Hurray! We’re going to the cinema, and sharing lots of things you never knew about those classic British horror movies of the sixties and seventies. Even better, we’re having fun with April Moon Book’s new anthology Spawn of the Ripper, a great collection of stories inspired by… a psychopathic frog? No, you guessed – classic horror movies of the sixties and seventies.
A few weeks ago we interviewed Neil Baker of April Moon Books, and to be honest we hadn’t expected to be back in Canada-land so quickly (see once in an april moon) Then we found out that Spawn of the Ripper was launching, and we had to be in on it, for we at greydogtales are unrepentant fans of those wonderful films like The Reptile, Twins of Evil and Dracula Prince of Darkness. We can’t include Django or Chilli, of course. They’re too young to watch such terrors.
So we thought we’d look at a few of the films behind the April Moon anthology, and give you the low-down on the book at the same time. As Neil has produced suitably cheesy poster illos for the stories, we have the added pleasure of including some of those and some posters from the original films. We do like pictures – they distract our listeners from any mistakes in the articles.
Spawn of the Ripper itself is fresh off the press, and Neil describes it as “my love letter to the men and women before and behind the cameras at Bray and Shepperton, who created some of the most beautiful horror on film.”
What are these strange and wonderful films? We brush briefly past their content to provide you with the trivia you either already knew or will soon wish you didn’t (and yes, we’re bound to have got something wrong – that’s how trivia work)…
From the book – “‘Spawn of the Ripper’ by Glynn Barrass and Martha Bacon is inspired by Hands of the Ripper while Christine Morgan’s ‘Immacula: Blood Communion’ is a darkly humorous take on the classic vampire tale.
“‘The Fates of Dr. Fell’ by Josh Reynolds channels the glorious portmanteau Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors while Ben Stewart’s ‘The Avenger Cometh’ and John Hunt’s ‘The Tablet’ owe more than a little to one of my favorite films, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter.”
Hands of the Ripper is from 1971. As a child, Jack the Ripper’s daughter witnesses him kill her mother. As a young woman she unconsciously carries on the murderous reign of her father. A psychiatrist tries to cure her, but all does not go well.
Trivialtales: Whilst it stars Eric Porter of Forsyte Saga fame, it is more remarkable in that Lynda Baron, who plays Long Liz (a real-life Ripper victim), is also Nurse Gladys Emmanuel in the BBC series Open All Hours. She is still playing this role even today, forty years after Open All Hours began. And she’s been in Doctor Who alongside both William Hartnell in 1966 and Matt Smith in 2011. Impressive or what?
Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, from 1965, stars Peter Cushing as Dr Terror, aka Dr W R Shreck. This is one of those lovely multiple story films. An architect returns to his ancestoral home to find a werewolf out for revenge; a doctor discovers his new wife is a vampire; a huge plant takes over a house; a musician gets involved with voodoo; an art critic is pursued by a disembodied hand.
Trivialtales: The film was a deliberate attempt by writer Milton Subotsky to repeat the success of Dead of Night from 1945. Subotsky rose to fame producing Rock, Rock, Rock in 1956, a film about a girl getting ready for the prom, starring Chuck Berry, The Flamingos and other rock and roll stars. Subotsky wrote most of the songs, and the soundtrack album is often cited as Chuck Berry’s first album.
Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter – 1974. A village is stricken with premature ageing and sudden mysterious deaths. Dr. Marcus calls in his army friend, Captain Kronos, to help. Kronos and his companion, the hunchback Hieronymus Grost, are professional vampire hunters. Grost explains to the initially sceptical Marcus that the dead women are victims of a vampire who drains not blood but youth, and that there are “as many species of vampire as there are beasts of prey.”
Trivialtales: The film’s score is by Laurie Johnson. From the 1960s to the 1980s, he composed over fifty themes and scores, including the themes used on iconic UK TV series such as The Avengers, Jason King, The New Avengers and The Professionals. Many of Johnson’s works have since become stock music for series such as SpongeBob, Squarepants.
From the book – “Amy Braun’s ‘The Maker of Monsters’ has shades of Vampire Circus about it, while ‘Blood Red Dahlias’ by Jonathan Cromack echoes the psychological horror of Asylum. The nefarious carryings on of Baron Frankenstein are well represented by the stories ‘The Brain of Evil’ by D.J. Tyrer, ‘Scourge of the Flesh Devils’ by Coy Hall and ‘The Private Ambitions of Arthur Hemming’ by Pete Mesling, and the seedy underbelly of society mixed with black magic is represented by R. Allen Leider’s ‘Nightwork’.”
Vampire Circus is a 1972 release – a travelling circus called the Circus of the Night appears mysteriously at a village ravaged by plague. Are this appearance and what happens next connected to the vampire killings of many years before. Well, yes. What did you expect?
Trivialtales: Three of the cast – Adrienne Corri, Laurence Payne and Lalla Ward – came together again in the 1980 season of Dr Who with Tom Baker as the Doctor. And David Prowse, who later played (the body of) Darth Vader in the first Star Wars trilogy, appears in a silent role as the circus strongman in Vampire Circus. Did you know that he also played the minotaur in the Dr Who story The Time Monster, with Jon Pertwee as the Doctor this time?
Asylum, also 1972, concerns the arrival of a certain Dr Martin at a secluded asylum “for the incurably insane”, to be interviewed for a job by the strange, wheelchair-bound Dr. Lionel Rutherford. Rutherford wants to see if Martin is right for the position of chief doctor. Rather than have a look at his CV, Rutherford tells him to interview the inmates and work out which one is Dr Starr, the former head of the asylum.
Trivialtales: The film was scripted by Robert Bloch, who adapted four of his own short stories for the screenplay. Barry Morse, who plays inmate Bruno in the film, was later to take the lead role in Space: 1999, and was born Herbert Morse. Herbert Lom, on the other hand, who plays Byron, was born Herbert Charles Angelo Kuchačevič ze Schluderpacheru in Prague. And not Barry Schluderpacheru, as you must have expected. Disappointing.
From the book – “Patrick Loveland’s ‘The Five Crystal Dragons’ is an obvious and thrilling take on The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and ‘The Blood-Soaked Sand’ by Aaron Smith is a ripping yarn full of derring-do and monsters in Egyptian temples. Finally we have John McCallum Swain’s entertaining ‘The Wolf Who Never Was’ which purports to tell the true story behind the making of The Curse of the Werewolf and Oliver Reed’s legendary drinking.”
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, 1974, was the ninth and final film in the Hammer Dracula series. It was released in North America in an edited version as The Seven Brothers Meet Dracula, and alternatively known as The Seven Brothers and Their One Sister Meet Dracula. An old monk summons Dracula from his tomb to tell him that a Chinese cult, the Golden Vampires, is losing its power, and Dracula is needed to restore their former glory. The Count possesses the monk’s body and heads for China, as you would. High oriental jinks ensue.
Trivialtales: This is the only Hammer “Dracula” film not to feature Count Dracula’s name in the title of the film, and the only one where Dracula was not played by Christopher Lee. This was also the last time Peter Cushing would play Van Helsing. The film is notable for the use of the Chinese vampire, the jiangshi. If you’re used to Western vampires swirling and striding around in Gothic manner, the Chinese ones take a little adjustment. They hop. They hop a lot, arms outstretched as tradition demands. So there.
Curse of the Werewolf, 1961. It’s a bit of a tragic tale. A young woman refuses a nobleman’s advances, is thrown in jail and raped by a mad beggar while in there. When the girl escapes, she is taken in by a scholar and his wife, but she dies after giving birth to a baby on Christmas Day. The boy, Leon, is cursed by the evil circumstances of his conception and by his Christmas Day birth. An early hunting incident gives him a taste for blood, which he struggles to overcome. Dot dot dot.
Trivialtales: This was Oliver Reed’s first credited film appearance, and the only werewolf film made by Hammer. But wait… the film also includes Peter Sallis, as Don Enrique. Gosh.
Peter Sallis is famed for his role in Last of the Summer Wine (he appeared in all of the 295 episodes from 1973 to 2010), and was the voice of Wallace in Wallace and Gromit. In both cases, despite being born in London, he was forced at gunpoint to use a Northern accent.
Not only that, but we should mention the 2005 Wallace and Grommit film The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, in which Sallis played opposite such luminaries as Ralph Fiennes and Helena Bonham-Carter – and Mark Gatiss! Yes, 44 years after working with Oliver Reed, Sallis finally became the werebeast himself.
Extra trivialtales: This echoes the myth of the kallikantzaros, in some cultures a demonic creature, in others a cursed child born between December 25 and January 6, which are known as the ‘unbaptised’ days in Serbian folklore. These children were at risk each Christmas of turning into dakr and twisted things. It was one element of that wonderful book by Roger Zelazny, This Immortal, originally serialised as And Call Me Conrad. You should read it. And Zelazny’s Isle of the Dead, which we covered here: the isle of the dead
With reference to Aaron Smith’s story in the anthology, we have an excuse to mention Valerie Leon, famed for her dual role as Margaret and the ancient Egyptian Queen Tera in Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb. Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb was made in 1971, and based on Bram Stoker’s novel Jewel of the Seven Stars (The Awakening, another version of Stoker’s tale, was made in 1980 but wasn’t as good as this one).
Trivialtales: This would have been a Peter Cushing film but Cushing had to pull out because his wife was ill. Five foot eleven inches tall, Valerie appeared with both Roger Moore and Sean Connery in Bond films, did seven Carry On movies and loads of TV work. She was also famous at the time as the Hai Karate advert girl.
There you are. An entire article which is of no use except to fill your mind with pointless oddities. We do love that. In summary, Spawn of the Ripper is great fun and well worth a look.
####
We give a special last nod to Joshua M Reynolds, whose story The Fates of Dr Fell was particularly enjoyable, with a wry twist on the old portmanteau films we used to love. We laughed; we cried. Apart from the crying.
Sadly, Josh still insists on producing his St Cyprian tales, with Charles St Cyprian as the successor and inheritor to the Cheyne Walk domain of Thomas Carnacki. Josh is thus the major competition to Tales of the Last Edwardian, in that he too writes after the loss of Carnacki. We may yet have to instruct our own Mr Dry, the infamous Deptford Assassin, to pay him a warning visit…
Next week on greydogtales – something lurchery, we hope, and a super interview with fantasy author and nauticalist Matt Willis as part of the astounding Stranger Seas series (yes, we’re easily astounded here).