Today sees the premiere of Jurassic World, the fourth installment of the lumbering prehistoric franchise that seems to have become a permanent fixture of weekend television. When I saw the trailer I had a sense of déjavu - not simply with regard to myself, but also for the characters: does the basic premise not ring any alarm bells with anyone visiting a theme park with live dinosaurs? Has no-one learned anything? Anyway, the trailer was so laden with CGI that I found myself hankering for prehistoric hokum from an earlier era, and have therefore been feasting on some old Hammer dvds.
The name of Hammer will always be associated with the horror genre, but the studio's output also included science-fiction, thrillers and comedies. During a short period in its history Hammer also turned their focus on the prehistoric era, resulting in four films: One Million Years B.C. (1966), Slave Girls (1967), When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) and Creatures the World Forgot (1971.) Compared to the contemporary Jurassic franchise, these movies might appear as antiquated as the period in which they are set, but they provide entertainment in areas that Spielberg left untouched. 1. One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966) The movie is actually a remake of One Million B.C. (Hal Roach, 1940) which starred Victor Mature as Tumak and Carole Landis as Loana - parts played in the Hammer film by John Richardson and Raquel Welch respectively. Tumak is the son of Akkobo, chief of a dark-haired and savage tribe known as the Rock People. He is cast out from his people after a squabble over who gets to the eat the biggest chunk of meat, and after surviving a series of dangers, is rescued by the lovely Loana from the more civilised Shell People. Tumak's rough ways are gradually softened by living with the new tribe, but the prospect of peace is threatened by skirmishes with the Rock People, dinosaur attacks and a volcanic eruption. 
Faced with a giant lizard, Tumak (Victor Mature) clearly finds Loana (Carole Landis) a more attractive sight. Who could disagree? 'One Million BC' (1940)
Rather than using the costly stop-motion process to depict his dinosaurs, director Hal Roach used magnified footage of live reptiles wearing stick-on fins and horns. Ludicrous although it sounds, the effects were actually so good that they were re-used in several other films such as Tarzan's Desert Mystery (Wilhelm Thiele, 1943), Two Lost Worlds (Norman Dawn, 1951) and Valley of the Dragons (Edward Bernds, 1961.) The most iconic image from the film is, of course, that of Racquel Welch in her fur bikini; it would be a dreadful sin of omission if I failed to include a picture.
Loana (Racquel Welch)
The 1966 movie sticks fairly closely to the story of the original, but for the dinosaur scenes they turned to Ray Harryhausen, whose stop-motion animation technique has recently been used in Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963) and First Men on the Moon (Nathan Juran, 1964.) Some live action sequences - involving a magnified iguana and tarantula - were also included as a nod of respect towards Hal Roach's movie.
Highlights include a battle between a tyrannosaurus rex and a triceratops, an attack on the settlement by an allosaurus, where a young girl is stranded up a tree, Loana being carried away by a pterosaur or flying lizard (below.) 
A pterosaur, looking surprised at the sight of humans
2. Slave Girls/ [In U.S. - Prehistoric Women]
(Michael Carreras, 1967) 
As executive producer of Hammer Films from 1955, Michael Carreras was the driving spirit behind much of the studio's output over the next two decades and was the producer of all four films featured here. Slave Girls (released in America as Prehistoric Women) is, however, the most ridiculous of the quartet, and studio executives were well aware that it was a sub-standard effort. It was shot in four weeks, re-using sets and costumes left over from One Million Years B.C. - a cost-cutting tactic frequently used by Roger Corman for his B-movies.
The script is far-fetched, to say the least. Big-game hunter David Marchand (Michael Latimer), has been captured by African tribesmen and is about to be sacrificed when a time portal opens up and transports him back to a prehistoric world populated by two tribes of women - one blonde, the other brunette. The latter are the dominant tribe, headed by Queen Kari (Martine Beswick), and the poor blondes - who happen to be rhino-worshippers - live in a state of slavery, while the men are imprisoned in a dungeon. Marchand's arrival makes things worse, especially when he falls for blonde slave girl Saria (Edina Ronay). Whether these are prehistoric slave girls or merely women in a jungle somewhere is never resolved, and there is even a hint that the entire episode may have been some sort of dream after Marchand passes out. Despite the absurdity of all this, Martine Beswick delivers an impressive performance as the imperious Queen Kari. A less dignified scene sees her recreating her catfight with Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C., this time with Carol White, whom sharp-eyed viewers might remember as the young Sibella in Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949) - she was soon to receive great acclaim in the role of a homeless single mother inCathy Come Home (Ken Loach, 1966.) Beswick went on to appear in From Russia with Love and Thunderball, but her Bond girl roles were really a step down from Queen Kari. 
This image of Queen Kari graces the cover of I.Q. Hunter's excellent book 'British Trash Cinema' (BFI, 2013.)
In many UK cinemas Slave Girls was screened as a double bill with The Devil Rides Out (Terence Fisher, 1968)
3. When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (Val Guest, 1970) 
Basically a reworking of One Million Years B.C., using a screenplay worked on by J.G. Ballard - earning his first screen credit - and adapted by Val Guest, director of the original Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and The Abominable Snowman (1957), When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earthwas filmed at Shepperton Studios and on location at Fuertaventura in the Canary Islands, between November 1968 and January 1969. The stop-motion animation of the dinosaurs was executed (superbly) by Jim Danforth, as Harryhausen was busy in America doing stop-motion work for The Valley of the Gwangi: in a shrewd marketing ploy Warners had the two movies released as a double bill.
Gentlemen prefer blondes - but the men in the dinosaur monks are clearly no gentlemen, as these three fair ladies are lined up as sacrificial offerings.
The movie is underpinned once again by rivalry between blondes and brunettes. A dark-haired tribe are about to sacrifice a group of blonde victims as an offering to protect them from dinosaur attacks, when a freak storm (apparently to do with the creation of the moon) disrupts the ceremony. One of the blonde women, Sanna (Victoria Vetri) escapes by plunging off the cliff into the sea, from which she is rescued by members of another tribe - including Tara (Robin Hawdon), whose affection for her rouses the jealousy of his 'wife' Ayak (Imogen Hassall.)
The hostility of Ayak is just one of the difficulties faced by Sanna - she has to fend off dinosaur attacks, escape from giant snakes and carnivorous plants, while the priest (Patrick Allen) from whom she escaped at the start comes looking for her and manages to convince her rescuers that she is responsible for their misfortunes. Everything comes to a head on a beach, just as a tsunami prepares to roll in - one of many scenes in which the laws of nature appear to have been suspended. The film follows the same structure as One Million Years BC, and the caveman 'language' is used much more extensively - which does become tedious rather quickly. There is some effective handheld camera work and intriguing scenes, such as one where we see one of the Beach Tribe women applying tar to young girl's blonde hair. Highlights include a beach attack by a plesiosaur, a battle with a triceratops-like chasmosaurus , a delightful baby dinosaur and its less delightful mother, and another flying lizard snatch. 
Beauty and the beast - Victoria Vetri with a made-up dinosaur (rather like the Rhedosaurus in 'The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms') in hot pursuit.
4. Creatures the World Forgot
(Don Chaffey, 1971) 
Deer little boys - Toomak and Rool
The title is slightly misleading, as the reference to creatures raises some expectation of more dinosaurs, but alas, the movie is devoid of prehistoric monsters and instead provides another tale of rivalry between dark-haired and fair-haired tribes. This conflict is personalised when a woman gives birth to twin sons, one blond (Toomak) and the other dark-haired (Rool); recalling Biblical tales of Cain and Abel or Jacob and Esau, the two grow up as rivals, the situation exacerbated when Toomak is given the hand of Nala (Julia Ege), daughter of a tribal chief. We do get to see a sabre-toothed tiger and a python, but despite the presence of former Miss Norway, Julia Ege, the film is more concerned with cavemen rather than women, whose dialogue consists of grunts that are even less eloquent than the prehistoric 'dialect' used in the previous film. It may be just as far-fetched as the films outlined above, but there is a sense with Creatures the World Forgot that Hammer was making a stab at realism: the world depicted here is certainly a more plausible than one in which dinosaurs and humans romp about together. There are some interesting depictions of folklore rituals involving masks and talismans, and the film makes the most of the location shots in Namibia, incorporating footage of native wildlife. The influence of these films is discernible upon subsequent prehistoric romps such as The Land That Time Forgot (Kevin Connor, 1975) its sequel The People That Time Forgot (Kevin Connor, 1977) and the totally anachronistic nonsense of 10,000 BC (Roland Emmerich, 2008) whose time-specific title must surely be a respectful nod towards the earlier Hal Roach/Hammer movies. Although they have managed to move away from the sexist and racist overtones of the Hammer era, the Jurassic Park franchise continues to indulge audiences' desire to see humans and dinosaurs on screen together, and they even make a direct allusion to the earlier movies: 
Note the movie title reference on the banner
Anyway, to end, here's the posters for Hammer's prehistoric quartet. If anyone goes to see Jurassic World, feel free to add a comment below with your opinion!
   
The final word on Prehistoric Women (AKA Slave Girls) goes to Amazon customer/reviewer Trevor Willsner:
"`Beware the lash of the savage goddess - ruler of a kingdom of women - where men are chained... tortured... and made slaves to desire!'<br /><br />Hammer were infamous for coming up with a title, a tagline and a poster before they ever bothered with anything as mundane as a script, and never was this more apparent than with the truly bizarre quota quickie Prehistoric Women, which spliced their caveman pictures and recycled sets from One Million Years B.C. with the lost city/evil queen aspects of She to results so surreal even for the 60s at their most psychedelic that they almost defy synopsis. Alan Bates imitator Michael Latimer's big game hunter finds himself out of the frying pan and into the fire after a tribe of African natives in rhino masks try to sacrifice him because "Your presence has disturbed the spirit of the white rhinoceros!" when a bolt of lightning sends him back in time where Martine Beswick's evil white rhino worshipping Amazon queen and her tribe of `Dark Ones' (brunettes) enslaves all `Fair Ones' (blondes), who she forces to dance for her or sit on a statue of a rhino before being wed to the `Devils of Darkness,' and imprisons all men in a cavern of chains with Sydney Bromley...<br /><br />There's no lost city or dinosaurs, but all the other lost world staples are there, from `savage rituals' that look more like bad floor shows at naff clubs (there are almost enough dance routines for it to qualify as a musical) to the obligatory slave revolt and intervention of Mother Nature in a bad mood (well, it rains and there's the odd bit of thunder), though they've rarely seemed quite so insane as in this: you have to wonder what writer-director and Hammer heir apparent Michael Carreras was on when he concocted this one. Even Hammer knew they were on a loser with this one, cutting it by 17 minutes, retitling it Slave Girls and barely releasing it in the UK. The dialogue is as delirious as the plot ("What makes you so cruel?" "Cruelty has made me cruel!" or "He hates you. Why?" "The man he used to hate died last week. He needs someone new.") but credit where it's due to Michael Reed's vivid comic strip widescreen color cinematography. You won't believe what you see or hear, but you'll never quite be able to forget it... especially when the `real' white rhino makes its dramatic appearance on castors in the finale!"
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Saturday, 12 September 2015
Saturday, 10 January 2015
TERROR & WONDER:
The Gothic Imagination
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Two hundred rare objects trace 250 years of the Gothic tradition, exploring our enduring fascination with the mysterious, the terrifying & the macabre (Oct 2014 - Jan 2015) |
This fascinating exhibition at the British Library, London, was almost everything one could desire from an exhibition about Gothic Horror. For me it certainly made up for not having had the opportunity to visit Paris last year for "L'Ange du Bizarre" (and for failing to find the catalogue at an affordable price!). Here in all its glory was the story of Gothic literature in a place dedicated to books old and new, and in a space perfectly designed for the subject, with make-believe gothic doorways, windows, draught blown curtains, black painted showcases and video screens drawing you through darkened rooms in the expectation of great movie moments (such as Bride of Frankenstein), TV Gothic and other sounds and trappings of several hundred years of Terror and Wonder...
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There were enough rarities here, spotlit behind glass, to satisfy the curiosity of anyone even remotely interested in the origins of our favourite monsters and literary terrors. What a shame though, that the show petered out towards the end with a collection of lack-lustre photos taken in Whitby, plus a few other odds and ends, in an overlit space, hardly welcome after the darkness of the preceding galleries.
"Celebrating how British writers have pioneered the genre, Terror and Wonder takes the first Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, and exhibits treasures from the Library’s collections to carry the story forwards to the present day. Eminent authors over the last 250 years, including William Blake, Ann Radcliffe, Mary Shelley, Charles Dickens, the Brontës, Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, MR James, Mervyn Peake, Angela Carter and Neil Gaiman, underpin the exhibition’s exploration of how Gothic fiction has evolved and influenced film, fashion, music, art and the Goth subculture."
Lead curator of the exhibition, Tim Pye, stated: “Gothic is one the most popular and influential modes of literature and I’m delighted that Terror and Wonder is celebrating its rich 250 year history. The exhibition features an amazingly wide range of material, from stunningly beautiful medieval artifacts to vinyl records from the early Goth music scene, so there is truly something for everyone”.
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Friday, 7 November 2014
Friday, 31 October 2014
Saturday, 13 September 2014
Blood & Roses
Blood and Roses
At last a German DVD issue has offered us the chance to finally see this Euro-vampire movie denied many of us for so many many years I dread to count them! And as though rewarding us the wait this is the longer 85 minute continental version with German and French soundtracks but also with English subtitles. Its a treat and possibly the best release we'll get to see... who knows? - In celebration I am borrowing a review from Cinefantastique. Also check out a recent issue of Sight & Sound magazine (July 2014), Blood and Roses is reviewed therein:
Blood and Roses: From Cinefantastique
There follows a few set pieces that BLOOD AND ROSES is most famous for. During a rainstorm, Georgia confronts Carmilla, telling her that she knows Carmilla is in love with Leopoldo. Carmilla tells her that she’s wrong as Carmilla is dead. Georgia gives Carmilla a red rose and promises to always be her friend. A thorn of the rose pricks Georgia’s lip and Carmilla kisses the blood away, thinking, “One drop is not enough. I must have more, much more.” (How much more is probably part of what was excised from the American release). Per vampire legend, the rose quickly loses its color once Carmilla touches it.
As in Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, near the end a doctor offers a rational explanation of what has been transpiring. He says that Carmilla has been sick for some time now and, given the impossibility of her love for Leopoldo, retreated into a world of fantasy, living like a child in a dream where she could take Georgia’s place and have Leopoldo all to herself. Overhearing the explanation, Carmilla wanders off toward the abbey, where the army is detonating remaining explosives, and she is killed, with blood dripping down her blouse as in the dream when her body lands on some barbed wire.
BLOOD AND ROSES (Et Mourir de Plasir["To Die with Pleasure], 1960). Directed by Roger Vadim. Screenplay by Claude Brule, adaptation and dialogue by Roger Vadim and Roger Vailland; based on “Carmilla” by J. Sheridan LeFanu. Cast: Mel Ferrer, Elsa Martinelli, Annette Vadim, Rene-Jean Chauffard, marc Allegret, Alberto Bonucci, Serge Marquand, Gabriella Farinon, Renato Speziali, Edith Peters, Giovanni Di Benedetto.While BLOOD AND ROSES was lensed in Technicolor and the Technirama widescreen process, thus far Paramount has seen fit to release only a faded pan & scan presentation on VHS in the ep mode, and then only in its dubbed and shortened American version. Now if only dedicated cultists could convince Paramount that this rarely screened classic deserves to be seen on video in this country in its original and complete form.
I was not impressed by Vadim’s othercinefantastique offerings (the first — and worst — part of SPIRITS OF THE DEAD and the Jane Fonda vehicle, BARBARELLA). Though BLOOD AND ROSES shares the same pros and cons, it is by far the best of Vadim’s genre films, and it is significant and important in its own right. Once more, the words are often stilted, the characters underdeveloped, and the plot barely coherent, but this film has images that will haunt you and become part of our collective consciousness.
Vadim’s original title for the film was ET MOURIR DE PLASIR, which translates as “To Die With Pleasure,” and the European version was 13 minutes longer than the 74-minute re-edit that made it to U.S. shores . Still, to see Americanized BLOOD AND ROSES is to see the origin of so-called Eurotrash horror; much of the basic imagery would be mined in that particular sub-genre for decades to come, including the pioneering effort to feature a lesbian subtext.
Since BLOOD AND ROSES is difficult to see, I will provide some details concerning its plot and characters. The film is narrated by the spirit of Millarca, a member of the Karnstein family, who kept a villa in Italy and were rumored to be vampires. Though set in what was then contemporary times, Millarca identifies with the world of the spirit, which she says is the Old World. She begins relating the story of her current incarnation.
At Karnstein Castle, Carmilla Karnstein (Elsa Martinelli) from Austria has come to visit her beloved cousin Leopoldo (Mel Ferrer) before his wedding to Georgia (Annette Vadim). Leopoldo has hired a premier pyrotechnician Carlo Ruggieri (Alberto Bonucci) to put on a fireworks display for the engagement party, which he intends to set up at the site of a ruined abbey nearby, along with its adjacent cemetery.
Gradually we discover that Carmilla has fallen deeply in love with her cousin Leopoldo and has become bipolar — one minute deliriously happy and the next hopelessly depressed. Ruggieri’s fireworks set off a hidden cache of German explosives, frightening the crowd and loosening Millarca’s sepulcher. Dressed in a white wedding dress, Carmilla wanders through the smoke-drenched abbey, drawn by the presence of Millarca, who takes possession of her body.
The next morning Carmilla walks back to the castle and falls asleep on a bed, where Leopoldo and Georgia find her. Georgia watches as Leopoldo takes Carmilla to her room, observing, “I ought to be jealous of her, but I’m not.” Later, Georgia bends over Carmilla only for Carmilla to suddenly grab her by the wrist with an ice-cold hand. This bit of entrapment becomes linked to a subsequent scene in which groundskeeper Guiseppe (Serge Marquand) has captured a fox and put it on a leash for Georgia, only for it to break away from her at the approach of Carmilla.
BLOOD AND ROSES then delights in giving hints that Carmilla has become a vampire, as when Georgia asks her if she likes the sun, and Carmilla replies, “No, it burns.” There is a dream-like scene of Guiseppe standing next to a fire, and through the flames we see the approaching figure of Carmilla in a white dress, only for her to appear on the other side of him, moving away. Carmilla recalls the abdication of the Hapsburgs as if it were a recent event, and suddenly knows how to dance to classical music, connecting her to another time. Once a talented equestrienne, Carmilla now finds horses start and shy away in her presence.
Millarca, having taken possession of Carmilla, announces that she has to return to her grave and that she needs “nourishment — blood!” as she eyes Lisa (Gabriella Farinon), the family’s servant girl who lives in a cottage nearby. Carmilla pursues her, and Lisa is later found dead by two young girls who tend the sheep. The doctor who examines the body pronounces her death an accident, though Guiseppe tells the girls that a vampire is to blame, and the girls later take to wearing garlands of garlic.
Complicating matters, Leopoldo invites Carmilla to join them on their honeymoon to the Caribbean, but when Carmilla sees herself in a mirror, she sees a spreading bloodstain on her white blouse near her heart — the stain only visible in the mirror image. This panics her, causing her to flee to her bedroom and rend her dress. Concerned, Leopoldo comes to her and begins kissing her on her bed.
The final great setpiece is a dream sequence reminiscent of the work of Cocteau. The dream is Georgia’s and is presented in black and white with color vividly intruding in two instances. The first is of Carmilla with a white scarf around her neck from which spurts crimson blood. The dead Lisa swims by the window and Georgia follows her by opening the window and diving into the water – wandering past dancers at the estate, a gateway to the real world (with color and a man on a horse carrying a woman), a corridor with many women, and finally two nurses escorting her to an operating room with all the nurses wearing bright ruby gloves. There she sees Millarca as the surgeon and Carmilla as the patient on the operating table. The two women seem to embrace and spin as Georgia wakes up screaming.
The cinematography is by Claude Renoir, who worked with Renoir on THE GOLDEN COACH and THE RIVER, and later shot SPIRITS OF THE DEAD and BARBARELLA for Vadim, as well as the James Bond adventure THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. The great costumes, including that haunting bat mask, are by Marcel Escoffier, and Juan Andre and Robert Guisgand handled the memorable production design.
However, Millarca gets the last word: as Leopoldo and Georgia return from their honeymoon and travel from Paris to Rome by plane, Leopoldo fails to notice that the rose he gives to Georgia suddenly fades at her touch. Millarca has finally claimed her elusive lover by possessing yet another victim.
Though talky and slow at the start, BLOOD AND ROSES features ripe imagery that would keep other filmmakers such as Mario Bava and Roger Corman very busy over the rest of the decade, doing their own variations of the tropes Vadim presents here.
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