IT'S ALL GREEK! 'THE DEVIL'S MEN' 'LAND OF THE MINOTAUR' FEATURE AND PHOTO GALLERY

When a number of young people go missing on a sleepy Greek island, Father Roache (Donald Pleasence) fears that the devil is at work…

The horror genre was in a state of flux in the late 1970s.  Hollywood had proved it possible to make quality genre films on a big budget with the likes of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973), while independent filmmakers like George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, 1968) and Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre) demonstrated that talent and ingenuity could make up for a lack of resources, and in the process helped to drag the genre away from the gothic into something much more immediate and “in your face.”  Budget conscious producers around the globe attempted to keep abreast of the changes in audience tastes, and many of the actors associated with the more “old fashioned” thrills of yesteryear found it necessary to branch out in search of steady employment.  With the virtual demise of Hammer and Amicus looming during this time frame, Peter Cushing – who had spent the bulk of his career working in his beloved England – was occasionally obliged to accept work on minor films shot in comparatively “exotic” locales.  The Devil’s Men (aka, Land of the Minotaur) was one such assignment.

The film was produced in Greece under the auspices of producer Frixos Constantine.  Constantine had some hopes of turning Greece into a new “player” in the international filmmaking scene, but his hopes would, for all intents and purposes, go unfulfilled.  Looking at The Devil’s Men, it’s easy to see why.  Constantine was on the right track when it came to importing Donald Pleasence and Peter Cushing to give the film some name value, but his selection of the screenplay and the director proved far less inspired.  The end result was met with resounding indifference in most quarters, and Constantine’s career as an independent producer came to an ignominious end.  He would later have a hand in Michael Powell’s swansong, Return to the Edge of the World (1978), but his credits since then have been limited to short subjects of an educational bent.

The story is as hackneyed as it is predictable.  A bunch of obnoxious horny teens go missing.  A concerned priest calls in a pal-turned-New York-flatfoot to help investigate, since the local authorities are incompetent and unconcerned.  The pal is concerned, but not terribly competent – he spends a good deal of time wanting to get information out of a local woman, for reasons that are never made terribly clear, and basically exercises bad judgment at every turn.  Ultimately, it is revealed that an exiled nobleman (Peter Cushing at his most chilly) appears to be the mastermind behind the plot.

In many respects, The Devil’s Men is an amateurish mess.  And yet, for some reason, it has a certain wonky charm.  Despite the best attempts of director Costa Carayiannis, whose basic MO appears to be to lock down the camera and zoom in and out a great deal, there’s some atmospheric sequences.  The Greek locales are photogenic.  Brian Eno contributes an eerie score.  And the climax gives the ending of Robert Fuest’s The Devil’s Rain (1975) a run in terms of sheer lunacy.

There’s also the performances of Pleasence and Cushing to consider.  Neither actor really gives one of their more memorable performances here, but they look very good indeed compared to the likes of Costa Skouras, whose New York cop emerges as one of the most obnoxious clowns ever to “grace” a horror film.  Pleasence looks properly bemused, while Cushing turns off his usual grandfatherly charm to play a downright nasty villain.  The script doesn’t give him a great deal to do, but Cushing seizes the few opportunities that come his way, and the film certainly springs to life during his too-few appearances.

It will never be mistaken for great (or even good) art, but The Devil’s Men is still worth a look for its various positive attributes; fans of Cushing will also be interested to see him playing a completely unsympathetic role for once, while Pleasence gets to rehearse his later appearance in John Carpenter’s vastly superior Prince of Darkness (1987).

fEATURE: TROY HOWARTH
IMAGES: MARCUS BROOKS

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TEMPTATIONS LTD PETER CUSHING: FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (1974)

CAST:

Linking Story: Peter Cushing (Antique Store Proprietor). 1: David Warner (Edward Jeffries). 2: Ian Bannen (Christopher Lowe), Donald Pleasence (Jim), Angela Pleasence (Emily), Diana Dors (Mabel Lowe). 3: Ian Carmichael (Richard), Margaret Leighton (Madame Orlov), Nyree Dawn Porter (Suzanne). 4: Ian Ogilvy (Williams), Lesley Anne Down (Rosemary Williams) 

PRODUCTION:

Director – Kevin Connor, Screenplay – Raymond Christodolou & Robin Clarke, Based on Short Stories by Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes, Producers – Max J. Rosenberg & Milton Subotsky, Photography – Alan Hume, Music – Douglas Gamley, Special Effects – Alan Bryce, Production Design – Maurice Carter. Production Company – Amicus. 

SYNOPSIS:

An antique store proprietor promises a little ‘something extra’ with everything he sells. 1:- Edward Jeffries buys a mirror for his apartment. One evening, he has the urge to hold a seance. There he is possessed by a man in the mirror who uses Jeffries to lure girls to the apartment and sacrifice them so that he might gain physical form again. 2:- Hen-pecked husband Christopher Lowe befriends a street peddler and begin an affair with the man’s strange daughter. The daughter shows him how he can use a voodoo doll to get rid of his nagging wife. 3:- A man encounters the batty old Madame Orlov on a train who tells him he has an elemental spirit on his shoulder. When he finds himself strangling his wife, he is forced to call upon Madame Orlov’s services to exorcise the spirit. 4 A man buys an antique door and finds that it opens back into the era of Charles I.

COMMENTARY:

From Beyond the Grave was one of the best horror anthologies to come from Amicus. (See below for Amicus’s other anthologies). From Beyond the Grave was the directorial debut of Kevin Connor who would go onto become a modest name in genre cinema. This is in fact one of Kevin Connor’s best films and he demonstrates exceptional directorial style. Particularly good are the seance scenes in the first episode where Connor conducts some inventive 360^o pans with a candle that explodes between a flickering flame and a jet in the foreground. The murders in this segment are vividly staged with Connor creating some marvellously sinister images of David Warner standing about in bloodstained clothes and a wrecked apartment.

The second and third stories go for a much more tongue-in-cheek tone. The second is a veritable EC Comics tale – in fact, is a more successful EC-type story than Amicus’s two actual EC adaptations, Tales from the Crypt (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973), were. The second episode has a particularly strong cast in weak-willed Ian Bannen; Diana Dors, who is having the time of her life playing it up as the wife; and a decidedly offbeat Donald Pleasence and his very, very weird real-life daughter Angela.

The third episode is played entirely for laughs. The exorcism scenes are a wonderfully over-the-top pyrotechnic show after which it surely seems impossible to watch The Exorcist (1973) with a straight face again. Margaret Leighton’s performance as the batty old exorcist is side-splitting.

Where in most anthologies there usually tends to be some stories that are weaker or stronger than others, this is one occasion where all four stories are equally strong. The only failing is the weak linking story, which has to contrive to introduce antique objects that have no other purpose in the episode other than to wind in the second and third stories. The linking story also contains an awkward performance from the usually great Peter Cushing.

Amicus’s other horror anthologies are:– Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1964), Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), Asylum (1972), Tales from the Crypt (1972) and The Vault of Horror (1973). Amicus producer Milton Subotsky later adapted more short stories from British writer Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes in his horror anthology The Monster Club (1980).

From Beyond the Grave was the directorial debut of Kevin Connor who later became a genre regular. Connor next directed Amicus’s trilogy of lost world Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations, The Land That Time Forgot (1974), At the Earth’s Core (1976) and The People That Time Forgot (1977), and one original lost world film Warlords of Atlantis (1978), all starring Doug McClure; the Arabian Nights fantasy Arabian Adventure (1979); the cannibalism black comedy Motel Hell (1980); and the Japanese ghost story The House Where Evil Dwells (1982). These days Connor directs for tv, making such unexceptional true life soap opera fare as Diana: Her True Story (1993), Liz: The Elizabeth Taylor Story (1995), Mother Teresa: In the Name of God’s Poor (1997) and Mary, Mother of Jesus (1999). Among Connor’s genre tv fare is:- Goliath Awaits (1981), an interesting tv mini-series about a society that has survived in a sunken ship; The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1986), which brought the famous sleuth into the present-day; the Indian adventure The Mysteries of the Dark Jungle (1991); the stalker thriller Shadow of Obsession (1994); the Egyptian archaeology adventure The Seventh Scroll (1999); the Christmas fantasies Santa, Jr. (2002), A Boyfriend for Christmas (2004)and Annie Claus is Coming to Town (2011); the Hallmark adaptation of Frankenstein (2004); and Chasing Leprechauns (2012).

 

Images: Marcus Brooks

SOCK IT TO ME SUNDAY! WIN A SET OF HAMMER FILM SOCKS!

Here's a bit of fun for tomorrow @ the UK Peter Cushing Appreciation Society Facebook Fan Page Hammer Socks! Now selling on ebay for silly money, you can bag a set for free! Sock It To Me Sunday! Ten sets to win. Three pairs of socks in a set depicting Christopher Lee as the creature in 'The Curse Of Frankenstein' and Count Dracula in 'Dracula' (1958) and 'Taste The Blood Of Dracula' (1970)

BEWARE THE MOORS AT NIGHT! TROY HOWARTH REVIEWS PETER CUSHING'S BBC 'HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES'

According to legend, the heirs of the Baskerville family are all doomed to meet untimely demises at the claws of the Hound of the Baskervilles; Sherlock Holmes is called in to uncover the truth…

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s career as a writer is inextricably linked to his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes.  This was not what the author himself had in mind, however, and indeed he eventually tired of the popularity of the character and grew to resent having to serialize his adventures.  He decided to kill the master detective off in 1893, with The Final Problem, wherein Holmes takes a tumble off Reichenbach Falls while struggling with his nemesis, the criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty.  Public outcry was so strong that Doyle eventually felt compelled to revive the character.  Published in 1901 and 1902, The Hound of the Baskervilles – its action set before the incidents dramatized in The Final Problem – was the first of the “new” Holmes adventures; it has since become the most popular of the various Holmes adventures.  It also remains far and away the most heavily adapted for film and television.  A complete rundown of the various versions would call for an article in itself; suffice to say, it was serialized in Germany on at least two occasions during the silent era, in addition to several other British and German versions, many of which are now believed to be lost.

 

The 1939 version from 20^th Century Fox version is remembered less for its (sometimes spotty) merits as a film than for being the first to introduce the now-legendary pairing of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Holmes and Watson.  Rathbone remains the screen’s definitive Holmes, while Bruce’s less-than-canonical account of Watson remains a sore point with many purists.  The Fox version has some nice set pieces but lumbers under the pedestrian direction of Sidney Lanfield.

An obscure German version from the 1950s would follow, but it would be up to Hammer Films to offer up the next significant adaptation.  Peter Cushing made his debut as Holmes, with Andre Morell as a much-truer-to-Doyle incarnation of Watson.  Capitalizing on the success of their Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), Hammer also saw fit to cast Christopher Lee in the role of Sir Henry Baskerville, thus giving the actor his first chance to play a romantic lead.  This version has many fine points to recommend notably Morell’s Watson and a tour de force bit of directing from Terence Fisher during the film’s extended opening flashback sequence – but it suffers from taking too many liberties with the text and has a generally cramped and claustrophobic quality, despite some superb cinematography by the great Jack Asher.  Cushing’s neurotic take on the detective, however, did not really connect with audiences – and the film failed to repeat the box office takings of Hammer’s straight horror films, thus quashing the potential for a series of Holmes adventures.

The next version is the one under discussion, produced by the BBC , with Cushing reprising his turn as Holmes and Nigel Stock stepping in to play Watson, as he had done for the entire run of the BBC series.  Later versions would range from the serious to the comical – Paul Morrissey’s slapstick-infused version from 1978, starring Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, is often reviled, but taken on its own lighthearted terms, it offers some genuine chuckles – with wildly uneven results.  A 1972 TV version starring Stewart Granger and Bernard Fox was one of the worst, while Granada ’s miniseries version with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke was something of a disappointment.  Ultimately, for a story adapted for the screen on so many occasions, the definitive version has proved elusive; in many respects, this two-part BBC version is as good an option as any, for at least it remains true to the basic particulars of the story, and offers up a fine Cushing performance at its center.  But like every other extant version to date, it most definitely falls way short of the potential offered by the subject matter.

Like other entries in the BBC series, the film suffers, aesthetically, from the mixture of being shot on film and video – the location photography is much appreciated, however, and helps to add a sense of menace to the proceedings.  The script is dialogue heavy, but this is hardly an issue when Cushing is on hand to help sell the material.  He again displays great chemistry with Stock, and the two actors are quite skilled at bringing their characters to life.  Director Graham Evans shows himself to be more competent than inspired, and the pacing tends to slacken when Holmes is off screen – which, this being relatively faithful to the text, poses a problem in the mid-section of the narrative. 

The supporting cast includes Gary Raymond, then part of the ensemble of the popular Rat Patrol TV series and later to headline on the better episodes of The Hammer House of Horror, Two Faces of Evil.  Raymond does a capable job as Sir Henry, though he inevitably lacks the sheer presence of Lee in the earlier adaptation.  Ballard Berkeley, later to find small screen immortality as the delightfully dotty Major in Fawlty Towers, puts in an appearance as Sir Charles Baskerville; he had earlier costarred with Cushing in Cone of Silence (1960).  David Leland makes for a less blustery and overtly suspicious-looking Dr. Mortimer than Lionel Atwill and Francis DeWolff, in the Fox and Hammer versions, respectively; he would later pop up in comedic relief capacity in Roy Ward Baker’s Scars of Dracula (1970).

This version of Hound may not offer up the blood and thunder approach of the Hammer version, but it remains a very competent adaptation in its own right.

It’s truer in spirit and particulars to Doyle’s original tale, and it makes for a cozy way of whiling away a couple of hours on a rainy afternoon; mystery lovers with a love of old fashioned whodunnits will be properly entertained.

Review: Troy Howarth
Images: Marcus Brooks

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HAVE YOURSELF A FANTASTIQ FANTASY WEEKEND

The Fantastiq Festival of fantasy, Sci-Fi and Horror which takes place in Derby this weekend starting Friday 9th August! With the BBC having just announced the casting of Peter Capaldi as the 12th Doctor the Fantastiq festival celebrates Peter Cushing's portrayal as 'Dr Who' in the sixties movies Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966)! Alongside these and many more classic horror and sci-fi film screenings, there will be screening of  Peter Cushing's  'Hammer house of Horror' episode, 'The Silent Scream', 'The Beast Must Die' with an interview with director Paul Annett and a screening of Hammer Films 58' 'Dracula'. There's a great guest list also  including Dez Skinn, the legendary creator of iconic seventies monster magazines House of Hammer and Starburst.

Here is a run down of the THREE DAY event:

FANTASTIQ – THE FESTIVAL OF FANTASY, SCI-FI AND HORROR AUGUST 9-11 2013
 
Friday 9th August
1pm Hammer House Of Horror Double Bill
2pm From The Vault: Heavy Metal (15)
3pm Bug (15)
4pm Orson Welles’ The War Of The Worlds
5:30pm Ghostwatch (adv 15)
6:00pm Preview – Upstream Color (15)
7:15pm Stephen Volk In Conversation
8:00pm From The Vault – Heavy Metal (15)
8:40pm Book Signing Whitstable
9:30pm Spectral Press Presents…Dracula (12A)
10:00pm House (Hausu) (15)

Saturday 10th August
10:45am From The Vault: Silver Bullet (15)
11:00am The AckerMonster Chronicles
1:00pm Dez Skinn In Conversation
1:15pm Corruption (adv 12A)
3:00pm Jason And The Argonauts (U)
3:15pm The Sorcerers (15)
4:45pm Johnny Mains On John Burke & The Sorcerers
6:00pm The Beast Must Die (15)
6:30pm Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan (U)
8pm Paul Annett In Conversation
8:30pm From The Vault: Silver Bullet (15)
9:30pm Preview – Kiss Of The Damned (cert tbc)
 
Sunday 11th August
11:00am From The Vault: The Black Belly Of The Tarantula (15)
11:30am Horror Tour Of Derby with Darrell Buxton
1:30pm Dr Who And The Daleks / Daleks: Invasion Earth Double
Bill
2:00pm Filmmaker’s Forum Panel Discussion
4:00pm Zombie: The New Undead (adv 18)
5:30pm Cinema Retro Presents…Vampire Circus
6:00pm Orson Welles’ The War Of The Worlds
7:15pm Robert Young In Conversation
8pm From The Vault: The Black Belly Of The Tarantula (15)
8:45pm Closing Night Preview – John Dies At The End (15)

WHERE THERE IS NO IMAGINATION, THERE IS NO HORROR : TROY HOWARTH REVIEWS 'A STUDY IN SCARLET' PETER CUSHING

A corpse is found inside an abandoned house; nearby, the word “Rache” has been scrawled on the wall in blood.  Scotland Yard is stymied, so Sherlock Holmes is called in to investigate…

 “Where there is no imagination, there is no horror…”

These words, spoken by Sherlock Holmes in this adaptation of A Study in Scarlet, could be said to represent the philosophy of actor Peter Cushing, here cast as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s immortal sleuth.  The BBC brought Holmes to the small screen in 1964, in the form of the imposing character actor Douglas Wilmer.  Wilmer’s frustration with the lack of rehearsal time prompted him to depart after two seasons, thus leaving the BBC in a bit of a bind.  They initially sought to get John Neville as a replacement, but the actor – who had played Holmes in A Study in Terror (1965) – turned them down flat.  The net was then cast to Peter Cushing, who decided to ignore Wilmer’s warnings and elected to take the part.  It would not be a pleasurable experience for the actor, and when he and Wilmer were later united on the Hammer/AIP production of The Vampire Lovers (1970), Cushing remarked that he would sooner spend the rest of his career sweeping Paddington Station than to work for the BBC again under similar circumstances. 

Cushing would later argue that the strain affected his performance, indicating a preference for his earlier, less hurried portrayal of Holmes in Hammer’s The Hound of the Baskervilles (1958).  With all due respect to Cushing, however, I disagree – where his earlier performance is a bit mannered, he seems far more relaxed and comfortable in the role in the BBC series.  Sadly, many of the episodes are now missing – but the ones that survive show just how effective Cushing really was in the role.  A Study in Scarlet wasn’t the first of the run that he did for the BBC, but it is the first in continuity of that surviving episodes.

The story itself, published in 1887, was actually the first of the Sherlock Holmes adventures.  It established the template for everything which would follow, and set the stage for the public’s fascination with his super rational master detective.  It was first adapted in the silent era, with the approval of Doyle himself, but this version is considered lost.  The earliest surviving version dates from 1933 and starred Reginald Owen as Holmes.  As with so many adaptations of Doyle’s works, the makers saw fit to use the title and very little else.  Completests may feel compelled to seek it out, but it remains a stodgy, stilted and hopelessly dated affair.  Amazingly, it would not be officially adapted again until this version from the BBC, though an episode of the 1950s series starring Ronald Howard as Holmes used it as a starting point for a “new” adventure.  When Holmes went back into “vogue” courtesy of the Granada series starring Jeremy Brett, the story was passed over altogether.  It was, however, loosely adapted for the recent hit series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch.  In essence, the Cushing version remains the most “canonical” crack at the tale – and it arguably remains the best by far.

In addition to Cushing’s splendidly detailed performance – note the wonderful bits of sly humor, as when he rolls his eyes when Watson announces that even he was fooled by the murderer’s deception, or the way he writes notes on his cuffs, a detail culled from Doyle’s stories – there’s much to enjoy in the performance of Nigel Stock as Watson.  Stock, also to be seen as a disgraced medic in Hammer’s off the wall The Lost Continent (1968), would finish out his career playing a supporting part in the Steven Spielberg production Young Sherlock (1986), thus reestablishing a connection to the franchise which brought him the most popularity in the UK.   

Stock had already established a good rapport with Wilmer in the previous two series, and would later remark that he felt that Wilmer was impossible to replace; but he also had good things to say about Cushing, for whom he had tremendous respect.  Stock plays the character with a bit of the comical bluster of Nigel Bruce in the classic Basil Rathbone series, but he doesn’t reduce the character to caricature; he is credible as a sensible ex-military man and medic, as well.  William Lucas, Cushing’s costar in Night of the Big Heat (1967), makes for a solid Inspector Lestrade, while George A. Cooper (veteran of the Freddie Francis films The Brain, 1962, Nightmare, 1963, and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, 1968) impresses as Inspector Gregson.  Lovely Edina Ronay, previously seen as one of Jack the Ripper’s victims in A Study in Terror, is on hand as well. 

A Study in Scarlet packs in enough incident and deduction to fill its hour time slot quite nicely - and with such skill in the acting department, it remains a joy from start to finish.  It is not the best of the run of the series, but it’s a fine intro to one of Cushing’s most iconic portrayals. 

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PETER CAPALDI IS DOCTOR WHO

Well.... Peter Capaldi IS DOCTOR WHO!

The waiting is over. Good choice!

 Peter Capaldi

NEW DOCTOR WHO ACTOR : WE'RE ALL WAITING

 
If you are a fan of the BBC Doctor Who television series, it can't have escaped your notice that tonight at 7pm the BBC announce the name of the actor who will take over the role from Matt Smith.
 

Speculation on who would take over the role has been rife since Smith announced in June that he would be leaving the sci-fi series. And so, we wait.....

NINETY ONE AND STILL THE REAL DEAL: CHRISTOPHER LEE

Sir Christopher Lee, ninety one and still the real deal!

DANISH 'THE BRIDES OF DRACULA' CINEMA POSTER

The Brides of Dracula, Starring Peter Cushing, Yvonne Monlaur and David Peel.  (1960) : Danish cinema poster. Apparently, this actual poster once belonged to the film's co star David Peel, who kept it in his collection because Denmark was the only country to give him top billing!

FILM REVIEW: JULY 1969 VERONICA CARLSON PETER CUSHING 'FRANKENSTEIN COVER'

WE HAVE A WINNER: SANDRA PASCOE: DR WHO AND THE DALEKS BLU RAY AND POSTER COMPETITION

Congratulations to SANDRA PASCOE winner in our Peter Cushing, Dr Who and the Daleks blu ray and poster competition! Thank you so much to everyone who entered what was a very popular competition!