The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein

No sooner has Frankenstein (Dennis Price) re-animated his monster than he and his assistant Morpho (director Jesus Franco) are killed. The man behind the murders, Cagliostro (Howard Vernon), wants the monster so that he can mate it with a human female and create a master race. Cagliostro has already conducted his own experiments in creating life which have resulted in a bizarre half-woman, half-bird, blind, vampiric creature, Melisa (Anne Libert). Cagliostro is not going to have things go entirely his way, however, since Dr Seward (Alberto Dalbés) and Inspector Tanner (Daniel White) are investigating the case, as is Frankenstein’s daughter Vera (Beatriz Savón).

When discussing El Topo Alejandro Jodorowsky was fond of remarking that what audiences would get out out of the film was dependent upon what they would put into it. If the spectator was limited then the film was limited.

This is a useful notion to bear in mind when watching a Jesus Franco film. This is because they are replete with inter-textual associations, whether it is the re-use of character names, the casting of what amounts to a stock company of performers, allusions to other films or to art in general. As such a Franco film is often an exercise in hermeneutics, a search for the code that will break the hermetic seal to permit entry into the Francoverse.

Name-wise, we have Morpho, Tanner and Orloff. Cast-wise, beside those already mentioned above, there are Britt Nichols, Luis Barboo and Daniel White – the last often Franco’s composers of choice, and who also provides the music here.

Allusion-wise the film comes across as one of Franco’s tributes to 1930s and 1940s horrors, notably The Mask of Fu Manchu, via the sadistic torture devices in Cagliostro’s dungeon; The Bride of Frankenstein, via Cagliostro himself, as a Dr Pretorius type; and any of the X meets Y permutations and combinations along House of Frankenstein lines.

At the same time, however, the film also has a more contemporary sensibility through the Bava-style red and blue lighting of Cagliostro’s dungeon; a Lady Frankenstein character (and here not forgetting that Rosalba Neri had earlier worked with Franco on Lucky the Inscrutable and 99 Women) and the prescient ideas of mating the monster, as would be mooted in Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, and of using it to create a master race, as would be foregrounded in Flesh For Frankenstein.

The idea of mating the monster arguably gives an added element to one of Franco’s obsessions, namely the female pudenda shot. For some of those here seem reminiscent of Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde. (One can also conceive of Melisa having stepped out of a Max Ernst painting.)

The version of the film watched was an AVI sourced from the UK Go Video release; it was also released along with companion piece Dracula Prisoner of Frankenstein by Tartan on DVD. The longer cut includes an early appearance by Lina Romay.

GBH / Grevious Bodily Harm

Club own Murray is in trouble. Gangster Keller wants a cut of his profits in return for protection, said protection being from Keller’s thugs. Murray, however, is not one to back down and so recruits his old doorman and troubleshooter Donovan, who is just about to be released from prison after serving a six month sentence, a sentence that stemmed from the last time Donovan helped Murray...

A Double bill with Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts?

Of course if Donovan had simply said no and walked away we would either not have a film or at least a very different one. So, much like the relationship between Terry McCann and Arthur Daley in Minder, Donovan is soon back to working for Murray.

My reference to Minder is not accidental, given that it was one of the highest rated series on British television at the time GBH and that lead – one hesitates to say star – Cliff Twemlow seems something of a McCann character in real life, having worked as a Manchester nightclub doorman for many years.

In part it is the choice of milieu that makes GBH work, since it is clear that the film-makers actually know about the world they are depicting on screen. More important than this, however, is their fundamental belief in what they doing.

For GBH could otherwise be compared to the various David Sullivan and Paul Raymond films of the era, such as Queen of the Blues, Emanuelle in Soho and Paul Raymond’s Erotica – except for the sense that co-writer, producer, composer (under the pseudonym John Agar) and lead Twemlow and his coterie of friends were intent upon doing the best they could rather than just the minimum required.

Yes, the narrative and characterisation are cliché. Yes, the writing and performances are frequently awkward. Yes, it was shot on video rather than film. Yes, there are basically two car door slamming type sound effects used for punches and kicks. Yes...

... but director David Kent-Watson also throws in some Dutch angles, slow motion and so on that he did not have to and also handles the action scenes well. Many of the exchanges written by Kent-Watson and Twemlow are also, in their own way, quite brilliant:

Donovan: Didn’t know this was a gay bar.
Barman: It isn’t.
Donovan: What about those two poofs over there?
[Fight ensues]

Tracy: The big hard type?
Donovan: Didn’t know I was showing.

Abducted by the Daleks

The plot?

Well, if you are familiar with any of other ‘films’ by director Don Skaro under his other pseudonym Roman Nowicki, you’ll anticipate that is is minimal.

The auteur of the Fantom Kiler and Fantom Seducer series is not exactly known for complex plotting. Rather it is about stringing together a few scenes with the same basic slasher/porno dynamic. Woman gets naked, then woman gets killed (in the former) or fucked (in the latter).

This is much the same, following the softcore dynamic of the former series, with Daleks in the place of Fantoms.

We begin with four women in a car, travelling through woods reputed to be the domain of the Serial Skinner, clearly a close cousin to the Fantoms.

Their car hits something (which we see is a Roswell type alien) so they get out to explore. Three of the four soon end up naked and prisoners of the Daleks.

Here I found it impossible not to think of Victor Lewis Smith’s TV Offal and his Gay Daleks skits, and of Jon Pertwee era Who companion Jo Grant actor Katy Manning appearing topless with a Dalek.

That said, the special effects are probably better than the original Who, if only by virtue of being 20-30-40 years later. (Is there a CGI setting to do CSO?)

Following the extermination (not insemination) of the women (white wee wee, white wee wee) an alien dominatrix in female form, indistinguishable from the others (i.e. bleached blond, silicone breasted, shaved pubis, heavy accented non-native English speaker) finds herself in the woods, where she is captured by a hunter seeking the Serial Skinner.

The Daleks intervene, attempting to teleport her back to their craft, but get the Skinner instead...

There are amusing aspects to Abducted by the Daleks, such as some of the credits (besides Don Skaro the script is by one Billy Hartnell, for instance) and the Star Trek TOS door opening/closing sound, but overall it is a tedious watch even at just 55 minutes.

Maybe Big Finish and Johnny Trunk / Wisbey should do an audio collaboration inspired by this?

Little Shoppe of Horrors #30

The new issue of Little Shoppe of Horrors, devoted to Hammer’s Vampire Circus, courtesy of the fine folk at Hemlock Books arrived earlier this week. I had a vague personal interest in this issue as, in the late 1990s, I was involved with a university film society screening in which one of the film’s actors, Laurence Payne, was in attendance. Unfortunately I could not remember much about the Q&A after the screening and so was unable to provide publisher/editor Dick Klemensen with anything that could have been included in the issue.

One thing that I did do for the film society screening (self-promotion...) was prepare a programme note, a page of smallish type, maybe seven or eight hundred words on the film. Watching Vampire Circus and comparing it to other Hammer films that I had seen to that point – basically whatever had turned up on the four terrestrial UK channels, with the exception of Terence Fisher’s So Long at the Fair, which I had annoyingly failed to set the VCR for – I was struck by how atypical it was.

There was no obvious savant to oppose the monster. Nor, indeed, was there an obvious monster, the lead vampire Count Mitterhaus having been dispatched in the prologue – a sequence that would have likely presented the climax of an earlier Hammer vampire film, or been given a brief recap before plunging into the main narrative, Dracula Prince of Darkness style. The approach was more ensemble based, with character actors rather than stars. You have Thorley Walters, for instance, but no Peter Cushing. As the film went on, it became increasingly fantastique – i.e. Continental, European, not stolid British, physical, Manichean Hammer, in the Terence Fisher mould. There was the tantalising prospect that evil might, for once, win.

So I put all this into my programme notes. I doubt if anyone else in attendance would have got these references. (Okay, so I'm an arrogant SOB...)

Now, reading the various contributions to this issue I feel vindicated. What I said, what I thought, seems broadly in line with what the contributors here felt. (Okay, so I'm an arrogant SOB #2...)

Away from the Vampire Circus related material, Klemensen continues to present a meta-commentary on fandom via his reviews. His magazine also continues its commitment to looking at lesser-known Hammer personnel, through an insightful and tragic interview with actor Peter Arne, unpublished for 30 years, Arne being murdered soon after.

All told, anyone who is a fan of Hammer, British Horror, or even cult cinema in general should get this.

Video Nasties

If you are at all interested in the UK video nasties affair of the early 1980s you have to go here. The creator of the site, devoted to Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead, has meticulously went through UK newspaper archives, many on microfilm and held at the British Library in London, to re-produce hundreds of newspaper articles on the nasties.

I am only one-sixth of the way through one of the PDF's, but it is already giving me new information - and I say this as someone who has read Martin Barker's The Video Nasties; David Kerekes's See No Evil; John Martin's Seduction of the Gullible; Kate Egan's Trash or Treasure, and watched almost all of the nasties, including the likes of Mardi Gras Massacre and Cannibal Terror, along with various documentaries on the affair.


I can only say thank you to the person who has produced this invaluable resource.

Little Shoppe of Horrors #29 - The Abominable Dr Phibes

Although it has been out for the last six months or so I had not got around to reading this issue of Richard Klemensen’s long running British horror magazine until now – a few days before the next issue, focusing on Hammer’s Vampire Circus, is released.

In reading this issue on the Dr Phibes films I had an epiphany of exactly what it is that I so like about Little Shoppe of Horrors. It is the polyphonic, kaleidoscopic, triangulated approach that Klemensen takes.

Triangulation is a concept that I first encountered in relation to map-reading and orienteering and then in relation to social sciences research. It means that when you have multiple takes or perspectives on something then you are better able to pinpoint exactly what that something is.

Or, to bring it back to a British horror subject of particular relevance this week, that of Peter Cushing’s centenary, it is the way in which just about everyone who ever worked with Cushing indicates how he was a gentleman, a consummate professional, and was heavily affected by the death of his wife Helen.

Or, in relation to the Phibes films, it is how the various authors’ contributions not only cumulatively tell you just about everything you could ever want to know but also give you a sense of where the truth likely lies on those occasions when there are multiple conflicting or mutually reinforcing accounts.

For instance, the tension between Vincent Price and Robert Quarry on the second Phibes film appears to have stemmed less from anything either actor did than certain third parties insinuations that the latter was being groomed as a replacement for the former. Additionally matters of sexual orientation may have played their part, with contributor David Del Valle noting that Quarry was openly gay and Price’s daughter that her father bisexual and closeted.

Away from the Phibes films specifically another thing that emerged from the issue is the importance of the TV series The Avengers for 1960s and 1970s British fantasy cinema. While this had earlier been argued for by Matthew Boot in his study of the British horror cinema Fragments of Fear, it is the detailed discussion of director Robert Fuest’s work as a designer on The Avengers that makes all the difference here.

Another point that several contributors make is how The Abominable Dr Phibes makes little sense when considered in terms of conventional narrative logic (who/what is his mute assistant Vulnavia, for instance), but nevertheless works despite – or indeed because of – this. This in turn leads on nicely to the Vampire Circus issue, insofar as that film is so atypical and fantastique in the Hammer canon.

Of Muscles and Men - Essays on the Sword and Sandal Film

When you are a fan of Italian filone cinema one thing which quickly becomes evident is how some filone have received far more attention than others, especially in the context of English-language scholarship. There’s most material on the Italian Western, followed by horror and the giallo, but considerably less when it comes to the peplum, sex comedy, mondo, spy film, war film etc.

As such this recent collection of academic essays on the peplum or sword and sandal film is especially welcome, even although only some of the authors investigate the Italian cycle of the late 50s-early 60s and there is certainly scope for further research.

Editor Michael Cornelius begins the collection with a overview of the genre and the areas which the individual essays explore.

Cornelius notes how the peplum, sword and sandal or strongman film is difficult to place within a generic taxonomy. Unlike comedy, romance, horror and thriller films there is not any obvious emotional state or mood associated with the peplum. In this it is like the Western. However, whereas the iconographic objects of the Western have symbolic value (white hats vs black hats, the horse vs the iron horse etc.), the sword, sandal and skirt are primarily functional.

A further area of difference (one likely shared with the Italian Western cycle) is around the dynamics of the gaze, or who looks at whom. Rather than men looking at women, the peplum is more likely to have men looking at other men. This, of course, raises issues around the homosocial and the homosexual.

Cornelius contends that four major periods of peplum filmmaking can be identified, the first two being associated with Italian cinema and the latter two with Hollywood. The filone/genre emerged in the 1910s, with the first colossal epics drawing on Ancient Rome and strongman Maciste’s shift from being a minor figure in Cabiria to the title character. The filone then reappeared in the late 1950s, beginning with the success of the Steve Reeves starring Hercules and would continue for another ten or so years. It then experienced a resurgence in the 1980s, with Conan the Barbarian, and in the 2000s, with Gladiator. (Regarding to the 1980s sword and sandal film it is worth noting that the likes of the Ator series, The Barbarians and Conquest are not mentioned.)

Maria Elena D’Amelio’s ‘Hercules, Politics and Movies’ proves one of the most rewarding chapters for the enthusiast and/or scholar of Italian popular cinema, both for the points she makes and where they might be taken.

D’Amelio identifies three key individuals or groups within the pepla of this period. First, the hero. Second, the tyrant. Third, the wider society. The role of the people is usually passive, the victims of an oppressive tyrant who has usurped power from a rightful ruler. Although the hero is sometimes responsible for overthrowing the tyrant, it is also frequently the case that the latter is undone by his own actions. Where he does overthrow the tyrant, the hero declines to take power himself, even if the people ask him to, instead returning power to the pre-tyrant ruler or their heir.

Though D’Amelio does not mention Will Wright’s structuralist study of the Hollywood Western, Sixguns and Society, the relationships she identifies seem much the same as those of the ‘classical’ Western there. In both cases the hero and the villain are strong and the society weak.

Beyond this Wright mentions a further three Western plots that presented different configurations of the relationship between these parties: the transitional plot, the revenge plot and the professional plot. Later Christopher Frayling and Bert Fridlund would explore how well these plots and the trajectory from the classical to the professional could be found in the Italian Western, with both proposing a number of alternative plots. In Frayling's case the factor that is especially important is his sense that the differences between American and Italian plots related to wider differences between the two societies.

Returning to D’Amelio, she likewise relates the particular configuration of the Italian peplum to politics and history, particularly Fascism and the post-war re-alignment into Western and Eastern blocs. Essentially the tyrant was Mussolini, the people the Italians, and the hero America. Establishing the rule of the tyrant as a deviation from the norm accorded with a post-war narrative that required ordinary Italians and Christian Democrat politicians to be excused from culpability with Fascism. Presenting the people as needing an external liberator downplayed the role of the left-dominated anti-Fascist resistance and the Communists in particular. Establishing the hero as someone who magnanimously defeated the tyrant but then chose not to himself take power suited the interests of the US, as the power behind the throne.

The next chapter is by Kristi M. Wilson and examines Pasolini’s Medea and the distinctive contributions of its director. While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with the piece, it does seem a reflection of a weakness of many studies dealing with popular cinema, namely giving greater attention to the auteur film than would strictly be warranted given its audience size.

Following this Jerry B. Pierce looks at Gladiator, Troy and 300 and how they respectively work to performatively establish the heterosexuality of their protagonists within their primarily homosocial context.

Andrew B. R. Elliot also looks at the contemporary peplum and how it typically features a group of heroes rather than an individual. This is again interesting in relation to the Western and Wright’s analysis of its different plots. The last of Wright’s plots, the professional plot, is likewise characterised by having multiple protagonists.

John Elia’s essay presents a defence of third and fourth generation pepla by seeking to draw a distinction between ‘reverent’ and ‘irreverent’ violence. This distinction is one that is situated as going back to ancient Greece and which potentially has uses elsewhere. In particular we might consider the subject of vengeance and the vendetta in Italian society; in Nietzsche’s notion of Christianity as a slave morality that inverted the values of earlier belief systems such that taking vengeance was wrong rather than right; and how revenge is treated in the Italian Western.

Subsequent chapters are of less obvious interest, in that they again exclusively address third and fourth generation pepla, but without less that can be drawn upon in relation to their second generation counterparts. Two essays that are worth singling out are those by Robert B. Pirro and Cornelius. Pirro brings out points where Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy departs from Homer’s source texts and relates these to the director’s personal history, as a German growing up post-WWII. Cornelius examines the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe franchise of the early 1980s and its affinities with the gay male clone subculture. (He-Man et al were literally clones, the action figures coming from a few basic moulds; whether He-Man and the others devoid of genitals ever got any 'action' is another matter...)

“Do you like gladiator movies?!”