Today’s horror on the lens is a short horror comedy from 1942. In The Boogie Man Will Get You, Winnie Slade (Miss Jeff Donnell) buys an old house from Prof. Billings (Boris Karloff) with plans to covert it into a hotel. However, one of the conditions of the sale is that Prof. Billings and his servants be allowed to live on the property. What Winnie doesn’t know is that Prof. Billings had been conducting experiments on traveling salesman. He hopes to turn them into supermen who can then be sent overseas to fight the Nazis. (Kind of like Capt. America, when you think about it…) However, his experiments have yet to be successful and have mostly just resulted into a lot of salesman being buried out in the rose garden…
However, things start to look up for Prof. Billings when he meets Dr. Lorencz (Peter Lorre), who is not only a doctor but also a mayor, sheriff, and dog catcher. Seriously, Dr. Lorencz can do it all….
The Boogie Man Will Get You is a fun little time capsule of the time in which it was made. For horror fans, it is mostly interesting because it features both Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. Both Karloff and Lorre appear to be having a lot of fun parodying their usual screen images.
For today’s televised horror, we have another episode of a show that I loved when I was growing up! In this episode of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, Sabrina attempts to hold a Halloween party and ends up having to give marriage advice to Frankenstein and his wife!
This episode was originally broadcast on October 27th, 2000.
For today’s horror on the lens, we have a low-budget but undeniably effective film from 1980, The Children. In The Children, a school bus drives through a toxic cloud and, as a result, all of the children on the bus turn into perpetually smiling zombies with black fingernails. Accepting a hug from these children will result in your being burned alive!
I reviewed The Children last year and, when I did, I pointed out that The Children may be low-budget and it may feature some questionable performances but it is still really scary and kind of disturbing.
Here’s your chance to watch it and decide for yourself!
In this episode of The Twilight Zone, the Earth has somehow gotten off of orbit is now being drawn closer and closer to the sun. With humanity on the verge of extinction, two women (Lois Nettleton and Betty Garde) struggle to survive as the heat keeps rising.
Full of haunting images of a deserted and sun-baked city, The Midnight Sun is one of the few episodes of The Twilight Zone that has ever given me nightmares. For some reason, the melting painting always gets to me.
This episode was written by Rod Serling and directed by Anton Leader. It was originally broadcast on November 17th, 1961.
For today’s horror on the lens,we have a film from 1977. I recently watched this film very late at night and — OH MY GOD! Seriously, I had nightmares for two nights straight!
Full Circle opens with the horrifying death of Kate (Sophie Ward), the daughter of Julia (Mia Farrow) and Magnus (Keir Dullea). After Kate’s death, Julia and Magnus divorce and Julia moves into a new house. However, she is haunted by visions of a little girl who looks just like Kate. As well, the house is full of odd noises, creepy toys, and appliances that turn on by themselves. Is Julia seeing the ghost of her daughter or something far more dangerous?
Full Circle is a truly haunting and disturbing haunted house film. Mia Farrow gives a great performance as Julia and the entire film is dominated by a palpable atmosphere of dread. And that final scene — AGCK!
Tonight’s episode of the Twilight Zone was originally broadcast on January 24th, 1963 and it’s one of the rare hour-long episodes of the original Twilight Zone. In He’s Alive, a very young Dennis Hopper plays Peter Vollmer, an aspiring Neo-Nazi who isn’t having much luck bringing fascism to America until he meets a mysterious benefactor who teaches him the tricks of the trade.
It’s a pretty good (if heavy-handed) episode, distinguished by both Dennis Hopper’s lead performance and a message that is probably even more relevant today than when the show was first broadcast.
This episode was written by Rod Serling and directed by Stuart Rosenberg.
For today’s horror on the lens, we have The Beast Must Die. In this 1974 film, millionaire Tom Newcliffe (Calvin Lockhart) invites a group of people to spend the weekend at his mansion. Tom explains that one of them is a werewolf and therefore “must die.”
But who is the werewolf? Tom has come up with several werewolf tests but, actually, it turns out that the easiest way to discover the identity of the werewolf is to just let the werewolf kill everyone who isn’t a werewolf. Or, at least, that’s the way it seems to me.
The best thing about The Beast Must Die is that it features a 30-second werewolf break where the audience is encouraged to announce who they think the werewolf is before the actual solution is revealed!
Seriously, many movies would be greatly improved with a werewolf break.
Tonight’s episode of The Twilight Zone is a political allegory about a communist dictator in Central America who gets a magic mirror that, he believes, will reveal who is plotting against me. It’s undeniably heavy-handed but, at the same time, it’s a lot of fun to watch Peter Falk play Fidel Castro.
This episode was written by Rod Serling and directed by Don Medford. It was originally broadcast on October 20th, 1961.
As some of our more frequent readers may remember, I shared the 1974 Dracula-martial arts hybrid The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires as one of our horrors on the lens last October. Judging from the comments that I got last year, this was apparently one of the more popular films that we featured.
And why not? The film is one of those rather ludicrous movies that really could have only been made in the early 1970s. It combines two genres that really should not go together — martial arts and the Hammer Dracula series — and somehow, it all works. Don’t get me wrong. The film doesn’t make a bit of sense. I’ve seen it a few times and I still have a hard time following just what exactly is going on. But you don’t watch a film called The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires for the plot. This is one of those movies that you watch for the style. Fortunately, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is all about style.
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires is the final entry in Hammer’s Dracula series. Or, at least, it might be. It all depends on whether or not you consider 7 Golden Vampires to actually be a part of the series. I do but quite a few people don’t.
Why the controversy?
Well, first off, Christopher Lee does not appear in this film. Much as he did with Brides of Dracula, Lee read the script and announced that he would not be returning to play Dracula. Of course, when Lee refused to appear in Brides of Dracula, Hammer responded by creating an entirely new vampire for Prof. Van Helsing to battle. This time, however, they simply recast the role. An actor by the name of John Forbes-Robertson took on the role of Dracula and, unfortunately, he gave a rather bland and unmemorable performance. If Lee’s Dracula seemed to be motivated by rage, Forbes-Robertson is merely petulant.
The other issue that purists have with the film is that it violates the continuity of the previous Dracula films. The film opens in 1805 and features Dracula leaving his castle for China, where he will spend the next 100 years as the leader of the infamous 7 Golden Vampires. The problem with this, of course, is that there had already been 7 other films that established that Dracula spent the 19th Century going between England and Eastern Europe.
It would be easy to declare that 7 Golden Vampires has nothing to do with the other Hammer Films except for the fact that Peter Cushing returns of Prof. Van Helsing. When the film opens, Van Helsing is in China, lecturing to skeptical students about the legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. After one lecture, Van Helsing is approached by a man (David Chiang), who explains that the 7 Golden Vampires have been attacking his village. Van Helsing agrees to help the man vanquish the 7 Golden Vampires and, along the way to the village, he even tells some stories about his previous battles with Dracula.
So, here’s my theory. The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires does take place in the same continuity as the Christopher Lee Dracula films but I do not believe that the vampire played by Forbes-Robertson is actually Dracula. I think he’s just an upstart who has claimed the infamous name while the actual Dracula is inconvenienced.
As for the film itself, it works far better than you might expect. At the time 7 Golden Vampires went into production, Hammer was struggling to survive with their once racy products now seen as being rather tame when compared to what other studios were releasing. 7 Golden Vampires was a co-production between Hammer and the Shaw Brothers, which means that the film was full all of the gothic trappings that I love about Hammer while also featuring all of the martial arts action that fans of the Shaw Brothers would have expected. It’s an odd combination that works exactly because it is so unexpected.
Finally, one word about the 7 Golden Vampires. Not only are they far more desiccated than the average Hammer vampire but whenever they ride up on their horses, they’re filmed in slow motion, just like the zombies from Amando De Ossorio’s Blind Dead films. As a result, those 7 Golden Vampires are pure nightmare fuel.
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires may have been the final entry in Hammer’s Dracula franchise but at least the series went out on a memorable note.
First released in 1973 and, like Dracula A.D. 1972, set in what was then the present day, The Satanic Rites of Dracula was the 8th entry in the Hammer Dracula series. It was also the last to feature Christopher Lee in the role of Dracula and that perhaps is why, judging by some of the other reviews that I’ve read online, The Satanic Rites is one of the more reviled entries in the series.
Judging from a lot of those reviews, the attitude seems to be that The Satanic Rites of Dracula was so bad that it was the film that made Christopher Lee say, “No more!” Reportedly, Lee felt that the film itself was both poorly written and that it was too violent. And, even though the film is rather tame by the standards of today’s horror films, The Satanic Rites is still probably one of the more extreme entries in the series. The film features a graphic and drawn-out flashback in which we see a naked woman sacrificed by a Satanic cult, a scene that’s bloody even by the standards of Hammer. Later, when Jessica Van Helsing (played by Joanna Lumley, who took the role over from Dracula A.D. 1972‘s Stephanie Beacham) is menaced by a pack of female vampires, the vampires literally claw at her body like wild animals. And finally, when one of Dracula’s brides is staked, blood literally splashes across the screen.
Christopher Lee was not a fan of The Satanic Rites of Dracula and neither are a lot of critics but you know what? I think The Satanic Rites of Dracula is actually rather underrated. If nothing else, it’s certainly far more unpredictable than some of the far more critically embraced Dracula films.
Satanic Rites opens with a British secret agent (Maurice O’Connell) escaping from a country house in which he had previously been held prisoner. Though he’s fatally wounded during the escape, the agent manages to tell his superiors that, at the house, he witnessed a Satanic ritual that involved some of the most important people in the British government. Since one of the accused occultists is a government minister, the secret service passes the case on to Scotland Yard’s Inspector Murray (Michael Coles, reprising his role from Dracula A.D. 1972) and then provide him with clandestine assistance. (Or something like that. To be honest, I get the feeling that the main reason Murray was called in was to maintain some continuity between Dracula A.D. 1972 and The Satanic Rites of Dracula.) Murray suspects that vampires may be involved so he calls in Lorrimar Van Helsing (Peter Cushing).
After discovering that his old friend, scientist Julian Keeley (Freddie Jones), is a part of the cult, Van Helsing deduces that it’s all part of huge conspiracy headed by none other than Dracula himself. The plan is to release a mutated form of bubonic plague and wipe out humanity.
Why is Dracula planning on destroying humanity?
Van Helsing theorizes that this might be Dracula’s way of committing suicide. By wiping out humanity, Dracula will no longer have anyone to feed upon and his undead existence will finally end. And, if nothing else, you have to admit that is a pretty interesting motivation!
How can you not enjoy a film that’s as strange as The Satanic Rites of Dracula? It may not be a typical Hammer Dracula film and it may be a bit too obviously an attempt to revitalize a fading franchise by tossing everything that was then trendy at it but so what? This is one of those movies that could have only been made at a certain point in time by a certain group of filmmakers and, as such, it’s valuable as both history and entertainment.
Christopher Lee may have hated The Satanic Rites of Dracula but he’s being way too hard on the film. If nothing else, it provided a nice excuse for Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing to face off and how can you not appreciate that?
