object, with Ronay concluding that the deformed skulls are those of a previously unknown human ancestor and Quatermass concluding that the object is in fact an alien spacecraft. Quatermass further discovers that the skulls had their origin from within the spacecraft. Us, it turns out, is them.
With this classic SF set up, the film proceeds to explore the implications of a scenario that would have, I strongly suspect, a determining influence on Arthur C. Clarke’s and Kubrick’s screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film of which was released the following year. If you are familiar with both films, you will know exactly what I mean.
I will not give away any of the plot, as that would most certainly spoil the joys of this film. And there are many joys to had here, particularly if you like your science fiction dense with ideas and their extrapolations. But it is not all laboratories and pensive boffin foreheads in Quatermass and the Pit. For starters you have the always delightful presence of Barbara Shelly as Dr. Ronay’s assistant Barbara Judd. It is Ms. Judd who uncovers the lost history of Hobb’s End, the ancient sightings of strange stunted beings and the contemporary sightings of ghosts and goblins. And then there are the scenes of mass madness at the climax of the film. Okay, so I did give away a bit of the plot. But there is much, much more to chew on in this film, I assure you.
Kneale’s screenplay is the real star of Quatermass and the Pit. It is always on the move, restlessly exploring its ideas while creating scenes of high drama in which these ideas are brilliantly articulated. The film is spooky and exciting and wondrous all at the same time. There are not many science fiction films that can do that. In fact there are not many films that can do that, period.
The interviews that accompany this release are some of the most extended. Of particular interest is the interview with Judith Kerr, wife of Nigel Kneale, who reveals that the inspiration behind Quatermass and the Pit was the Notting Hill race riots of 1958. Evidently Kneale told her that the core idea behind Quatermass and the Pit was the same as Kerr’s novel, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit: a call for racial understanding and an end to violence in the name of difference.
Actor Julian Glover who plays Colonel Breen (the ‘obligatory asshole as he says of his role in the film), relates fascinating anecdotes not only about Quatermass and the Pit but also about his long career, including his role in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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Considering the obvious care and love with which these films have been restored, and the dedication in producing all the documentaries that accompany the films, it is clear that these Hammer Horrors have outlasted their critics and left an indelible impression on those who love this particular period of British cinema. For all fans of the gothic, these films are an absolute must.
Now, if only the new Hammer would direct its attention to the loving restoration of The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula….
Five out of Five Stars for the lot.
Dracula: Prince of Darkness
Director: Terence Fisher
Plague of the Zombies
Director: John Gilling
Quartermass & The Pit
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Rasputin: The Mad Monk
Director: Don Sharp
The Devil Rides Out
Director: Terence Fischer
The Reptile
Director: John Gilling
The Mummy’s Shroud
Director: John Gilling
Format: Blu-ray
Release: 6 March 2013
Distributor: Shock Entertainment
RRP: $24.99
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