Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)

It is 1872 and Dracula (Christopher Lee) is finally vanquished. Unfortunately, a cultist collected his ashes and moved the stake that dispatched him to a churchyard. Fast forward one hundred years and Dracula must face the greatest horror: insufferable young people!

The movie jarringly transitions from a rural setting to mod London. The cultist’s heir (the appropriately named Johnny Alucard) involves his friends in a ceremony to bring Dracula back to seek revenge.

This film spends the bulk of its time with the crowd of hipsters rather than Lee and Cushing. At first glance we hate Alucard (Christopher Neame), what with his top hat, felt jacket, and ruffles. We eventually learn that he is a recent addition to the group of friends. Jessica (Stephanie Beacham) is the good girl of the group and target of Dracula, being granddaughter of Peter Cushing’s Professor Van Helsing and a direct descendant of the original Van Helsing.

Jessica was initially intended to be the Professor’s daughter (34 year age difference) but Peter visibly aged after his wife passed the prior year. He looked much older than his 59 years. A picture of his wife is seen on the Professor’s desk. Why Jessica was living with her grandfather was never addressed.

Lee called the script “appalling”, perhaps because of his reduced role. The group of friends aren’t terribly likable. It’s unclear if they were supposed to resonate with the hip mod crowd or serve as commentary about them. Also, the stake that killed Dracula earlier in the film was left in a rural churchyard. A hundred years later it is still there, undisturbed, and now inside the London urban area. There are details which shouldn’t be analyzed very much. And the scene where the professor makes the connection between Alucard and Dracula is silly. Here he claims to be an expert of the occult but apparently never watched Son of Dracula.

Dracula A.D. 1972 isn’t much of a film. Perhaps not appalling, but also not interesting. Hammer wanted another Dracula film and everyone just went through the motions. AMRU 2.5.

Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)

Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing), having moved from his familial castle into a tastefully decorated townhouse, is working on a plan with his Dr. Watson to transfer the soul of a recently executed man into the body of his dead lover. What could possibly go wrong.

No longer content to build monsters from spare parts, the good Baron is now in the soul transference business, and the result is a hot chick out for revenge. And calling Thorley Walters’ Dr. Hertz “Doctor Watson” isn’t far off the mark, having played the Watson character several times on film and TV. 60’s party girl Susan Denberg plays our fetching reanimated corpse. Her film career was very brief before leaving it all behind. She was one of Mudd’s Women.

Frankenstein Created Woman is a fresh take on the story, but it's a horrorless horror film that lacks the sex appeal of contemporary Hammer films. Stylish with some appropriately good performances, but pretty bland overall. And apart from box office considerations, there is no reason to link it to the Frankenstein franchise. Cushing could just as easily have been playing Dr. Jekyll. Very much a lesser Hammer. AMRU 2.5.

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)

Sanna and two other women are being sacrificed to a glowy thing in the sky for the crime of being born with a blonde wig. But Sanna escapes and is rescued by the handsome Tara from another tribe. He is already paired with the beautiful Ayak, but blonde wig, am I right?

Soon Sanna is cast out by her new tribe because of the glowy thing in the sky, and befriends a dinosaur. Believing her dead, Tara goes about his life of dealing with dinosaur mayhem. It’s the classic story. Cave boy meets cave girl, cave boy loses cave girl …

An unofficial sequel to One Million Years B.C., it features all the tropes of the genre. Scantily clad cave people, nonsense language, throw-away story, hominids coexisting with dinosaurs, and scenes stolen from better pictures, this time The Lost World (1960). At first I thought for a G rated film, the women were wearing some seriously PG-13 costumes. Things escalated when the costumes came off. Only the American edit was G. Still …

The stop-motion dinosaurs and their interactions with the human cast (and not the lizards in prosthetics from The Lost World) were actually quite good, resulting in an Oscar nomination. And Victoria Vetri was quite beautiful. She had a small part in Rosemary’s Baby but her career would never fully take off. She would spend six years in prison for the attempted murder of her husband.

There’s not much else to say about the film. The story really is a nothing burger, not far afield of a modern rom-com. There are quite a few of these films, but I doubt I have the stamina to watch many more. That said, I kind of enjoyed it, even if it was more than a little forgettable. AMRU 3.

She (1965)

Three veterans from the great war, Professor Holly (Peter Cushing), young Leo (John Richardson), and manservant Job, are in Palestine for some reason. When trying to score with a young hottie, poor Leo is shanghaied. He awakes in a palace and is greeted by the beautiful Ayesha (Ursula Andress) who gives him a ring and tells him to give it back to her when they meet again. It’s unclear why. To help him find her again, She gives him a map to a lost Egyptian city that is less detailed than a Denny’s place mat.

So our heroes go looking for this lost city and meet up with trouble as well as the young hottie from the first act. Turns out She, that is Ayesha, is thousands of years old and has been waiting for the return of her departed love. Ayesha is She who waits. Does young Leo look exactly like her departed love? Of course he does.

Based on the same book as the 1935 version, it is one of a dozen or so adaptations. Being somewhat closer to the source material, the setting and initial motivation differ, but the story is essentially the same. Immortal queen from exotic culture waiting for the reincarnation of her dead lover, plus mentor, manservant, and humble hottie along in tow. Leo tries to resist but Ayesha is She who must be obeyed. 

I’m not a big fan of the Hammer aesthetic. The ancient buildings all look freshly painted and the flora look plastic. I mean, they are, but do they need to look like it? It takes away from the atmosphere and attitude that the better of the old time films had. In fairness their intent was to look different and to trade in a small serving of sex appeal and gore.

The source material is a story of Eurocentrism and unabashed colonialism. Originally set in the African interior, Ayesha was the White Queen amongst, you know, those people. Now moved to Egypt and pretty much everyone in the lost city are honkies. Toned down somewhat for sixties audiences, it becomes more a story of the aggressive woman, sexually and politically. Something men of all times fear, Victorian era, the teens, the 60’s, and even today.

She (1965), as it stands, is fairly nonsensical. Why give Leo a ring for him to give right back (and then not take it)? Christopher Lee has so little to do it was a waste to even cast him. Ayesha is irresistibly alluring as well as frighteningly terrible, but we don’t really see it. They tried to touch on smaller story elements that you just can’t explore properly in a 100 minute film. As is, it’s an amusing distraction. Andress is great and all, but for my money I would have stuck with the hottie Ustane. AMRU 3.

The Mummy (1959)

A noted archaeologist plunders … I mean excavates the tomb of a beautiful Egyptian princess. While his young son (middle-aged Peter Cushing) nurses a broken leg, an Egyptian in a fez warns dad not to desecrate the burial site lest he incur the wrath of Karnak. But desecraters will be desecraters. Dad is alone in the tomb when something happens and he spends the next three years in a home for the mentally disordered (been there). Finally dad explains that he was reading a Scroll of Life he found when a mummy came out of nowhere and attacked him. The game is afoot.

I have never been too charmed by these Hammer horror updates. They are a brightly colored, slightly sexy and bloody, simplified versions of the originals, and The Mummy is no different. What they add in blood and cleavage they lose in creepy atmosphere. Here the story elements are mostly stolen from various Universal Mummy films with little new added. So, why was I so immensely entertained by it? The best reason I can figure is that after watching The Love Wanga, the high quality print, bright set pieces, flowery language, and decent acting was a very welcome change. There was no question how the story would end, only the details.

Once again Christopher Lee plays the monster while Cushing plays our hero. Kharis is doomed to stand guard over his beloved Princess because he tried to use that very same Scroll of Life to bring her back after she was embalmed, and if you saw the sexy, sexy embalming scene, you’d understand. Gosh, is Cushing’s lovely bride the spitting image of Kharis' long dead Princess? Of course she is.

Lee looks great at the Mummy. Distinctive from the Universal movies and downright menacing. Sure, the ending is dumb and it has the cleanest, least ornate, and most brightly lit ancient tomb on film, but I loved every second of it. The Mummy is by no means a great film. IMDb rates it lower than the Frankenstein and Dracula efforts, but based on my reaction on the night I watched, I rate it a bit higher. AMRU 4.

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

An Xperimental rocket lands in an English farm. What went up with three astronauts came down with only one and two empty space suits. Our heroic pilot Victor can't talk to explain what happened. Chaos reigns as things go from bad to worse.

The spelling of Xperiment is explained by this being the first Sci-Fi film to earn an X rating. Apparently that meant something different in 1955 Britain. British films lacked the polish and style of Hollywood which gives them a certain charm. Another difference is their choice for protagonist. In America he would be a young hotshot or a thirty-something hunk, with a love interest either way. Here he’s a fifty-something bombastic professor who bullies everyone into doing what he wants. In real life he would have been taken into custody on day one.

Here we find that annoying Sci-Fi trope where the mystery is explained by two minutes of speculative, ridiculous exposition that makes sense to nobody, and the audience is expected to accept it without question. Nothing further happens in the film to support or better explain this hypothesis.

The Quatermass Xperiment was based on a TV mini-series and spawned a series of TV and feature film sequels. They tried rebooting it in 2005 to less than spectacular results. It’s interesting, maybe counter intuitive, to continually make feature film versions of television productions, but that’s what seems to have happened here. Don’t we usually do it the other way around? TV and film reboots happened so often I’m not certain they are part of the same Quatermass universe.

Let’s get back to what a jerk our hero really is. Quatermass launches the rocket without authorization because he's impatient. And every decision he makes along the way seems to be incidental to the safety and well being of the people around him. How is this our hero?

1950’s British level production quality, interesting concept, short enough not to bore me. Pilot Victor's makeup was creepily effective (although wife didn't mention anything about his looks) and the final monster was quite good. The story? Well, it was almost interesting enough to be a Dr. Who episode. AMRU 3.

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

Some rich dude (Christopher Lee) and his buddy Rex discover that a young friend has joined a satanic cult. Our hero uses every method illegal to save him from a fate worse than freedom of religion. He calls up all sorts of arcane knowledge and artifacts to rescue him. And some chick.

Seldom did Lee play the hero (although I’d argue he was the hero of The Wicker Man) and here I could argue he was the villain playing a confidence game convincing his dim-witted friends and relatives of a non-existent danger. He asserts with authority how every action and object is part of satanic activity without providing much evidence, and bullies the doubters. Of course Satan IS at work. Hammer isn’t that deep, but for a while I was tempted to doubt the premise.

Renamed “The Devil’s Bride” for American audiences so we wouldn’t think it was a Western. Here as the lead satanist is Charles Gray who also played Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever (1971) and a Criminologist in some other film.

The Devil Rides Out was released at the start of a satanic panic that spanned the 1970’s and 80’s. Fanatical Christians went crazy seeing the work of the devil behind every activity, starting baseless lawsuits and ruining reputations. Mediocre films like this fed into the nonsense that sometimes rears its ugly head today.

But to be fair, it’s not a terrible film. It had a larger budget than most Hammers and Lee’s favorite of his films. But it is very two dimensional story-wise. Bad guy is bad, good guy is good, and the action is moved forward by the other characters being stupid. Also, they are menaced by a spider that is translucent in the wide shots. In the tight shots they did a close up of a tarantula crawling on a miniature set, which looked exactly like a close up of a tarantula crawling on a miniature set. Sometimes it’s better to forgo the effect if it doesn’t work.

Not scary, not terribly interesting. Just passable by my standards. AMRU 3.

Countess Dracula (1971)

The aging Countess Elizabeth (Ingrid Pitt) gets the hots for a young soldier at her husband’s funeral. Soon she discovers that the blood of a virgin girl makes her skin look young again (by apparently washing away her silly-putty makeup) so she decides to impersonate her own daughter and woo the young man. Complications arise when she learns she must frequently re-apply the virgin-girl-blood, which villagers aren’t very keen about. They weren’t fond of her to begin with.

The main conflict resolves around General Dobi, who loves Elizabeth as she is (rich), the young soldier Imre Toth, who loves who he thinks is the Countess’ daughter, and Elizabeth herself, obsessed with youth and sexy-time. Toth is the closest thing we have to a protagonist so we kinda root for him. But Dobi, cruel and self serving as he is, isn’t without virtue. And we can even relate to Elizabeth’s obsession. Also, sexy-time.

Most of your Hammer Horror weapons are at play here, most notably copious blood and the flashing of cleavage. What doesn’t work are the set which look like that of a stage play, and the makeup and costumes, which are about as convincing as your average Monty Python skit. At one point I could see the tape holding a character’s beard on. And while the 30-something Pitt was quite fetching, I don’t think anyone would mistake her for a nineteen year old. See The Vampire Lovers for context.

Our Countess Elizabeth is a version of the historical Elizabeth Báthory from Hungary and not related to Dracula nor a vampire at all. Much like Pitt’s previous film, it reads like a mediocre costume drama with minor horror elements and brief nudity. By no means a waste of time, but between the two, Vampire Lovers is slightly better, and I’d rewatch neither. AMRU 3.

One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Our story begins One Million Years B.C., or 1,001,966 years before the films release, which is an oddly specific date. As the narrator says, this is when the Earth was just beginning. The Earth is 4,543,000,000 years old, so this was when it was a mere 4,541,998,034 years old, which too is an oddly specific date. So, actually, the story begins with us completely dispensing with the idea of it making any scientific or logical sense.

The Rock Tribe, peopled with brunettes, is brutal and warlike. Our hero Tumak is cast out of the tribe during one of their nonsensical grunting and grabbing ceremonies. He finds a cave with water and some sort of indoor pine tree that produces edible fruit, but he has to leave when the Morlocks come. Later he stumbles onto another tribe. Not sure what they were called. The narrator had given up by then. They carried shells with them, so let's call them the SHELL tribe! Yea, that works.

Anyhow, the Shell Tribe is peopled by blonds who make their cave comfortable and inviting. Totally interior decorators, these people are. They are nice and treat this injured new human. He can't stop his grunty and grabby ways, so off he goes with hot Loana (Raquel Welch) in tow. Have we heard this before? Why yes, as it is a remake of the 1940 One Million B.C., a film with basically no dialog, and the story was copied almost verbatim! They added a few more monster fight scenes, and had the talents of Ray Harryhausen, but the end result was amazingly similar.

So, the question is, did this film need to be remade? All it added was color, slightly better effects, and more cleavage. Otherwise it was quite dull. But let's hand it to Hammer Films. It was a HUGE money maker and movie poster is absolutely iconic. Although noticed in Fantastic Voyage, this was this film that made Raquel an international sex symbol.

Having seen the original, I felt I needed to see the remake. Maybe I would have liked it more had the order been reversed, but that's not what happened. Raquel's boobies not-with-standing, this is a fairly uninteresting movie. AMRU 2.5.

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

The good doctor (Peter Cushing) is in prison waiting execution when he tells his story to a priest, and it goes something like this: Young Victor is rich, becomes an rich orphan, is brilliant, hires a tutor, somehow grows older than his tutor, then starts playing with things God did not intend. Then he goes to jail ...

The original took serious liberties with the source material, and Hammer films were threatened with a lawsuit if any of it's story or images were copied. So, we are left with the elements brilliant and privileged scientist, taking science too far, creation of a monster, and bad consequences. Mix elements thoroughly and bake for 45 minutes and you get a new version of Frankenstein. Or Jekyll and Hyde. Same deal.

TCM played a pile of Christopher Lee films a couple weeks after his passing. Because interesting films on TCM come in waves, I had filled my DVR with good stuff and had to be very selective what I saved. This was the lone Lee film that made the cut.

Formal, stilted acting, mostly unoriginal story, and a complete lack of actual scares or surprises is mostly saved by decent set design and photography, and Lee's performance. Very much a Hammer production. AMRU 3.5.

Christopher Lee: "I've got no lines!"
Peter Cushing: "You're lucky. I've read the script."

Horror of Dracula (1958)

Amateur vampire sleuths Harker (Nobody) and Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) look to end the reign of the evil count.

You know the basic premise. Here, we mix up the characters (Harker is betrothed to Lucy and Mina is married to Arthur) change the details (Transylvania? Never heard of it), lose Renfield, and film it in color. Now Drac has fangs and there is blood to spurt. No ta-tas like in later Hammer films, but it's a start.

Despite the campy feel, I liked this complete reinterpretation of the story. So many of these films are unofficial remakes anyhow, it's nice when it's done well. Fairly well, anyhow. And because it was such a departure from the classic story, you tend to throw the book comparison conversation out the window from the get-go. Christopher Lee makes for a better than average count, starting off as the dashing and mysterious type before showing himself to be the fiend he is.

Hmmm ... what more to say .... The title was changed from simply Dracula in America for the best reason I've seen so far: Bela's classic was still bouncing around theaters and they wanted to avoid confusion. I accept that. Arthur is played by Michael Gough, whom dedicated readers may remember from Horrors of the Black Museum but actually from Batman. Gosh, that's about it. AMRU 3.5.

The Vampire Lovers (1970)

How sexy horror is done right. Well, mostly. Ingrid Pitt is a vampire that somehow gets entreated into the home of rich people with hot daughters. She gains the trust of said daughter, then proceeds to get it on, Vampire style. Mostly that means bite her and make everybody wonder what is making their precious daughter so sick. Peter Cushing plays dad #1.

I'm sure I've seen others, but since blogging this is the first Hammer film. Lush but cheesy sets and costumes, clumsy dialog, sexy sub-plot. I watch worse. Controversial when it came out because of the lesbian subtext (she bites girls on their boob!), it is barley soft core by today's standards.

Here are a few things I want to make fun of: Ingrid Pitt (Marcilla/Carmilla/Mircalla), while hot, was way older than the 19 years her gravestone had her out. Vampirism takes a bit out of you, I suppose. The title presumes that two vampires are in love. Actually one vampire is trying to seduce the daughters, but their real motive is blood. Am I being picky? Am I? Yes, Fred, you are being picky.

I enjoyed it, but have to say if fell flat in the horror department. It read more like a costume drama with bad dialog. Still, I give it an AMRU 3.

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

My oldest is a fan of Sherlock Holmes. So was I back in the day. I thought he might enjoy watching Grand Moff Tarkin and Count Dooku. He never got the chance. No television if you can't do your homework. The day before it was due, I watched it alone.

To be honest, I was a little iffy on this. I never read the story and really think Basil Rathbone when I think Holmes, and the 1939 treatment is really the definitive one. That said, Peter Cushing made for a better than fair Holmes.

Christopher Lee is Sir Henry, the heir to the Baskerville estate. He became the air when dear Sir Charles passes away, possibly done in by an evil hound. Seems this hound has made a habit of chowing down on the Baskerville heirs, starting many years ago with Sir Hugo, in punishment for slicing up this servant girl, who totally deserved it, what with her not wanting to be his whore and running away and all. Anyhow, family friend and physician Dr. Mortimer hires Sherlock to investigate.

Well, there is an attempt on Henry's life, an escaped convict, an abandoned mine, a hot crazy chick, and lots of good old fashioned Holmesian dialog. I understand there were some significant changes from the book, but again, I never read it. Maybe I will. Certainly I'll watch more Sherlock Holmes. Unfortunately, with the exception of some TV work, Cushing never did Holmes again.

Not overly thrilling but engrossing never-the-less. I'm sorry my boy had to miss it. Maybe I'll get it again. AMRU 3.5.