Scream of Fear (1961)

... aka: Ein Toter spielt Klavier (A Dead Man Plays the Piano)

... aka: Kyôfu (Fear)

... aka: La casa del terrore (The House of Terror)

... aka: Pelon tunne (A Feeling of Fear)

... aka: Taste of Fear, A

... aka: Un grito de terror (A Scream of Terror)

Directed by:

Seth Holt

Director Seth Holt started out as an actor before transitioning into editing at Ealing Studios, where he worked as an assistant (usually sans credit) on such classics as Dead of Night (1945) and, one of my personal favorites, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1948). From there, he moved on to primary editing, producing and, finally, a single shot at directing (the crime drama Nowhere to Go) at Ealing before the studio was absorbed by the BBC in the late 1950s. While Nowhere to Go was a box office flop and critical failure, it was enough to get his foot in the door with Hammer, who hired him for Scream of Fear (originally titled Taste of Fear). Instead of suffering from a sophomore slump, Scream was both a commercial and critical success in the UK, U.S. and throughout much of Europe. Despite that, he'd have a difficult time securing directing jobs until his death and was involved in a number of projects that either ultimately got assigned to other filmmakers or were abandoned altogether.

Holt is almost exclusively known these days for a trio of genre films he was able to make with Hammer, which also included the excellent The Nanny (1965) starring Bette Davis, and the lesser but still not bad Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971), which he was never able to finish because he died of a sudden and unexpected heart attack at the age of just 47 (producer Michael Carreras had to step in and complete the final week of shooting). What's obvious in retrospect is that he clearly should have been given far more chances to direct than he was, and Hammer in particular should have utilized him far more than what they did.

Having spent ten years away in Italy, wheelchair-bound Penny Appleby (Susan Strasberg), who was crippled in a horse-riding accident, returns to France to stay with her estranged father (Fred Johnson). Expecting him to meet her at the airport, she's surprised to instead see he's sent his chauffeur Robert (Ronald Lewis, who also starred in William Castle's MR. SARDONICUS this same year) to retrieve her. On the drive to the family villa, Robert informs Penny that her father went away four days earlier, he doesn't know where he went, doesn't know when he'll be back and that he has recently been ill but is now apparently doing better, at least well enough to travel abroad.

Upon arriving at her new home, Penny meets her stepmother Jane (Ann Todd) for the very first time and, bucking the evil stepmother stereotype, she seems friendly, affectionate, compassionate and even a bit motherly. They've transformed the father's sitting room into a bedroom for her, purchased new furnishings, put in ramps for her chair and even installed a buzzer that rings down to the kitchen and the parents' bedroom if she ever needs anything. As for the whereabouts of the father, Jane informs her that he went out out of town on a "business deal," even though she pleaded with him not to. Seeing how he's not seen her for an entire decade, it's basically impossible for Penny to not feel just a little hurt by his absence.

Penny has recently been through a lot of trauma and is in an especially vulnerable, perhaps even emotionally unstable, state. She didn't want to leave Italy, which has been her home since her parent's divorce, but felt she had no other choice after the passing of her mother and then the death of her nurse / best friend (perhaps even lover) in a mysterious drowning accident. After losing the two closest people to her, she grew depressed and suicidal, and that's when she received a letter from her father asking for her to return to France. It doesn't take her long to regret taking him up on the offer.

Her first night there, she gets up to fix a rattling shutter, sees a candlelight flickering in the summer house across the courtyard and goes to investigate. Inside, she's startled to discover what appears to be the corpse of her father. Panicking, she tries to wheel away and ends up falling into a swimming pool. She's saved by Robert and, when she awakens, she's being tended to by local physician Dr. Pierre Gerrard (Christopher Lee), who also happens to be her father's personal doctor (and his chess buddy). Robert had made mention already that Gerrard has recently been a regular presence in the home, and he appears to be plotting something with the stepmother. Determined to prove she's not a "mental defective," Penny insists they all go to where she saw the corpse, but no body is there and everyone claims the summer house is always kept locked up, anyway.

Unlike most other victimized, weepy heroines in films like this, Penny is refreshingly not about to just roll over and play the victim. While she's emotional and a bit neurotic, she's also smart, plucky, headstrong and maintains her wits. She knows what she sees isn't a delusion, senses some scheming going on behind her back and acts accordingly, approaching everyone around her with suspicion and distrust. She snoops around. She asks questions. She refuses pills from Dr. Gerrard, starts growing a bit distant from Jane and, while Robert seems like a potential ally (and a potential love interest), she has her apprehensions about him, as well. She's also careful about giving certain characters information that may conceivably be used against her, including additional sightings of her father's corpse around the house. Strasberg is one of those actresses who usually doesn't make an overwhelmingly positive nor negative impression on me, but she's pretty wonderful in this particular role.

Though Lee spoke highly of this film and the director in interviews, and said it was perhaps Hammer's best overall production, he's interestingly the weakest link of the central cast. That's due in part to his failed attempt at a French accent and in part to the fact his character simply isn't all that interesting. Thankfully, the other three stars are all great. Lewis is extremely magnetic as the chauffeur and had all that it took to become an A List leading man. Sadly, that never happened due to his alcoholism, which eventually led to bad press, troubles with the law, divorces, bankruptcy and a damaged career, culminating in his suicide in the early 80s. Often unfairly overlooked here is Todd, who gives an excellent performance; perhaps the best performance. The way she uses subtle facial expressions and body language to show cracks beneath the surface of her warm, caring exterior tells you this woman was a complete pro.

In addition to the strong direction and acting, this excels in the screenplay department too, with fine dialogue, characterizations and plotting. Just when you think you're getting a handle on what's going on and working out who's conspiring with who to get what (a sizable inheritance is naturally at stake), Jimmy Sangster's script pulls the rug out from under you and unleashes some genuine surprises in the last 20 or so minutes. These aren't surprises pulled out of thin air either, but one's carefully built into the story. This is also a handsome looking film. Multi-BAFTA winner and three time Oscar nominee Douglas Slocombe (who'd go on to work with Steven Spielberg, Roman Polanski and other notables) does a great job shooting it, using lots of low lighting, shadows and lush soft focus. Other production people, from composer Clifton Parker to production designer Bernard Robinson, offer up strong work, as well.

This film's success led Hammer to branch out from their usual period-set classic monster movies to produce more modern psychological genre films. The initial cycle of these (there would be another in the early 70s) included Maniac, Paranoiac (both 1963), Nightmare (1964), Fanatic (aka Die! Die! My Darling!), Hysteria and the aforementioned The Nanny (all 1965). Though some of these are better than others, all of them are at least decent.

Released theatrically here in the U.S. by Columbia (who also handled the British, Canadian and Mexican releases), this then turned up on home video (with rather horrible-looking box art) by RCA / Columbia in 1989. Since, there have been quite a few Blu-ray and DVD releases, including from Sony (as part of their "Icons of Horror" series) and Mill Creek (as part of their "Hammer Horror Collection" series).

Easily besting the above is the 2019 BR release on the UK label Indicator ("Volume Four" in their Hammer line of box sets). It not only comes with three other films; THE REVENGE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1958), THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL (1960) and The Damned (1962), plus plenty of accompanying materials for each of those, but also a wealth of Scream of Fear extras. Included are over three hours of archival interview material with Sangster (some video, some audio), an 82-minute archival audio interview with Slocombe, new interviews with Desmond Davis (the camera operator) and John Crome (the assistant sound editor), a rare condensed Super 8 version, profiles on actress Todd and composer Parker, a 36-page booklet and much, much more.

★★★1/2

Blood of the Vampire (1958)

... aka: Der Dämon mit den blutigen Händen (The Demon with the Bloody Hands)

... aka: El venganza del vampiro (Vengeance of the Vampire)

... aka: In de macht van de vampier (In the Power of the Vampire)

Directed by:

Henry Cass

You ever wondered what the very first horror film made commercially available on home video was? Apparently it was this one, which was issued on both Betamax and VHS all the way back in 1978 by an early label called Magnetic Video. That makes this of some historical significance and also probably explains why the Magnetic release is a big collector's item now that sells for about 100 bucks on Ebay. Blood was made by the short-lived production company Artistes Alliance Ltd., who were also responsible for The Cosmic Monsters (1958) and The Giant Behemoth (1959), and clearly green lit due to the massive theatrical success of Hammer's THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957). This was actually in production at around the same time as Hammer's inaugural vampire film HORROR OF DRACULA (1958), though it wouldn't make it to theaters until three months later. Due to the fact it's a British Gothic horror film shot in color, written by Jimmy Sangster and has a period setting, good production values and several actors the studio would later use, this has often been mistaken for a Hammer film.

Things open in 1874 as a group of men haul a shrouded corpse high up the Carpathian Mountains in Transylvania. One of the men drives a stake through the corpse's heart and all but the gravedigger tasked to bury the body leave. A mysterious figure watching the proceedings from the brush then kills the gravedigger and steals the corpse. The killer turns out to be Carl (Victor Maddern), the crippled, mute, droopy-eyed and facially disfigured henchman of a scientist rumored by villagers to be a vampire. Carl enlists the aid of a scuzzy alcoholic doctor (Cameron Hall) to perform a heart transplant (!) on the vamp. After he's done with that and demands more money for the operation, Carl simply stabs him to death.

We then jump ahead six years to Carlstadt. In a courtroom, brilliant young surgeon John Pierre (Vincent Ball) is being tried on malpractice / murder before the medical board for attempting a blood transfusion as a last ditch attempt to save a dying patient's life. Despite being innocent, a letter from a colleague (which he strongly suspects has been forged) incriminates him and he's found guilty by a judge (John Le Mesurier) and sentenced to an island prison for life. Before being transported to the island, however, he's taken out of his holding cell, thrown into a carriage and whisked away far into the woods to a mountaintop castle doubling as a prison / asylum for the criminally insane. There, he's roughed up by sadistic, snarling main guard Wetzler (Andrew Faulds) and thrown into a rat-infested cell, where his new cellmate Kurt Urach (William Devlin) informs him that the guard is "the least of the evils you have to contend with here" and that the asylum itself is "the bottomless pit of hell." Sounds reassuring.

Lashings, beatings and mysterious disappearances are the order of the day at the asylum. Prisoners are threatened by vicious dogs in spiked collars and are forced to do manual labor, which involves digging holes in a graveyard that's already so full that bodies have to be buried on top of bodies. Everyone seems in fear of Dr. Callistratus (the amazingly-eyebrowed Donald Wolfit), who is deemed "absolute lord and master" As it turns out, Callistratus has arranged for John Pierre to be sent there after hearing of his crime. The blood transfusion part especially interests him. He immediately puts John to work identifying and classifying the various blood groups in his lab, using fellow prisoners as blood donors, with the end goal being finding a cure for a rare and peculiar blood disorder that he suffers from. For cooperating, Dr. Pierre is given special privileges (having his manacles removed so he can walk around freely) and better accommodations (his own vermin-free bedroom).

Meanwhile, Dr. Pierre's lovely fiancee, Madeleine Duvaal (Barbara Shelley), manages to prove the letter that put her love away is a forgery and demands he be released. Not so easy considering prison commissioner / inspector Monsieur Auron (Bryan Coleman) is being paid off by Callistratus and is actually the one who intercepted and forged the fake letter to begin with. After Pierre and Kurt attempt to break out, Kurt is killed by the dogs and Callistratus falsely sends back word that Pierre has also been killed. Not believing it, Madeleine gets a job there to replace the former housekeeper (Barbara Burke), who was found snooping around in the cellar where most of the grislier experiments have been taking place.

Despite the title, this is a very non-traditional "vampire" tale. There are no fangs here nor any blood drinking nor supernatural powers nor any of your usual vampire mythology. The villain is simply a mad scientist who's been resurrected from the dead with a heart transplant but now suffers from a disorder that requires him to receive blood transfusions. While the lack of traditional vampire movie tropes has been known to disappoint certain viewers, if you know what you're getting yourself into here, this really isn't bad at all. There's a lot of gloomy, gray, oppressive atmosphere within the grimy stone-and-steel prison, it's briskly paced, fairly well-plotted and all of the technical aspects, from the make-up to the photography to the art direction, are professionally handled. In addition, the cast all do a good job, particularly Wolfit and Maddern in the showier roles. I almost gave this three stars except the finale was too predictable and thus a little underwhelming.

Faulds, who also appeared in small supporting parts in The Crawling Eye (1958), The Flesh and the Fiends (1960) and Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), would later go into politics and, as a member of the Labour Party, served in Britain's House of Commons from 1966 to 1997. He passed away in 2000. This was also an early genre role for Shelley, who'd go on to earn the title "First Lady of British Horror" for her various appearances in horror films, including a number for Hammer. Director Cass also made the ghost comedy Castle in the Air (1952) and The Hand (1960). Promotional materials for the film show several other scantily-clad ladies chained up in the cellar, though none are actually in the film.

Unlike many other genre releases of the time, this received fairly good reviews upon release with a number of critics appreciating its offbeat plotting and production values. Contemporary viewers, I've noticed, haven't been quite as kind for some reason. After its initial VHS release, Vampire seemed to all but disappear for decades. Later prints of this Eastmancolor film that were circulated around were severely washed out and had a drab, reddish hue to them, though that issue has since been fixed with subsequent releases. In the U.S. this was released to theaters on a double bill with Monster on the Campus (1958). The first DVD release through Dark Sky in 2006 paired it with the swashbuckling adventure The Hellfire Club (1961), which was co-directed by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman; the producers of Blood of the Vampire. Berman also shot this.

★★1/2