Pirates of Blood River (German Film Program)

Scans of the Illustrierte Film-Bühne #6165, dedicated to The Pirates of Blood River (aka Piraten vom Todesfluss). This is a 4-page film program providing a lengthy synopsis amid the credits and a collage of crucial scenes. Scan 1 and 4 are effectively the front and back page, 2 and 3 are the interior pages and should ideally be held next to each other. As is, the text is unfortunately disrupted.

Alas, none of the images can even attempt to properly portray the truly awful faux French accents used by most of the actors (including Christopher Lee).

The ten Hammer films I’m most ashamed never to have seen (not including “Straight On Till Morning”)

In preparation for a forthcoming post on my blog The Dennis Wheatley Project, I watched The Lost Continent for the first time the other night.
I’d owned a copy of it for ages, but I’d been saving it until after I’d read Uncharted Seas, the Dennis Wheatley novel it’s based on. (I’m reading all Wheatley’s novels in order. Don’t ask. It’s a long story.)
As usual when I catch up with a Hammer film I’ve never seen before, I enjoyed every second of it, and was struck again by the fact that there’s just something... some weird, indefinable alchemical something... about Hammer films - all Hammer films - that perfectly suits my cinematic metabolism.

I can see that their best films are their best films, but even the ones that inspire nothing but complete disdain from even sympathetic reviewers – like this one – invariably give me nothing but pleasure.
From the first time I saw Lust For a Vampire I knew that it was a film I would be periodically watching again and again for the rest of my life. Dracula AD 1972 gets better every time I see it. I got The Vengeance of She as part of a box set and didn’t get round to it for over a year, so persuaded was I by its reputation as perhaps the worst of all the major Hammer movies - and when I finally gave it a chance I loved it from the first frame to the last. My most recent viewing was my fourth and it won’t be the last.

The vast majority of the Hammer films I’ve seen, and all the most famous and important ones, I saw between the ages of ten and eighteen, in a lucky, happy time when they seemed hardly ever absent from British tv, on BBC2 on Saturday nights, and ITV in the week.
Heady days they were, and I was able to indulge so regularly and with such repeated pleasure that it’s only comparatively recently that its occurred to me that there are gaps still to plug here. In the last couple of years I've tracked down - and adored - those last few major stragglers, like Captain Clegg, most of those black and white Jimmy Sangsters, and, best of all, The Mummy's Shroud. (Even the fact that those fabulous stills of the mummy looming up behind a négligée-clad Maggie Kimberly turned out to be another case of the Susan Denbergs didn't spoil it for me.)

There remain, however, just a few significant chapters in the Hammer saga that still remain just titles and stills to me.
Here are ten of the most notable – accompanied by my pledge to catch up with all of them over the next year.
Anyone got a copy of The Old Dark House?

1. X- The Unknown
2. The Abominable Snowman
I’ve seen the two black and white Quatermasses, but never did get round to these remaining black and white proto-Hammer horrors, the first written by Sangster in Nigel Kneale mode, the second by Kneale himself and with Peter Cushing in the cast. No excuse, no excuse. I always thought it would have been interesting if Hammer had retained Nigel Kneale as a regular screenwriter and just let him do whatever he wanted: his obviously more cerebral approach would have made for an interesting counterpoint to Sangster and Hinds. I can't see Sir James giving him a free hand, though. Incidentally, my former day job brought me into contact with Judith Kerr, Kneale’s widow, last year, and necessitated me visiting her at their daughter's house - which has the largest tank of tropical fish I’ve ever seen. It all seemed very Quatermass, somehow.

3. Shadow of the Cat
Bit of an interloper this. Nowadays, the is-it-or-isn’t-it-a-true-Hammer-Horror battle is over, and the verdict is yes. But I got into Hammer at a time when nobody had even heard of it, and I lived through those bitter years when the pro- and anti- forces besieged each other. I sided instinctively with the nays, for some reason, despite my love of Barbara and André, and I’ve never really accepted it into the family, certainly not in the blasé way in which it now turns up in all the lists, without even a comment to indicate its mongrel status. But still, there’s no excuse for not ever having seen it.

4. The Damned
I’m beginning to notice a running theme so far: I’ve missed most of the black and white ones.
I’m sure it’s a coincidence (and in any event we’re switching to colour from this point on) but it’s certainly true that colour is, to me, one of the defining features of Hammer. Another is a certain traditional kind of ambiance, even in modern-setting productions. This, I’ll wager lacks the latter every bit as much as the former, and in truth I’m really not in any great hurry to catch up with this. For my money Joseph Losey, like Alan Parker, is one of those names that practically guarantees an infuriating time.

5. Terror of the Tongs
This looks like great fun, rather more so I should think than Stranglers of Bombay, a(nother) black and whiter with which it is invariably if mysteriously paired. Christopher Lee in Fu Manchu rehearsal, the docks of Peking recreated at Bray and the famous bone scraping scene... and all I can do is imagine it.
The same goes for The Scarlet Blade, and for The Devil Ship Pirates, and for...

6. Pirates of Blood River
I’m sure I'd love them all, but Pirates just edges ahead in my wish list because of its rare casting of two of my minor Hammer glamour favourites: Baskerville minx Marla Landi, whose uniquely mangled dialogue is a delight in that movie and I'm sure will be again here, and the incredible Marie Devereux, for whom no justifying comment is necessary.

7. She
8. Slave Girls
There are a few reasons why I really should get around to seeing this. It’s a key Hammer movie, of course, along with One Million Years BC (the closest I've got to a Hammer film I couldn't get all the way through) one of the anomalous smash successes among the studio's sandy adventure films that convinced them there was potential in the subgenre. A score of flops later they were still trying. But this one features both Lee and Cushing – which actually is a rarer event than you might have thought at Hammer – and I have, let’s not forget, seen The Vengeance of She four times, so it feels somewhat perverse to have never watched this.
And Slave Girls just looks like good fun, with Martine Beswick in a scandalously rare swaggering lead, the potential of which just pushes the film ahead of The Viking Queen and Creatures the World Forgot in my ten.

9. The Old Dark House
Can this really be as bad as they all say? Surely not.
I doubt it’s a patch on the 1932 original – few films are – but then, it doesn’t sound like it’s all that similar either. The prospect of William Castle working for Hammer is one to savour, and so is this cast: Janette Scott, Fenella Fielding, Peter Bull, Robert Morley, Joyce Grenfell...
I’m willing to bet that this is a little gem in hiding, desperately long overdue sympathetic re-evaluation. I can't even guess what it's really like. But will we ever get the chance to see it?

10. The Anniversary
I like The Nanny; love Bette Davis… So how come I’ve never made the effort to see this? Search me. Anyway, I promised to limit this list to ten, which means, as predicted, there’s no room for Straight On Till Morning.

What are the most glaring gaps in your circle of Hammer film acquaintances?

Marie Devereux (*1938/40)

According to what source you read, Marie Devereux was either born as Pat (Patricia) Sutcliffe in 1940 in France and emigrated to England as a child or she was born in 1938 in New Malden/Surrey. She got her slightly exotic looks from her mother who was Spanish.

Her voluptuous 38-23-36 body first gained Michael Caine’s attention who subsequently introduced her as a 16 year old to Glamour photographer George Harrison Marks. She soon graced the pages of countless girly magazines starting with the May 1956 edition of Carnival. She also danced topless at London’s Windmill Theatre. If you want to get an idea of the kind of photos she then shot, check out Solo #8 which was entirely dedicated to her and is now a collector's item. A number of her photos are also available through Nostalgia Publications: check for her name in their two catalogues dedicated to Glamour photos and girly mags including Just Marie Deveraux (sic), a compilation of some of her 1950s photographs. Or simply drop by the Harrison Marks website.

Between June 23 – July 05, 1958 she appeared in Tender Trap for the Queen’s Theatre in Hornchurch, her one and only drama appearance that I am aware of.

Half of her film credits are Hammer productions: She has a small part as a Harem Girl in I Only Arsked (1958). Her most memorable role (hint: THAT cleavage) was as a taunting and sadistic Oriental girl in The Stranglers of Bombay (1960). In the same year she was also one of The Brides of Dracula (1960), the more beautiful, but silent one next to Andree Melly. She spent A Weekend With Lulu (1961) and appeared in The Pirates of Blood River (1962).

Marie Devereux was Elizabeth Taylor’s stand-in for Cleopatra. Following that she could have had her best shot at mainstream fame, had Cassandra’s Iliad been made. That film – based on a screenplay by Mario Puzo - was to star Marlon Brando and to narrate the classic Homer tale from the perspective of Cassandra. And Devereux was meant to play that part. Alas, the film never got off the ground. And – after appearing in two Samuel Fuller movies (Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss) – Devereux just did a vanishing act and was never to be seen or heard from again. Not a very uncommon fate for a Hammer Girl.

The Stranglers of Bombay (1959)

After a while spent travelling and focusing on other projects and articles for other websites and magazines, it is now time to start digging into my pile of unwatched Hammer movies, primarily the three Icons sets that I recently obtained.

First on my list: The Stranglers of Bombay.

Now call me shallow, but the first thing on my mind when I started watching this was: “Black and White? What the hell?”. Somehow I was expecting a story filmed in the lush colour tones of Hammer's Gothic horrors or other Adventure movies. Yes, I am aware that – although the company made their mark with colour movies – they have a large selection of black and white films in their back catalogue as well. Black and white, however, for me was always associated with their Hammer Noirs, their psychological thrillers or war movies and I generally associate their foray into adventure cinema with colour productions. I do suspect that economic reasons may have deterred them from using their usual cinematographic choice.

Still, not a biggy, as I do like black and white in general and Arthur Grant's stark contrasts make this a very enjoyable (if unusual) choice for this viewer.

Next thing on my mind was: “Ah..... Guy Rolfe” followed by memories of seeing him at one of Don Fearney's events just prior to his death. To my utter disgrace I hadn't at the time been consciously familiar with this actor, but when he strolled into the Cine Lumiere building it became obvious that we were in the presence of a man just oozing charisma. Resembling a latter day John Carradine, Rolfe's gaunt features and tall stature, even when walking on a stick, commanded a presence that resulted in a lot of the event's visitors respectfully moving aside to make way for him.

It was clear to me from then on that eventually I would just have to make myself more familiar with him, especially when I subsequently noticed that I had of course already seen him as Mr. Sardonicus and as Andre Toulon in some entries of the Puppet Master series as well as in Hammer's excellent Yesterday's Enemy.

Still, The Stranglers of Bombay had eluded me up till now. Rolfe gives a fantastic performance as Capt. Harry Lewis, an expert in Indian Affairs working for the East Indian Company who is trying to expose the realities between the mysterious disappearances of hundreds of locals and the continuous attacks on company caravans. Whereas he suspects the workings of the Thugee cult devoted to the Goddess Kali, his superiors ignore his findings and force him to research on his own.

Rolfe – tall, dark and handsome - makes for a convincing leading man not without some small personal issues. It is fun to see him constantly talking over his wife who doesn't seem to be able to get a word in edgewise no matter how much she wants to express her support.

Rolfe heads a list of actors that are second string only in relation to their overall recognition in the Hammer canon but first rate in terms of acting quality. So look out for George Pastell as a Kali High Priest and Marne Maitland as the Indian Patel behind the Cult's exploits. Allan Cuthbertson, familiar from scores of TV appearances, makes for a convincing arrogant officer who only sees the truth when faced with his own death.

Hammer's only exposure to Glamour here comes in the form of Marie Devereux in a silent role as one of the Cult's female accolytes and practically bursting out of her top.

When Hammer failed to obtain the rights to John Masters' novel The Deveivers, they simply based their script on the memoirs of Major General Sir William Sleeman who was primarily responsible for bringing the Thugees' reign of terror to an end. As such they had the veneer of a factual approach though I doubt that historical accuracy was at the top of their mind with this picture, especially given that the main character's name was not even identical with that of its historical model.

Still, though some of the scenes, as usual with Hammer, had to be cut upon its release, the censor seemed to have let them get away with quite a lot probably because of the historical pretense. As such we see scenes of men being blinded, murdered, cut and tortured while Kali's followers ecstatically look on. One sequence that you could not expect in modern movies any more features a real fight between a mongoose and a snake. Not sure whether no animals were harmed in the making of this film. Biggest WTF moment comes when one of the Cult members not only joyfully looks forward to his own hanging, but willingly jumps into the noose before the hangman has a chance to do his job.

Terence Fisher is the ideal man to head this production, combining the more gruesome elements of the story with a sense of more epic adventure. Hard to believe that all of those scenes of the Indian subcontinent were filmed in Bray's own backyard.

What is highly unusual about this film is not only its exotic set up (Thugees were rarely ever given centre stage in a movie before), but also its bleak approach to the subject matter. When Lewis gets stone walled he may ultimately be able to expose the cult, but fails to prevent a single attack and instead is faced with a freshly dug mass grave and a prime villain still at large.

Indeed if there is one thing that may drag this film down a bit, it is the rushed and rather unsatisfactory ending. A character who previously had no compunctions about killing his own brother all of a sudden shows remorse when he recognises a necklace our hero wears and helps him escape. And though the major villain of the piece then sees a heavy suspicion fall upon himself, he is far from being outed and able to continue his rule of terror for a while.... and likely for a sequal that may have been hinted at but never came to pass.

One certainly wishes that more thought could have been spared for a more conclusive finale to an otherwise interesting film.

Go see it.... in Strangloscope!