The title translates as The Wax Doll
Showing posts with label Freddie Francis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freddie Francis. Show all posts
Monday, 23 November 2009
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Gebissen wird nur nachts / Mezzo litro di rosso per il conte Dracula / The Vampire Happening
[Note that this review contains spoilers]
The Vampire Happening is, to all intents and purposes, a contemporary re-make / rip-off of Roman Polanski's Dance of the Vampires, with a modish late 1960s happening substituting for the vampire's annual ball.
The filmmakers freely acknowledge their inspiration through the casting of Ferdinand Mayne as the head vampire, here none other than Dracula himself, and a similar flip/cynical ending which sees vampirism able at last to move beyond its Transylvanian heartland – albeit via jet plane going to Hollywood rather than horse-drawn sledge.
Betsy Williams (AKA the Countess Von Ravenstein, AKA Pia Dagermark) in...
A film within the film, with Dance... inspired credits
This said, the film also contains echoes of other vampire films of the period, including Malenka AKA Fangs of the Living Dead, in the painting that reveals the uncanny likeness between our heroine and her undead ancestress; Lust for a Vampire, in the lesbian vampire in a girls' school motif and Jean Rollin's sexy vampire films, in general surrealistic weirdness if not obvious personal obsession.
The painting as double
The distinction on the last count is that the film was helmed by Hammer and Amicus regular Freddie Francis, a man whose films as a director are marked by what I'm tempted to call a professional detachment or indifference: He'd do what was needed, but rarely go that extra mile nor really identify with his material.
What we get are various comic and nudie-cutie type comic scenarios along with various sight gags and one-liners: A 20-something sexy school student remarks of her Dutch-lesbian teacher Miss Nielsen that “that dyke should go back to Holland”; Mayne's Dracula tells another vampire to “Call me Christopher. I'm sure he won't mind”; and a broadcast from Radio Transylvania warns that "the local blood bank is running low and requests donors report to Dr Frankenstein”...
One difference between The Vampire Happening and its model here is the sense of toleration: While Count von Krolock's homosexual son is undoubtedly a stereotype, as is Alfie Bass's Jewish inkeeper turned vampire (“Oy, you got the wrong vampire,” when the serving wench tries to scare him off with a crucifix) they are more affectionate than mocking. Here, by contrast, the camp airline steward is unnecessary while the lesbian vampire teacher is now doubly marginalised, her advances rejected by the same 20-something but now undead students.
Another of the film's targets is the Catholic church, with a monk and the abbot getting bitten; the abbot, a peeping tom in life, insisting that they maintain their old hierarchy.
That the film is of West German origin meanwhile explains why it could not follow its model here: Jewish vampire jokes have a different meaning when made by a filmmaker of Jewish origins than by Gentiles.
The sight of Betsy encourages one of the monks to see sexual symbolism everywhere he looks, with the woman-statue not out of place in the likes of Bunuel.
It's all very hit and miss and, at 102 minutes, undoubtedly has one or two characters, ideas and skits too many.
The Barbara Steele-esque confusion over the identity of Pia Degermond's 20th century US actress, Betsy Williams, and her great-great- Transylvanian ancestress Clarimdone is well played, however, while the fact that Degermond spends much of her time as Betsy not wearing much and the rest as Clarimonde wearing even less (other than a black wig) is an obvious attraction.
More impressive in itself than Bray studios?
The same might be said for Jerry Van Rooyen's very happening soundtrack (cuts from which are available on Crippled Dick's At 250 Miles Per Hour compilation), and the production design, with good use being made of an actual castle.
The Vampire Happening is available on a good but long OOP Anchor Bay DVD and a not so good Alpha one, neither unfortunately presenting it in the original German dub.
The Vampire Happening is, to all intents and purposes, a contemporary re-make / rip-off of Roman Polanski's Dance of the Vampires, with a modish late 1960s happening substituting for the vampire's annual ball.
The filmmakers freely acknowledge their inspiration through the casting of Ferdinand Mayne as the head vampire, here none other than Dracula himself, and a similar flip/cynical ending which sees vampirism able at last to move beyond its Transylvanian heartland – albeit via jet plane going to Hollywood rather than horse-drawn sledge.
Betsy Williams (AKA the Countess Von Ravenstein, AKA Pia Dagermark) in...
A film within the film, with Dance... inspired credits
This said, the film also contains echoes of other vampire films of the period, including Malenka AKA Fangs of the Living Dead, in the painting that reveals the uncanny likeness between our heroine and her undead ancestress; Lust for a Vampire, in the lesbian vampire in a girls' school motif and Jean Rollin's sexy vampire films, in general surrealistic weirdness if not obvious personal obsession.
The painting as double
The distinction on the last count is that the film was helmed by Hammer and Amicus regular Freddie Francis, a man whose films as a director are marked by what I'm tempted to call a professional detachment or indifference: He'd do what was needed, but rarely go that extra mile nor really identify with his material.
What we get are various comic and nudie-cutie type comic scenarios along with various sight gags and one-liners: A 20-something sexy school student remarks of her Dutch-lesbian teacher Miss Nielsen that “that dyke should go back to Holland”; Mayne's Dracula tells another vampire to “Call me Christopher. I'm sure he won't mind”; and a broadcast from Radio Transylvania warns that "the local blood bank is running low and requests donors report to Dr Frankenstein”...
One difference between The Vampire Happening and its model here is the sense of toleration: While Count von Krolock's homosexual son is undoubtedly a stereotype, as is Alfie Bass's Jewish inkeeper turned vampire (“Oy, you got the wrong vampire,” when the serving wench tries to scare him off with a crucifix) they are more affectionate than mocking. Here, by contrast, the camp airline steward is unnecessary while the lesbian vampire teacher is now doubly marginalised, her advances rejected by the same 20-something but now undead students.
Another of the film's targets is the Catholic church, with a monk and the abbot getting bitten; the abbot, a peeping tom in life, insisting that they maintain their old hierarchy.
That the film is of West German origin meanwhile explains why it could not follow its model here: Jewish vampire jokes have a different meaning when made by a filmmaker of Jewish origins than by Gentiles.
The sight of Betsy encourages one of the monks to see sexual symbolism everywhere he looks, with the woman-statue not out of place in the likes of Bunuel.
It's all very hit and miss and, at 102 minutes, undoubtedly has one or two characters, ideas and skits too many.
The Barbara Steele-esque confusion over the identity of Pia Degermond's 20th century US actress, Betsy Williams, and her great-great- Transylvanian ancestress Clarimdone is well played, however, while the fact that Degermond spends much of her time as Betsy not wearing much and the rest as Clarimonde wearing even less (other than a black wig) is an obvious attraction.
More impressive in itself than Bray studios?
The same might be said for Jerry Van Rooyen's very happening soundtrack (cuts from which are available on Crippled Dick's At 250 Miles Per Hour compilation), and the production design, with good use being made of an actual castle.
The Vampire Happening is available on a good but long OOP Anchor Bay DVD and a not so good Alpha one, neither unfortunately presenting it in the original German dub.
Sunday, 20 September 2009
The Psychopath
Between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s Freddie Francis directed a number of horror and thriller films. Unfortunately it was often often a case of quantity over quality as he took on unpromising assignments from Hammer, Amicus and whoever else was offering steady work. Yet if The Deadly Bees and Trog are notorious examples of bad cinema, Francis also directed some intriguing films such as Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly and The Vampire Happening.
The Psychopath, made under the auspices of Amicus, is also one of Francis's better efforts, clearly gaining from his experiences in helming a number of Hammer's mini-Hitchcocks and the curious British-German krimi co-production Traitor's Gate.
Images from the title and credits sequence; thanks to the guys at Cinemageddon who put together this German version with the English audio track.
Indeed, the story here comes across as something that Edgar Wallace could easily have penned in the 1920s, given a 1960s update in the manner of the Rialto films from West Germany.
Almost everyone except the investigating Inspector Holloway is a suspect, be it the group of old war colleagues initially targeted by the killer; the young medical student who is dating one of their daughters, or the widowed old woman confined to a wheelchair through a psychosomatic rather than physical condition who lives with her Milquetoast son in a house full of dolls.
"No love lost in the House of Dolls" - a relevant Joy Division quote, given the war crimes that have something to do with the case.
Dolls also figure in the killer's modus operandi, as a doll bearing the features of each victim is left with their body. Besides being a nice Wallace-esque quirk courtesy of screenwriter Robert Bloch, the use of the doll / mannequin trope also helps position The Psychopath as another point of connection between various 1960s and 70s thrillers:
One of the dolls that signal death
Bloch had also, of course, written Psycho, whose mother-son relationship is vaguely echoed by that between Mrs Von Sturm and her son. Psycho's shower scene murder provided a major source inspiration for the likes of Freda and Bava, who upped the stakes in films like The Ghost and Blood and Blood and Black Lace respectively: What Hitchcock suggested a blade could do to human flesh, Freda showed. Where Hitchcock gave audiences two murder set pieces, Bava gave them six.
Bava's film, of course, also featured mannequins and people as mannequins in those body in pieces and Hans Bellmer kind of ways. ("Mannequin comes from the French word mannequin, which had acquired the meaning "an artist's jointed model", which in turn came from the Middle Dutch word mannekijn, meaning little man, figurine.")
This theme would be taken up would later gialli like Torso ("They were only dolls - stupid dolls, made out of flesh and blood!") and Deep Red, along with the Spanish Pieces ("It's exactly what you think it is.")
Nevertheless, there are also differences between Francis's film and its intertexts. While The Psychopath features a number of stylish compositions and makes conscious use of a limited colour palette primarily consisting of reds, greens and the black-white scale, it's far less imaginative and excessive than Bava's work.
Insofar as the two men were great cinematographers and technicians, I would ascribe this to a general film cultural thing. Take an English Gothic by Fisher or Francis, and an Italian Gothic, even one nominally made in an English style, by Robert Hampton or John M. Old (Bava's reading of his distributors request to make up "an old English name" under which he could be credited) and you immediately get the difference.
A US poster for the film; did Glenn Danzig see it on a double bill with Fanatic? Unlikely, since Fanatic was a Hammer production, but a nice thought....
Francis's Taste the Blood of Dracula is perhaps exemplary in this regard, insofar as he apparently only gave the film's cinematographer Arthur Grant colour filters he had previously used himself somewhat reluctantly. Had the film been directed by Bava you suspect he would either have functioned as his own cinematographer or encouraged whoever was his cinematographer to use more stylised lighting from the get-go.
Returning to the krimi, there are also some distinctive omissions: First, no attempt is made to signify that the film is indeed taking place in London, England. Instead, this is just taken for granted. Second, the usual developing romantic attachment between the woman in peril and the Scotland Yard man aspect is missing, perhaps because Patrick Wymark is not a dashing and dynamic lead in the Joachim Fuchsberger or Heinz Drache mould.
As far as placing the film temporally the treatment of Mark Von Sturm is noteworthy. Had the film been made a few years later, I got the feeling that he would have been made into an explicitly homosexual figure rather than being given artistic inclinations. As it is these inclinations still lead into fairly coy Peeping Tom-type artists and models territory as far as nudity and sleaze are concerned compared to five years later.
Two final aspects of the film that must be commented upon are the effective score by twelve-toner Elizabeth Luytens, one of those serious composers who benefited from the opportunity to do the kind of high-culture music she wanted within the low-culture format of the horror film, and the titles, with their use of an eerie eyeless doll's head vaguely recalling Halloween's pumpkin head.
The Psychopath, made under the auspices of Amicus, is also one of Francis's better efforts, clearly gaining from his experiences in helming a number of Hammer's mini-Hitchcocks and the curious British-German krimi co-production Traitor's Gate.
Images from the title and credits sequence; thanks to the guys at Cinemageddon who put together this German version with the English audio track.
Indeed, the story here comes across as something that Edgar Wallace could easily have penned in the 1920s, given a 1960s update in the manner of the Rialto films from West Germany.
Almost everyone except the investigating Inspector Holloway is a suspect, be it the group of old war colleagues initially targeted by the killer; the young medical student who is dating one of their daughters, or the widowed old woman confined to a wheelchair through a psychosomatic rather than physical condition who lives with her Milquetoast son in a house full of dolls.
"No love lost in the House of Dolls" - a relevant Joy Division quote, given the war crimes that have something to do with the case.
Dolls also figure in the killer's modus operandi, as a doll bearing the features of each victim is left with their body. Besides being a nice Wallace-esque quirk courtesy of screenwriter Robert Bloch, the use of the doll / mannequin trope also helps position The Psychopath as another point of connection between various 1960s and 70s thrillers:
One of the dolls that signal death
Bloch had also, of course, written Psycho, whose mother-son relationship is vaguely echoed by that between Mrs Von Sturm and her son. Psycho's shower scene murder provided a major source inspiration for the likes of Freda and Bava, who upped the stakes in films like The Ghost and Blood and Blood and Black Lace respectively: What Hitchcock suggested a blade could do to human flesh, Freda showed. Where Hitchcock gave audiences two murder set pieces, Bava gave them six.
Bava's film, of course, also featured mannequins and people as mannequins in those body in pieces and Hans Bellmer kind of ways. ("Mannequin comes from the French word mannequin, which had acquired the meaning "an artist's jointed model", which in turn came from the Middle Dutch word mannekijn, meaning little man, figurine.")
This theme would be taken up would later gialli like Torso ("They were only dolls - stupid dolls, made out of flesh and blood!") and Deep Red, along with the Spanish Pieces ("It's exactly what you think it is.")
Nevertheless, there are also differences between Francis's film and its intertexts. While The Psychopath features a number of stylish compositions and makes conscious use of a limited colour palette primarily consisting of reds, greens and the black-white scale, it's far less imaginative and excessive than Bava's work.
Insofar as the two men were great cinematographers and technicians, I would ascribe this to a general film cultural thing. Take an English Gothic by Fisher or Francis, and an Italian Gothic, even one nominally made in an English style, by Robert Hampton or John M. Old (Bava's reading of his distributors request to make up "an old English name" under which he could be credited) and you immediately get the difference.
A US poster for the film; did Glenn Danzig see it on a double bill with Fanatic? Unlikely, since Fanatic was a Hammer production, but a nice thought....
Francis's Taste the Blood of Dracula is perhaps exemplary in this regard, insofar as he apparently only gave the film's cinematographer Arthur Grant colour filters he had previously used himself somewhat reluctantly. Had the film been directed by Bava you suspect he would either have functioned as his own cinematographer or encouraged whoever was his cinematographer to use more stylised lighting from the get-go.
Returning to the krimi, there are also some distinctive omissions: First, no attempt is made to signify that the film is indeed taking place in London, England. Instead, this is just taken for granted. Second, the usual developing romantic attachment between the woman in peril and the Scotland Yard man aspect is missing, perhaps because Patrick Wymark is not a dashing and dynamic lead in the Joachim Fuchsberger or Heinz Drache mould.
As far as placing the film temporally the treatment of Mark Von Sturm is noteworthy. Had the film been made a few years later, I got the feeling that he would have been made into an explicitly homosexual figure rather than being given artistic inclinations. As it is these inclinations still lead into fairly coy Peeping Tom-type artists and models territory as far as nudity and sleaze are concerned compared to five years later.
Two final aspects of the film that must be commented upon are the effective score by twelve-toner Elizabeth Luytens, one of those serious composers who benefited from the opportunity to do the kind of high-culture music she wanted within the low-culture format of the horror film, and the titles, with their use of an eerie eyeless doll's head vaguely recalling Halloween's pumpkin head.
Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Das Verrätertor / Traitor's Gate
This 1964 krimi departs from the norm in two obvious ways. First, it's a West German / UK co-production, with Freddie Francis in the director's chair and Jimmy Sangster – concealed beneath his Henry Samson pseudonym – responsible for adapting the Edgar Wallace source novel. Second, it's got a different emphasis from usual, with no murder mystery component whatsoever. Instead it is more of a heist thriller in the tradition of Jules Dassin's Rififi, with a gang of jewel thieves hatching the audacious plan of stealing the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.
The colour on black and white animated titles are interesting as always
As such, Scotland Yard has less of a part to play, with the main audience identification figures instead being a young couple – he's a guard at the tower, she's a means by which he can be coerced into cooperating with the gang – and a hapless German tourist who become involved up in the gang's plans by design and accident respectively.
Money-directed professional voyeurism
Though the former are classic Wallace types – the girl is even taken prisoner by yet another one of those cars that dispenses knockout gas into the passenger compartment at the flick of a dashboard switch – the tourist is the obvious invention of the filmmakers, presumably intended to make the film more accessible to German audiences, especially given that he is played by series regular Eddi Arent.
The touristic gaze
Otherwise it's largely business as usual, with Klaus Kinski prominent as one of the robbers and another escaping from Dartmoor, seemingly the only correctional facility in the Wallaceverse, pursued by those firearm equipped policemen that curiously go against the myth of the British police his work otherwise promulgated.
Having said this, the presence of Francis and Sangster does however seem to give the British aspects of the production a touch more authenticity than was often the case on the all-German productions, with more substantial location shooting around the Tower and Picadilly Circus.
If both locations highlight the imagined / inauthentic aspect of the krimi, this is also more deliberate than usual thanks to Arent's character and the inherently touristic nature of the Tower itself, with Beefeater guards and suchlike already 'putting on a show'.
Soho sleaze; note the apparent lesbians behind Arent
The device of having the robbers first do a dress rehearsal with a mock up of the chamber in the tower also helps here, self-consciously foregrounding the studio bound nature of other aspects of the production to provide that convenient get out whereby the failure of something to look like the real thing could be passed off as a knowing gesture.
This said, the dramatic explosion on board a ship at the film's climax is all too obviously a bit of modelwork, while the execution of the real robbery proves fairly perfunctory compared to Rififi's daring silent centrepiece sequence and the in some ways comparable Grand Slam, in which Kinski also appears.
Fans of Francis and Sangster's work for Hammer and company may care to note the presence of Evil of Frankenstein's Katy Wild and dancer / choreographer Julie Mendez, who also appeared in She, in small roles; the latter also briefly exposes her breasts in the obligatory Soho club scene to provide an early instance of the kind of more daring material increasingly commonplace in the colour krimis.
Those seeking giallo connections will find them in the fact that the camera operator is none other than Ronnie Taylor, later to serve as director of photography on Argento's Opera and Sleepless.
With future Academy Award winners Francis and Taylor on board it's little surprise that Traitor's Gate looks good, although Francis's characteristically skilful but anonymous approach towards direction – as David Pirie argues, he was probably a better craftsman than Terence Fisher, but sometimes only brought craft to his work – means that there also less of the experimentation and neo-expressionism characterising Harald Reinl and Alfred Vohrer's krimis.
While there are plenty of subjective shots through telescopes, binoculars and so forth, as the robbers stake out the Tower, there is nothing comparable to the skull's eye view shots in The Skull nor the filter lighting effects in Dracula Has Risen From the Grave.
Kinski and weapon in a shot that would look good in 3D
Though Kinski is a bit more subdued than his usual this can be accounted for more positively as being an indication of his character being a solid professional. In contrast it's the same old thing from Arent, either welcome or a necessary evil depending on your tolerance for his comic pratfalls and to-camera mugging; to the uninitiated, think of Arent as the Michael Ripper or Luciano Pigozzi of the krimi, that kind of reassuring figure whose presence reassures that you're going to get what you expect, even if not always anything beyond this.
In line with this Peter Thomas delivers an effective score characterised by his usual quirks of unusual (male) vocalism and odd noises against the swing and lounge beats, making one wonder if he might be considered as something of the krimi equivalent of Ennio Morricone in the Italian western.
The colour on black and white animated titles are interesting as always
As such, Scotland Yard has less of a part to play, with the main audience identification figures instead being a young couple – he's a guard at the tower, she's a means by which he can be coerced into cooperating with the gang – and a hapless German tourist who become involved up in the gang's plans by design and accident respectively.
Money-directed professional voyeurism
Though the former are classic Wallace types – the girl is even taken prisoner by yet another one of those cars that dispenses knockout gas into the passenger compartment at the flick of a dashboard switch – the tourist is the obvious invention of the filmmakers, presumably intended to make the film more accessible to German audiences, especially given that he is played by series regular Eddi Arent.
The touristic gaze
Otherwise it's largely business as usual, with Klaus Kinski prominent as one of the robbers and another escaping from Dartmoor, seemingly the only correctional facility in the Wallaceverse, pursued by those firearm equipped policemen that curiously go against the myth of the British police his work otherwise promulgated.
Having said this, the presence of Francis and Sangster does however seem to give the British aspects of the production a touch more authenticity than was often the case on the all-German productions, with more substantial location shooting around the Tower and Picadilly Circus.
If both locations highlight the imagined / inauthentic aspect of the krimi, this is also more deliberate than usual thanks to Arent's character and the inherently touristic nature of the Tower itself, with Beefeater guards and suchlike already 'putting on a show'.
Soho sleaze; note the apparent lesbians behind Arent
The device of having the robbers first do a dress rehearsal with a mock up of the chamber in the tower also helps here, self-consciously foregrounding the studio bound nature of other aspects of the production to provide that convenient get out whereby the failure of something to look like the real thing could be passed off as a knowing gesture.
This said, the dramatic explosion on board a ship at the film's climax is all too obviously a bit of modelwork, while the execution of the real robbery proves fairly perfunctory compared to Rififi's daring silent centrepiece sequence and the in some ways comparable Grand Slam, in which Kinski also appears.
Fans of Francis and Sangster's work for Hammer and company may care to note the presence of Evil of Frankenstein's Katy Wild and dancer / choreographer Julie Mendez, who also appeared in She, in small roles; the latter also briefly exposes her breasts in the obligatory Soho club scene to provide an early instance of the kind of more daring material increasingly commonplace in the colour krimis.
Those seeking giallo connections will find them in the fact that the camera operator is none other than Ronnie Taylor, later to serve as director of photography on Argento's Opera and Sleepless.
With future Academy Award winners Francis and Taylor on board it's little surprise that Traitor's Gate looks good, although Francis's characteristically skilful but anonymous approach towards direction – as David Pirie argues, he was probably a better craftsman than Terence Fisher, but sometimes only brought craft to his work – means that there also less of the experimentation and neo-expressionism characterising Harald Reinl and Alfred Vohrer's krimis.
While there are plenty of subjective shots through telescopes, binoculars and so forth, as the robbers stake out the Tower, there is nothing comparable to the skull's eye view shots in The Skull nor the filter lighting effects in Dracula Has Risen From the Grave.
Kinski and weapon in a shot that would look good in 3D
Though Kinski is a bit more subdued than his usual this can be accounted for more positively as being an indication of his character being a solid professional. In contrast it's the same old thing from Arent, either welcome or a necessary evil depending on your tolerance for his comic pratfalls and to-camera mugging; to the uninitiated, think of Arent as the Michael Ripper or Luciano Pigozzi of the krimi, that kind of reassuring figure whose presence reassures that you're going to get what you expect, even if not always anything beyond this.
In line with this Peter Thomas delivers an effective score characterised by his usual quirks of unusual (male) vocalism and odd noises against the swing and lounge beats, making one wonder if he might be considered as something of the krimi equivalent of Ennio Morricone in the Italian western.
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