Mock the Raven Nevermore!

Many moons ago I contributed to a book called Ten Years of Terror: British Horror Films of the 1970s.
I haven't looked at it in years, but not long ago I came across a review of it on Amazon, in which was written the following:
"But while the book seeks to inform and entertain, readers may be disconcerted by some of the cruel jibes which pass for 'criticism' (the string of comments directed at Mike Raven, star of Crucible of Terror, are especially unpleasant)"

I'm pretty sure I'm the main culprit here: I recall reviewing Crucible of Terror for the book, and including a variety of smartarsey put-downs of the star.
Though the intention was to be amusing rather than cruel, it's still something I now deeply regret. In fact, I'm rather ashamed of the tone of much of my early writing on horror films, the majority of it (I'm pleased to say) fairly well buried in long-forgotten magazines. I've not gone back to the book to check on my piece, but I have every reason to think that this reviewer has got it spot on. Guilty, m'lud.

For a long time, actually, I've felt the need to make amends to the memory of Raven, who sadly passed away in 1997.
Not because he was necessarily a better actor than we ever claimed but simply because of all the male figures who passed through British horror, he seems to have been given the most flak and the least slack, almost as if he was serving as the symbolic figurehead for everything we didn't like about the decline of British trad-horror.
And 'male' is most definitely the operative word - here's another home truth from that same Amazon reviewer:
"There is a tendency - peculiar to a certain breed of UK genre writer - for cheesecake to dictate the evaluation of any given film. Young male actors (not considered sexy by straight male reviewers) are constantly dismissed as non-entities, regardless of ability or experience, while even the most talentless actress will be praised for little more than a flash of her cleavage. In a review of The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, for instance, Robin Stewart (a perfectly adequate performer) is rubbished because he lacks macho prowess, while Julie Ege 'comes closest to achieving a performance'."

Hands up again, I think.
Imagine if Valerie Leon had followed up Mummy's Tomb with two self-devised horror cheapies in which she took the lead? Would we all be so unforgiving of their - or her - cinematic merits then? (Now stop imagining it and carry on with this post.)
So ask yourself: would the British horror film have been a better thing without Mike Raven or his two massively eccentric starring vehicles?
Just to pose the question is to reveal the absurdity of it. Raven is part of the wonderful, rich fabric of British horror, and whatever you think of him or his films, he's a wonderfully strange and enjoyable part of it. And if he'd been a woman we'd be hailing him as the unsung hero of the hour.

The thing that has really prompted this, though, is a recent post by my pal Mark, he of the Random Ramblings, which told me a number of things I never previously knew about Raven, and made me feel even more of a berk for writing him off so crassly.
I knew, of course, that he had been a disc-jockey, and takes pride of place (front row centre) in the famous group photograph of the original Radio 1 DJs:

But I didn't know that after his two Cornish-set starring horrors he stayed on in Cornwall, reverted to his real name of Austin Churton Fairman and became a sculptor, specialising in religious subjects with a marked erotic undercurrent.
That he was genuine occultist, with a deep and sincere knowledge of religious esoterica, had been a key element of his image as a horror star, but his own faith, it seems, was Christian: "looking back from the comparative serenity of old age," he wrote, "I can see that my whole life has been conditioned by two main elements; my consistently unsuccessful struggle to come to terms with my own sexuality, and my, consequently, equally unsuccessful attempts to live up to my Christian beliefs."
Many, in fact it would appear most, of his pieces are inspired by Biblical passages: you can see a good selection of them here, at this fascinating website maintained by his family.

Of course, to anyone who knows Raven's horror films well, there is something entirely splendid about his having become a sculptor in the wilds of Cornwall - that being the premise of his first and more widely-seen starring movie, Crucible of Terror.
I wonder how much we tend to pre-judge these movies by the standard of his best-known appearance of all: as Count Karnstein in the prologue of Hammer's Lust For a Vampire. Not only is he entirely dubbed (by Valentine Dyall), he also suffers the indignity of having close-ups of Christopher Lee's eyes (from Dracula Has Risen From the Grave) substituted for his own (surely the only time any actor has been subjected to so bizarre an indignity as the imposition of an eye-double).
It's as if the studio, having gone to the effort of hiring him, then refused to have any faith in him at all, even though the part is an obvious try-out, and there's very little anyone could do with it that would have had a lasting effect on the film.
As it is, the obvious overdubbing of Dyall's almost comically sepulchral tones and the inserts of Chris Lee's peepers more or less do for the performance: there's no question that Raven left to his own devices would have been better. (He's perfectly adequate, you'll remember, in I, Monster.)
But it's that silly Hammer image of him, I think, that we tend to bring with us to his two starring vehicles, and as a result the assumption that they - and he - are inherently ridiculous is ingrained from the start.

That they are low-budget affairs is obvious, and until some eccentric benefactor pays for a top class restoration we will have to be content with pretty sub-par prints. (They are incredibly grainy, as if they had been blown-up from 16mm).
But what they most definitely are not is the predictable, run of the mill rehashing of sub-Hammer themes and motifs. You could never mistake them for a Tigon film or an Amicus film or a Herman Cohen film. They look, and are, unique.
Crucible is almost a hearkening back to the baroque grandiosity of pre-Hammer horror, with some splendid shots of the bubbling cauldron in Raven's foundry, and excellent use of Cornish tin-mining locations.
The second, Disciple of Death, is potentially the more intriguing, and clearly personal to Raven: an occult melodrama that he both wrote and produced. Set again in Cornwall, with Raven as 'The Stranger', a Satanic emissary who recruits young women for diabolic sacrifice by posing as a priest, the film is a period piece - incredibly ambitious considering the budget.
I'd love to tell you more about it, but the truth is I've never actually seen all of it - and it's a long, long time since I've seen Crucible for that matter.
Still, one ker-ching on the Amazon till later and both are heading my way: I will report back...

In the meantime, here's to Mike Raven: the world of British horror would have been vastly the poorer without him.

Smart new Woman In Black poster...

I like this a lot... and I must say I'm very cautiously looking forward to the movie too.
Until now, New Hammer have been very keen to stress the New, but there's a lovely retrospective feel to this poster image that bodes well for the film.
All it lacks is the legend 'A Hammer Film' emblazoned somewhere near the top.
Other than that, though - very nice indeed.

Lee and Cushing after hours

I'm sure you've all seen these before, but they're really good.
This is what the kings of Hammer got up to when they had a minute or two to spare.

Great promo reel for DRACULA A.D. 1972

All I Want for Christmas

Caroline Munro On the Buses

I had only ever watched Mutiny on the Buses and given that this comedy trilogy was Hammer's financially most profitable venture – Did someone say they didn't successfully try new ways in the 1970s? - was always somewhat ashamed that I had missed out on watching all three productions so when I discovered a cheapo set of those flicks in town (a steal at just €2.50) I had to splash out and dedicate the weekend to a journey back into a time when birds were crumpet and men were henpicked.

Well, what can I say? If you can stomach this kind of comedy these movies aren't all that bad. They sure aren't the worst of their kind but I wouldn't exactly call them examples of comical genius either.

What fascinated me most of all, however, was finally being able to see Caroline Munro's first appearance in a Hammer movie.

Hang on, I hear you say. Wasn't her first role in Dracula A.D. 1972 to be followed by the seminal Captain Kronos, Vampire Hunter?

Sure.... Legend has it that James Carreras discovered her on one of her Lamb's Navy Rum billboards and straight away decided to offer her a contract.

Just where, however, did he see her billboard? Could it have been here?

Yes, watch the original On the Buses and you can clearly spot her a couple of times on a giant billboard right next to the bus depot.

Wanna see more proof?

So unless someone supplies me with evidence to the contrary I will remain convinced that constant exposure to her image during the filming of this comedy left him unable to resist her charms and compelled him to cast her in somewhat meatier roles and Hammer history was made.

Don't bother looking for her in Mutiny and Holiday on the Buses. By the time these were shot, her billboard had already been replaced.

Matthew's Watching Hammer Top Ten

Encouraged by Holger's decision to republish his Top Ten Hammers (see here), here's mine, also lifted from the fine and much lamented Watching Hammer blog.

Comparing the two lists, I guess I'm slightly surprised that mine and Holger's list have only one film in common; perhaps even more surprising is the fact that it's Dracula AD 1972!
Incidentally, I watched this again recently and was stunned by how little attention Caroline Munro gets: not only is she the first victim, killed off the moment Dracula reappears, but note just how little of the dialogue goes to her, and just how few close-ups she is given, not just in the party scene (where you can blink twice and even imagine that she's not present at all) but also in the ritual sequence - at which she ultimately proves the central presence. Watch as the camera pans around the assembled gang, and observe how few times it lights on Caroline.
For the studio's big new star discovery this is simply inexplicable.

Lovely to then watch Captain Kronos for the first time in maybe twenty years: the contrast was so great it almost nudged Kronos into a revised top ten.
In fact, in the year or so since I posted the below, I've caught up with several of the Hammer Films I had not seen at the time, and reacquainted myself with others I had only seen once and a while ago. I now think Curse of the Werewolf is a much better film than I remembered, and a few others have 'rearranged themselves' in my affections too.
But as my ultimate choice of ten, I stand by what I originally posted, as follows.


1. THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1962)
Right. The brief is to pick my ten favourites, not necessarily the ten I think are the best. But pride of place has to go to Phantom, which is my favourite, but it’s my favourite because it’s also the best, and nobody seems to think so but me. Incredible how a film’s reputation can continue to be influenced by its original reception, and how people decades later can watch this so sure it’s going to be the lacklustre disappointment they all said it was in ’62 that they come away still believing it’s the lacklustre disappointment they all said it was back in ’62. Personally, I’d triple-bill it with Curse of F and the big D and challenge any newcomer to spot the difference – saving, of course the regrettable absence of Messrs Cushing and Lee, not that Gough and Lom aren’t fine and dandy in their roles. I can’t think of a single thing about this film that isn’t superb. It’s the best re-imagining of the plot we have on film, it’s atmospheric and spooky, and it has a terrific music score (including a fake opera devised for the film by Edwin Astley; my second favourite fake opera devised for a film after the one Oscar Levant wrote for Charlie Chan at the Opera). There’s also not an ounce of flab on it anywhere, which you can’t always say about Hammer in the sixties. You can slice big slabs of fat off Curse of the Werewolf and Dracula, Prince of Darkness, but here we’re back to the 82-minute tightness of the very originals. I’ve written elsewhere about the magnificence of the film’s editing but it needs repeating: just watch the scene prior to the abduction of Christine by the dwarf and note how superbly Fisher combines music, staging and (mis)direction, so that we get that magnificent shock when she opens her curtains, with the sound of the window being pushed down acting as a percussive bridge between the lush romantic music of this scene and the scary organ music of the next. A true masterpiece.

2. THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) and DRACULA (1958)
My mother wasn’t too keen on my obsession with Dracula and horror movies as a kid, and eventually being allowed to see them was a major milestone in my life, so nostalgia must inevitably loom large here: all those countless lunchtimes and midmorning breaks at primary school huddled over my friend Steven’s copies of Horror Movies (by Alan Frank) and House of Horror (edited by Allen Eyles), gazing at the pictures, and trying to imagine what those movies could possibly be like. I still get that odd feeling, when I watch, say, the brain operation in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, that I am watching a still picture come to life, as if someone had deliberately recreated The Night Watch on film or something. My memory tells me that the first Hammer film I ever saw – illicitly at a friend’s house – was The Satanic Rites of Dracula, but for some reason that didn’t make the kind of impression on me I would have expected it to, looking back. What did, was the short season of classics BBC2 showed at Christmas, 1984, when at last I caught up with Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy, the first two double-billed.
There’s no point me boring you with why Dracula is brilliant – everybody knows it’s just one of those movies with nothing wrong with them whatsoever; that you can watch over and over again without even slightly dimmed pleasure. I will, however, put in an extra word for Curse – fractionally my favourite of the two - as it is too fashionable now to claim that it is an enormously important film but not a great one, and that it was only with Dracula that everything really clicked for the first time. I’ve always found it a barnstormer from first to last, fully the equal of its more cherished follow-up. I love the grotty Eastmancolor, I love Hazel Court – always the queen of Hammer for me – and I love the rumbling opening bars of that theme music. It excites me rather more than Dracula.

4. BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB (1971)
Interestingly, that 1984 season consisted of the earliest Bray films and this – which, to make things even odder, they showed first. I’ve often asked myself if nostalgia is the main reason why I think this is far and away the best film the studio made in the seventies. But no, I absolve myself of the charge: this is a masterpiece, pure and simple. In a sense it is an original, of course, not really the fourth mummy film but a first adaptation of a Bram Stoker novel, very compellingly told with some beautifully photographed sequences, great music and – as it’s the seventies now – very gory scares. But it’s spooky in an almost Val Lewtonish way. I love the Egyptian flashbacks, filmed at night, and so much more atmospheric than the usual sort, bathed in unsubtle, baking arc light. And then of course there is perennial Carry On bit-parter-cum-set dressing Valerie Leon, who – let us first note – is entirely credible, and memorably otherworldly, in her one and only dramatic lead, before adding as supplementary information that yes, she is also built like the world’s most sexually attractive battleship. (If you can imagine such a thing.)

5. DRACULA HAS RISEN FROM THE GRAVE (1968)
Funny thing, but I actually got quite blasé about Hammer after that. Talk about ungrateful. By the time I saw Risen From the Grave, some time in ’85 I think, it was like I’d been watching Hammer films all my life and I remember thinking ‘ah, look: here’s another of those cute little Hammer films I used to be obsessed with…’ Now I know better. It’s the best of the post-Dracula Draculas, and the most Bray-like, in its look and atmosphere, of all the post-Bray Hammers: those scenes of the young lovers scuttling over the beautifully designed rooftops are just gorgeous. And then we have Veronica Carlson; we have an excellent opening theme and title sequence; we have a fabulous (albeit physically and chronologically impossible) post-credits sequence; we have some fascinating theological angst involving a stuffy cleric and a cocky young atheist (borrowed, along with a couple of giveaway visual ideas, from the recent film of Bolt’s A Man For All Seasons); we have the heavy use of amber-edged filters which is always distracting but not unattractive; we have some complicated business about Dracula being able to pull the stake out that annoys vampire purists – always a good thing, and most of all, of course, we have a grand finale involving Christopher Lee falling off a cliff and getting kebabbed on a giant crucifix.

6. FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (1967)
Oh yes, we must find room for this in a list of favourites. Had it been the ten best it might have been just edged out by Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969), but that’s such a bleak and mean-spirited film; never one I turn to for pleasure. Unlike this beauty: so weird, so Grimm’s fairy tale, such excellent use of sets and locations: Black Park at its most verdant and inspiring, the old inn, those windy streets… Susan Denberg, kittenish one minute, savage the next, is terrific.
“You see: the hair has changed colour…” Somehow, we never doubted it would, Peter.

7. LUST FOR A VAMPIRE (1971)
I caught up with most of the studio’s seventies output in my middle teens, when ITV launched 24 hour television and suddenly realised there were a lot of hours that needed filling. Mircalla to the rescue! I’m virtually alone in my (strange) love for this, I know (though I seem to remember David Pirie being surprisingly positive about it). But once we get past that naff Mike Raven prologue this is a rich, ripe stilton of a movie, and of all the Hammers that pussyfoot around with nudity and sex it’s by far the most happily, healthily and uncomplicatedly sexy. Does Yutte Stensgaard give a bad performance? I don’t know: how would a fresh-revived 19th century vampiress attending a girls’ finishing school behave in real life, d’you think? Until you produce the evidence to the contrary my guess is pretty much the way Yutte gives it to us, so lay off her. I also like the outdoor aerobics class.

8. DRACULA AD 1972 (1972) and MAN ABOUT THE HOUSE (1973)
Two wonderful evocations of London in the early seventies, and how I look forward to the day when I will only need to bend over backwards justifying my love of the second one. I mean, don’t you think it’s about time we stopped pretending Dracula AD 1972 is anything less than a classic? For years we had to pretend it was irredeemable rubbish, painful to watch. Now it’s at the guilty pleasure stage, so bad it’s good and all that. True recognition will come, so why not just save time and say it now: it’s great fun, exciting, scary, moves like a bat out of hell, and the change of time and setting works a treat.
And Man About the House is basically more of the same, only without the vampires.

10. CHILDREN OF THE FULL MOON (1980)
Too young to have ever seen a Hammer at the cinema (I’ve still only seen one on the big screen: Dracula, at the Barbican in 1996) my memories of them are entirely bounded by the small – and square – television screen. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always nurtured a fondness for the TV films made under the Hammer House of Horror banner. Never saw any of those Mystery and Suspense ones; I gather they’re not so hot, but a good half-dozen of the first batch are more than commendable attempts to do what Hammer-proper died trying to do: make traditional but modern horror films. And this one is a masterpiece, as good as anything the studio did in the seventies, except for one annoying trait it shares with most of the series: an annoying pre-credits sequence that gives the game away before it’s even started. Unlike the majority, however, it does have a proper (albeit grim) ending, whereas most of them don’t end but just sort of stop, in a would-be Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected kind of a way, and you have to pretend it’s a Hammer feature film you set your video to record but the tape ran out two reels from the end. Set in a wonderfully creepy house in a wonderfully creepy forest, this has some great lines, real suspense, one of my favourite ever pull-back-the-curtains shock moments, Diana Dors being quite brilliant, and Robert Urquhart for circularity. A small thing of considerable beauty.