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.

Amicus Horrors: Tales from the Filmmakers' Crypt

I bought this new volume from Midnight Marquee, via the UK’s Hemlock Books, after seeing it on Troy Howarth’s Facebook feed.

A book about Amicus would be very welcome, I thought, especially if it treated the company’s horror and non-horror output in a manner comparable to, say, John Hamilton’s book on Compton/Tigon/Tony Tenser.

Amicus Horrors certainly starts off promisingly, with a worthwhile discussion of the musical anthology films produced by Amicus partners Max Rosenberg (production, finances) and Milton Subotsky (writing, in this case of both screenplay and musical numbers) and how the approach taken in them would feed into Amicus’s better-known horror productions.

If the writing also seemed somewhat fan-boyish that could be excused on account of many of the recollections and quotations stemming from author Brian McFadden drawing upon his meeting Subotsky over 40 years ago.

It was also balanced out by the author’s explanation of the similarities between the narrative structure of Psycho and of Amicus to-be’s first foray into horror, City of the Living Dead/Horror Hotel: made after Robert Bloch’s novel Psycho but before Hitchcock’s film Psycho, it was highly probable that Subotsky, a voracious reader, would already have read the former.

Additionally, McFadden nicely brings out how Subotsky’s experience in television production; padding out or cutting down material to fit a certain length; and general knowledge of how to put the money on the screen proved (in)valuable to Amicus.

Unfortunately it is pretty much all downhill from this point.

Though entitled Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and Christopher Lee at Amicus, the chapters on the three horror icons devote as much or more space to their careers elsewhere.

The chapter on the Amicus Stock company that follows makes little sense given the author had previously indicated, quite correctly, that a key feature of the Amicus approach was the casting of stars on a one-off, short-term basis to make the films look more expensive than they actually were.

For instance, Ingrid Pitt’s inclusion, despite appearing in only one segment of the anthology film The House that Screamed, is explicated in terms of the iconic qualities of one of the still taken off her in the production.

There is some valuable material in these chapters, as is also the case in McFadden’s discussions of Amicus at Shepperton and at Twickenham Studios, and of some of the composers who worked for the company, such as serialist Elizabeth Lutyens and jazzman Tubby Hayes. But, and it is a big but, it is very much a case of sifting through considerable quantities of less-than-gold material to find these nuggets.

In between the studio and music chapters a foray into Hammer territory also highlights the basic problem with the book. To wit, there is no doubting McFadden’s enthusiasm for his subject, but it isn’t always clear what this subject actually is.

Ultimately, we are still waiting for the book that will do Amicus justice. Until then the Little Shoppe of Horrors issue on the studio, #20, remains the reference of choice.

Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs / Spie vengono dal semifreddo

This was one of those films that I’d been wanting to see for a long time, but approached with a measure of trepidation. On the one hand, it was one of the few films directed by Mario Bava that I hadn’t seen. On the other it had a reputation as something of a 'bomb' itself.

The plot is simplicity itself.

The evil Dr Goldfoot (Vincent Price) has managed to evade capture once again and is soon back to his old tricks with his attractive but explosive girl bombs – i.e. convincing looking fembots equipped with explosive charges.

Working with the Chinese, represented by Hard Job (Moa Tahi), Fong and a bunch of nameless goons, his plan is to precipitate a nuclear war between the USA and the USSR by dropping an H-bomb on Moscow.


Price in the Pit and the Pendulum?

The only ones standing in his way are Bill Dexter, an ex-agent of SIC (i.e. Security Intelligence Command) whose boss Colonel Benson (Francesco Mulé) refuses to believe him when he tells the that Goldfoot is alive and scheming until it is too late; Benson’s secretary and obvious love interest/damsel in distress Rosanna (Laura Antonelli), and two hapless individuals by the names of Franco and Ciccio (er, Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia) accidentally recruited by SIC as the only men with the special talents needed to stop Goldfoot in his tracks…


Franco makes a gesture that means something different to an Italian than a US audience?


Goldfoot and the lookalike General Willis

The results aren’t quite as bad as I had feared, but would hardly qualify as prime Bava by any stretch of the imagination.

The chief culprits are Franco and Ciccio, the extraordinarily prolific and popular Italian comedians who averaged half a dozen films a year at the time by the expedient of doing their usual characters and routines in spoofs of whatever was in favour at the box-office at any given moment (e.g. spaghetti westerns like The Handsome, the Ugly, and the Stupid and Two R-R-Ringos from Texas).




The girlbomb Antonelli

Whilst Franco and Ciccio were clearly very good at what they did, their humour doesn’t appeal to me. Not that it could or should be expected to. There is, after all, a big difference between watching this film as a member of the terza visione in Italy, 1966, caring nothing about its director, and as an Anglophone Bava fan 40 years later.


We are the robots...

Following from this, the larger problem seems to be that the film is simply too much of a mish-mash of elements to particularly appeal to anyone: One could well imagine the same terza visione audience who wanted to see Franco and Ciccio do their thing tuning out when Vincent Price or Fabian were on the screen, and the bulk of the US matinee audience wondering who these crazy Italians were. (Tellingly even the English and Italian titles emphasise different things: Goldfoot and his girl bombs versus the two spies who came in from the semi-cold.)


Franco makes his escape, disguises as a girlbomb

Bava’s direction seems pretty flat and uninspired, though his hand feels evident in the numerous trick shots and the cheap yet sometimes effective designs for Goldfoot’s laboratory, most notably the mirrored room in which the ever-multiplying army of girl bombs exercise.




While Ciccio gets captured and stuck in the duplication machine

At a pinch there is also some characteristic play on the idea of deceptive appearances in a gag where Price is on one side of the mirror frame and Ciccio, as his reflection, on the other, and in the girl bombs more generally, most notably in the sequence where Fabian has to make out the difference between the real and replicant Antonelli’s – part of the difference being that the real one won’t yet make out with him while the mechanical doll double is decidedly more forward – with the result a broken doll/dummy figure on the floor.

Another moment, intriguing in light of the Bava-scripted Schoolgirl Killer with its private girls school setting and cross-dressing killer, is a scene where Dr Goldfoot dresses up as a nun while his girl bombs pose as schoolgirls in order to intercept the bomb from Franco and Ciccio.