Crimson Cult, The (1968)

... aka: Black Horror: le messe nere
... aka: Crimson Altar, The
... aka: Curse of the Crimson Altar
... aka: Curse of the Crimson Cult
... aka: Reincarnation, The
... aka: Spirit of the Dead
... aka: Witch House, The

Directed by:
Vernon Sewell

Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele and Michael Gough all in one horror film? Pinch me, I'm dreaming. Directed by the same man who brought us the ho hum Ghost Ship (1952) and the atrocious THE BLOOD BEAST TERROR (1968), which star Peter Cushing claimed was his worst-ever horror film in interviews? I guess I'll keep my expectations low. Following the opening credits is a quote from an unnamed "Medical Journal" which tells us that the combination of hallucinogenic drugs and hypnosis may "induce the subject to perform actions he may not normally commit." This is immediately followed by a Satanic black mass set in a green-lit dungeon featuring a topless blonde with strategically placed hair getting whipped by a dominatrix wearing pasties, a woman holding a chicken, a man with a goat and a muscle man blacksmith prepping a red hot branding iron. Steele, looking extremely striking in green face paint and a feathered ram's horn headdress, pops in and announces herself as "Lavinia, Keeper of the Black Secret" in an echo voice. She instructs Peter Manning (Denys Peek) on what he needs to do, which is sign his soul away to Satan, stab the blonde sacrifice and then get branded to seal their pact.

After receiving an odd letter from Peter, his brother Robert (Mark Eden), who runs an antique shop in London, decides to head on down to Greymarshe to see if he can locate his missing sibling. He's just in time for "Witch's Night;" an annual celebration in the area that involves games, fireworks, a burning of a witch effigy and, of course, parties. While driving down an old country road he runs right into a panicked blonde in a pink mesh body stocking being chased by a car. That turns out to just be a "sophisticated game of hide and seek." On to Craxted Lodge he goes, where a wild shindig is well underway. Young folks guzzle down champagne, smoke weed and dance, and this happens to be the second 1968 British horror film I've seen in a week to contain body painting (the other being CORRUPTION), which must have been the in-thing in swingin' Brit culture at the time. Robert runs into the blonde again. She introduces herself as Eve (Virginia Wetherell) and she's the niece of the man Robert came there to see; J.D. Morley (Lee).

Despite numerous clues suggesting the contrary, J.D. claims to have never seen Robert's brother, but offers up a place for Robert to the next few days while he searches for him. John Marshe (Karloff), a professor, witchcraft expert and collector of instruments of torture, shows up in a wheelchair to tell our hero all about the witch and explains that there's always been a link between those who burnt Lavinia at the stake in 1652 and those who've mysteriously died in the area. While staying in Craxted, Robert keeps receiving warnings to get out from neurotic dim-wit butler Elder (a wasted Gough) and then starts having bizarre nightmares involving psychedelic / kaleidoscopic swirls, his brother calling out to him and Lavinia trying to force him to sign a book in blood before stabbing him. After one such dream, he even wakes with a real wound on his arm. Robert, with help from Eve, must piece together the clues before he ends up just like his dearly departed brother.

Things look very good thanks to talented cinematographer John Coquillon and all of the actors do what they can but there's only so much that can be done to try to overcome a poor screenplay and a certain overworked, predictable blandness this entire film possesses. Neither the plot nor the characters are adequately developed and the ending feels rushed in how it attempts (and fails) to tie up all the loose ends. Steele, who looks fantastic and is just perfect in these kind of roles, and Karloff, who is given most of the humorous lines, probably come off best amongst the principles, though they, Lee and Gough are strictly supporting players despite the billing order. While shooting this in January, 1968 under freezing conditions, supposedly poor Boris (who was 81 years old at the time) developed pneumonia and never quite recovered from it. That makes frigid outdoor scenes of the feeble actor - steam exiting his mouth after each line - more than just a little sad to sit through.

Curse of the Crimson Altar first hit U.S. theaters in 1970 under the title The Crimson Cult. For this initial American release, some of the kinkier moments (like the lady with the whip) and Wetherell's brief nude scenes were removed so it could secure a PG rating. All of those scenes have since been reinserted for the DVD version. Though the credits say it was based on a story by Jerry Sohl, it's actually partially based on H.P. Lovecraft's story "The Dreams in the Witch House." The cast also includes Rupert Davies in a brief role as a vicar, Rosemarie Reede as a secretary, Michael Warren as Basil, a mute, black-clad man in sunglasses who pushes Karloff's character around and Roger Avon as a skeptical police sergeant.

It was made for executive producer Tony Tenser's Tigon British Film Productions, who tried to compete with what rivals Amicus and Hammer were up to at the same time with such films as THE SORCERERS (1967) starring Karloff, Witchfinder General (1968) starring Vincent Price, THE BEAST IN THE CELLAR (1970), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971) with Linda Hayden, DOOMWATCH (1972) and THE CREEPING FLESH (1973) with Cushing and Lee.

★★

Horrors of the Black Museum (1959)

... aka: Crimes in the Black Museum
... aka: Das schwarze Museum (The Black Museum)

... aka: Die Folterkammer des Teufels (The Devil's Torture Chamber)

Directed by:
Arthur Crabtree

During the memorably nasty opening sequence, a woman receives an anonymous package with a pair of binoculars inside, tries them out and then gets her eyeballs poked out by retractable blades hidden inside. It's the third brutal murder of a London female in just two weeks. Sensationalist writer Edmond Bancroft (Michael Gough) finds it all "fiendishly clever." Bancroft, who "eats, drinks and sleeps crime," taunts the Scotland Yard detectives handling the case and hobbles around on a cane chain-smoking Tibetan cigars, seems eager to write it all up. While he makes a ton of money dishing out the sordid details to the public, the murders are oddly enough having a strange physical effect on him that even his physician Dr. Ballan (Gerald Andersen) doesn't quite understand. After each killing, Edmond goes into a deep, though temporary, state of shock. Because his patient "manifests a high state of unnatural excitement" discussing death, Dr. Ballan believes he should be committed to a nuthouse... and he is, of course, correct in his assumption.

In the cellar of Bancroft's home is a large museum dedicated to murder and the macabre; one so elaborate he thinks it even makes a mockery of Scotland Yard's famed "Black Museum." In Edmond's personal collection are mannequins acting out various bloody death and torture scenes, tons of antique murder weapons adorning the walls and even a huge computer system. Edmond wants to demonstrate to the world that his "weapons can be used again and again... and that the murderer will never be caught," so he's been sending out his young assistant Rick (Graham Curnow), who has what Edmond refers to as "the gift of obedience,"  to murder women.

In between orchestrating his killings, Edmond's been keeping a drunken blonde trollop, Joan (June Cunningham), cooped up in an apartment he pays for. When sugar daddy refuses to give her extra spending money, the two get into a hilarious fight where he comments on her lack of "service polish" and she calls him an "ugly cripple." After getting drunk and dancing to a Rockola jukebox for a bar full of leering men, Joan returns home and hops into bed, only to quickly a little too late that Rick has turned her headboard into a makeshift guillotine.

Right as Edmond is about to make another kind of killing with his new true crime book "Terror After Dark," an unhinged man attempts to steal his thunder by erroneously confessing to the crimes. To remedy the situation, Edmond kills an antique store owner (Beatrice Varley) who's trying to blackmail him with a giant pair of ice tongs (!) and then electrocutes his shrink and dissolves the body in a vat of acid. He usually leaves the dirty work up to poor Rick, who's certainly not the brightest bulb in the shed and sits back and allows Edmond to give him a "treatment" (injection of green gunk) that turns him into a lumpy face killer. Rick's secretly dating Angela (Shirley Ann Field) but when Edmond finds out about it, he tells Rick that women are "a vicious, unreliable breed" and then instructs him to kill her on the Tunnel of Love ride at the Funfair.

So this is not a good movie. Much of the dialogue is cringe-worthy, the story line is all over the place, several of the supporting performances are flagrantly awful and it was filmed in early Cinemascope color (by Desmond Dickinson), so the whole thing has this really ugly, murky, muted look. Thankfully, Gough (who headlined KONGA [1961] and BLACK ZOO [1963] for the same production company) is around and steers this dreary little number right into camp territory by going hilariously over-the-top throughout. I love this guy. He's always great playing heartless, hateful and extremely smug sociopaths and here he cranks his performance up to a 20 when it really requires about a 7. Sometimes chewing the scenery is the way to go, and Gough knew when and when not to do it. And boy was it needed here. He's about the only thing to breath any life into this one.

Geoffrey Keen and John Warwick co-star as the detectives, Herman Cohen co-wrote and was the executive producer, Samuel Z. Arkoff was an uncredited producer and future director Jim O'Connolly (who made the amusing Joan Crawford vehicle BERSERK! [1967]; which also featured Gough) was the production manager.

★★

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)

... aka: Blood Suckers, The
... aka: Die Todeskarten des Dr. Schreck
... aka: Le train des épouvantes (Train of Terrors)

Directed by:
"Freddy" (Freddie) Francis

Neither the best nor the worst anthology from either Amicus or director Francis. The film is generally well-made, the cast is good and it's entertaining, but it also suffers from trying to cram too many stories (five of 'em, plus a lengthy framework) into just an hour and a half. This results in three of the five tales being sadly underdeveloped. Late one evening, five different well-groomed men board the same compartment on a train for presumably an all-night trip. Mysterious occult / metaphysics expert Dr. Schreck (Peter Cushing, with fake caterpillar eyebrows and a German accent) becomes the sixth. A few of the men help Scheck pick up his belongings after he drops his bag and notice he's in possession of a deck of tarot cards. Franklyn Marsh (Christopher Lee) labels it "nonsense" and accuses Schreck of being a charlatan, but the other men are interested in having their fortunes told. All they have to do is tap the cards three times, then they're shuffled and dealt. The first four cards foretell destiny and the fifth gives him the knowledge to change it if he so chooses. Well, unless it's already too late.

After selling his ancestral house, located on a foggy island, architect Jim Dawson (Neil McCallum) gets the opportunity to go back to help its new owner - wealthy and attractive widow Deirdre Biddolph (Ursula Howells) - with some alterations. She wants to tear down a wall to create a large room to showcase her deceased archeologist husband's collection of artifacts. Also living there are a groundskeeper Caleb (Peter Madden) and his granddaughter Valda (Katy Wild), who both lurk around acting mighty suspicious. Jim gets to work on the renovation, but discovers a coffin behind a newly built wall in the cellar. The coffin - decorated with an ornate wolf head - supposedly belongs to one Cosmo Waldemar, who was rumored to be a werewolf and has a grudge to pick with the Dawson family for a wrongdoing centuries earlier. Cosmo's body disappears from the coffin, wolf tracks are found on the dirt floor, howling is heard at night and Valda turns up dead after trying to warn Jim of something. He makes silver bullets out of a heirloom cross and waits by the coffin... Cramming all of this into just over 10 minutes turns out to be a mistake, since it's poorly paced and underbaked. The 'werewolf,' by the way, is just a dog.

Upon returning from holiday, Bill (Alan Freeman) and his wife Ann (Ann Bell) notice a strange vine growing alongside their home. The plant seems to cry out in pain when hit with a hoe and even knocks a pair of shears out of Bill's hand when he tries to snip it! The family seeks the aid of a few scientists (including Bernard Lee), who draw the conclusion that this is the new evolution in plant which may take over the planet if not stopped. It's superintelligent (enough so to cut the phone line!), kills the pet dog when it digs at the roots, strangles one of scientists and eventually surrounds the entire home, trapping the family inside. But like most other living beings, it's scared of fire. Potentially interesting segment but again it's too short and could have used some fleshing out. The open ending won't sit well with some viewers.

In our next story, jazz trumpeter and all-around goofball Biff Bailey (Roy Castle) gets a gig at the Flamingo Club on an island in the West Indies. Though he's warned against it, Biff sneaks out at night to attend a voodoo ceremony, where he copies down the catchy music of the "Great God Damballah." Natives warn him not to use, but when he returns to London he does anyway, which leads to wind destroying his club and an evil presence following him home. Much better than the first two segments, this seems paced about right, is amusing, has several great musical numbers and a surprisingly non-horrific or mean-spirited finale. By the way, the misleading title for the film comes from this segment: the lead characters passes by a mock "Dr. Terror's House of Horrors" poster on a wall stating its stars are "Franklyn Marsh," "Sandor Shreck" and "Biff Bailey!"

Back on the train, Dr. Schreck finally convinces Mr. Marsh / Lee to have his fortune told. Marsh is a snooty, uptight art critic who gets his jollies humiliating artists with bad write-ups in the local paper. During a showing of work from painter Eric Landor (Michael Gough), the tables are turned when it's Marsh who gets humiliated by praising a painting done by a chimpanzee. Landor continues to harass Marsh by constantly referencing the incident to destroy his credibility. Fed up, Marsh runs him over with his car, severing his hand in the incident. Unable to paint, Landor gets depressed and commits suicide. But Marsh gets his just desserts in the form of a living, disembodied hand that never seems to go away regardless of what Marsh does to it. This segment is the most memorable of the bunch, has one of the more enjoyable Lee performances and the special effects on the crawling hand are surprisingly effective.

Finally, things wrap up with a rather ordinary vampire tale. Doctor Bob Carroll (Donald Sutherland) has just taken a new bride - the sexy Nicole (Jennifer Jayne). Nicole disappears late at night every night; turning into a bat and going out to do her bloodsucking thing. Meanwhile, a young boy shows up at Bob's clinic with a bad case of anemia and puncture wounds on his neck. Strangely, this segment completely ignores the vampires cannot go out in the daytime mythology but sticks to the rest (turning into bats, being afraid of crucifixes, being killed with a stake through the heart, etc.). There's a cheeky end twist involving Bob's boss, Dr. Blake (Max Adrian), which is the only thing to breath any life into this tired tale. We return to the train for the final twist involving Dr. Schreck and the passengers, which is rather predictable itself.

What would have greatly improved this would have been to cut out one of the lesser segments, preferrable the werewolf one since it's the weakest, least interesting and boasts the lamest twist of the bunch, and then used that saved time to expand upon the other two weaker tales. The "Voodoo" and "Disembodied Hand" stories work just fine as they are, as does the framework itself thanks to the wonderfully sinister Cushing. It's worth watching for these... just expect some lulls along the way.

Francis also made the Amicus anthologies TORTURE GARDEN (1967) and TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1971) as well as the non-Amicus TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS (1973). The widescreen German DVD from Koch Entertainment is the one I viewed (their title translates to something like "Death Cards of Dr. Schreck"). It was distributed by Anchor Bay in the UK and might finally be getting a DVD release in America later this year through Olive Films (though I wouldn't hold my breath waiting).

★★1/2