THE TRAILER FOR AMICUS FILM PRODUCTIONS 'TORTURE GARDEN' IN 1967. A TIME WHEN CINEMA WAS FUN AND GIMMICKS TO PUT 'BOTTOMS ON SEATS' WAS PART OF THE GAME. HERE THE PAYING PUBLIC WERE PROMISED A PACKET OF 'SEEDS' TO GROW THEIR OWN 'TORTURE GARDEN'!
Tuesday 21 February 2012
PETER CUSHING JACK PALANCE: 'TORTURE GARDEN' REVIEW AND GALLERY
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Director: Freddie Francis. Screenplay: Robert Bloch, Based on his Short Stories. Producers: Max J. Rosenberg & Milton Subotsky. Photography: Norman Warwick. Music: Don Banks & James Bernard. Makeup: Jill Carpenter. Art Direction: Don Mingaye & Scott Simon. Production Company: Amicus film Productions.
CAST:
Burgess Meredith : Dr Diablo. Enoch:- Michael Bryant: Colin Williams. Maurice Denham: Uncle Roger. Terror Over Hollywood:- Beverly Adams: Carla Hayes. Robert Hutton: Bruce Benton. John Phillips: Eddie Storm. David Bauer: Mike Charles. Bernard Kay: Dr Helm. Mr Steinway:- Barbara Ewing: Dorothy Endicott. John Standing: Leo. The Man Who Collected Poe:- Jack Palance: Ronald Wyatt. Peter Cushing: Lancelot Canning.
THE PLOT:
At a carnival exhibit, Dr Diablo takes five customers to a back room where he offers them glimpses of their futures. Enoch:- Colin Williams goes to stay with his uncle, determined to get hold of his fortune. He withholds his uncle’s medicine to force him to tell him where the money is, but instead the uncle dies. Afterwards, Colin meets a cat Balthazar that talks to him and demands that he conduct other killings in return for which it will show him where the fortune is. Terror Over Hollywood:- Aspiring actress Carla Hayes determinedly pursues a part in a film. Cast, she soon finds herself falling for her leading man, the enduring star Bruce Benton. But then she finds the secret of movie stars youthful longevity – that they are being replaced by robot doubles. Mr Steinway:- Journalist Dorothy Endicott goes to interview the introverted concert pianist Leo. They become romantically involved but when she tries to draw Leo away from his beloved grand piano Utopie, it becomes jealous. The Man Who Collected Poe:- Ronald Wyatt, a dedicated Edgar Allan Poe collector, goes to visit Lancelot Canning, one of the foremost Poe collectors in the world. Getting drunk, Canning shows him his secret collection of unpublished Poe works. Wyatt then makes the shocking discovery that Canning has brought Poe back to life to write new stories.
COMMENTARY:
Amicus Films had had great success with the portmanteau anthology Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1964). They returned with Torture Garden, reuniting director Freddie Francis and star Peter Cushing. Burgess Meredith, in an appallingly fake-looking beard, is clearly cast in the same mold as Peter Cushing’s Dr Schreck in Dr Terror, as a sinister figure introducing the segments on the pretext of showing people their future. On script, Amicus imported American horror author Robert Bloch who was then in the public eye as a result of Alfred Hitchcock’s wildly successful adaptation of his novel Psycho (1960). For Torture Garden, Robert Bloch adapted several of his own short stories published in the 1950s into a script. Bloch later went on to become a mainstay of Amicus, contributing to several other anthologies such as The House That Dripped Blood (1970) and Asylum (1972) and original films like The Skull (1965), The Psychopath (1966) and The Deadly Bees (1967).
Torture Garden is one of the lesser among Amicus’s mostly worthwhile anthologies. The first two stories are flat, Terror Over Hollywood being the especially weak link in the chain. But the next two are sharp and original – compare them to Dr Terror’s humdrum revamping of standard B-movie themes and it becomes clear just what Bloch manages to bring to the party. Freddie Francis brings his customary stylism and sharp pictorial contrasts between fore– and background. Memorable images abound such as Barbara Ewing being chased about the house by a grand piano. The Edgar Allan Poe segment works the best where Jack Palance and Peter Cushing are clearly enjoying themselves. The linking segment is slight. One might also note that, despite the title, the film features no torture, nor any gardens. For that matter, despite the title Terror Over Hollywood, the segment is actually set in an English studio. Much better anthologies would emerge from Amicus – see Tales from the Crypt (1972), From Beyond the Grave (1973) and the aforementioned Bloch titles.
Review: Richard Scheib
Images: Marcus Brooks
Sunday 19 February 2012
Saturday 18 February 2012
PETER CUSHING AND THE RETURN OF THE CYBERNAUTS: THE AVENGERS TV SERIES
50 years ago the very first episode of The Avengers was transmitted. Hot Snow, shown on the 7 December 1961 and introducing Ian Hendry as Dr. Keel and Patrick Macnee as John Steed, doesn't really give much of an indication as to how The Avengers would become the ultimate expression of Sixties pop culture and a global television phenomenon.
Those early episodes are gritty, hard-nosed thrillers and I've already covered Optimum's DVD box set releases of Series Three and Series Four back in 2010 and 2009, charting how this black and white thriller blossomed as the decade moved on, and how, as James Chapman noted in his essay in Windows on the Sixties, "The Avengers both defines and is defined by the 1960s [and reflects] the social changes taking place in Britain during the period" and is a barometer of the "the technological changes that occurred in the television industry moving from 'live' performance to film, and from black-and-white to colour."And with Series 5 we do indeed move into colour, heralded with a caption card 'The Avengers in Color' on each episode as required by the American network ABC who had paid the then-unheard of sum of $2 million for the first 26 episodes and made the series one of the first, if not the first, British series to be aired on prime time U.S. television.
Series 5 takes the fantasy elements prominent in the first Rigg series and exaggerates them with the use of full colour, high-fashion elements (including costumes for Rigg and Macnee designed by Alun Hughes and Pierre Cardin), a bevvy of prominent British character actors playing a wealth of eccentrics and diabolical masterminds and a knowingness about the relationship between the television audience and the programme itself.This knowingness is present both in the number of attempts to break the fourth wall by the leading actors, with asides and direct looks down the lens, to the manipulation of artifice and surface, in set design and narratives that pull apart and glorify the very idea of making films and television programmes. It's very much Clemens and his production team emulating the progress that a director like Federico Fellini was making in his own work in the late 1960s. The Fellinesque qualities of stories such as Epic, Escape in Time and Something Nasty in the Nursery suggest a pop-art style married to increasingly metatextual narratives that comment on the art of storytelling and film-making within the contrived nature of 'Avengersland'.
'Avengersland' is a construction that Fellini would have been proud of and depicts an England of the mind, of the imagination, where increasingly during Series 5 the threats to Steed and Emma become more and more artificially generated. As I discussed in my review of Spirits of the Dead, Fellini's section of that film is about the audience understanding that Terence Stamp's character exists in a knowingly artificial world. Much the same occurs in Brian Clemens concept of The Avengers.
'Avengersland' is a construction that Fellini would have been proud of and depicts an England of the mind, of the imagination, where increasingly during Series 5 the threats to Steed and Emma become more and more artificially generated. As I discussed in my review of Spirits of the Dead, Fellini's section of that film is about the audience understanding that Terence Stamp's character exists in a knowingly artificial world. Much the same occurs in Brian Clemens concept of The Avengers.
'Avengersland' is therefore postmodernist in nature, and Christopher Sharrett, in commenting on Fellini's work from Spirits of the Dead on-wards has called this effect "the sum and substance of post-modernity [where] the piling up of 'signifiers' merely creates new attractions and commodities" and where, by extension, the colour episodes of Avengerland are created "by removing [them] from all social/political/economic context."
This self-evident awareness of its own construction, of the tropes that it uses, marks out the first colour series of The Avengers and is later developed into the Thorson series. Where the previous Rigg series had been 'Britain versus the world' it is worth noting that by 1967 this had shifted to 'Britain is the world' in the colour episodes and was very much in line with London being regarded as the epicentre of the late 1960s explosion of pop, architecture, fashion and design and The Avengers own nostalgia for a non-existent version of England where the troubles of the modern world are eradicated by a desire to recreate Edwardiana via glossy Hollywood pastiche.
Science fiction and fantasy rub shoulders with the series's own comedy of manners and sense of British fair-play, epitomised in everything from the tag sequences, the 'Mrs. Peel We're Needed' introductions and the witty captions that summarise each episode to the gaggle of malcontent British scientists, astronomers, executives, aristocrats, ministers and secret agents who believe they have been treated unfairly in the rush to embrace the 'swinging sixties' modernisation of the nation.
Personally, from Series 5, I would single out:
From Venus With Love - its obsessions about alien invasion from Venus and the deadly threat of laser weapons jostle with a comedy turn from Jon Pertwee and a stylish cameo from Barbara Shelley.
Escape In Time - an utterly surreal story about a man who provides a service to criminals that allows them to escape from the authorities into any part of past history. Superb guest cameo from Peter Bowles and filled with massive chunks of gaudy, dream-like visual/physical comedy that divorces the series entirely from any reality. Looks stunning in its restored format here.
The Winged Avenger - a clever mix of thriller, comic book (the legendary Frank Bellamy supplied the comic strips for the episode) and a tongue in cheek and metatextual nod to the Adam West Batman series in Steed's showdown with the villain where he clouts him over the head with Roy Lichtenstein inspired pop-artwork declaring 'Pow!' 'Blam! and 'Splat!' Another sequence where live action flips back and forth with comic book recreations was way ahead of its time.
Never, Never Say Die - a pastiche of the Frankenstein story with a great guest performance from Christopher Lee.
Epic - stunningly restored here and a wonderfully surreal blend of Sunset Boulevard and Fellini's 8½, thoroughly divorced from realism and driven by completely glorious performances from the triumvirate of Peter Wyngarde, Kenneth Warren and Isa Miranda.
Something Nasty in the Nursery - more surreal and nightmarish imagery that twists childhood memories completely out of shape. It's a very knowing episode that allows the audience in on the artificiality of the storytelling.
Who's Who? - great fun in that it allows Macnee and Rigg to stretch and play against their characters and it features an equally sensational double-act in Freddie Jones and Patricia Haynes as the agents they swap bodies with. The ad-breaks are structured to feature a very tongue-in-cheek recap for the audiences as to who is exactly whom as the story continues.
Return of the Cybernauts - Peter Cushing is sublime as the villainous Paul Beresford, and the story is unusual in that he is actually a friend of Steed and Emma's and there are undercurrents of jealousy from Steed when Paul gets very enamoured of Emma.
Dead Man's Treasure - glorious romp combining a treasure hunt, a cross-country car chase that showcases the English countryside at its most beautiful, a deadly racing-car simulator and Laurie Johnson's bouncy incidental music.
The Positive-Negative Man - more surreal, comic strip inspired material successfully blended with an espionage thriller and featuring Ray McAnally at roughly the same time he went on to make the sublime Spindoe for Granada.
The quality of the image here is again very good and with many episodes it is truly sensational, with vibrant and exceptional colour and contrast that show off the gorgeous sets and location shooting and often revealing fine detail in faces and costumes.
These are blemish free digital masters, exquisitely restored but there is a noticeable shift in the quality of cinematography between the earlier and later episodes in the production run. Certainly the contrast and colour fidelity isn't as robust in The Fear Merchants for example but I would put that down to the way it was shot rather than a fault of the restoration.
The restoration is of such good quality that it simply begs for a Blu-Ray release in high definition and I hope that Optimum will be looking to achieve this in the next year as I think these will look particularly stunning in HD.
The highly effective and memorable music from Laurie Johnson is well represented on the soundtrack but alas, there does seem to be a problem with the sound mix. It is obvious that the vocal track is slightly speeded up and is particularly noticeable with male voices, especially Steed's, which are pitched slightly too high. Optimum have already been made aware of this and are offering replacement discs for this set. A real shame that problems like this are not being identified by the company's own quality control department. It's a blemish on an otherwise fantastic DVD set.
The commentary to The Winged Avenger, moderated effectively by Jaz Wiseman, covers writer Richard Harris's contribution to the original black and white series of The Avengers and the comic book influences that went into the creation of his script for the colour Rigg series. The chat is interesting and informative and very much focuses on his career as a writer, including his work on the Hancock scripts for ATV and developing Man in a Suitcase.
Perhaps the stand-out commentary on this set has to be from the legendary Peter Wyngarde on the episode Epic. Wyngarde is clearly not that concerned about remembering the more intricate details of the episode (although he dedicates it to colleagues James Hill, Isa Miranda, Kenneth Warren and Albert Fennell) but goes on to regale us with tons of anecdotes about his theatrical career, working with Ralph Richardson, and breaks off to put in a performance as George Sanders and later recites various songs and poems. A true 'luvvie', bless him.
Stunt artist Cyd Childs and writer/producer Brian Clemens also offer interesting stories and anecdotes on their own commentaries for, respectively, Return of the Cybernauts and Murdersville.
Once again there is a massive amount of supplementary material on the DVD set:
- Archive German TV interview with Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg
- Episode trims from The Fear Merchants, Escape In Time, From Venus With Love and The See-Through Man
- The Avengers – A Retrospective (documentary produced for the Lumiere VHS releases)
- ATV newsreel footage (Diana Rigg receives TV Award)
- The Avengers – “They’re Back” archive trailer
- Filmed episode intros by Brian Clemens to The Bird Who Knew Too Much, The Living Dead, Epic, The Correct Way To Kill, The Superlative Seven, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Station, The Joker and Murdersville
- Granada + points for each episode
- Episode Reconstructions for lost Series 1 episodes One For The Mortuary, Death on The Slipway, Tunnel of Fear and Dragonsfield
- 1960s German Titles
- Insert reprint of series 5 promotional brochure
- Stills gallery for featured episodes (literally hundreds of images)
- PDF material including shooting scripts, TV Times and more
An essential purchase but marred by that sound fault so proceed with caution and check that Optimum are still replacing the erroneous discs and replacing stock in stores.
The Avengers
Digitally Restored Special Edition: The Complete Series 5 / 1966-67
Released 25 October 2010 / Optimum Releasing / OPTD1751 / Region 2 / Cert PG / Running time: 1,127 mins / 4:3
Review: Frank Collins
Images: Marcus Brooks
VINCENT PRICE AND PETER CUSHING: PRESS BOOK MADHOUSE (1974)
GREAT EXAMPLE OF 'MADHOUSE' PROMOTION BACK IN 1974
SUSAN DENBERG, PETER CUSHING AND OTHER HAMMER FILM FACES BEHIND THE SCENES ON 'FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN' HAMMER FRANKENSTEIN FRIDAY
SUSAN DENBERG POSES WITH HER CO STAR AND
FRANKENSTEIN'S ASSISTANT THORLEY WALTERS
EVERYONE POSES FOR THE CAMERA! PETER HAS A LAUGH AT
PRODUCER ANTHONY NELSON KEYS, WEARING HIS TOP HAT!
THE TEAM: PETER CUSHING, SUSAN DENBERG, PRODUCER ANTHONY NELSON
KEYS AND DIRECTOR TERENCE FISHER POSE FOR THE CAMERA AT FRENSHAM
PONDS, THE LOCATION FOR THE GUILLOTINE SCENES IN 'FRANKENSTEIN
CREATED WOMAN'
SUSAN DENBERG AND PRODUCER ANTHONY NELSON KEYS SHELTER
UNDER A BROLLY BESIDE A PROP ROAD SIGN BEARING THE NAMES
OF TWO FAMILAUR HAMMER FILM TOWNS :
KARLSBAD AND INNSBAD.
THE BROLLY BECOMES A HANDY PROP AS BOTH PETER AND
SUSAN DENBERG TAKE A STROLL AROUND BRAY STUDIOS, HOME TO
HAMMER FILMS AND SO MANY OF THERE BEST MOTION PICTURES.
MORE POSING FOR THE STILLS MAN
NOTE THE SCRIPT UNDER PETER'S ARM IN THIS SHOT. PENS PENCILS AND
RUBBER BANDS. PETER WAS WELL KNOWN FOR HIS NOTE TAKING AND
SCRIBBLES IN THE MARGINS OF HIS SCRIPTS. POINTERS TO DIALOGUE,
REMINDERS AND ALSO DOODLINGS. PETER LOVED TO DOODLE
WHILST WAITING, SOMETIMES LONG HOURS ON A SET.
AND THE SHOOT WRAPS WITH ONE OF PETER'S SIGNATURE
KISSES TO HIS CO STAR, SUSAN DENBERG
Friday 17 February 2012
FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN: THE CLASSIC POSE AND ONE OF THE FIRST PLACES IT APPEARED!
FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN: THE CLASSIC POSE AND ONE
OF THE FIRST PLACES IT APPEARED!
Wednesday 15 February 2012
THE STORY BEHIND PETER CUSHING AND 'CORRUPTION': COMMENTARY AND GALLERY
After the end of the second world war, Robert Hartford-Davis worked in a variety of capacities at numerous British studios before making his own short films and episodes of TV shows like Police Surgeon (1960). In mid-1962 he won the contract to make films for Compton-Cameo, who ran profitable cinema clubs specialising in risqué films and now wanted to branch out into film production.
So successful were the 1963 pictures That Kind of Girl (which Hartford-Davis produced), and The Yellow Teddybears (which he produced and directed), that a year later he was appointed 'executive in charge of all production'.
Director of Photography on these films was Peter Newbrook, who had previously worked on such prestigious pictures as The Sound Barrier (1952), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and In The Cool of the Day (1963). In August 1964, Hartford-Davis and Newbrook formed Titan Productions, immediately making the bizarre pop musical, Gonks Go Beat (1965). Their biggest budgeted film followed in 1966: The Sandwich Man was a comedy produced with money from the National Film Finance Corporation, a funding organisation set up to initiate new independent British film productions.
Not even cameos from numerous top British comic stars could prevent it from being only a modest success, and with none of the other NFK-funded films succeeding, Titan had to look elsewhere for capital. It came in January 1967 from independent American company, Oakshire Films, with whom Titan signed to make three films, all to be distributed through Columbia. The first two announced - The Mask of Innocence, a story of a child's obsessive love for her father, and We, the Guilty, concerning the nationwide pursuit of two prison escapees - both went unmade. The third was Corruption.
Hartford-Davis came up with the original idea and brought in Donald and Derek Ford to write the script. The Fords had written all of Hartford-Davis's Compton-Cameo releases, and had stayed with the company to author the classic Sherlock Holmes versus Jack the Ripper film, A Study In Scarlet (1965).
Peter Cushing was the obvious choice for the top-billed part in any British horror film. Discussing Corruption with Eamonn Andrews on television, he remarked that he was looking forward to his next picture; a horror film in modern dress, for a change.
Receiving equal billing was Sue Lloyd, who had previously appeared as Michael Caine's girlfriend in The Ipcress File (1965) and had a recurring role in The Baron (1966). Hartford-Davis would be so impressed with her work on Corruption that he'd present her with an antique cup inscribed, "To my actress of the year, from your corrupted director." At the end of shooting, Cushing presented her with a special script holder. "I did rather well out of that film!" she now laughs. Kate O'Mara, a relative newcomer to film, was cast as Lynn's sister, and Anthony Booth - then popular as Alf Garnett's son-in-law in Til Death Us Do Part (1966) - played groovy photographer Mike.
When making movies, Hartford-Davis apparently considered actor David Lodge his "lucky charm"; a part, therefore, had to be found for him. Lodge remembers: "I said, 'There's nothing in here for me.' He said, 'There's got to be something. I tell you what, what about one of the hippies?' I said, 'They're kids!' - and I was well into my forties. He said, 'We'll make one of them a big idiot with the mental age of about 12. He's retarded.'" So was born Groper, the strongman of Terry's beatnik gang, blindly obedient to leader Georgie.
Saving money where they could, Titan used Isleworth Studios in south-west London, not far from Hartford-Davis's home. Primarily use for making adverts in the year prior to the Corruption shoot only one other film had been made there.
The film's four-week schedule commenced on 10th July 1967, and most scenes were completed quickly. One exception was the discovery of the head in the fridge by Sandy, a female gang member. Actress Alexandra Dane was so shocked by the sight of an apparently decapitated head that she became quite distressed on the first take. The crewmen who had the job of stuffing the head with various offals referred to it as 'the laughing Japanese shot'. Far East audiences enjoyed a lot of gore, apparently.
The finale - in which the laser disposes of most of the leading characters - was achieved by stringing up lengths of wire around the set, which were then lit, and burned brightly where the laser was supposedly striking. Sue Lloyd remembers that the actors had to be wary of their positions if they were to avoid being injured.
Care also had to be taken in the scene in which Groper holds a brandy glass over Lynn's mouth in order to get information out of her. John Lodge remembers being cautious to leave a small gap so she could still take in air. Location shooting took place at Seaford, between London and Brighton. The scene where Lynn lures Terry's husband, Rik, to the edge of the cliff and forces him over was especially arduous for Sue Lloyd: "I suffer from terrible vertigo and that cliff was a sheer drop. I just couldn't do it. I just froze and in the end they had to get a double in. If you look, you never see my face when she pushes him off."
The murder in the train was also shot on location. This disturbing sequence was shot by Newbrook through a fish-eye lens, lending it a delirious quality. Another murder - that of the prostitute in the flat - was shot twice. In the version seen in Scandanavia, South America, and the Far East, a bare-breasted Marianne Morris, replacing the negligee clad Jan Waters in the regular edition, is attacked quite graphically by a manic Cushing. Again, Newbrook used a distorting fish-eye lens in the scene.
Over a year after its completion, the film premiered at London's Metropole on 21st November 1968, but was replaced after a week by Carry On Up the Khyber (1968). On general release from 8th December, Corruption was paired with an Alex Cord spaghetti western, Un minuto per pregare, un instante per morire / Dead or Alive (1968).
David Lodge recalls going to see an early screening of Corruption with Peter Cushing and them both chuckling all the way through. Cushing later remarked: "I felt it was a great idea, but the only thing I felt about the picture was that it was repetitive within itself - and it had to be, I suppose, because of what the story was about ... I think with a little more time it could have been more subtle, but even so it was an incredible success in America."
After filming ended, Peter Cushing went immediately into The Blood Beast Terror (1968) (then known as The Deathshead Vampire) at Goldhawk Studios. Sue Lloyd eventually became a regular on the television soap opera Crossroads (1964 - 1988), and later recreated her Ipcress File role in a new Harry Palmer film shot in Russia, Bullet to Beijing (1997). David Lodge continued to appear in many British films (in The Railway Children (1970), his Bandmaster can be seen wearing Groper's pebble-lensed spectacles).
After two more movies, the partnership of Hartford-Davis and Newbrook broke up. Newbrook formed Glendale Productions, responsible for both Crucible of Terror (1971) and The Asphyx (1973). Robert Hartford-Davis formed World Arts and made two further pictures in England before relocating to Hollywood for two more, and some television. In 1977, he was just starting work on the TV movie Murder at Peyton Place when he died, aged 54, of a massive heart attack
CHRISTOPHER LEE 'MOULIN ROGUE' BEHIND THE SCENES
LOOK CAREFULLY AND YOU'LL SPOT A YOUNG CHRISTOPHER LEE RELAXING ON THE SET OF THE 1952 PRODUCTION OF 'MOULIN ROGUE'. THOUGH THEY NEVER SHARED SCENES TOGETHER, 'MOULIN ROGUE' STARRING JOSE FERRER IS THOUGHT TO BE THE SECOND TIME..... IF YOU COUNT CHRISTOPHER LEE'S APPEARANCE IN 'HAMLET'... WHERE CHRISTOPHER LEE AND PETER CUSHING PATHS CROSSED...EVEN IF THEY DIDN'T KNOW IT!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
