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

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.

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 Scarlet Blade (1963)

Following the success of Pirates of Blood River (1962), director John Gilling was asked to again helm Hammer’s next swashbuckling adventure The Scarlet Blade.

Jack Hedley as Robin Hood, sorry: The Scarlet Blade, has to go undercover and battle for his king against his opponents. Though set during the English Civil War there really is very little that differentiates The Scarlet Blade from the more traditional Robin Hood fare. It has all the typical elements of undercover war fare in the forest, friends being lost and rescued, scheming baddies, chivalric heroes and ladies who can’t help but fall for the outlaw. Nothing we haven’t seen done much better before.

The film is sorely lacking in big name actors. Oliver Reed is the one charismatic actor in the production and pretty much carries the movie with his moody looks and mellifluous voice. His character, Capt. Tom Sylvester, becomes traitor against Cromwell out of love for his Colonel’s (Lionel Jeffries) daughter (June Thorburn) who has turned against her father to support the king. When he discovers that his love interest has herself fallen for The Scarlet Blade the pendulum swings back and he again betrays the royal supporters. When his treachery gets discovered he outs the Colonel’s daughter as one of the main key figures in the fight against Cromwell and ends up being shot by her protective father.

It is hard not to root for his egotistic cause at times as he is clearly used and his emotions are being played with by the nominal heroes of the movie. It is these moral dilemmas that on the one hand distinguish The Scarlet Blade from similar productions, on the other hand make it such an utter disappointment: We see a daughter turn against her father and use a lovesick soldier for her cause; a father trying to protect her daughter from becoming a victim of the very same system he supports; a jilted lover twice turning traitor and finally ending up being pretty much the only one of the main cast who ends up dead, yet he’s the one who’s the least of all interested in any one side.

This moral ambivalence is carried through right to the end of the very short running time, though rather than making this an exercise in ethical dilemma, the overall ending just comes across as an anti-climactic let down. After barely 80 minutes – at a time when the viewer could usually expect some kind of show down between the opposing parties – we see The Scarlet Blade and the Colonel’s daughter escaping from Cromwell’s troops and finding refuge in a gypsy camp run by Michael Ripper in quite possibly his worst make up job ever. The Colonel searches through the camp. Now will he or will he not discover daughter and lover there? Will The Scarlet Blade be captured and battle him to the death? Will we see a fight scene that will be imitated by all the teenage boys on their way out of the cinema?

Err, no…..

He discovers both of the fugitives, then turns to Michael Ripper and advises him to make sure his gypsies remain in the forest. As he rides off the credits announce that we have just seen a “Hammer Production”.

This denouement is by far Hammer’s worst ending ever. Forget about Dracula removing his stake or seeing the devil in To the Devil… A Daughter being killed off by a simple stone. The Scarlet Blade will have you look at your neighbour in sheer disbelief with a quiet look of “What the….” on your face.

Jack Hedley is a very competent actor, but not the first person you’d have in mind for a swashbuckling debonair role. He is generally better suited for authoritative, grumpy old man parts as in Lucio Fulci’s New York Ripper (1982).

For June Thorburn this would prove to be her second last movie. A promising career that had previously included Peter Cushing’s Fury at Smuggler’s Bay (also directed by John Gilling) was cut short when she died heavily pregnant in a plane accident.

The film is Suzan Farmer’s debut Hammer production. She has very little to do in her small part as Hedley’s sister Constance Beverley, a few lines and a terrified scream when she is led away by Cromwell’s troups.

John Gilling would soon direct his most famous movies, Hammer’s Cornish Horror duo The Reptile (1966) and Plague of the Zombies (1966).

Overall The Scarlet Blade is quite pedestrian and generally very unexciting. It is by far not Hammer’s worst swashbuckler - that dubious honour will have to go to A Challenge for Robin Hood (1967), an utterly charmless movie with moustachioed Merry Men that look as if they’re right out of an early porn production -, but it certainly was far from being one of the company’s best either.

Paranoiac (UK, 1962)

What is it with Hammer’s thriller movies? For all intends and purposes they all sound the same – a heroine driven to madness, the dead coming back alive (or do they?), twist endings, filmed in black and white etc etc – yet they all appear quite different and not at all repetitive. Maybe it is because they use a range of different actors for these thrillers whereas they always relied on a number of regular stock players for their horror output, but despite the initial similarities in Jimmy Sangster’s screenplays all of these productions are well worth a look, provide solidly good entertainment and are a great way to pass some 80+ minutes.

Thanks to the release of the cheap Hammer Horror Series box set it is now possible to re-evaluate two of these psycho style movies: Nightmare and Paranoiac.

Paranoiac is the first Hammer movie directed by award winning cinematographer Freddie Francis. He had previously added the lighthouse scenes for The Day of the Triffids starring Janette Scott and was re-united with her for this Hammer movie. She plays Eleanor Ashby, a young woman, who has already lost her parents in a plane crash and her teenage brother a few years previously had killed himself while jumping off a cliff. Her surviving brother Simon is played by Oliver Reed who is intent on driving her insane so that he can get his hands on the family fortune. His plans, however, seem to start going astray when the brother who was considered dead (Alexander Davion) apparently arrives back at their door steps.

This is an exceptionally well cast movie. On top of Janette Scott the following actors deserve a mention: Maurice Denham is the family solicitor. Sheila Burrell has some wonderfully OTT moments as Aunt Harriet: one moment she is the reserved back bone and protector of the family’s good name, the next she turns into a maniac lunatic who has quite clearly lost all her marbles. Lilianne Brousse has previously appeared in Hammer’s Maniac and again impresses as a gorgeous French girl with cute accent. It’s a pity that she subsequently didn’t do much of anything and now appears to be missing in action, a fate she shares with many other Hammer starlet.

Despite the plethora of excellent performances, this is Oliver Reed’s film! He gives a tour de force performance that is unrivalled by any of the other actors and one of his career best. In actual fact, when he plays the drunk, threatening and screaming bully one wonders how close this comes to some of Reed’s real life shenanigans. During the course of the film his character gradually turns from sardonically smiling schemer to enraged spoilt brat – no-one ever drove more vengefully over a flower bed – to certifiable lunatic when he ends up playing the organ to a skeleton. Francis also reserves one of the most imaginatively filmed moments of the movie for Reed when he shoots him from below water level with the waves distorting his facial features as a symbol for him finally crossing the line into madness completely. He sure was a handsome man at the time and wonderfully portrays the beauty of evil.

Some of the spookiest memories carried over long after the film is finished will also involve a freaky mask and a child’s creepy singing voice.

Highly recommended.

Trailers from Hell - Curse of the Werewolf (John Landis)

Trailers from Hell is a seriously addictive website featuring a large number of classic horror and cult movie trailers with commentary by "gurus" such as Stuart Gordon, Larry Cohen, Jack Hill or Eli Roth. Great idea! Have a look at this Curse of the Werewolf commentary by none other than American Werewolf director John Landis.

The Curse of the Werewolf

The Curse of the Werewolf was one of the first Hammer movies I ever saw at a tender age and that got me hooked on Hammer. I had watched it repeatedly over a couple of years, though admittedly this was a good while ago and it was more than time for a re-evaluation. Lately I had read about it being overrated and lacking in action, so when I finally put the disc into my player I was somewhat reluctant. Would I still feel the same about the film as in my youth? Or would it be yet another one of those memories that were better left untouched and simply kept as nostalgia.

I shouldn’t have worried. Curse still satisfied my lycanthropic cravings and remains an excellent film.

What is quite obvious is its very distinct three act structure. Act 1: The scenes at Count Siniestro’s (Anthony Dawson) court, the incarceration of the beggar (Richard Wordsworth), the rape of Yvonne Romain’s character and birth of Leon, the character doomed to become a Werewolf. Act 2: Leon’s childhood, the discovery that he is indeed a werewolf. Act 3: Leon as an adult played by Oliver Reed, his involuntary killing spree and final death.

Of those three acts the first and the last are by far the most memorable and horrific. The scenes of debauchery at the court, the humiliation and animalisation of the beggar and the rape of the mute servant girl still don't pull any punches. And the werewolf transformations and killings are classic iconic scenes. True, some may think that the second act may be dragging a bit, yet the scenes in it are ultimately essential in making us getting to like Leon and his family and thereby creating a more tragic climax.

Though it takes nearly an hour until Oliver Reed appears in his first proper starring role, he does give his all and it is a tremendous, haunting performance by the young actor that clearly put him on the map.

Interestingly enough we are not given the more traditional reasons for why the transformations occur. There is no other werewolf in the picture who may have bitten Leon or anyone else in his family. Instead any one of a number of possible reasons for his affliction are indicated: Was it the rape by someone who deteriorated to sub-human levels? Or the fact that the mother survived for months alone in the forest by living a quasi-animal life? Or because he was born out of wedlock on Christmas Day? Or maybe because he had to battle strong inner demons? This untraditional approach leaves a very satisfying mystique about the character.

The film was based on a novel by Guy Endore, The Werewolf of Paris, in which the action takes place in France whereas the Hammer adaptation transferred it to Spain.