THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT (III)


TWINS OF EVIL
COUNTESS DRACULA
HANDS OF THE RIPPER
BAD TIMING


The Hammer Dracula, even viewed today, retains the power to chill the blood. Christopher Lee, and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing the intrepid vampire‑hunter, formed an uneasy blood pact to thrill audiences for the next twenty years. The 1960s cemented Hammer’s reputation as their prolific series of reviving old characters and themes continued unabated. The Mummy (1959), The Curse Of The Werewolf (1960), The Phantom Of The Opera (1962), Prince Of Darkness (1965), The Plague Of The Zombies (1966) and Rasputin, The Mad Monk (1967) all got the Hammer treatment. Rasputin had Christopher Lee once more arousing women’s fantasies, this time as the great seducer of the Russian Court.

Frankenstein and Dracula survived into the 1970s, but by 1973 both had dwindled in popularity. Interestingly, the relaxation of censorship at the end of the 1960s produced a brief cycle of more ‘adult’ Hammer films: The Vampire Lovers (1970), Lust For A Vampire (1970) and Twins Of Evil (1971). These capitalized on attractive young starlets prepared to bare their all in the name of Hammer. The sexual aspects of vampirism are taken to greater heights as women sink their fangs into various parts of not‑too‑unwilling young men. In fact, Twins Of Evil is something of a Gothic Hammer classic.

Based on characters created by J. Sheridan Le Fanu (mainly the lesbian vampire Carmilla), and directed by John Hough from a screenplay by Tudor Gates (who also scripted Vampire Lovers and Lust For a Vampire), it combines Puritan zeal with the decadent lust of vampirism. Maria and Frieda are twins who move from Vienna to the small village of Karnstein to live with their Uncle Gustav Weil (Peter Cushing), head of an obsessive Puritan sect. Meanwhile, Lord Karnstein inadvertently reincarnates his ancestor Mircalla and becomes a vampire. In turn, Frieda, escaping into the night to visit the Lord, is seduced and vampirized. She in turn bites others, male and female, until her sister Maria and fiancé Anton, with the help of the crazed Weil and villagers, attack Karnstein and bum the castle.

The twins of the tide were played by real twins, Madeleine and Mary Collinson, whose likeness was so great that on set it was allegedly impossible for the crew to tell the two actresses apart. On screen, however, the gimmick doesn’t really come off and it’s left for director Hough to create the horror with the mists of the Pinewood sets. His aims were simple: ‘If cinemagoers don’t scream and shudder, I feel I shall have failed.’

For the critics, he did succeed. Nigel Andrews, writing in Monthly Film Bulletin, stated the ‘reincarnation of Countess Mircalla, an ectoplasmic shape rising from the sarcophagus and floating in hooded silence towards the terrified Karnstein, is a tour de force. And though Twins Of Evil has its share of the usual Hammer deficiencies – insipid juveniles and some over-familiar Pinewood locations – it is easily the best of their Vampire films for some time’.

Mircalla could be a direct relative of Countess Elizabeth Nadasdy, played by Ingrid Pitt in Countess Dracula (1970). The character is based on the real-life Hungarian Countess Bathory, who, in the seventeenth century, bathed in virgins’ blood to rejuvenate her flesh and retain her youth. Directed by Peter Sasdy, it was a compelling addition to Hammer’s library. It was also the first production that Hammer made in association with Rank Films.

After discovering that a virgin’s blood does wonders for the skin, Elizabeth kills a chambermaid and poses as her own daughter in order to seduce young hussar, Imre Toth (Sandor Eles). The ploy succeeds, but Elizabeth needs a constant supply of blood to remain young. With the help of faithful Captain Dobi (Nigel Green), she abducts and kills young women from neighbouring villages. However, during her wedding to Imre, she suddenly transforms into her older self and accidentally kills him in her hunger for fresh blood. At the end, she is locked in a cell and awaits the hangman, while the women in the village whisper the name… ‘Countess Dracula’.

Countess Dracula was the first film to propose that the vampire legend was started by women. The story of Countess Bathory allegedly began when by accident she hit a chambermaid so hard that blood from the girl’s nose spurted into her face. When she washed the blood off and looked in the mirror, she found her skin appeared more beautiful and much whiter. So began a life of murder. At Countess Bathory’s trial in 1611, it was found she had killed more than a hundred virgins (although only eighty were found), who had all been tortured before slowly being drained of blood.

Another historical villain that the Hammer folks were finally attracted to was Jack the Ripper, although the approach was quirkily demented in Hands Of The Ripper (1971). Here the ‘supernatural’ emanates from a familiar character in British horror, the fake medium. Anna, Jack the Ripper’s daughter, is acting as a ‘voice’ during the séance, but has become psychologically disturbed as a result of the actions of her father. When a series of murders seem to follow in her footsteps, psychiatrist Dr. John Pritchard (Eric Porter) deduces that Anna may be the killer. Freudian methods corroborate the concept and when he pursues her to St. Paul’s Cathedral, he catches her in the act of murder. In a hypnotic trance, she falls from the Whispering Gallery to her death.

The curious idea of Jack the Ripper’s daughter carrying on the tradition, albeit subconsciously, is bizarrely effective. Scenes of the medium’s discovery of Jack’s identity, coupled with the daughter’s homicidal tendencies, are indeed frightening. The film was again directed by the talented Peter Sasdy, who was born in Hungary, but emigrated at an early age to England. He was highly rated for his prestigious BBC productions (such as Wuthering Heights and Spoils Of Poynton), before he went under contract at Hammer. Hands Of The Ripper, despite its excesses, is a full expression of his skills, especially in the handling of Anghared Rees, who was making her film debut at the age of twenty-three. The confrontation between Pritchard and Anna in St Paul’s has a wonderfully unworldly feeling as Pritchard arrives just in time to prevent Anna from murdering his own daughter Laura (Jane Merrow). From the nave, Pritchard gazes up into the Whispering Gallery where the murder attempt is happening and implores Anna to join him. With a beatific smile, Ann complies, releasing Laura, perching on the handrail, then stepping over and off. Her cape billows and she seems to take forever to reach the ground. When she does, the contact soft, her death like landing on a pillow of clouds.

That memorable cinematic flourish virtually signified the end of Hammer’s reign as the ultimate purveyors of Grand Guignol and Gothic grossness. The early 1970s produced only one more film of merit, Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell (1973). The others were mainly sub‑standard, or just plain disastrous, and besides Hammer couldn’t hope to compete with the very realistic group of films that were heralding a new era in film‑making at the start of the 1970s. An unpleasant era, some critics would say, but then again, that’s what they said on Dracula’s release back in 1958.

Times were changing. The early 1970s were marked by two devastating British films, Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs (1971) and Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971). In the former, the notion of a man and his wife (Dustin Hoffman and Susan George) trapped in their house while a gang of psychopathic yokels rail around outside, was used as a truly horrible fable, a vivid mirror of the contemporary increase in Britain’s violent crimes. In The Devils, the world Russell creates is corrupt and insane, so hysterical, disease-ridden and violent, it almost defies the imagination. These films were going beyond the period mysticism that Hammer sought to revive, instead presenting warped reflections of our own society. Hammer’s days were definitely numbered.

The new horror was based on the psychological terrors of twentieth-century life. In this realm, Rank’s last film as a production company was a worthy arrival. Bad Timing (1980) is about a relationship that goes sour. And wry observers of the British film industry noted at the time that the film’s name was somehow appropriate to Rank’s sad withdrawal from active film-making. Bad Timing, directed by one of Britain’s most stylish directors, Nicholas Roeg, really wasn’t for the squeamish. It centres on an oppressive, doomed relationship between Alex (Art Garfunkel), an American psychiatrist working in Vienna, and Milena (Theresa Russell), a wilful young American woman drifting through the bars and clubs of middle Europe. Alex is spotted by Milena and wishes to possess him completely. Through a series of intricate flashbacks, we watch the two meet, fall in love and grow apart. But there’s nothing ordinary about it - Milena has taken an overdose and is having her stomach pumped in hospital. A dour police officer, Netusil (Harvey Keitel), is questioning Alex, because there’s something odd in the timing. Something strange and disquieting. The film soon becomes a nightmare vision of Alex’s subconscious.

Bad Timing is an engrossing, compulsive, disorientating movie as it seeks to re-evaluate relationships and our responses to them. Roeg’s mastery of the medium is wholly absorbing, forcing us deep into Alex’s besotted fantasies. It’s a truly disturbing film, as dark a nightmare as one is likely to find. Roeg commented: ‘I wanted to reach down inside people to permeate their emotions…’ It was chosen as the closing film at the Berlin Film Festival and what a way to finish. Not a very happy ending. Indeed, the film quickly became one of the most controversial of the year, only gaining an ‘X’ certificate when a certain scene was cut. It divided audiences and critics alike, but its mixture of crude visual and cynical artistic thought was certainly a perfect reflection of the modern horror.