The Vampire Lovers.

Review #2284: The Vampire Lovers.

Cast: 

Ingrid Pitt (Marcilla/Carmilla/Mircalla Karnstein), Pippa Steel (Laura Spielsdorf), Madeline Smith (Emma Morton), Peter Cushing (General Spielsdorf), George Cole (Roger Morton), Dawn Addams (the Countess), Kate O'Mara (Mademoiselle Perrodot), Douglas Wilmer (Baron Joachim von Hartog), Jon Finch (Carl Ebhardt), Ferdy Mayne (The Doctor), Kirsten Lindholm (the First Vampire), and John Forbes-Robertson (the Man in Black) Directed by Roy Ward Baker (#1742 - The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. #2106 - Scars of Dracula, #2120 - The Vault of Horror)

Review: 

Well, it was the dawn of the 1970s and therefore the dawn of trying to do something a bit different with vampire movies...The Vampire Lovers was the first of what is considered a "Karnstein Trilogy". All three films were produced by Hammer to go along with having a screenplay by Tudor Gates. Each had a different company responsible for getting it shown in the States, with this one being a co-production between Hammer and American International Pictures. The film uses the Gothic novella Carmilla (as serialized by Sheridan Le Fanu from 1871 to 1872; he died the following year), which involved a woman being prey to a female vampire that is later revealed be a Countess Karnstein. Harry Fine and Michael Style produced the film together and wrote the adaptation with Gates. Baker was once again directing a film (already noted for A Night to Remember (1958) and TV work) with Hammer after having done work for them with Quatermass and the Pit (1967), The Anniversary (1968), and Moon Zero Two (1969) It was the only one of the films to have AIP involved. The next two films of the trilogy were each released in 1971 with Lust for a Vampire (as directed by Jimmy Sangster with Yutte Stensgaard and Mike Raven as the new Karnsteins) and Twins of Evil (as directed by John Hough with Damien Thomas and Katya Wyeth as Karnsteins alongside the Collinson sisters)

Admittedly, one does get what they were looking for in leering power with as many bosoms as there are vampires. You have to love a movie that gives a warning on the poster that it is "Not for the mentally immature". It probably isn't as vaunted in devastating power of lurid sex and violence as one might wonder about, but it is a neat gem worth giving some interest for its craftsmanship in the long run. You get your melodrama that will build the inevitable in hunting and tombs and all that stuff that matters, albeit in a split format that gets you a head-chopping early before getting into the cyclical nature of a woman falling into the habit of being friendly with a young lady (first with Steel and then with Smith). Pitt went on to do other vampire-related films such as Countess Dracula (1971) to go along with dabbling in writing (such as Bedside Companion for Vampire Lovers). She had a clear view of how it felt to do films like these that works out here for alluring charm, one who plays it all much like a cat playing with the things around them (so not exactly in a carnal way). Smith probably plays it a bit too much like a deer in the headlights in innocence, but it does lend itself to some amusing moments when she and Pitt engage in play. You don't get as much of Cushing as you might wonder about, but I suppose not every vampire film with him needs to be him giving you exposition, though funny still to see him paired with Wilmer (who like Cushing played Sherlock Holmes), which works out fine. It's strange that there even is a "man in black" watching the proceedings at all to go along with nightmares of cats (vampires, cats, black-and-white, get it?). The vampire death gives you something different: stake to the chest and a head-chopping, although it probably is most striking to see a painting turn decrepit for that last shot. In general, it delivers allure in the gradual display of lurid entertainment you would expect in terms of appealing women and the patience to make the display of deja vu lady vampirism work out without seeming tired or out of its element. 

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

The Horror of Frankenstein.

Review #2107: The Horror of Frankenstein.

Cast: 

Ralph Bates (Baron Victor Frankenstein), Kate O'Mara (Alys), Veronica Carlson (Elizabeth Heiss), Dennis Price (the Graverobber), Jon Finch (Lieutenant Henry Becker), Bernard Archard (Professor Heiss), Graham James (Wilhelm Kassner), James Hayter (Bailiff), Joan Rice (the Graverobber's Wife), and David Prowse (The Monster) Produced and Directed by Jimmy Sangster.

Review: 

...I'm sure you remember the Frankenstein series as set by Hammer. It had started with The Curse of Frankenstein in 1957 as directed by Terence Fisher with Jimmy Sangster (a production manager who did not particularly like working as one and had never thought about being a writer before, well, becoming one with his debut X the Unknown from the previous year) providing the script. A sequel followed one year later with Revenge (which featured Fisher as director and Sangster as writer) before the 1960s saw three further films in The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), and Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969). All of those films starred Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein with their own distinct levels of villainy to the character, whether that involved using hypnotists to bring back the monster, soul catching of recently deceased people, or trying to take advantage of the secrets of an insane man that sees the doctor being carried into a burning building (and, for some sick reason by a producer, a rape scene). I think you can see where the series felt the need to do something a bit familiar but with a "younger push" with Ralph Bates instead of Peter Cushing. This was the first film Sangster directed and one of just three in total, with the others being Lust for a Vampire (1971) and Fear in the Night (1972). Sangster was first approached to do rewrites on a script that had been done by Jeremy Burnham, an actor-turned-writer (in his first and only script for films). Apparently, Sangster was not particularly interested in what seemed like to just be a remake of his 1957 script until Hammer offered him a deal to do a re-write along with produce and direct the film, which opened the door for him to inject a good deal of dark comedy in it. Hammer would make one further film involving Frankenstein (with Cushing returning) in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974).

The film is okay in some respects, but you can really see the seams and limits of where the series could go in the eyes of Hammer. It is a bit of light fun, but one already had a pretty good Frankenstein film three years before that, one a couple years before that, and so on. It is the law of diminishing returns with this film, which isn't nearly as compelling with its lead actor despite the best efforts to do so to go with a middling climax that doesn't have the energy or the timing to make it matter for anything. Bates had his first prominent film role with Taste the Blood of Dracula, released just a few months earlier in 1970, and he would appear in various other Hammer productions the following year in Lust for a Vampire and Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. He does make a curious Frankenstein here and there, but the script seemingly forgets whether to treat him as a heel that one awaits to see their comeuppance or a tragic figure, which makes for a curious observation that deserved better. He seems ripe for either a really deranged role or something with a semblance of interesting dignity, and it is a shame he never became the successor actor that Hammer would probably have preferred to see in the 1970s when the company was in need of something to counter the diminishing interest of American funding. His best sequence might be the one where he is confronted with someone who doesn't want to go through with retrieving body parts, and he pretends to go along with quitting only to almost immediately electrocute them without saying a word. Carlson was actually in the last Frankenstein film, but she isn't exactly given that much to do that proves interesting, which is amusing when the only other feminine contrast is O'Mara that plays it with the hinges of a cheesy soap opera. Price is at least semi-funny when it comes to graverobbing for those small moments. In general, though, the movie lacks a true center when it comes to a lack of things for the creature (as portrayed by Prowse, who returned for the aforementioned next Frankenstein film) to really do, which is quite unfortunate. Like the first film, the monster is dissolved in acid, albeit without the plot device of it being told as a long flashback but because a kid haphazardly presses something to have it happen (in theory it would set up a sequel, but, well, these films only loosely follow any sort of rules anyway). In the end, neither of Hammer's attempts at reinventing Dracula or Frankenstein for 1970 are particularly any good, but those familiar with the series (whether as an admirer or as a completionist) will surely stick through with it and let it pass at least once without rolling their eyes too many times.

Overall, I give it 6 out of 10 stars.

Frenzy.

Review #977: Frenzy.

Cast: 
Jon Finch (Richard Ian "Dick" Blaney), Alec McCowen (Chief Inspector Oxford), Barry Foster (Robert "Bob" Rusk), Billie Whitelaw (Hetty Porter), Anna Massey (Barbara Jane "Babs" Milligan), Barbara Leigh-Hunt (Brenda Margaret Blaney), Bernard Cribbins (Felix Forsythe), Vivien Merchant (Mrs. Oxford), Michael Bates (Sergeant Spearman), and Jean Marsh (Monica Barling) Directed by Alfred Hitchcock (#219 - Rope, #223 - North by Northwest, #446 - Spellbound, #447 - Psycho, #450 - Vertigo, #455 - Rear Window, #553 - Strangers on a Train, #800 - Shadow of a Doubt, #910 - Notorious, #963 - The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, #964 - The Ring (1927), #965 - Downhill, and #970 - Mr. and Mrs. Smith)

Review: 
Frenzy was Alfred Hitchcock's 52nd feature film, along with being his penultimate film, with Family Plot (1976) being released four years later. This was adapted from the novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square by Arthur La Bern. He later wrote a letter in a newspaper that described it as a "painful experience", citing the screenplay by Anthony Shaffer. If you've seen enough Hitchcock films/thrillers (or have heard about him already), there are quite a few familiar aspects present, such as the wrong man motif, and a macabre attitude at times, with more thrills than mystery present (seeing as you know who the killer is by the first hour), but it doesn't make the film any less interesting in its plunge into the dark (depending on how much you can stomach, anyway). The tracking sequence involving the killer taking his next victim is executed finely enough, and the potato truck sequence invokes a bit of nausea along with interest in where it will end up. This was Hitchcock's third British film since he had moved to Hollywood in 1939 (with the other two being Under Capricorn (1949) and Stage Fright (1950), although he shot some exterior shots in England for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956)), and this also happened to be his first (and only) ever film rated R upon theatrical release, with the violence and imagery shown on screen showing more of the ugly nature of death than previous Hitchcock films had done - for better or for worse. If you can stomach the film's macabre aspects, you likely can stomach the film as a whole just fine.

Finch is a fair main lead, being brutally blunt and fitting as the man in the wrong circumstances while not merely just an innocent lamb, which is somewhat refreshing although it may be a turnoff for others. McCowen does fine, being fairly crucial towards the climax. The humor is quite sharp and welcome, with the scenes between McCowen and Merchant feeling like the right sort of contrast in a film with a man who kills people with neckties (I happen to have no biases toward this fact, seeing as I wear zip ties); the scene with the men discussing the details of the murder in a pub is also a strange highlight. Foster has a sort of ease to his performance that is fairly off-putting and quite effective; his scene with Leigh-Hunt is haunting along with lurid. The rest of the cast are quite interesting in their supporting roles, such as Massey and Cribbins, each having a certain pull factor that works in their own way; the locations used (such as Covent Garden) is also pretty helpful in making for a unique atmosphere for the film to take place, with some of the location having changed since the film's release. The climax of the film is fairly engaging and typical for a Hitchcock movie (which isn't a criticism), having a satisfactory end - for a movie like this, anyway. It is easy to say this is not one of Hitchcock's best films, but it is at least a fair piece of entertainment that happens to fall in the middle behind genuine classics that he had made prior. Love it or hate it, it is clear that Hitchcock still seemed to know what he was doing even at the age of 73, and this is a fairly decent representation of that.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.