The Amicus Anthology

Compared to some of the subjects of author Bruce Hallenbeck's previous books, most notably The Hammer Vampire and The Hammer Frankenstein, The Amicus Anthology likely provided a greater challenge -- one that he thankfully rises to.

For the Hammer Frankenstein films, excepting the one-off spoof/parody Horror of Frankenstein, are unified by the constant presence of Peter Cushing in the title role and, barring The Evil of Frankenstein, Terence Fisher as director/auteur. The Amicus anthology films, by contrast, were directed by Freddie Francis and Roy Ward Baker in approximately equal numbers and had no recurring characters.

The history of Amicus is intrinsically linked to that of its rival. Milton Subotsky presented Hammer with a script for a Frankenstein film. Hammer's bosses didn't like it, but learned that Mary Shelley's characters were out of copyright and thus made their own treatment. This became the epochal Curse of Frankenstein.

Subotsky and other Amicus mainman Max Rosenberg responded to Hammer by employing Christopher Lee for the atmospheric City of the Dead. While not an official Amicus film its present-day setting would emerge as something differentiating Amicus and Hammer horror on aggregate.

There are, in my opinion, three key reasons why The Amicus Anthology works.

First, Hallenbeck provides historical context to the horror compendium film in his opening and closing chapters, which reference the likes of Waxworks, Dead of Night, and Creepshow.

Second, he contextualises Amicus's anthologies in relation to their single-story horrors, such as The Skull, and their non-horror films, such as the Amicus in all but name Dr Who adaptations with Cushing as (a) Who. (This Amicus/Who nexus is worth noting, with third and fourth Who's Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker both appearing in Amicus anthology horrors.)

Finally, Hallenbeck makes you think: Do you prefer to see Amicus's guest stars or Hammer's character actors? Do you prefer segments or wholes? Do you prefer humour as punchline or intermittently? Does a great segment outweigh a good film?

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.

RIP Roy Ward Baker

A sad farewell to British film director Roy Ward Baker, director of A Night to Remember and numerous Hammer and Amicus films, including Quatermass and the Pit, The Anniversary, Moon Zero Two, The Vampire Lovers, Asylum, And Now the Screaming Starts..., Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde.







One of those no-nonsense professionals that rarely get the respect they deserve.

Little Shoppe of Horrors - Scream and Scream Again: The Uncensored History of Amicus Productions

Amicus, along with Tigon, has always been the also-ran of British horror, one of the companies that wasn’t Hammer. Such a label is however unfair to Amicus and thus their two key men, Milton Subotsky (1921-1992) and Max Rosenberg (1914-2004), on at least two counts.

First, it ignores their role in actually establishing the English Gothic, by virtue of planting the seed of what would eventually become The Curse of Frankenstein. Second, it fails to distinguish between their approach and those of their competitors, of recognising the relatively genteel nature of Amicus’s style against Tigon’s preference for shock horror.

This issue of the long-running magazine Little Shoppe of Horrors presents the Tigon story on a film-by-film and period-by-period basis, from the first collaborations between Subotsky and Rosenberg, through to the eventual – and sadly acrimonious – dissolution of their partnership and beyond, to perform a function comparable to the likes of Dennis Meikle or Wayne Kinsey or Marcus Hearn’s respective Hammer histories.

While Dark Side publishers Stray Cat had put out a book about Amicus in 2000, it was less than satisfactory for a number of reasons, as explicated by author Philip Nutman in his introduction – an introduction which also indicates the extremely long gestation of his own study, one dating back to the time when Amicus were still making films!

The first issue with the Stray Cat book was that its primary author, Jonathan Sothcott, took his name off the manuscript after it was drastically edited without his input.

The second, was that it was produced with the co-operation of Rosenberg, still alive at the time, but not the by then dead Subotsky.

When you are dealing with two very different men with two very different understandings of the company and its history where one – Subotsky – ended up taking the other – Rosenberg – to court that is understandably crucial.

Indeed, it also represents one of the reasons why Nutman’s manuscript itself has not been published, albeit with repeated updates and additions, until now. For, apparently thinking that it would present the Subotsky side of the story too much, Rosenberg had repeatedly threatened litigation during his lifetime.

The crucial thing here, as one reads through the 80,000 words of text in the densely packed, profusely illustrated 90-odd pages, is that Nutman plays fair to both men. Subotsky emerges as someone who was simply too naive and nice for the world of independent and exploitation film production and who thus needed a more worldly partner in Rosenberg. They were, as Nutman summarises, yin and yang figures, each complementing the other’s strengths and helping compensate for his weaknesses.

Moreover, if it was Rosenberg’s betrayal that eventually led to the breakup of the company against the harsh backdrop of the British film industry circa 1975, he also seems in turn been to have been manipulated somewhat by others’ shadow plays. (Of note here, but sadly unexplored due to Rosenberg’s reticence to say much about it later in his life, was his youthful involvement in progressive politics in the 1930s and 40s.)

Returning to happier times and the yin and yan motif, Nutman identifies karma as the Amicus equivalent to the Manicheanism of Hammer’s key auteur, Terence Fisher. In Fisher good and evil simply are, with the former invariably triumphing over the latter. By contrast in the universe of Subotsky – as the partner who took the more hands on role in filmmaking, Rosenberg handling the business side of things – is one where evil is more of a mundane and mendacious nature and where, most of the time, it ends up defeating itself. It’s not an absolute formula, insofar as some of the victims of Amicus’s horrors don’t do anything obviously wrong, but does work heuristically. (There are also, after all, non Fisher Hammer films that express a different moral universe.)

Away from such David Pirie or Peter Hutchings style thematic interpretations, Nutman also succeeds in producing a work which will prove extremely useful as a reference guide (which one of those anthology films featured that story with that actor being the perennial question here?); for fans of trivia (the impressive main set in The Skull first saw service, albeit briefly, in Darling); as a source of quotes from the two men and figures like Freddie Francis, and for anyone just wanting to know more about the history of British horror and independent film production in the period from the mid-1950s to mid-1970s.

The cover paintings are beautiful, clearly labours of love in keeping with the text itself and the rest of the magazine.