Made in 1974 by Cyclone & Getty Pictures Corp and occasional director Jack Cardiff - more famous for his work as a cinematographer for the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and John Huston - 'The Mutations' (also known as 'Freakmaker') is the story of a mad scientist by the name of Professor Nolter (Donald Pleasence) who's attempting to create a plant / animal hybrid by feeding rabbits to a tree and by kidnapping and experimenting on his own students. Helping him in these endeavours is freak show owner Mr Lynch played, under heavy prosthetics, by Tom Baker in a very familiar looking outfit and who 2 months and 4 days on from the movie's release make his debut as The Doctor.
Truly it's a bit of a mess and really only composer Basil Kirchin who provides an often beautifully dissonant but also groovily jazzy and filmic score and the various cast members populating the freak show come out of the movie with their heads held high. Pleasence and Baker are both reliable enough and the fabulous Jill Haworth ('The Haunted House of Horror', 'It!' & 'Tower of Evil') is reduced to a little more than a bit part with the leads being given to the woefully wooden Brad Harris and Julie Ege neither of whom have the charisma or the acting chops to carry the film.
Cardiff isn't much of a director and after a promising start the film begins to lag and the monster when it appears is hysterically bad but beyond the creature feature there's a rather lovely little riff on Tod Browning's masterpiece 'Freaks' that's bursting to get out but never quite manages too.
If
you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us
continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the
blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain
Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.
What do you get when you cross Hitchcock's Psycho with a Universal Monster movie? Well, according to star Roddy McDowall (The Ballad of Tam Lin) the answer lies in the 'SH' he added to the film's title when he gifted a copy of the movie poster to his co-star, Jill Haworth.
McDowall plays Arthur Pimm the assistant curator of London Museum who keeps his dead mother in his apartment and steals jewellery from the collection for her to wear. Following a fire at the museum's warehouse and the death of the curator the sole surviving artifact, a giant stone Golem, which according to the workmen tasked with installing it, is "full of 'ate!" is put on exhibition. Pimm soon learns how to control the Golem and sends it off to do his nefarious bidding.
Roddy McDowall, Paul Maxwell & Jill Haworth
So the obvious question to be asked has to be was McDowall - and co star Haworth (The Haunted House of Horror, Tower of Evil) who also hated it - correct in his renaming of the movie? Well, kind of. It's pretty much trash but personally I like it very much. McDowall is far too likeable to be taken seriously as the villain and the excellent Haworth is inevitably relegated to eye candy but there's a lightness here and an understated acknowledgenment of the absurdity of the subject matter that culminates in the daftest of finales.
If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain
Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.
Director Michael Armstrong's 1969 debut feature 'The Haunted House of Horror' (also known as 'Horror House') has become well known as an example of studio hackery over directorial vision as his taut proto-slasher was re-edited and added to by studio (Tigon) diktat turning it into a bit of an overlong and meandering mess.
At its core is a solid thriller with some strong performances from much of its cast especially Jill Haworth - who made a few horrors around this time including 'Tower of Evil' - but one has to wonder if some of Armstrong's original casting choices - including David Bowie as 'Richard' - would have made for a stronger movie with US popstar Frankie Avalon - cast at the insistence of US investor AIP - making for a very ineffective lead right up to his eye-watering end and both the subplot featuring a stalkery George Sewell and the final reveal drag somewhat but this is a movie that despite its many flaws I have a real soft spot for although it is tinged with a hankering for what could have been.
If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain
Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.
Also known as 'Horror on Snape Island' this early 70s horror has been credited as an early example of the slasher genre and certainly most of the elements are there, remote location, horny naked teens, lots of stabbing and slashing and a psychologically damaged murderer with a thing for pointy implements.
The film concerns two groups of teens - one group seen mostly in flashback thanks to some Prisoner-esque hypnosis techniques - who find themselves on the remote and rocky Snape Island, the first group for fun and frolics and the second for an archaeological dig. Also accompanying the second group is a detective (Bryant Haliday) hired by the parents of the sole survivor of the first (Candace Glendenning) who is borderline catatonic and accused of her friend's murders.
Like the contemporaneous 'Death Line' ('Raw Meat' in the US) the film shows a definite move away from the gothic creature feature trappings of the Hammer productions into areas more concerned with societal changes and the rise of newer lifestyles which, it seems, will be drenched in blood; an idea that would be returned to again and again in films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a seemingly endless procession of Friday the 13th and Halloween movies and exploitation movies galore. Unlike 'Death Line' though it doesn't have an actor of the calibre of Hugh Armstrong to lend pathos to the murderous maniac.
Despite being derided on it's initial release 'Tower of Evil' has aged remarkably well. It's definitely a product of it's time and it gleefully engages in some, almost, equal opportunity sexploitation as there are bare boobs and bums - of both genders - galore including that of Robin Askwith who (thanks to the 'Confessions of a...' movies) has a bum that's been photographed more times than most people's faces - even in the age of the selfie. But it's well made and in amongst the campier actors there's a strong cast that includes such notables as Jill Haworth, Jack Watson (Llud in Arthur of the Britons) Derek Fowlds (Bernard from 'Yes Minister'), Anna Palk ('The Earth Dies Screaming') and Dennis Price ('Twins of Evil') and a storyline that toys with the supernatural without ever fully embracing it leaving just a suspicion of what, perhaps, lies behind the murders.
If
you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us
continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the
blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain
/