Ollie's Last Round

Two years ago I had visited Oliver Reed's grave in Churchtown, Co. Cork, I blogged about it here.

Prior to this on a visit to Malta I had met the guy in whose arms Reed had died while filming Gladiator. At the time I had published a travelogue about the experience for The Hungover Gourmet #7.

This article together with five others have now been republished in Ollie's Last Call, a new 22.400+ word eBook that is available for just $0.99 (or whatever equivalent in your local online store Amazon deems this to be).

The full list of articles is as such:

Ollie’s Last Round: A travelogue about meeting the guy in whose arms Oliver Reed died while filming "Gladiator" in Malta

Look What's Happened to the Omen and to Rosemary’s Baby:
A look at two much maligned follow-ups to two of the best known movie classics, "Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby" and "Omen IV: The Awakening"

Little Shop of Euro-Horrors: Visiting the Profondo Rosso store in Rome, owned by Dario Argento and Luigi Cozzi, and meeting up with Luigi Cozzi

Raising the (Blind) Dead: An overview over the series of Blind Dead movies by Amando De Ossorio

The Baroness: A book by book look at the wonderfully lurid series of The Baroness paperbacks by “Paul Kenyon” with a solution to their true authorship

Anatomies Dissected: Reviews of the two German "Anatomie" movies

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: The Sign of Satan (08/May/1964)

Just discovered this episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour from May 08, 1964 with Christopher Lee on YouTube. Not sure how long this will be on but it can also be viewed on DailyMotion.

The Sign of Satan was filmed at Universal Studios and is from the second season of the hour long program. This show was effectively a continuation of the previous half an hour long “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”.

The episode was based on Robert Bloch’s short story Return to the Sabbath, first published in “Weird Tales” (July 1938) when Bloch was just 21. Other stories published that month in the magazine contained Henry Kuttner’s Spawn of Dagon, Seabury Quinn’s Fortune’s Fools and Clark Ashton Smith’s Mother of Toads as well as a poem each by H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard.

It features Lee as Karl Jorla, an Austrian Devil Worshipper who features in a recording of a Black Mass. When that recording gets released, his acolytes suspect that he was behind this and threaten to hunt and kill him. A film studio hires him as an actor for a similar role, not knowing that what they had seen in the initial production was not a work of fiction.

During the satanic ritual Lee is heard speaking German and truth be told his German is better than the German accent he puts on when speaking English. He also appears to be wearing a head piece as well as some crazy bushy eye brows and some of the scenes evoke his Dracula, no doubt one of the reasons he was hired for the job.

All the occult references are very moody and must have appealed to Lee as an aficionado in that area. Though the premise of this episode is preposterous - no studio would have hired a No Name and put up with all those exorbitant requests and strange behaviour - the fact that this is one of those productions that show him amongst Satanists and Devil Worshippers with hints of Horror Hotel (1960) as well as future Dennis Wheatley adaptations makes this well worth checking out.

Lee mentions in his autobiography that he was anxious to leave his 12-week old daughter Christina behind which places his arrival around the February 15 mark. This was Lee’s first invite to Hollywood. Rather than being placed in a grandiose hotel as he had hoped for, he is put up in an unfinished motel, but has Marlon Brando’s dressing room.

Filming lasts two weeks and while there, he also meets one of his idols, Groucho Marx, as well as Ray Bradbury who had wanted him to play Mr. Dark in an adaptation of Something Wicked This Way Comes.

Prior to filming he was seemingly convinced he’d be directed by Alfred Hitchcock directly and only became aware that this was not the case when meeting Bob Douglas, the actual director. He only ended up briefly seeing Hitch from a distance and also lost eight of Ray Milland’s golf balls in a match against him in Bel Air.

Peter Cushing as a Mafioso

I recently published a 15.000 word eBook dedicated to the German series of Dr. Mabuse movies from the 1960s. I am planning this to be the first in a number of overviews dedicated to classic German Crime and Thriller flicks and for my next project want to approach the eight Jerry Cotton movies featuring George Nader as the eponymous FBI Agent.

Jerry Cotton is a series of German "Heftromane", short weekly 60+ page novels that are exclusively sold through news agencies and by now has run up more than 3000 issues over the decades. Especially in the earlier years they tended to show covers with stills taken from totally unrelated movies.

So imagine my surprise when I wanted to stock up on some of them for research when I came across this cover for Die Rache des Mafioso ("The Mafioso's Revenge") featuring Peter Cushing in a scene from The Satanic Rites of Dracula.

I was reminded of the time when I posted a similar cover photo from a Jerry Cotton novel featuring Veronica Carlson.

For the Cushing cover I am particularly intrigued as the original image of course also included a crucifix which had been cropped to make him more in line with the Mafia theme of this issue (that I have yet to read).

The Ugly Duckling (1959)

THE UGLY DUCKLING used to be one of the Holy Grails for Hammer aficionados.

 Directed by prolific British B-Picture Director Lance Comfort and long considered lost, it was in actual fact hidden in plain sight in the vaults of Sony and BFI. It just hadn’t been screened for more than half a century.

 British Free-to-Air channel Talking Pictures as part of their amazing lineup of vintage movies and TV series has twice now transmitted this production and thereby allowed Hammer Fans to finally view this often discussed but rarely seen comedy.

 Must admit, given that comedy is probably the genre that easily dates the worst (never mind the fact that it often also doesn’t travel well from one culture to the other), I was at least just as anxious as I was curious about finally coming face to face with this movie.

 But I shouldn’t have worried. It is hardly a forgotten masterpiece but it also isn’t a dud. Instead it is a thoroughly enjoyable little contemporary riff on Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde”. The film’s credits even indicate that the idea was “stolen” from that book.

 Shot in 1959, at a time when Hammer’s Gothic reinvention had already begun, it’s something of a throwback to the company’s earlier black and white pictures and seems to have purposely been planned as a comedic variation to THE TWO FACES OF DR. JEKYLL, released in the same year.

 THE UGLY DUCKLING features a number of familiar faces for Hammer and classic UK movie fans, such as Bernard Bresslaw (MOON ZERO TWO as well as countless CARRY ON films), Michael Ripper and Marla Landi (THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER) as well as Jon Pertwee and many more.

Bresslaw plays Henry Jeckle (sic), great-great-grandson of the original Dr. Jekyll, and totally ill at ease amongst London’s hip youth….. who were still a few years away from being completely changed by the appearance of The Beatles and the subsequent upheavals of the 1960s. When he revives his ancestor’s notorious formula he transforms into a self-confident hoodlum who helps a gang to steal some precious jewels, only to try and give them back to the owners during his more innocent but fumbling real personality.

 And all kinds of mayhem ensues….

 THE UGLY DUCKLING is clearly a product of its time - we even see Jeckle go to bed with a golliwogg doll. – but it’s a fast moving and enjoyably breezy comedy that may have even inspired Jerry Lewis to venture into similar territory with THE NUTTY PROFESSOR four years later.

 The film also features a number of dance band pieces, possibly inspired by producer Michael Carreras lifelong love for jazz. Those musical interludes do at times overstay their welcome quite a bit.

 Ultimately the film probably suffered from a different kind of bad timing as it is depicting a cultural landscape that just a few years later would irrevocably be changed for good and thereby quickly aged this production.

 Still, it is good to finally be given a chance to appreciate this rare Hammer production, remarkable for its balancing act between comedy, musical numbers and the occasional digression into horror-lite with its well lit transformation scenes.

Captain Kronos vs The Mummy (Titan Comics Releases)

Recently read two officially licensed Hammer comics published through Titan Books.

 Titan had previously issued Marcus Hearn’s excellent HAMMER STORY, HAMMER GLAMOUR, THE HAMMER VAULT and THE ART OF HAMMER, so is the perfect choice for Hammer Studio related publications.

 In the past you were able to enjoy Hammer related comic book stories in the pages of the legendary “The House of Hammer” magazine, predominantly adaptations of their films, at the time an ideal way to immerse yourself in their movies when easy access to them via DVD, Blu Ray or streaming was unheard of.

 Titan Comics’ recent THE MUMMY – PALIMPSEST and CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER both go a different direction by taking the original Hammer movies and using them as a spring board to develop new stories.

 Each of those two are perfectly readable and enjoyable in their own right but CAPTAIN KRONOS is the one that has the edge with regards to truly carrying the Hammer torch whereas their version of THE MUMMY really is only tangentially linked to any of the Hammer mummy flicks.

 Though often flashing back to previous incarnations, most of THE MUMMY – PALIMPSEST is set in modern day London.

 In the late 19th Century members of a secret society, the Sect of Anubis, discovered how to cheat death and gain eternal life via the Palimpsest ritual, which required them every 33 years to drink the blood of a female victim chosen to be the host for the ancient Egyptian Priestess Nebetah. Their current chosen one, Angel Kostenko, has been brought to London by sex traffickers but proves resilient in her fight against both her kidnappers as well as the Sect. She is somewhat aided by another group battling the Sect of Anubis, however, soon learns that those guys’ motives may also not be quite as benevolent as they seem to be.

 This is a very effective mummy story but it is only borderline related to Hammer’s original MUMMY (a few brief glimpses of Kharis here or there) and despite the focus on a female mummy also has little to nothing to do with BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY’S TOMB.

 Even though the connections to Hammer are tenuous, this is a highly enjoyable read within the sub-genre of mummy literature and films with an ever so slight – cynics may say: token – feminist slant given that the current sacrifice is both a victim of sex traffickers as well as a pawn between two male-only member societies.

 For Brazilian artist Ronilson Freire THE MUMMY – PALIMPSEST is arguably his biggest English language assignment yet as he is mainly known for work in his native country though has also been involved with DOCTOR WHO graphic novels and a number of other UK/US projects.

 Up until I read the mini bio at the end of the comic, I was convinced that writer Peter (X-STATIX) Milligan was American as the weakest part of this graphic novel is the often ridiculously clunky, archaic and faux-English Upper Class dialogue by the members of the two Secret Societies battling each other. I was totally convinced that no one born in the UK would write lines like: “I am popping up to Scotland for a spot of shooting.”

 Goes to prove how much I know…..

 The CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER comic on the other hand is directly related to the characters in the movie and develops their story further.

 The main hero was always one of the most original vampire hunters, a young, debonair, swashbuckling, pot smoking slayer who at one stage was even planned to be a time traveller, hence the name: Kronos.

 No time travelling in this comic by writer Dan Abnett (GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY) and artist Tom Mandrake (THE SPECTRE). Instead the plot reunites the three main characters from the movie –Kronos with his trusted sidekick, the eccentric Professor Grost, and sexy gypsy girl Carla who they encountered in the movie and who has now joined them along their way - for a new adventure following the film’s events.

 Their journey brings them to a little village besieged by powerful vampires. When Kronos ventures out to investigate he doesn’t just discover that these are immune to sunlight but also unearths an even bigger mystery.

 What this story does really well, apart of course from some grandiose fight scenes, is to depict the fact that in Kronos’ world there are all different types of vampires that each require a new strategy to defeat them, again setting this character apart from the more traditional vampire hunters.

 Both comics also contain short articles by Marcus Hearn about the history of the original Hammer movies these new stories were inspired by. CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER also contains a foreword by Caroline Munro.

 Overall am quite impressed with New Hammer’s comic book excursions into Old Hammer material with a modern twist and I’m hoping there’ll be more to come… but have a funny feeling this will be yet another short lived attempt to try and breathe new life into an otherwise moribund company.

Paying my respects to Oliver Reed

 I moved to Cork (Ireland) Christmas 1995 and had previously travelled back and forth for a good few years. As such I was very well aware of the fact that Oliver Reed was living quasi in my neighborhood, in Churchtown, a little village just about 50km to the North of Cork City, just off the N20.

 There he lived a fairly quiet life, made friends with the locals and all in all seemed to enjoy that no one made a major deal about the celeb living in their midst. He became a regular to O’Brien’s Bar and despite all the rabble rousing stories told about him, the only time his stay in Churchtown garnered any attention during his lifetime was in a very positive light that would endear him to the locals for years to come: When he heard about a young local girl who suffered from Tetra-amelia, a very rare syndrome that had her born without arms and legs, he arranged a fundraising campaign that would ultimately help to raise IE£ 800.000 towards her treatment.

 So at the time I knew what I had wanted to do. Drive over to Churchtown and plank myself on a bar stool in O’Briens until Reed would show up. Things always came in the way but I always assumed that I’d have all the time in the world to get this arranged.

 Alas, Reed surprisingly died in a bar in Malta during the filming of GLADIATOR. A good few years ago I had managed to visit the bar while visiting the island and noticed that at least at the time the owners had turned this – not necessarily tastefully – into an Oliver Reed shrine to attract the punters and in another bar by chance even met the guy in whose arms Reed had died. (More details on this encounter can be read in my article about it for THE HUNGOVER GOURMET #7)

 Following his death, his corpse was laid to rest in Churchtown, proof how attached the actor had been to his last place of residence. The funeral ended up being a 10-Day-Wake with a number of celebrity mourners such as Michael Winner and Alex Higgins, leading to an influx of visitors that this village would likely never seen again.

 And yet, despite living so close to Churchtown it took me until last summer to finally make it up there and in the end it took a visit by Hammer fan and historian Robert Simpson to get me off my backside and up to Reeds’s gravesite.

 What struck us first was how utterly non-descript the place is: a village square, a pub or two, a church, a couple of small roads and that’s really it.

 Bruhenny Graveyard, the cemetery in which Reed is buried is located just off the main square and O’Brien’s Bar and can be entered through a narrow lane that can easily be missed unless you look out for it.

 Inside one is struck by a feeling that this must be one of the most deserted cemeteries ever which makes it easy, though, to locate Reed’s grave which is just as spare as most of the other graves on the site. It has been reported that over the years visiting fans had drowned so much alcohol in his honour over the gravesite that flowers no longer grow on it which may explain why it now doesn’t stand out much anymore.

 Instead a simple gravestone carrying his name (Robert Oliver Reed) and dates (1938-1999) together with the faded inscription “He made the air move” is all that now marks the final resting place for one of cinema’s most notorious rebel rousers.

Robert and I remained a few minutes in front of the grave until heading to O’Brien’s for a refreshing drink just across the road.

 In contrast to the total overkill in Malta’s bar there is very little that serves as memory to their most famous patron. Where they respected his boundaries in real life and just treated him as one of their own, they continued doing so after his death and all that serves as a reminder now is a single photo of Reed whereas most of the other walls are dominated by horse racing images and memorabilia that reflect the importance of equestrianism for the area.

 I guess we could have stayed and ask the elderly lady behind the bar or some of the few patrons that day about Reed and extract a story or two.

 But we didn’t.

 Truth be told it just didn’t feel right to interfere. No doubt no-one would have minded had we asked but we came to pay our respects and saw no need to further intrude.

The Skull (1965)

“Christopher Maitland sat back in his chair before the fireplace and fondled the binding of an old book. His thin face, modelled by the flickering firelight, bore a characteristic expression of scholarly preoccupation. 

Maitland’s intellectual curiosity was focussed on the volume in his hands. Briefly, he was wondering if the human skin binding this book came from a man, a woman, or a child. 

(…) It was nice to have a book bound in a woman’s skin. It was nice to have a crux ansata fashioned from a thigh-bone; a collection of Dyack heads; a shrivelled hand of Glory stolen from a graveyard in Mainz. Maitland owned all these items, and many more. For he was a collector of the unusual.” 

The Skull is one Amicus’ first horror films. Coming hot on the heals of their first portmanteau flick, Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, this is actually a feature length movie though ironically based on a short story, The Skull of the Marquis de Sade, by Robert Bloch, i.e. the kind of material that they would later typically use for the anthology productions.

Horror films about obsessive collectors are a fascinating sub-genre that have very rarely been explored outside of Amicus where Robert Bloch appears to have been the driving force behind that niche (see also “The Man Who Collected Poe” segment of Torture Garden).

For The Skull Milton Subotsky co-adapted Bloch’s screenplay about an esoteric collector (Peter Cushing) who starts a descent into murder and madness when he is being offered the genuine skull of the Marquis De Sade.

Though the movie by and large follows the general plot of the short story to the point where certain lines of dialogue are even lifted verbatim, given the requirements of a feature length production there are added sections that are virtually dialogue free in which the film truly shines.

For these scenes director Freddie Francis managed to create some memorable bravura images that clearly demonstrate the cinematographic skill that would ultimately lead to him winning an Oscar. (Official Director of Photography here was John Wilcox.)

A Gothic pre-credits scene is bathed in a very Bavaesque light and depictures a silent, moody grave robbing. At one stage everything is filmed from the point-of-view of the corpse. It appears as if the corpse was lying in a glass tomb and could look through it to see the dirt removed from the coffin.

The film has lots of those strange angles and we often get to see everything from the perspective of the skull, a type of imagery that Alfred Vohrer was also very fond of in German Edgar Wallace Krimis at the time.

Long periods without sound or talk other than musical cues and purely visual imagery dominate this production that is also chock-a-block with little unnerving details such as somewhat distorted mirror reflections or bizarre camera angles.

The most famous of these scenes is midway through and could have been taken straight out of TV’s AVENGERS series: Maitland appears to get arrested and is brought to a Kafkaesque location, a large but mainly empty room only presided over by a judge surrounded by demonic statuettes who communicates through mute sign language and forces him to play a game of Russian Roulette, probably the most drawn out one prior to Deer Hunter. Maitland afterwards escapes through a maze of red corridors, and is threatened by gas and crushing walls while the skull is seen floating through the air. It’s a wonderfully filmed surreal nightmarish vision that vastly improves on the short story’s equivalent which features a rather more conventional form of torture by Iron Maiden.

The visual opulence of this production is furthermore highlighted by some of the most stunning set designs to be found in a 1960s horror production (courtesy of Scott Slimon and Bill Constable).

The characters all live in individually styled surroundings emphasizing their various collecting interests: Maitland’s library; an opulent billiard room with tribal masks; a phrenologist’s apartment featuring a range of masks and dragons as well as lots of books, crystal balls and skulls; the paintings in the shady dealer’s room.

According to Deborah DelVecchio and Tom Johnson in Peter Cushing: The Gentle Man of Horror and his 91 Films all this was filmed in Shepperton Studios “on one composite set which consisted of five rooms and a hallway”.

The Skull is probably the closest we have to a Cushing/Lee-Team-Up in which Peter Cushing plays a Baddy against Christopher Lee’s Good Guy though Cushing’s character is never inherently evil just involuntarily under an evil influence. (And Lee is not really a Goody, just scared and not-evil.) In actual fact the film ramps up the body-count in comparison to the original short story where there were decidedly less killings and none of which were cause by Maitland. 

The film is a major tour-de-force for Cushing who features in the vast majority of the scenes and often is required to silently act within the confines of a dialogue-free atmospheric scenery.

The only other two actors in this production with any decent screen-time to speak off are Patrick Wymark as a wonderfully sleazy procurator of artefacts and Christopher Lee as a friend and fellow-collector who first of all gets embroiled in a bidding war over some demonic figurines and afterwards wants nothing more to do with them. It’s rare that we ever hear fear in Lee’s voice but this is one of the few occasions where he is made to portray a man at the end of his tethers.

Also watch out for Michael Gough as an auctioneer and Patrick Magee and Nigel Green as a coroner and police officer, all three in tiny blink-or-you-miss-them short appearances that beg the question why so many reasonably well known actors at the time constantly show up in what amount to little more than extra parts at that stage in their careers.

All in all, The Skull is one of Amicus’ best productions if not even THE best. Though the studio is mainly known for their portmanteau movies, it required a feature length adaptation of a short story to help them properly unleash a highly atmospheric feast. Some may consider this to be a bit short on actual horror but for me this is one of the most intriguing visual treats the studio had to offer.

The ever-changing faces of Victoria Vetri

Or should I call this: The ever-changing hairstyles of Victoria Vetri?

Either way, I just happened to come across two of Vetri’s TV appearances this weekend:

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E.’s The Indian Affairs Affair still features her under her alternative nom-de-plume Angela Dorian.

The episode is the series’ Season Two finale and with its exaggerated “Cowboys’n’Inchuns”-imagery already gives a taster for the campy madness that was to follow in the subsequent season.

All of the Native Americans on display may be American but they’re hardly native. Even Illya Kuryakin joins in and dons a dark wig and a fake accent.

Dorian/Vetri plays Charisma Highcloud, the daughter of an Indian Chief (played by familiar in face if not in name, Ted de Corsia) held captive by Indian hating L.C. Carson who intends to drop a hydrogen bomb and apparently needs the Indian’s reservation for his schemes. (Don’t ask.)

Seriously, whatever happened to the hydrogen bomb? Isn’t it time we get a decent hydrogen threat again? Atomic warfare is so lame in comparison!

Much to her father’s annoyance, Vetri’s character sustains her student’s lifestyle by becoming a Native go-go dancer in New York.

For MISSION IMPOSSIBLE’s Squeeze Play she is back again to her more paler real self. This Season 5 episode is one of the shows with Leonard Nimoy and Leslie Warren in its line-up, both of which also have prominent roles infiltrating the hide-out of a dying Mafia don (Albert Paulsen, who had previously also appeared in a variety of other roles for MISSION IMPOSSIBLE) with the intention of obtaining his secret list of heroin distributors and causing an internal struggle in its ranks.

Vetri again plays a “Chief’s” younger family member, this time the grand-daughter who is pretty much innocent but has inklings of the nefarious activities of all those sharp-suited men in sunglasses around her.

Truth be told if the mention of “Angela Dorian” hadn’t triggered something in my memory I may never have connected her with the blonde-haired bewigged cavegirl of Hammer’s WHEN DINOAURS RULED THE EARTH. Strange that someone who has become something of an iconic figure in Hammer Fandom, should ultimately be so unrecognizable in most of her other performances but such is the fate of Brunettes who briefly become famous as Blonde Bombshells.

The MISSION IMPOSSIBLE episode is currently available on YouTube or Netflix US. THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. may be on YouTube for some…. but not for my region. I watched this courtesy of my fab U.N.C.L.E. box set.

Now I better be off trying to come across some more of Vetri’s TV work. It seems that due to her looks she was often hired for more “ethnic” roles and therefore featured in a number of Western series as well, not just 1960s Spy shows.

Four Sided Triangle (1953)

Given that Hammer’s official YouTube channel has made some of their lesser known and previously only difficult to get a hold off early black & white productions more readily available, it is pretty pathetic that I haven’t spent a few sleepless nights yet in front of the screen in my endeavor to plug a few more of my holes in my Hammer filmography.

Time to change this…..
(Spoiler Alert: Please continue reading only after watching the film first.) 

FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE was Terence Fisher’s first Sci Fi movie and some of its concepts indeed seem to predate some of their later Frankenstein flicks (e.g. CREATED WOMAN).

In a pastoral English village, Robin (John Van Eyssen who is better known as (HORROR OF) DRACULA’S Jonathan Harker) and Bill (Stephen Murray), two friends since childhood, are collaborating together to create what was apparently going to become a prototype for Star Trek’s replicator. They are assisted by Lena (Barbara Payton), a childhood sweetheart who has just returned back from a stint in the States, and makes up the third (and later on also forth) side of their triangle.

Payton’s character is potentially the most interesting one in this movie as she is so decidedly off-centre, yet the film seems to treat most of her later decisions with the utmost normality.

We first see her in a flashback playing knights and lady with the boys and clearly already favouring Robin. Following a lengthy stay in the States she meets up with Dr Harvey (James Hayter), the narrator of this film, and proudly proclaims that she intends to spend all her money and subsequently “die in some reasonably unmessy fashion”.

This is quite possibly one of the most casual suicide declarations ever filmed and even more shocking as we never seem to get a proper idea why she considers herself such a failure and disappointed with life. What a way to get introduced to a character!

Meeting her old friends again, however, seems to give her a fresh purpose in life and she acts as their assistant and quickly rekindles her mutual infatuation with Robin, leaving Bill just longing after her.

Most of the research work is depicted as taking place in a laboratory that could easily have also been used in both the Universal or Hammer Frankenstein productions. Where at first the goal was to replicate inanimate objects, duplicating life is the obvious next step, especially given that Bill comes up with a plan to copy Lena giving him at last a chance for some quality time with her artificial twin but leading the viewer with a few more choice head-scratch moments with regards to her dubious decision making skills.

Not only does she readily agree to volunteer without batting an eyelid for this untested replication process. Her artificial twin (called Helen) is a carbon copy even down to her emotions for Robin yet out of some misdirected sense for – yes, for what exactly? it is never clear - , she decides to marry Bill, only to attempt to drown herself. To make things even worse, she subsequently believes that getting her memory wiped just so she can forget about her real true love is indeed a good idea (“an empty mind and a new beginning”).

And never during any of this do we get a feeling that this is anything else but common sense decision making! Any single one of those decisions is actually beyond creepy so not emphasizing that creep factor in the movie and making all those actions appear downright normal is in the end an awfully wasted opportunity and a missed chance.

This could have become a proto-Cronenbergian Mind Fuck but just ends up being a very average and mercifully short production based on a preposterous idea. Even a potentially disturbing surprise ending is solved amicably, unlike the literary original that appears to have gone just this extra bit further with regards to the final outcome.

William F. Temple’s original story was adapted to the screen in collaboration by both Terence Fisher and Paul Tabori, a Hungarian author who on top of writing some English language pulp fiction novels wrote a number of screenplays as well and was also involved with Terence Fisher’s next film, SPACEWAYS, yet another early Science Fiction movie by Hammer.

Whereas most of the talent in this film was just at the beginning of their careers, sadly 26-year-old Barbara Payton was already approaching the end of hers.

Once an up and coming potential Hollywood Star she was a true-life Femme Fatale and after having made the rounds through a number of her leading men and nearly being responsible for the death of one of them following a vicious brawl over her, she was deemed toxic in Hollywood and reduced to shooting the likes of BRIDE OF THE GORILLA.

Going to Bray was meant to be a new start for her. FOUR SIDED TRIANGLE was filmed from August – September 1952 and shooting on her second Hammer film BAD BLONDE/THE FLANAGAN BOY started right afterwards on September 25.

Alas, there was little else to come for her careerwise. She fell into a vicious spiral of alcoholism, drug abuse and homelessness, was at one stage reduced to sleeping on park benches and ended up selling her body. She died much too young at the age of just 39 as a result of heart and liver failure.

Though it’s easy to blame the Hollywood system for her downfall, it must also be said that there are ample examples of normal folks out there pressing the self-destruct button out of their own volition.

A cover story in CONFIDENTIAL magazine published an exposé: “How I went from a $10.000 a week movie queen to a $5 party girl!”

In her memoirs I AM NOT ASHAMED she wrote choice nuggets such as:

"I went out with every big male star in town. They wanted my body and I needed their names for success. There was my picture on the front pages of every paper in the country... Today I live in a rat infested apartment with not a bean to my name and I drink too much Rose wine. I don't like what the scale tells me. The little money I do accumulate to pay the rent comes from old residuals, poetry and favors to men. I love the Negro race and I will accept money only from Negroes. Does it all sound depressing to you? Queasy? Well, I'm not ashamed."

Having long been out of print and commanding high prices, the book was re-published a few years back (and is still available cheaply for the Kindle) as well as a biography about her, KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE, named after one of her films. I hope to review these books a bit more extensively in the near future but you know me: I may also just vanish again for a while from the blogosphere.

In the meantime: Do check out the movie. After all it comes free courtesy of Hammer’s YouTube channel. It may just be an average production overall but with the Frankensteinian vibes and some off-beat moments courtesy of one of Tinseltown’s most miserable real life stories, this is worth a quick glance.

The Deadly Bees (1967)

A contemporary Amicus horror film directed by Freddie Francis, starring Suzanna Leigh and a wild eyed, over-the-top and eccentric Frank Finlay, also featuring Michael Ripper as a publican, with songs by Elkie Brooks (dubbing Leigh) and The Birds on screen with Ronnie Wood and a screenplay co-written by Robert Bloch based on H.F. Heard’s bestselling Holmes pastiche A Taste for Honey.

So what could go wrong?

 Actually not all that much at first glance.

Though mainly known for their anthology horror concepts, these always were a bit hit and miss and it’s therefore good to see one of Amicus’ proper feature length forays into horror. Not making this a Gothic horror production wisely set them apart from Hammer while at the same time securing some of Hammer’s key personnel guaranteeing a certain recognition factor.

Suzanna Leigh plays a popular singer on the verge of a mental breakdown who is sent off to a remote island for some respite. (The doctor who diagnoses her is played by a blink and you’ll miss him Michael Gwynn.) The vibes of Swinging London are represented by Swinging Cameras going back and forth while capturing a performance by The Birds (and the bees… nudge nudge). In contrast rural England is frequented by merry publicans, cheerful lasses, eccentric characters and a dysfunctional couple, the husband (Guy Doleman, best known as SPECTRE agent Count Lippe from Thunderball), a brooding farmer/bee keeper who keeps his raging emotions only barely under control and whose venomous, chain smoking wife (Catherine Finn, Michael Ripper’s wife in real life) never lets him forget who it is that has the money in the relationship and out of spite never even bothers answering the phone even when she sits right next to it.

Watching this kaleidoscope of 1960s genre characters is a joy but of course this is the first killer bee movie ever made and based on a popular Sherlock Holmes pastiche, so how does this fare as either a horror or mystery movie?

Not that well, is the short answer……

The only thing frightful about the killer bee attacks is how awful they look. Given that Freddie Francis was a future Academy Award winning cinematographer it is surprising how bland the production looked. The bee attacks in particular are badly process shot in slow motion while the actors were flailing wildly with plastic insects of a kind stuck to their faces.

And for a mystery there really is very little of that. We only ever have two suspects for being the mastermind behind the bee attacks and one of them is so blatantly obviously suspected by just about everyone that the real killer simply must be the other one.

Given that this is an adaptation of a popular book it is surprising to see how much Amicus didn’t even bother with the novel’s main attraction: the fact that its hero, Mr Mycroft, is a very thinly disguised Sherlock Holmes enjoying his retirement as a rural bee-keeper!

In the movie there is no reference to either Holmes or Mycroft or indeed the male Watson substitute and book’s narrator. It appears that in Bloch’s original version of the screenplay these references were much clearer. Bloch had seemingly envisaged Christopher Lee and Boris Karloff in the main parts. Amicus and/or Freddie Francis, however, took a dislike to Bloch’s concept and changed it further on leaving only the barest hints of its initial source idea.

Still, this may be both a failed mystery and horror thriller and at the time those aspects may have been the primary reason for it being critically dismissed. Nearly 50 years after the movie first hit the cinema screens, however, the then current horror flick has started carrying a patina that easily masks its short comings.

For me it will always be a pleasure to watch Michael Ripper behind a bar and encountering a range of off-beat English characters as well as 1960s starlets, a trip back in time to a mythical England where animals attack and civil servants wear bowler hats. Freddie Francis may just be a journeyman director but he is my kind of journeyman director and the film is a very enjoyable way to spend some 83 minutes.

The Deadly Bees was sometimes paired in a double feature together with The Vulture.

 

The Peter Cushing Scrapbook

Ever since I got my Kindle a little bit less than two years ago my reading and book buying habits have changed quite a bit. 

Whereas previously I was a regular client with the local bookstores and often purchased normal paperbacks at normal prices, this has now nearly completely gone down the river. Unless I receive a book voucher, I generally don’t spend any money on bog standard paperbacks anymore.

I quickly learned that I can easily get the classics for free and when I want a current novel or non-fiction book I get them cheaply and often at a great discount in an eFormat.

I am also a great fan of classic pulp fiction, easily get bored with the cover design for most modern editions and regularly frequent the Second Hand book stores, again getting my regular reading fix from discounted second hand books.

On the other hand, however, I have over the last few years spent a crazy amount of money on some exclusive edition coffee table books that may cost an arm and a leg but that truly deserve a special place on my shelves.

Especially us Hammer Fans have over the years been able to reserve some of our shelf space for beautiful tomes on all aspects of Hammer. 

Wayne Kinsey is one of the most prolific authors in this field and when his Hammer Films on Location failed to find a regular publisher he simply set up his own publishing house, Peveril Publishing.

The Peter Cushing Scrapbook is his second venture and limited to 2000 copies.

Printed landscape in an oversized scrapbook format this is a beautiful accumulation of Cushing memorabilia and a celebration of the life and career of the Gentleman of Horror who would have turned 100 this year.

The material is published on a film-by-film basis with short introductions provided by co-author Tom Johnson. None other than George Lucas has provided the foreword; the afterword is by Janina Faye.

The heart and soul of this work, however, are a myriad of pictures accompanying each chapter and generously provided by his secretary Joyce Broughton or on loan from a range of collectors worldwide.

These range from often rare and previously unpublished private and on-set photos to theatre programs, snippets of newspaper publications and most importantly countless reproductions of Cushing’s own copiously annotated scripts and sketches for costume suggestions as well as cartoons and phonetic rhymes created for his beloved wife Helen and other friends and colleagues. More than any written word can do, these give a wonderful insight into the true nature of Cushing, the man, and his vast range of interests and talents. Yes, we of course also get a good idea of all those scarves he designed, his toy soldiers, dollhouses and watercolours. And if you ever wondered what his well-travelled passports looked like, then wonder no more.

The most amazing insight into his professionalism as an actor comes from noticing the extent of notes he prepared in advance of any film shot, regardless how big or small the production may have been. Even lesser works such as The Uncanny or Hitler's Son had his full attention. No wonder he was incapable of ever providing a bad performance.

Those coffee table publications stand and fall with the quality of their printing and the reproductions here are faultless. I had no issue deciphering any of the script pages or other written material. The binding also appears to be made to last. The landscape format is unusual but ultimately a good choice for the subject matter.

This book is exclusively available through Peveril. When ordering it is also possible to purchase an additional DVD-R with some of the pictures in the book as well as a few others that didn’t quite make the cut. That DVD-R is not really essential but a nice extra to have.

As long as Wayne and some of the other authors will continue with their sterling efforts in creating those visual master-pieces, my book shelves will find a welcome space for those. No fear of me ever wanting to have these in anything else but a physical copy.

New Hammer to remake THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

Over the last couple of years New Hammer has risen from the grave and started producing a range of excellent horror movies that by and large were quite effective but didn't really share much of a link with the classic Hammer films.

True, THE WOMAN IN BLACK, probably their best new production, was a Gothic horror film and THE RESIDENT featured a cameo by Christopher Lee but overall the connections to the older films were tenuous.

This, however, will soon change.....

There have been rumours about Hammer reviving some of their older franchises before but today's press release (full text below) confirms that they are now going to remake their own ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN production.

When it comes to remakes, this is quite an excellent choice as they are approaching a movie that has its share of fans but that isn't widely recognised yet and features a monster that has not yet been done to death. As such they can explore new angles and approaches without being steeped too deeply in preconceived lore.

I for one am looking forward to it and am planning to revisit the original again over the next couple of months plus maybe review its literary background and other Yeti movies. Let's see.....

HAMMER TO RE-ENVISION THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN

London – 21st November, 2013:  President & CEO of Hammer and Vice-Chairman of Exclusive Media, Simon Oakes, announced today that Hammer, an Exclusive Media company, will produce a new version of The Abominable Snowman. The project is being developed by Hammer in association with Ben Holden (The Quiet Ones, The Woman in Black: Angel of Death).

In this modern take on the Yeti myth, a scientific expedition’s illegal ascent up an unclimbed peak of one of the World’s most formidable mountains accidentally awakens an ancient creature that could spell a certain end for them all.

The original screenplay by Matthew Read (Pusher, Hammer of the Gods) and Jon Croker (The Woman In Black: Angel of Death, Desert Dancer) will put a modern twist on the 1957 iconic original film from Hammer’s extensive canon of work. The project marks a continuation of Hammer’s ongoing campaign to maintain their heritage of producing enduring British horror films which are original, current and relevant for modern audiences, following on from The Woman in Black which became the most successful British horror film of all time.

Simon Oakes said of the project: "The success of Let Me In and The Woman In Black has shown that there is an appetite for quality horror films so it is exciting to draw on Hammer’s unparalleled source material in this genre which can be reimagined and updated for a new audience”.

Ben Holden is currently collaborating with Hammer on The Woman in Black: Angel of Death, which is in production in the UK now.  

I. Have. Returned.

Well… kind of.

After too long a time spending far too many hours working too many jobs, I have now simplified my life, quit the corporate world and am focusing entirely on my own projects, meaning predominantly working away as a private German tutor in Cork. 

If you want to pick up some tips and tricks on learning German, please feel free to visit my Facebook page. 

Oh, and I also give lessons through Skype.

What that means is that I should also finally have more time at hand to again focus on this dangerously abandoned blog of mine. I am not putting any undue pressure on me as to how often I might post again, but you should definitely see an upsurge in new posts over the coming weeks and months.

And for starters I would like to draw your attention to Flesh and Blood, Book 3.

If you remember, I was quite ecstatic about the first issue of this new 4-part horror comic series and had also featured an interview with the creators, Neil Vokes and Bob Tinnell, who had succeeded in creating a unique Gothic induced comic book world that was obviously influenced by the imagery of Hammer’s classic production without ever resorting to a simple rip-off of their tropes and themes. 

BOOK 2 had finished with a tantalizing hint of a time travelling Victor Frankenstein and BOOK 3 kicks off about half a century into the future in the late 19th century, a period of more than a passing familiarity for us Hammerheads.

Rather than being an all-encompassing demon slasher monster mash, the current issue focuses predominantly on Frankenstein and his attempts to regenerate a certain Dr Jeckyll who passed away while being possessed by his evil Alter Ego. He transfers Jeckyll’s persona into that of his final female victim and, hey presto, Frankenstein Created Woman and Dr Jekyll becomes Sister Hyde!

Just like in the previous parts, Tinnell and Vokes both manage to create a slice of genre comic that is clearly inspired by the magic of the Hammer Horrors, yet do it in such a unique way that this remains a genuinely new and unique piece of story telling.

With its new focus on the Jekyll & Hyde story and moving away from the Carmilla/Dracula/Werewolf angle of the first two books, BOOK 3 could easily be read independently by those readers who are not yet familiar with the FLESH AND BLOOD universe.

And a proper universe this is soon becoming as theoretically nothing should now be able to stop Mssrs. Vokes and Tinnell to further expand on these topics and set them up with any new monster and at any possible period of time. Kind of like what CAPTAIN KRONOS may have become had that film turned into a series.

In addition to the main graphic novel, we also get the continuation of two other far shorter comic books stories written by Tinnell (Baron Frankenstein drawn by Adrian Salmon and Operation Satan by Bob Hall). Tom Savini provides the foreword and with it one of my current favourite quotes: “The more you do, The more you get to do!” And an article by Michael H. Price with an overview of horror comics rounds up the entire oeuvre.

What can I say? It's good to be back.

The Peter Cushing Scrapbook - A Centenary Celebration

There are two types of people.

One, let’s call them: Me, who lead a busy life and barely manage to write a measly blog post.

Two, let’s call them: Wayne Kinsey, who lead an even busier and more demanding professional life – I doubt that being a forensic pathologist is for slouches – and in the time that it takes me to write a few lines manage to publish yet another high quality book.

Wayne is one of only a small number of authors who have managed to set themselves up as a true authority on Hammer films and have helped us all to expand our shelves with books and magazines covering just about any aspect of Hammer’s extensive history and filmography.

So much so that it is virtually impossible to come up with a Hammer related topic that has not been covered yet and that doesn’t stray into the niche-niche market area.

Following up on last year’s Hammer on Locations, Wayne’s (and Peveril Publishing’s) next oeuvre strays from the general Hammer overviews and is dedicated to a topic that appears so blatantly obvious as a fan’s delight that it’s surprising it has never been covered before. Outside of his numerous acting roles, Peter Cushing has also become well known as a wonderful artist in his own right. He meticulously sketched character aides in the copies of practically all his screenplays, designed scarves and jewellery for his wife, drew cartoons in correspondence with friends, designed model theatres, painted water colours etc. Yet despite the fact that some examples of this vast output have been reproduced elsewhere, there has never been a proper overview over this aspect of Cushing’s portfolio.

Until now.

Very shortly we will be able to glance over The Peter Cushing Scrapbook - A Centenary Celebration. Brought together with the help of Cushing’s longtime secretary Joyce Broughton the book promises to be yet another keeper.

As for order information, Wayne writes:

“Full colour limited numbered edition (A4 landscape; 328 pages) with over 1800 photographs ONLY available from www.peverilpublishing.co.uk Keep watching the website and Peveril Publishing Facebook site for details of when sales go live late April/early May. Cover price £35, postage costs yet to be verified. We are not taking pre-orders but email peverilpub@aol.com or follow contact link on website to register your interest. Wayne will reply to these emails just before sales go live to ensure you get an early signed number.”

Mountain of the Cannibal God (IT, 1978)

I recently discussed this film with an online buddy and wanted to point him towards my little blog review here, just to notice that I had a review online on my older, now-defunct Hammer Glamour site but that I hadn't actually transferred it over yet. The review is a few years old and I haven't done anything in touching it up.

Amongst the general public horror movies have a pretty bad reputation. Splatter movies are considered even worse. Italian Splatter productions will raise more than just a few eyebrows, but admitting to watch Italian Cannibal movies with their ultra-gory effects scenes and real-life animal slaughter will have you hounded by PETA and is considered by most to be just one step ahead of a snuff enthusiast. God only knows so what caused real stars such as Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach to appear in one of these oeuvres but I guess we all have our bills to pay. Both actors could hardly have hoped to expand their fan audience by making a film clearly aimed at a very niche market.

Andress plays the wife of a researcher who went missing in the jungles of New Guinea. She goes in search of her husband with the help of adventurer Stacy Keach and under background tunes of Italo Pop musicians Guido & Maurizio De Angelis ("Oliver Onions"), stumbling across the occasional tribe or two of cannibals along the way. Not much in the line of surprises so but then again a decent story was usually the last thing on cannibal fans’ minds.What is on most cannibal fans’ minds, however, is the quality of the gore scenes. Though most of the natives seem to happily munch away any chance they get, it is usually animals they eat. The actual cannibalism occurs mainly towards the end of the movie. One especially nasty sequence that is often cut from available prints is a very realistic castration scene.

Director Sergio Martino leaves no stone unturned when it comes to showing animal snuff: Throughout the entire film we are constantly reminded that this is a dog-eat-dog kinda world and get to watch natives ripping apart a lizard or a snake slowly suffocating a monkey. In an Anchor Bay DVD Martino was asked about the latter scene and commented that this scene happened naturally while walking past the snake, and that he in actual fact did nothing but hold the camera in order to film nature at play. Following this claim the interviewers then presented Martino with clips of film that clearly showed that the monkey was thrown at the snake for dubious entertainment’s sake. Somehow Natural Geographic never had to resort to these means for their documentaries. Needless to say after that stunt Martino will hardly be available for future interviews of the kind.

Looking at the bright side: Andress does have two nude scenes. In the second one she is covered in white paint by some of the tribe women. Much to the male viewers’ delight, Bo Derek a few years later suffered a similar fate in her husband's, John Derek's, adaptation of Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981). Andress had also been one of Derek's wives at one stage, so I wonder whether he closely followed her films and was actually inspired by Andress' stunt in this production.

Another scene that is quite memorable – though, of course, on an altogether different level - is seeing the lost researcher’s corpse with a Geiger counter instead of his heart. Andress’ "surprise" character twist, however, towards the end of the movie comes as no surprise whatsoever to anyone familiar with staple Italian horror fare. And Stacy Keach’s character comes to an untimely death, probably caused by budgetary restraints.

Overall, this is a film that finds it hard to please anyone: Too tame for cannibal gorehounds, it is still too heavy to please the average cinema audience who may have expected to watch a run-of-the-mill adventure story when coming across a picture like this starring two otherwise bankable movie stars. 

The film has repeatedly been released but to the best of my knowledge the Anchor Bay release is the only one uncut.

Where is the Ghoul?

Has it ever struck you that we have no idea where The Ghoul is set?
Me neither, until relatively recently. But when you watch a film as often as I’ve watched this equally beloved and maligned Tyburn showstopper (I believe the correct medical term is ‘too often’), it is inevitable that you start to think about it in ways and to degrees that its infrastructure was never designed to reward or uphold. 

Now, some films tell you where they are set and some films don’t: no big deal.
But The Ghoul is intriguing because it mentions one location and one only: Land’s End, the ultimate destination of the car race that lands the four heroes in so much cannibalistic trouble.
But we don’t know if they actually get there, or, if not, how close they get by the time disaster strikes. And we don’t know where they start from either.
I had always lazily assumed that it was indeed in the vicinity of Land’s End that they find themselves stranded, but we are never actually told this for sure. The unhelpful local policeman has some kind of a Westcountry accent, but we are not explicitly informed even of the county. I also assumed, even more lazily as it turns out, that they started from London, and was frankly amazed, when I double-checked, to learn that my assumptions are completely unsupported by anything in the film itself. Neither is it at all likely, since the only assistance we are given is the observation that Land’s End is “over a hundred miles” from where they begin, immediately corrected to “more like two.”

Land's End, Summer 2012

Every year the wife and I spend a week with my parents at an inn just inland of Land’s End, and most mornings I get up at 5 and enjoy the lonely cliff walk to England’s most southerly point as dawn rises.
As many of you will know, Land’s End itself is now a giant tourist attraction, a shopping village cum theme park which is, I’m sure, a living hell during the day, when it’s crammed with soggy visitors and you have to pay to get in. But first thing in the morning even this is beautiful: eerily quiet (and who doesn’t love the idea of wandering through a totally deserted tourist attraction?), the whistling wind the only sound, and dozens upon dozens of rabbits the only living things in sight.
I’d like to say I spend most of my time on these walks pondering the deep mysteries of existence and the universe, and it’s true, when the first rays of the sun hit those timeless rocks, standing now just as they have through the whole history of human life in this most primitive and inspiring of lands, I do have my moments. But by and large, I’ll be honest, I’m thinking about The Ghoul.

There’s a large, somewhat eerie, strangely melancholy white house en route (above), all alone in extensive but featureless grounds, that I always liked to think was the original location of Dr Lawrence and his oddball household. But now it seems unlikely that Daphne, Angela, Billy and Geoffrey ever got this far.
Just how near did they get?

So, over breakfast one morning I put the matter to my dad, who’s much better at this sort of thing than I am.
Here’s the challenge, I explained: Four people in the 1920s are attempting to drive to Land’s End. Let us suppose that they live in a reasonably large town, given their wealth, awareness of fashions in an age of limited media, and the large number of like minds attending their parties. Their destination is between one and two hundred miles from the start point, and somewhere, along the shortest and most reasonable pre-motorway route, they pass through boggy moorland and become stranded. (Since both cars separately end up there, it is reasonable to suppose that neither took a wrong turning.) So where have they probably started from, and where have they probably ended up?
The first thing you can do, he told me – long before you need to get specific with a map and compasses – is rule out London. Given the distances involved and the time taken, it is simply not a logical candidate for home base at all.
Now, if you draw two circles on a map, one representing 100 miles from the radial point of Land’s End and the other two hundred, and assume that the start point must be somewhere within those two circles, the range of possibilities is surprisingly small. A lot of it, of course, is underwater, and given that our heroes travel by car we can rule that out as confidently as London, if not more so.
Among the dry bits, my father reckons, the most likely candidates, from a shortlist that also includes Southampton, Yeovil and Salisbury, are Bristol, Bath and Bournemouth. I have decided to go for Bath, because I happen to live there, and it’s nice.
Now, where do they end up? Not a lot of moors on that route, and the only possibilities are Exmoor, Dartmoor or Bodmin Moor, with the latter by far the most likely, and the only one in Cornwall. It’s an appropriately misty, marshy and mysterious place, with many secluded corners, steeped in folklore and legend. (Not sure that any of its inhabitants needed to sleep inside mosquito nets, even in the 1920s, but we’ll allow Anthony Hinds that much dramatic license.)
Therefore, I propose that they set off from Bath and, with their target almost in sight, became stranded somewhere on Bodmin Moor.

I hope that’s put your mind at rest.

If only they had made it, I'm sure they'd have spent a more than comfortable night  in this splendid art deco hotel on the cliff walk between Land's End and Sennen Cove ...

... but they'd probably have been made less welcome at this magnificently austere temperance hotel on Land's End itself.

The other mystery about The Ghoul, of course, is just how that poor bugger ended up the way he is in the first place.
All we know is that he joined a decadent, evil sect and was corrupted by the experience. But then what? Did he catch a disease, or was he cursed, or what? By what process does falling into bad company leave you with rotten green skin and the desire to eat people?
And what happens if they don’t give him human flesh? Will he die – surely for supernatural rather than physiological reasons, if so? Would his system really know the difference if they brought him pork chops and just pretended it was prime cuts of Veronica Carlson?
These and other questions will be explored in my forthcoming five-volume study What Kind of Ghoul Am I?

(By Matthew Coniam Photographs by Angela Coniam)