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.

Peter Hutchings: Hammer and Beyond - The British Horror Film

Peter Hutchings: Hammer and Beyond – The British Horror Film. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press 1994.

Look at the name of the publisher and you can guess what you’re in for: This is a very academic and dry book analysing the impact British sociological changes had on the development of British horror movies, in particular those made by Hammer. It’s not a terrifically good book and often suffers from overinterpretation and is littered with trendy women’s lib demagoguery: “By showing the vampire as a vampire-rapist who violates and destroys her victim, men alleviate their fears that lesbian love could create an alternate model, that two women without coercion or morbidity might prefer one another to a man.” Hardly a book that you’ll want to cover in one sitting. It now commands ludicrous second hand prices on Amazon that I won't even gratify with a link.

N.B.

I feel that I can't just transfer over this review without addressing something rather important that in nearly four years of blogging surprisingly enough never once had come up. And that is.... the name of my blog. And more importantly its connection to the book reviewed above. Why would I be paying homage to a Hammer book that I obviously didn't like?

Well, I didn't. At least not consciously.

When I set up this blog I knew that though I wanted to focus on Hammer movies I didn't want to just concentrate on Hammer alone but also wanted to be able to include info and reviews about other movies that Hammer actors and directors were associated with. I also wanted to have the liberty to talk about British and Classic Horror in general even without a direct link to Hammer if it so tickled my fancy. I was searching for a blog title that should incorporate that very clearly.

At the same time The Groovy Age of Horror went through some rebranding of its own and in order to highlight that they weren't just going to review classic horror pulp fiction anymore at least temporarily promoted themselves as Beyond the Groovy Age of Horror.

I really liked the sound of it and thought that this approach could do well for my blog, too, hence called it Hammer and Beyond.

Imagine my surprise when a few months later I spotted a link to the actual Hammer and Beyond - The British Horror Film book, a book I had read, loathed and forgotten years before starting this blog... yet also a book that is just a foot or two away from my writing place on a shelf with all the other Hammer books staring at me any time I write a review!

I had never once spared a second thought to it after I had finished reading it but of course must have subconsciously been aware of its existence when I started writing this blog. As the blog had already been established when I finally noticed the connection, I didn't bother changing the name. It still irks me a bit that I named this blog - albeit unconsciously - after a book I had disliked a lot but what the hell......

Nobody seems to have ever spotted it until now. Or people were simply to polite to mention. 

Faceless (France, 1988)

The Film

Helmut Berger, Brigitte Lahaie, Telly Savalas, Chris Mitchum, Caroline Munro, Stephane Audran, Anton Diffring, Howard Vernon, Florence Guerin, Lina Romay.

This eclectic mix of genuine film stars and film stars’ sons, genre icons and scream queens, art house muses and hard core actresses must count as the most easily recognisable cast for main stream audiences that Shlockmeister Jess Franco ever managed to compile. Following the relative success of his previous film Dark Mission (also with Lahaie and Mitchum as well as Christopher Lee), he was now given a budget that even allowed his stars to stay in 5 Star Hotels in Paris. Franco has previously been known to siphon off money for one production and secretly produce an additional picture with the same cast and on the same sets. This time, however, Rene Chateau’s – the producer’s – reign was tight enough to make sure that all the money went on this one film. And the end results prove this to be the right approach: Though the film still has more than enough of Franco’s usual sleaze and gore mix, coupled with moments of sheer lunacy, it is this time filmed in a much more convincing and stylish way and has none of the annoying examples of out of focus camera work that mars so much of the director’s other output.

Brigitte Lahaie, the producer’s girlfriend at the time, teams up alongside Helmut Berger’s plastic surgeon Dr Flamand and Anton Diffring’s Nazi Dr Moser. Together they are trying to restore Flamand’s sister’s (Christiane Jean) face that was burned by acid when confronted with an ex-patient of his who wasn’t too happy with her own operation’s result.

In order to restore the face, they kidnap a bunch of local beauties and perform a face transplant operation not unlike that in John Woo’s later picture Face Off.

Contrary to her usual image as France’s at the time most popular porn queen, Lahaie actually comes across downright wholesome in her looks. That appearance makes for some very interesting viewing when contrasted with her character’s kinky love for the more perverted side of life. She loves playing with her victims before she kills them, y’know.

Berger’s Flamand and his sister Ingrid seem to have shared a very close, if not incestuous bond. His obsession for her is genuine and all he’s interested in is to give her her face back no matter what it takes.

Diffring’s Nazi doctor also shares a very unhealthy love for his gruesome work. His steely blue eyes generally do not reveal any hints of human sympathy for his victims. He only loses his cool when his first operation goes horrifically wrong and he’s heard shouting: “Scheisse! Scheisse!” in his native German.

Together the three of these characters make up a wonderfully amoral trio. They’re not just plain stereotypically bad, but are shown as people totally void of normal compassion, living in a world that is just dominated by what is right for them. In a scene towards the end of the movie, we see them toasting each other. Flamand’s sister again looks suspiciously similar to Christiane Jean not to Florence Guerin whose face she is supposed to carry. Gleefully happy about the apparent success of their operation, Moser raises his glass overwhelmed with emotion over seeing them all happily together again and utters: “Deep inside I am a real sentimentalist!” That, more than anything else, sent shivers down my spine. Nothing like a baddy with a twisted sense of what’s right and wrong.

But don’t get me wrong: This is not really a character study first and foremost!

The Special Effects are most of the time incredibly convincing and often painfully hard to watch. We do occasionally get a slightly dodgy puppet effect that is supposed to show a decapitated corpse, but overall the gore looks more than real. The operation scenes will make you squirm and have a genuinely disturbing sadistic touch to them. The victims get operated on while being conscious and the final victim has the dubious pleasure of being shown her face *after* it has been skinned off. Stephane Audran as a very nosey patient gets another very realistic looking needle into her eye that’ll have you yell “Ouch!”

Some of the other choice trash moments on view also show Mitchum battling a gay body builder - Bet his Dad never had to do that! -; Berger visiting a loopy female patient who spontaneously bursts into some bouts of very bad German opera; a female prisoner of his unceremoniously gets her arms chopped off during an attempt to escape.

Caroline Munro’s part is effectively a supporting role, so she sure ain’t the one with the longest screen time, but – whoah – what a part it is! It is unlike anything else we have ever seen her in. When she comes on screen first, we see her as ravishing as ever in a model shot, then leaves the shot to go snort some cocaine before being kidnapped by Lahaie’s character. Held imprisoned in the hospital she is giving us some very unlady-like looks up her skirt. Her subsequent rape scene is painful to watch and a harrowing bit of acting. Munro admits in a later interview that she wanted to show the brutal misery of the act, and therefore deviated from the original script that was apparently going for a much more superficial “sexy” act. When trying to escape from her captors, she subsequently tries seducing the hospital’s Igor type character and is so overtly sexual I felt like having a cold shower.

She had previously worked with Howard Vernon in Paul Naschy’s Howl of the Devil and was soon afterwards also acting again with Florence Guerin in Luigi Cozzi’s The Black Cat.

Telly Savalas hires Vietnam buddy Chris Mitchum (Sam Morgan) to rescue Munro who plays his daughter. Sam Morgan gets introduced as “a man who looks like a young Mafioso”. Somehow I’d have preferred “a man who looks like a young Bob Mitchum”.

He shares a scene in a mortuary with French actor Henri Poirier who seems to relish his part as an American bashing arrogant French cop: “We don’t like your kind of people who chew gum and only take their hands out of the pocket to work over the suspect’s face. You might think yourself a Bogey, but you don’t even have a trench coat or a hat!“ A classic!

And I better not forget to warn you that you’ll be humming looney tunes from the film’s Europop soundtrack for days to come.

Long lost in cinematic limbo just like Munro’s other late 1980s Eurotrash outing Howl of the Devil, it is a genuine surprise why this film never had a bigger impact in fan circles. It may have been too radical for the mainstream audiences it tried to reach, yet too mainstream for the loopy world true Franco aficionados seem to live in. It sure works for me, however.

The DVD

Taking into account the fact that Faceless was up til now nearly impossible to get a hold off – dodgy looking 10th generation videos of the title occasionally went on sale for very good money -, *any* new release of the film would have been welcome. As such it is even more welcome to see what a wonderful piece of work Shriek Show’s recent Region 1 DVD release has been.

The film is finally available in glorious remastered colours and will quite possibly be the best version of the film you are ever likely to see.

The DVD is chock full with extras that include:

• A lengthy interview with Caroline Munro in which she discusses her entire career as well as the film itself. She remembers that, being unaware of Franco’s reputation, she received a phone call from Steve Swires – a genre author who has covered Munro in many an article and interview - warning her against participating in it or to at least be aware of what was being filmed as he often used “funny camera angles”. After working with the director, however, she considered him to be wonderful, exciting, interesting, eccentric and – gulp – inspiring and a “very clever man” overall and is “very proud” of the final product.
• That same Steve Swires who initially warned her off the film, has now submitted a new compilation of Munro interviews for an additional booklet that is included with the DVD.
• There’s also huge photo gallery that only initially covers Faceless, but then primarily presents often very rare pictures of Caroline Munro in various photos from her modelling and cinematic career. It even has prints from some of the photos that were shot for the Dr Phibes movies, seldom seen Lamb’s Navy Rum ads, Munro together with Zacherley and much much more.
• A toothless and chain smoking Franco is interviewed and casually name drops the likes of Orson Welles and John Ford.
• Chris Mitchum comes across very relaxed and likeable in a further interview about his career and how he at one stage managed to be one of the Top 4 films stars in Asia together with Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson right behind Alain Delon who was always Number One in those parts at any given time. He also talks about his friendship with Bruce Lee and anecdotes on set with Alexandro Jodorowski.
• A partial commentary has a very amused Mitchum going through his own scenes.
• A complete commentary with Jess Franco and Lina Romay. The commentary is in French with English subtitles. Romay speculates that the reason people may not have heard of her despite her gazillion of appearances may be that she is a Spanish actress who very rarely performed in Spanish movies. Hmm, maybe this may have more to do with the fact that nearly all her performances were restricted to her husband’s movies. Franco acknowledges plot similarities between Faceless, his very own The Awful Dr Orloff (1961) and Franju’s classic Les yeux sans visages.
• Last, not least, the DVD also features the obligatory trailers for Faceless as well as a couple of other Shriek Show releases.

So is this a perfect DVD?

Well, it would be if it wasn’t for a little snag at the end of the movie that’ll have you hollering in rage at your TV, threatening to kick in the player if you weren’t aware of it when you started watching the film. Once aware of it, however, it just becomes a minor annoyance.

For one reason or the other Shriek Show’s version has Telly Savalas’ final sentence uttered…. in French! So instead of his proper English performance, you have a French dubbed Savalas speaking to his off scene assistant and saying:

“Jenny, book me a flight to Paris!”

Not trying to give away too much of the plot, but this seemingly innocuous sentence makes a major difference for the viewer’s perception of a film that has a great ambiguous open end. Even if Shriek Show could not obtain an English language copy of the scene – the film after all *was* filmed in English -, it will remain a mystery why they could not at least subtitle this very short passage.

Apart from this issue, however, this film is an absolute Must for Munro fans (the interview and photo gallery alone are worth the price), a Must for Franco aficionados (who will, however, probably complain how much their hero was put on leash by Rene Chateau) and at the very least a definite Maybe for anyone only remotely interested in getting acquainted with the wonderfully whacky field of European Shlock movies.

Only question that remains: When will Howl of the Devil find its way to DVD?

Nightmare (UK, 1962)

Another one of Hammer’s ventures into Psycho territory, scripted as usual (and also this time around produced) by Jimmy Sangster and directed by Freddie Francis.

Jennie Linden plays a young girl who is haunted by nightmares of her mother who was institutionalised after stabbing her husband. The opening scenes of the movie showing Linden walking through an empty asylum until she is faced with the lunatic mother are spinechilling and well executed. The subsequent scenes show a beautifully snow covered wintery Oakley Court that substitutes as a girl’s school.

As her nightmares upset the other girls she is transferred back home, where the bad dreams continue: She is faced with the constant presence of a strange woman in white who walks through her house and is later identified as the wife of her guardian (David Knight) who she then attacks in panic.

Linden is constantly carrying a little puppet, but appears far too old for that. She also kisses her guardian right smack on the lips when she meets him again hinting at a slightly unnatural, quasi-incestuous relationship.

In true Psycho style the film changes focus mid-way through its short 83 minute run: Whereas the first half concentrates on Linden’s character, the second half deals with her nurse played by Moira Redmond. What both girls have in common: They can scream. A lot. And loudly. Very loudly!

Julie Christie was initially scheduled to play Linden’s part, but then pulled out at the last minute to shoot Billy Liar.

Of course, if dissected under a microscope none of the plot would make the remotest bit of sense, but that really doesn’t matter: The film is slickly filmed and lot of fun to watch. It’s a little gem of a movie that was rarely seen until recently, but can now be easily accessed thanks to the excellent and very cheap box set of eight Hammer movies that was released a few months ago.

Caroline Munro (*January 16, 1950)

Caroline Munro is one of Hammer Glamour’s most stunning looking actresses. She probably did more to speed up some adolescent boy’s libido in the 1970s than any of the other female stars of the studio. Then again: I may be biased as Munro has always been one of my two favourite female stars of all times. (The other one being Jacqueline Bisset.) I can safely say that if it wasn’t for her, this web site may not be around, my book and DVD shelves may look different, and – God forbid - I may even have a completely different set of friends (both online and off).

But, yes, as long as I can remember I was a fan. Born in 1967 I remember watching her movies for the first time on the big screen. The very first time I saw her was either in Starcrash or At the Earth’s Core, two films that still carry a lot of nostalgic ballast for me even if everyone else these days appears to just find them fun on a “so bad it’s good level”. Yes, these days the effects are decidedly shoddy and would not fool today’s more refined teens, but at the time they actually *were* quite convincing and stirred a sense of adventure for “the boy who is half a man and the man is half a boy”. It also stirred up other things that are better left unsaid. I was enamoured hook, line and sinker and have followed her career ever since and had the privilege of meeting her for the first time during Bray II and to arrange an online interview session with her for my discussion group. In person she is one of the finest and most genuine people you are ever likely to meet and always looks as if she enjoys her time with her fans as much as they enjoy meeting her.

And she still looks absolutely vavavavvoom!

Munro started off as a model and singer. Her first single Tar and Cement featured up and coming Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce of Cream and Steve Howes of Yes as backing musicians. Munro became a very familiar face (and body) when she became the Lamb’s Navy Rum Girl and for nearly a decade was shown from posters and bill boards all across the UK. It was in actual fact one of these that drew her to the attention of Hammer Management who signed her up for a deal that included her parts in Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) and cult favourite Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1972).

Apart from those two Hammer flicks, Munro appeared in a number of high profile parts in the 70s that up to this day has her endeared to her fans: She was Sinbad’s companion Margiana in The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973), played naughty in the inane, but very watchable Rosemary’s Baby rip off The Devil Within Her/I Don’t Want to be Born (1975) alongside Joan Collins and Ralph Bates, went native for the Edgar Rice Burroughs’ adaptation of At the Earth’s Core (1976) with Peter Cushing and Doug McClure, became the Bond Girl with the sexiest screen wink ever in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and finally had her most active leading role while wearing some of her most amazingly fetishistic costumes in Italo Sci Fi Starcrash (1978).

Nearly more interesting than the projects she appeared in are the ones that she did not. For a variety of reasons – including her famous non-nudity clause - she missed out on a lot of parts that may have moved her up a few ranks on the celebrity ladder. At this stage one can only dream about how Munro would have looked in adaptations of Modesty Blaise, Vampirella or in a Starcrash sequel. Or how about her playing a were-woman in Altinai?

The 1980s saw her relocate more towards US and Continental European Trash Cinema. Her films became nastier and more exploitative. Her part in William Lustig’s Maniac (1980) was hastily added when she became available for the film. She subsequently played again alongside her Maniac and Starcrash partner Joe Spinell in the totally mindless idiocy that is The Last Horror Film (1981) before embarking on a journey with some of Europe’s more infamous Trash directors when she appeared in Paul Naschy’s Howl of the Devil (1987), Jess Franco’s Faceless (1988) and Luigi Cozzi’s The Black Cat (1989).

Following the Cozzi production, Munro took a long sabbatical in order to concentrate on raising her kids. During the 90s she only appeared in cameos in one or two movies, mainly as a favour for the film makers. Things started hotting up again when she set up her fan club and started touching base with her loyal fans. She also teamed up with musician Gary Wilson and – as Wilson Munro – recorded a CD with three musical duets.

Caroline Munro is currently one of the most sought after Hammer Glamour girls and is regularly jetting from one convention to the other both in the UK and the US as well as occasionally in some other countries. Her latest appearances can be checked on her official web site.

She also recently filmed two cameos again, for Flesh for the Beast (2003) and The Absence of Light (2004). Her most public appearance – and in actual fact one of her best roles ever! - was for a Doctor Who Audio CD called Omega.

A documentary dedicated to Caroline Munro - First Lady of Fantasy had also been released to great critical acclaim.

John McCarty: The Pocket Essential - Hammer Films.

John McCarty: The Pocket Essential - Hammer Films. Harpenden (Herts): Pocket Essentials 2002.


"Pocket Essentials” is a very popular series of cheap books dedicated primarily to Film Directors and Genres, but also to history, literature or other areas of general interest. They usually are below 100 pages in length and as such never intend to be anything more than introductions into the subject matter at hand.

Still, there are differences between the various entries: Where its Hitchhiker’s Guide e.g. is only the second book ever to deal with the phenomenon of Douglas Adams’ famous Sci Fi series and offers an excellent look at all of its incorporations, Hammer Films is one amongst a multitude of books about the company and even as an introductory read has little to offer. Nearly half of its content is nothing more than a lengthy filmography with only some very rare lines of comments hidden amongst the cast and crew credits.

The remainder of the book offers a very short and selective history of the Hammer studios and 1-page reviews of their most interesting – according to the author - and famous movies. Some of the opinion is bordering on the asinine. On (Horror of) Dracula he e.g. writes: “It is Van Helsing, much like Dr Frankenstein, who is the real villain of the piece.” Huh?

The book borders on the seriously eccentric when it recommends Hammer related websites without accompanying URL!

Still, it is a cheap oeuvre and currently seems to get off-loaded by a lot of book stores for even less than its initial cheap price. So it won’t break the bank and as such probably does belong into every Hammer Library even if it’s just for completeness sake.

A new Hammer film blog

I was just awarded a VERSATILE BLOGGER award by Hammer Film Reviews. Not sure if I'll be able to properly accept it as there are the usual requirements: I need to mention the person who awarded me (no problem there), then mention 7 things about me and nominate another 15 blogs. I have previously been nominated for other award memes and though I am not short of things to tell about myself, I am finding it increasingly difficult to find other blogs to nominate. Don't get me wrong: There are scores of worthwhile blogs around, but the ones I read most have all been nominated by me for other awards and I don't want to keep repeating myself. Also, the last time round a good number of my nominations received similar ones from other blogs pretty much the same day so those blog awards just end up making the same rounds all over again and again.

I am, however, happy to discover a new Hammer movie blog out there and from what I can tell Hammer Film Reviews is breaking the Irish mold as both my blog and Watching Hammer are based on the Emerald Isle just like the Unofficial Hammer Site whose owner Robert Simpson is also behind the Exclusive Project that he set up for his PhD research and the very important Save Bray blog. Of course, there are other worthwhile Hammer websites around (like the Dictionary of Hammer Horror) that are not based in Ireland but I was always intrigued to learn how much my adopted homeland became involved in Hammer blogging. 'Cause, believe me, we sure don't have tons of people walking around the streets of Cork, Belfast or Dublin just dying for a chance to chat about Hammer.

Alex, the guy behind the new Hammer blog, also runs The Korova Theatre focusing on classic cinema in general. Both of his blogs look great and have now been added to daily RSS feed diet. Check'em out!