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.
Showing posts with label peter cushing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label peter cushing. Show all posts
Saturday, 25 May 2013
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
Corruption / Laser Killer
[Note that this review contains spoilers]
After his fiance Linda Nolan (Sue Lloyd), a model, suffers horrible facial burns in an accident, respected surgeon Sir John Rowan (Peter Cushing) vows to restore her beauty.
The generation gap
This leads him to study Ancient Egyptian texts, which he uses in conjunction with pituitary glands and a laser to effect a remarkable transformation.
Linda after the accident, but before the operation
Its effectiveness proves transitory, however, prompting John into a succession of murders in a bid to meet Linda’s ever more desperate demands...
Scripted by John and Derek Ford and directed by Robert Hartford-Davis, this 1968 British horror obscurity is best known today for presenting Peter Cushing in some of the most extreme situations of his career.
But unlike Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, where Cushing, co-star Veronica Carlson and director Terence Fisher were taken by surprise by Hammer boss James Carreras’s demand they film a rape scene to spice the film up, we may surmise that Cushing knew from the outset what he was letting himself in for.
The script, after all, was by Donald and Derek Ford. Admittedly, the latter hadn’t yet sunk to the levels of the likes of the softcore Sexplorer and hardcore Sex Express AKA Diversions. Nonetheless, a filmography that had already included the likes of Primitive London and The Yellow Teddy Bears hardly pointed to the likelihood of Corruption being restrained, tasteful, well-made horror in the by then classic (if also thereby arguably aging) Fisher manner.
Moreover, the writers obvious source of inspiration was Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, a film whose unflinchingly rendered real life surgical horrors made the Hammer Frankenstein films look tame by comparison.
As such, I’m tempted to think that there is a hint of Cushing’s wariness coming through in the scene in which Sir John wanders through Soho at night looking for a likely victim. For, rather than being shown on location, we get what look like studio shots of Cushing superimposed over stock or second unit footage.
Cushing superimposed over Nudist Paradise at the Jacey
An uncut version of the film, which included Sir John’s picking up and killing a prostitute, whose head he takes, would probably help clear things up here.
The superimposition is also, however, very much of a piece with Robert Hartford-Davis’s showy direction, in which rack focus, hand-held camera, distorting lenses, shock zooms and rapid-fire editing are the order of the day in a Repulsion / Blow-Up / The Sorcerers type manner.
Cushing in full-on maniac mode
As the synopsis suggest, the story is replete with non-sequiturs: Where did the Egyptians learn about laser beams and the endocrine system, exactly?!
It also suffers from inconsistent characterisation: One minute Linda is expressing horror that John has experimented upon a guinea pig, the next encouraging him to cold-bloodedly murder the seeming innocent who has wandered into their orbit.
In retrospect, however, it all makes sense. The clue here is in the ending, in which it is suggested that most of what we have just seen, from the point of Linda’s injury onwards, has taken place in Sir John’s head.
Yes, it’s a projection of his subconscious...
If this seems fanciful, an excuse for weak writing, consider the aforementioned Diversions: While that film explicitly presents its vignettes as (sexual) fantasies, we are surprised at the end to learn that, rather than being a convicted prisoner she is in fact one of the police officers escorting the prisoner.
Put another way, there is a consistency of theme here, of Derek Ford looking to challenge middle-class respectability in his images.
More coincidentally, there are also thematic links to Fisher’s pre-Frankenstein film The Stolen Face, in which a surgeon believes a young woman’s malignancy is down to her facial deformity, cures her and then discovers that her ugliness was more a manifestation of an evil soul, with this in turn prefiguring Frankenstein Created Woman’s Christina.
All told, then, Corruption is not a good film in and of itself, but it is one that is certainly of interest to the British trash fan for various reasons.
After his fiance Linda Nolan (Sue Lloyd), a model, suffers horrible facial burns in an accident, respected surgeon Sir John Rowan (Peter Cushing) vows to restore her beauty.
The generation gap
This leads him to study Ancient Egyptian texts, which he uses in conjunction with pituitary glands and a laser to effect a remarkable transformation.
Linda after the accident, but before the operation
Its effectiveness proves transitory, however, prompting John into a succession of murders in a bid to meet Linda’s ever more desperate demands...
Scripted by John and Derek Ford and directed by Robert Hartford-Davis, this 1968 British horror obscurity is best known today for presenting Peter Cushing in some of the most extreme situations of his career.
But unlike Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, where Cushing, co-star Veronica Carlson and director Terence Fisher were taken by surprise by Hammer boss James Carreras’s demand they film a rape scene to spice the film up, we may surmise that Cushing knew from the outset what he was letting himself in for.
The script, after all, was by Donald and Derek Ford. Admittedly, the latter hadn’t yet sunk to the levels of the likes of the softcore Sexplorer and hardcore Sex Express AKA Diversions. Nonetheless, a filmography that had already included the likes of Primitive London and The Yellow Teddy Bears hardly pointed to the likelihood of Corruption being restrained, tasteful, well-made horror in the by then classic (if also thereby arguably aging) Fisher manner.
Moreover, the writers obvious source of inspiration was Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face, a film whose unflinchingly rendered real life surgical horrors made the Hammer Frankenstein films look tame by comparison.
As such, I’m tempted to think that there is a hint of Cushing’s wariness coming through in the scene in which Sir John wanders through Soho at night looking for a likely victim. For, rather than being shown on location, we get what look like studio shots of Cushing superimposed over stock or second unit footage.
Cushing superimposed over Nudist Paradise at the Jacey
An uncut version of the film, which included Sir John’s picking up and killing a prostitute, whose head he takes, would probably help clear things up here.
The superimposition is also, however, very much of a piece with Robert Hartford-Davis’s showy direction, in which rack focus, hand-held camera, distorting lenses, shock zooms and rapid-fire editing are the order of the day in a Repulsion / Blow-Up / The Sorcerers type manner.
Cushing in full-on maniac mode
As the synopsis suggest, the story is replete with non-sequiturs: Where did the Egyptians learn about laser beams and the endocrine system, exactly?!
It also suffers from inconsistent characterisation: One minute Linda is expressing horror that John has experimented upon a guinea pig, the next encouraging him to cold-bloodedly murder the seeming innocent who has wandered into their orbit.
In retrospect, however, it all makes sense. The clue here is in the ending, in which it is suggested that most of what we have just seen, from the point of Linda’s injury onwards, has taken place in Sir John’s head.
Yes, it’s a projection of his subconscious...
If this seems fanciful, an excuse for weak writing, consider the aforementioned Diversions: While that film explicitly presents its vignettes as (sexual) fantasies, we are surprised at the end to learn that, rather than being a convicted prisoner she is in fact one of the police officers escorting the prisoner.
Put another way, there is a consistency of theme here, of Derek Ford looking to challenge middle-class respectability in his images.
More coincidentally, there are also thematic links to Fisher’s pre-Frankenstein film The Stolen Face, in which a surgeon believes a young woman’s malignancy is down to her facial deformity, cures her and then discovers that her ugliness was more a manifestation of an evil soul, with this in turn prefiguring Frankenstein Created Woman’s Christina.
All told, then, Corruption is not a good film in and of itself, but it is one that is certainly of interest to the British trash fan for various reasons.
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