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)

John Hamilton: X-Cert

Let's see...

We have books on Hammer. Lots of them.

We have an excellent overview over Amicus courtesy of Little Shoppe of Horrors #20 and a controversial Dark Side publication Amicus: The Studio That Dripped Blood. The original author did an Allan Smithee and removed his name but say what you like about the contents this is still beautifully illustrated.

In recent years we also got Beasts in the Cellar: The Exploitation Film Career of Tony Tenser to focus on Tigon Productions. (I haven't read this yet but according to all the people whose opinions I value, this has my name on it.)

So what is left in terms of a more specialised approach to Classic British Horror?

Ah yes, an overview over the independent UK Horror movies of the time.

John Hamilton, author of Beasts in the Cellar, has now taken on the task of filling that gap on the book shelf.

X-Cert - The British Independent Horror Film: 1951 – 1970 does exactly what it says on the tin.

Published by Hemlock this volume will be instantly familiar to those who have previously read Bruce Hallenbeck's recent Hammer books. It features the same size and style of artwork and is richly illustrated, mainly in black & white but also with a separate 8-page coloured spread.

Given the complexities of film financing and international co-production deals at the time Hamilton mentions in his introduction the difficulties in coming up with a definitive list of what constitutes a) a British, b) an Independent and c) a Horror film and freely admits that his list is probably subject to debate. As such I am not even going to bother arguing which films should or should not have been included and am just enjoying his chronological overview of all the films from Mother Riley Meets the Vampire to The Corpse/Crucible of Horror.

Each of his entries is rich in historical detail and intelligent critique and low on synopsis just as it should be.

As this book primarily focuses on x-certified “adults only” movies of the time we get a good overview over the changing mores, involvements with the censor and political legislation with regards to film productions during those two decades.

Hamilton also manages to place the various cinematic talents in their respective career paths:

For one we have the usual genre stalwarts, often on a break from Hammer, such as Terence Fisher, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Boris Karloff, Anton Diffring or Michael Gough.

Even more interesting, however, are those that are on either end of their career spans: a young Sidney J Furie directing Dr Blood's Coffin or helping to supervise the making of Devil Doll; a mature Joan Crawford going Berserk! for Trog.

For some like Michael Powell producing a film like Peeping Tom would put an end to an illustrious career. For others like Bryant Halliday (Devil Doll, Curse of the Voodoo, The Projected Man) these films were practically the sole reason that they still feature somewhere in the footnotes of cinematic history.

The book is full with details about short-term production companies such as Planet, Gala or Eros Film Distributors some of which were only ever set up for one film to avail of a government deal, then were disbanded or re-formed under a different name to ensure that they would again be eligible for the very same State sponsorship.

If there is one single name that comes up time and again providing something of a narrative throughout the two decades' worth of indie film history it is that of  Richard Gordon. He was single handedly responsible for the largest bulk of the movies in this book. Having established a friendship with him over the years, the author then rounds up this tome with a very personal and heartfelt remembrance of this multi-talented business- and showman who – outside of the Great Three Studios – did most to provide the British public with their share of chills and thrills.

If there is anything major that this book could be criticised for it is mainly by sins of omission. I personally would have loved to see the topic extended to the 1970s, a decade that probably proved to be the most fascinating for British Independent Horror films with the likes of Pete Walker, Norman J Warren or Mike Raven around.

A little birdy has, however, told me that a possible follow-up volume may be on the horizon at some point in the future which will no doubt make a great companion piece to this edition.

X-Cert is available both through sellers at Amazon US and UK as well as through Hemlock's own website.

Herman Cohen: An American Weirdo in London

by Matthew Coniam

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It’s 1959.

Hammer’s Gothic horrors have only just gotten underway and already, here we are, in present-day London.

Here is a red London bus, and here is a red London post van.
The van stops outside a row of elderly Edwardian terraced houses, sectioned into flats. This is not rural Transylvania, or one hundred years ago in a mountain village in Switzerland. It could be the real world the audience is headed back to when the movie ends, redressed in the sickly primaries of the Eastmancolor palette.
The postman gets out, rings a doorbell, and the door is answered by a busty blonde, cut somewhat imprecisely in the image of Diana Dors. She takes a parcel from him, thanks him, calls him “dearie”.
We go inside to the flat she shares with a little French brunette, accented and perky, perhaps a language student, perhaps an au pair. The package contains a pair of binoculars, and the blonde walks to the window to try them out. The brunette turns to observe, and screams. The blonde has crumpled to the floor, her hands are clasped tight over her face, and there is blood seeping through her fingers, a garish, paint-thick Eastmancolor soup. The discarded binoculars are on the floor beside her, a pair of metal spikes jutting from them, and collecting in a pool on the carpet underneath: more of that blood. Drip, drip, drip...

.This is Horrors of the Black Museum. For Hammer, its inspiration, it was a declaration of war – and proof that they had accidentally kick-started something they would not be able to control. For Anglo-Amalgamated, its producers, it was the first of a notorious trio of modern-dress horrors that aimed to beat Hammer at their own game and resulted instead in a plague of journalistic outrage. (The others were Peeping Tom and Circus of Horrors.)

But for Herman Cohen – the film’s producer and co-writer it was a calling-card: an eccentric new force in British horror had arrived.

.
Born in Detroit in 1928, Cohen was a film fanatic from infancy, becoming a cinema usher at 12 and graduating to salesman and film exhibitor. By 24 he was an associate producer, with Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) to show for his labours. It began a lifelong relationship with men in gorilla suits.
By the following year he had formed Herman Cohen Productions, and released Target Earth!, in which Chicago is invaded by Venusians, in 1954. A team-up with AIP was inevitable, and the results defined an era: I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and I Was a Teenage Werewolf (both 1957), Blood of Dracula (1958, and don’t let the title deceive: it’s about a high-school girl who becomes a vampire with enormous black eyebrows and hair that resembles an afro hacked into some vague approximation of a Lugosi widow’s-peak) and How To Make a Monster (1958), shot on the AIP lot, where a disgruntled make-up designer, on the scrapheap when his studio switches from horror films to musicals, uses his creations – including the teenage Frankenstein (still played by Gary Conway) and the teenage werewolf (no longer played by Michael Landon, who had gone on to Bonanza) – to murder the studio heads.
By this time Cohen had garnered sufficient clout to take offices in London’s Wardour Street, a stone’s throw from Hammer House (which is why a packing-case is addressed there in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein). He began full-scale British production with a haunted house comedy called The Headless Ghost (1959). It made little impact, but Horrors of the Black Museum was just around the corner.

.

At its heart, the film was more or less a remake of How To Make a Monster, again featuring a dedicated professional in a disreputable industry hypnotising their assistants into killing off their oppressors. (In fact, the film that Monster’s villain is working on is actually called Horrors of the Black Museum!) But this time the looney is a true crime writer (Michael Gough, for Cohen what Cushing was to Hammer) who stages the crimes he then writes bestsellers about. (One is called The Poetry of Murder.) “There’s no doubt we’re dealing with a brilliant maniac!” the police exclaim.
Hammer Horror was scarcely a welcome new phenomenon at the BBFC, but this was something more again. Secretary John Trevelyan (in his memoir What the Censor Saw) recalled it as not “a standard horror film” but instead “both sadistic and nasty”. He particularly disliked the binoculars (“Of course we had to see the blood trickling down her face”), especially since Cohen made a point of boasting that the contraption was based on one used in a real British murder case.
Even grimmer is the film’s other showpiece murder, of Gough’s mistress, who has made the fatal mistake of laughing once too often at his walking stick. We watch her come home, undress to her girdle, stockings and suspenders, and then lie invitingly on her bed… whereupon she is decapitated by a guillotine blade above her pillow.
Despite a British setting and a British director (Arthur Crabtree, once a leading light at Gainsborough Studios) the film’s heritage is unmistakably that of Cohen’s drive-in past, with funfairs, tunnels of love, hypnotism, and a snarling AIP-ish killer, his murderous fits accompanied by an unexplained facial transformation, leaping to his death from the top of a big wheel. There was even the claim that it was shot in ‘Hypnovista’: US audiences got a six minute prologue ostensibly explaining its marvels.
Next, the ape-suit got a dusting-off for Konga (1960), still for Anglo-Amalgamated, but as different in tone from Horrors as conceivable. Michael Gough is a professor with a Lily Munster white streak and the hots for sweater girl Claire Gordon, who develops a growth serum that enables him to create giant plastic carnivorous plants that eat kippers and transform a chimp into a man in a gorilla costume. The ape goes on the rampage, trampling miniature sets and clutching a stiff wooden doll standing in for our mad Mike. This time the phony process is ‘Spectamation’ and the title was originally to have been I Was a Teenage Gorilla.

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After a brief return to America for 1963’s Black Zoo (made not for AIP but for Allied Artists, the former Monogram, with Gough still on board as a zookeeper who hypnotises his animals to kill and serenades them on his Hammond organ), Cohen came back to England to set up Fog, a film he had devised as an encounter between Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper. Learning that Tony Tenser and Michael Klinger had something similar in mind, the two parties agreed magnanimously to pool resources on what would become A Study in Terror (1965). It was probably the classiest product with which Cohen, credited solely as executive producer, was ever associated.

Next up were his lunatic collaborations with Joan Crawford, luminous former princess of MGM and Warners, whose sensational comeback in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? had condemned her to a twilight in cheapie horror films. With a couple of collaborations with William Castle already behind her it was perhaps inevitable that Cohen would come calling.

First was Berserk! (1967), an aptly-named big top melodrama with Joan as the ringmaster (the part had been written for a man so it’s ideal for Joan), Diana Dors getting sawn in half and Gough – innocent this time – having a tent-peg hammered into his head in one of the film’s several logically-impossible killings. The identity of the killer does come as a genuine surprise, however, so if you don’t want to know that it’s Judy Geeson, look away now. It’s Judy Geeson.

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But seven years was a long time for Cohen to go without using a man in an ape suit, so both it and Crawford were pressed back into service for Trog (1970), the first of two Cohen films to use proper director Freddie Francis. Joan finds a frozen troglodyte in a cave, thaws it out and teaches it to catch a ball in her garden; nasty Michael Gough sets it loose on a murder spree. (For more on Cohen’s collaborations with Crawford, see here.)

.

Cohen’s final British production could well be his weirdest: which, if you’ve seen any of his others, you’ll know is no idle boast.

Craze (1973) stars Jack Palance, an excitable actor at the best of times, here left to run riot by Cohen and Francis, as an antiques-dealer compelled to arrange blood sacrifices for an African idol that rewards murders with money and to which he chants in Latin. No Gough this time, but surely only Cohen could have talked Trevor Howard and Edith Evans into taking thankless support roles in this joyous farrago.

This film simply makes no sense at all: at least in Cohen's earlier titles the abundance of drive-in excess - the gorillas, the hypnosis, the mad special effects - never let you forget that what you were seeing was basically just a romp. But this plays straight - it could be Amicus or Tigon at a push - yet the thing itself obeys no rules, either of cinema or of logic. It's like a madman's dream.

.
Herman Cohen produced some of the craziest horror films ever produced in Britain, flipping an oddly invigorating bird to the occasionally po-faced Gothic seriousness of Hammer. His films really couldn’t be any sillier had that been their specific aim, but all are supremely entertaining and Horrors of the Black Museum, almost despite itself, remains a highly important milestone in the story of British horror. Cohen, who died in 2002, can rest content with that.