SHATTER aka CALL HIM MR. SHATTER (UK/Hong Kong - 1974; US release 1975) Directed by Michael Carreras. Written by Don Houghton. Cast: Stuart Whitman, Peter Cushing, Ti Lung, Anton Diffring, Lily Li, Yemi Ajibade, Huang Pei Chi, Lo Wei, Chiang Han, Liu Ka Yong, Liu Ya Ying, James Ma, Kao Hsiung. (R, 90 mins) Following the success of 1973's ENTER THE DRAGON and the subsequent explosion of kung-fu movies coming out of Hong Kong, Hammer, England's legendary house of horror, tried to get a piece of the action with a pair of co-productions with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers. Both turned out to be critical and commercial failures, starting with 1974's horror/martial-arts hybrid THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES, which bombed in the UK and wasn't even released in the US until 1979, drastically and disastrously re-edited as THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA. Since becoming widely available in its original, uncut form in the early days of DVD, the very entertaining LEGEND has found a strong cult following and is today held in higher regard by fans. The other was the international actioner SHATTER, which remains the ill-conceived dud that it was decades ago. Just out on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory (because physical media is dead), SHATTER was a troubled production from the start, with Hammer hiring the unlikely Monte Hellman to direct. A Roger Corman protege, Hellman enjoyed some critical success with a pair of low-key mid '60s westerns with Jack Nicholson and Millie Perkins (RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND, which Nicholson also wrote, and THE SHOOTING), and found a place in the post-EASY RIDER New Hollywood movement with 1971's existential road movie TWO-LANE BLACKTOP.
Despite his reputation as an American cult auteur, Hellman was never above a hired gun gig if he had bills to pay. He finished 1979's AVALANCHE EXPRESS without credit when director Mark Robson died during production, and he would later helm 1989's killer Santa sequel SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT 3: BETTER WATCH OUT. But it's hard to imagine why anyone thought he was the right guy for a Hammer/Shaw Brothers hit man/kung-fu movie, so it's little surprise that he immediately clashed with producer and studio exec Michael Carreras. Carreras stepped in to finish directing 1971's BLOOD FROM THE MUMMY'S TOMB when Seth Holt died of a heart attack on the set, and he would step in again here after firing Hellman three weeks into production. While Holt remained credited on BLOOD (it was about 90% done when he died), Carreras took Hellman's name off of SHATTER and is the sole credited director, even though all involved parties have said that most of the film was Hellman's work. In its finished form, it's a hodgepodge of ideas and trends that never quite gel, and experienced cinephiles with a sense for behind-the-scenes chaos will see a major red flag in the opening credits that list three cinematographers. It has hints of the themes of existential melancholy inherent in Hellman's films of that period, but it's also required to have some martial arts action, political intrigue (haphazardly represented by grainy, mismatched stock footage pilfered from TV news broadcasts), and some splatter and a little T&A for the exploitation crowd. It's a confused, compromised mess that feels more thrown-together and abandoned than finished.
Stuart Whitman had a pretty good run as a Hollywood leading man in the '60s, even earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as a just-paroled child molester in 1961's THE MARK (he lost to Maximilian Schell in JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG). He would end up doing guest spots on TV and appearing in some truly dreadful movies by the 1980s, but here, in 1974, he's definitely finding a niche in drive-in exploitation as Shatter, a freelance international assassin hired to kill Ansabi M'Goya (Yemi Ajibade), a brutal East African dictator. When he goes to Hong Kong to collect his payment from bank executive Hans Leber (Anton Diffring), the representative of his unnamed client, he's told that he won't be paid and if he makes any trouble, he'll be arrested for M'Goya's murder. This understandably sets Shatter off, especially since he's got people taking shots at him, plus Rattwood (Peter Cushing, attempting what sounds at times like a Southern American accent), a cynical agent from the government's "security division" having him roughed up and telling him to get out of town. Shatter finds a love interest in masseuse Mai-Mee (Lily Li) and eventually teams up with her martial-arts expert brother Tai Pah (Ti Lung) to take on the assassins coming after him and help him get his money from Leber, who represents not the CIA or British intelligence, as Shatter assumed, but rather a cabal of international syndicate heads who wanted M'Goya rubbed out because he stood in the way of their lucrative global opium pipeline.
Stuart Whitman (1928-2020)
Released on the US grindhouse and drive-in circuit in 1975 and into 1976 by Avco Embassy as CALL HIM MR. SHATTER, SHATTER does boast an admittedly awesome score by David Lindup, filled with gratuitous waka jawaka, vibraslap, and shrieked "Shatter!"s. And it comes alive on a few occasions, usually during some kung-fu beatdowns by Lung, who had a long career starting in Shaolin movies from that period and is still active today, but is perhaps best known for starring with Chow Yun-Fat in a pre-fame John Woo's A BETTER TOMORROW (1986) and A BETTER TOMORROW II (1987). Whitman and Diffring look like they're just in it for the free Hong Kong and Macao vacation, but Cushing, in his last appearance in a Hammer production, manages to bring a spark to his small but unusual role as a tough-talking intelligence agent, usually capping off his smartass bon mots by popping a piece of candy in his mouth (Shatter: "Rattwood, you're a real bastard." Rattwood: "Yes I am, aren't I?"). Carreras initially had some half-baked notion of SHATTER being spun-off into a TV series with Whitman and Cushing, but it obviously never panned out. Hammer was suffering from multiple identity crises in their waning days of the 1970s as established horror trends were completely upended by the likes of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, ROSEMARY'S BABY, and THE EXORCIST, and their short-lived dalliance with the Shaw Brothers is just another example of them throwing anything at the wall to see what stuck. It was a nice idea, but SHATTER is a dull, dreary misfire plagued by a problematic shoot, and feeling a lot longer than 90 minutes. Whitman eventually retired from acting in 2000, and SHATTER's Blu-ray release was already announced when he died in March 2020 at the age of 92.
Michael Carreras, Peter Cushing, Sir Run Run Shaw,
and Stuart Whitman on the set of SHATTER
Directed by Jimmy Sangster. Written by Jimmy Sangster and Michael Syson. Cast: Judy Geeson, Joan Collins, Ralph Bates, Peter Cushing, James Cossins, Gillian Lind, Brian Grellis, John Bown. (PG, 94 mins) A minor late-period Hammer thriller that's rarely referenced today, 1972's middling FEAR IN THE NIGHT gets by almost entirely on atmosphere alone, set in an eerily empty boarding school that allows director/co-writer Jimmy Sangster to maximize the sense of isolation felt by the film's terrorized heroine. But the story is so rote, predictable, and ultimately silly that the payoff isn't really worth the buildup. Recovering from what's been unfairly deemed a nervous breakdown (someone slipped her a mickey in a restaurant) followed closely by an attack by a one-armed man that no one around her believes really happened, Peggy (Judy Geeson) leaves her job as a caregiver for elderly Mrs. Beamish (Gillian Lind) when she marries teacher Robert (Ralph Bates) after a whirlwind romance. Robert moves them to an isolated rural area outside of London where he's accepted a position at a boarding school run by headmaster Carmichael (Peter Cushing). But right away, something is off and naive Peggy never does quite pick up on it: there doesn't seem to be any other teachers aside from Robert, and she keeps hearing voices in classrooms but there's no sign of any students. Carmichael--who has a prosthetic left arm--acts weird around her, she gets a strange vibe from his much-younger wife Molly (Joan Collins), and she's eventually attacked again by a one-armed man, but an incredulous, dismissive Robert tells her to "sleep on it" before talking her out of calling the police.
Hammer fans will recognize recycled elements from other Sangster-scripted women-in-peril thrillers like SCREAM OF FEAR (1961), PARANOIAC (1963), NIGHTMARE (1964), and CRESCENDO (1970), with some dashes of classics like GASLIGHT and DIABOLIQUE for good measure. But some of the big third-act reveals are so obvious that you'll figure out that someone is trying to drive Peggy insane and frame her for a murder long before Peggy does, especially with Robert's behavior and the presence of Collins, cast radically against type as a scheming, manipulative bitch. Robert's confession to Peggy about why he's actually at the school and what he's actually doing for Carmichael is utter nonsense, and the ultimate trick pulled off by Carmichael just comes off as one contrivance too many. Despite its myriad flaws, FEAR IN THE NIGHT is a reasonably enjoyable Hammer suspense thriller if approached with shrugged shoulders and an appropriately diminished level of expectation. Geeson (best known for co-starring with Sidney Poitier in 1967's TO SIR, WITH LOVE and more recently emerging from semi-retirement to appear in Rob Zombie's THE LORDS OF SALEM and 31) turns in an appealing performance even though you'll wish she wasn't so meek, passive, and slow on the uptake. It's obvious from the moment he's introduced sinisterly grimacing while adjusting his prosthetic arm like Dr. Strangelove that Cushing's Carmichael can't possibly be the villain, and with what's essentially a four-character story, it doesn't take much sleuthing on the part of the viewer to figure out what's going on and who's responsible.
Having written trailblazing Hammer titles like 1957's THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN and 1958's HORROR OF DRACULA among many others, Sangster saw his short-lived and largely negatively-received directing career end with FEAR IN THE NIGHT, which followed 1970's THE HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN and 1971's LUST FOR A VAMPIRE. All three of Sangster's films starred Ralph Bates, FEAR being the last of several unsuccessful attempts at grooming the young actor to be Hammer horror's heir apparent, selected to help nab the youth market as Cushing was pushing 60 and Christopher Lee was nearing 50. Hammer and Bates parted ways by the time FEAR IN THE NIGHT was barely released in the US in 1974, and it marked the only film to team Bates with Cushing, the legend he was supposed to succeed. The film is old-fashioned enough and completely lacking in the lurid sex and skin in which Hammer was beginning to indulge that, aside from the hairstyles and the fashions and one shouted "Bastard!," it could've been made a decade earlier.
Ralph Bates and Jimmy Sangster
on the set of FEAR IN THE NIGHT
For all its stale twists and predictability issues, FEAR IN THE NIGHT (just out on Blu-ray from Scream Factory because physical media is dead), is probably Sangster's most accomplished directorial effort from a technical standpoint. The money shot that concludes the opening credits sequence is legitimately creepy, there's some unusual cutting techniques that are well-handled, and the use of all the open space in the hallways and abandoned rooms at the school indicates that he may have caught some of the early hits of the Italian giallo craze. But without the shocking violence and the innovative style of a Dario Argento, FEAR IN THE NIGHT can't really compete in that field, and the story is so old-hat that most of the "surprise" twists are really just hoary cliches. Sangster (1927-2011) would soon leave Hammer behind, relocating to Hollywood by late 1972, where he became a busy television writer, only periodically dabbling in big-screen horror (he wrote 1978's THE LEGACY and 1980's PHOBIA) while focusing on TV shows like BANACEK, IRONSIDE, CANNON, MCCLOUD, MOVIN' ON, THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN, WONDER WOMAN, and B.J. AND THE BEAR.
ARABIAN ADVENTURE (UK - 1979) Directed by Kevin Connor. Written by Brian Hayles. Cast: Christopher Lee, Milo O'Shea, Oliver Tobias, Mickey Rooney, Peter Cushing, Capucine, Emma Samms, Puneet Sira, John Wyman, John Ratzenberger, Shane Rimmer, Suzanne Danielle, Elizabeth Welch, Hal Galili, Art Malik, Milton Reid, Jacob Witkin. (G, 98 mins) Variety called it "STAR WARS with flying carpets," which should give you an idea of what ARABIAN ADVENTURE is all about. A huge Thanksgiving flop in 1979 for the doomed Associated Film Distributors (CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, RAISE THE TITANIC!), ARABIAN ADVENTURE was the last of a quintet of British adventure sagas from the team of producer John Dark and director Kevin Connor. The initial four--a trio of Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations with 1975's THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, 1976's AT THE EARTH'S CORE, and 1977's THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT, followed by 1978's WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS--all starred Doug McClure and were modest hits in theaters and drive-ins. Kicking off a busy holiday movie season that featured the likes of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, 1941, THE JERK, KRAMER VS. KRAMER, THE BLACK HOLE, and ALL THAT JAZZ, ARABIAN ADVENTURE didn't generate much interest, even with its family-friendly G-rating, and its visual effects could be charitably deemed "antiquated" in the post-STAR WARS era. Written by veteran DOCTOR WHO scribe Brian Hayles (who died unexpectedly during production in 1978 at just 48), ARABIAN ADVENTURE has the spirit of classic adventures of old, borrowing extensively from the Arabian Nights tales and likely conjured up on Blu-ray now from Kino Lorber (because physical media is dead) to take advantage of the live-action ALADDIN with Will Smith.
Evil wizard Caliph Alquazar (Christopher Lee) will stop at nothing to obtain the magical Rose of Elil, a talisman that will grant him immortality and power over the entire world. That includes duping Prince Hasan (Oliver Tobias) by promising him his stepdaughter Princess Zuleira's (18-year-old Emma Samms in her debut, several years before breaking out on DYNASTY and its spinoff THE COLBYS) hand in marriage. Of course, he has no intention of following through, sending his cowardly flunky Khasim (Milo O'Shea) along as a "bodyguard" for the sole purpose of killing Hasan once the Rose is acquired. Khasim finds an unexpected obstacle when mischievous street urchin Majeed (future Bollywood producer Puneet Sira) and his capuchin monkey sidekick Chetti are drawn to Hasan's quest when they end up in the possession of a magical jewel gifted to them by the spirit of Vahishta (Capucine). Along the way and traveling on a magic carpet, they encounter mechanical fire-breathing dragons operated by the Wizard of Oz-like Daad Al-Shur (Mickey Rooney), an evil genie (perennial hulking manservant Milton Reid), and a crew of comic relief bandits led by Achmed (John Ratzenberger), who end up in the service of Alquazar.
It's generally enjoyable and silly fun, though there's a black hole at the center with THE STUD's Tobias making a dull hero (Connor/Dark regular McClure was in his 40s and two decades too old to play a young prince, but he at least would've brought some charm and personality to the part), but Lee is a blast, bringing all the pomposity in his arsenal as the sneering, bellowing, dastardly Alquazar. The special effects are definitely of the old-school sort even though this was the biggest-budgeted film of the Connor/Dark partnership, with the sometimes cheap-looking sets augmented by a copious use of matte paintings and rear-screen projection and even a couple of fleeting instances of Ray Harryhausen-inspired stop-motion. The optics of ARABIAN ADVENTURE's casting would probably launch a slew of AV Club and Vulture cancellation pieces if they ever got a review copy of it, with the largely white British and American actors sporting turbans and fezzes, and in the case of Ratzenberger (then an American expat working exclusively in the UK until landing his big break as Cliff on CHEERS) even wearing some smudgy brownface as "Achmed." That's nothing compared to Reid's appearance as the Genie, the India-born actor sporting near-full-on blackface and painted-on bulging eyes each looking left and right. Like a lot of 40-year-old films, certain elements of ARABIAN ADVENTURE haven't aged well, but from the perspective of 1979, it didn't deserve the miserable fate it found with audiences and perhaps could've done a bit better if it was released at a different time of the year (by the standards of today, this has "February" or "September" written all over it). Still, it's got a great cast of pros (there's also Lee BFF Peter Cushing in a small role as a long-imprisoned Alquazar enemy), and Christopher Lee as a de facto Jaffar is alone worth the price of admission. Lee, Samms, and Ratzenberger would reunite with director Connor on the 1981 syndicated miniseries GOLIATH AWAITS. Connor would go on to a busy journeyman career with the cult favorites MOTEL HELL (1980) and THE HOUSE WHERE EVIL DWELLS (1982) before settling into countless TV assignments, including a long run in recent years as a go-to director for the Hallmark Channel.
ARABIAN ADVENTURE opening in Toledo, OH on 11/21/1979
Directed by Denis Heroux. Written by Michel Parry. Cast: Peter Cushing, Samantha Eggar, Ray Milland, Susan Penhaligon, Donald Pleasence, Alexandra Stewart, John Vernon, Joan Greenwood, Catherine Begin, Roland Culver, Chloe Franks, Renee Girard, Katrina Holden, Jean Leclerc, Sean McCann, Donald Pilon, Simon Williams. (Unrated, 89 mins) Pioneered by 1945's DEAD OF NIGHT, the portmanteau horror anthology format became a durable subgenre in the 1960s with TV shows like ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, and THRILLER, and on the big screen with Roger Corman's 1962 Poe entry TALES OF TERROR and Mario Bava's 1964 classic BLACK SABBATH. The UK's Amicus Productions went all-in on the trend with titles like 1965's DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, 1967's TORTURE GARDEN, 1970's THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD, 1972's ASYLUM and TALES FROM THE CRYPT, 1973's VAULT OF HORROR, and 1974's FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. Horror's game-changer came with the release of 1973's THE EXORCIST, and despite attempts to stay current by upping the gore and T&A factor, the anthology, as well as the other kinds of more classically-oriented fare from Amicus and its more renowned contemporary Hammer, began to fall out of favor with audiences. The 1973 anthology TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS--with one segment devoted to a man's sexual obsession with an erotically-shaped tree stump--is easily the worst of the British portmanteau offerings, and the subgenre more or less faded away. The work of Stephen King would help revive the movement in America with 1982's CREEPSHOW and 1985's CAT'S EYE, but in the meantime, Amicus closed up shop in 1977 but co-chair Milton Subotsky kept the faith with a couple of tangential, Amicus-style stragglers. The wave of British horror anthologies dating back to 1965 came to a quiet end with 1981's generally lighthearted, Vincent Price-headlined THE MONSTER CLUB, which featured an obnoxious movie producer character named "Lintom Busotsky." Made at a time when slasher movies and innovative special effects were dominating the genre, THE MONSTER CLUB didn't even hit US theaters, instead going straight to syndicated TV.
An almost identical fate befell 1977's THE UNCANNY, which would be unseen in the US until it premiered on CBS in 1980. It establishes its British anthology bona fides by being co-produced by Subotsky and starring the ubiquitous Peter Cushing, but it's actually more a part of the Canadian tax shelter craze of the period. Shot and set in Montreal, THE UNCANNY is a triptych of unsolved, feline-related mysteries told in a framing device by nervous, paranoid writer Wilbur Gray (Cushing) to incredulous publisher Frank Richards (Ray Milland), who's having a hard time buying Gray's thesis that cats have a supernatural hold on their human owners. "London 1912" has wealthy, elderly spinster Miss Malkin (Joan Greenwood) cutting off her family and deciding to leave her vast fortune to her horde of cats, much to the chagrin of her scheming nephew Michael (Simon Williams) and her greedy housekeeper Janet (Susan Penhaligon). Janet manages to distract Miss Malkin's attorney (Roland Culver) and swipe the original copy of the new will from his briefcase and must get the other copy from her wall safe...but the cats have other ideas.
"Quebec Province 1975" has nine-year-old orphan Lucy (Katrina Holden, who would become an orphan herself a few years later and be adopted by her mother's friends Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland) and her cat Wellington sent to live with her aunt (Alexandra Stewart) and uncle (Donald Pilon) after her parents are killed in a plane crash. Her aunt takes an instant dislike to Wellington, but that's nothing compared to the scorn heaped on Lucy by her bratty, bitchy older cousin Angela (Chloe Franks), who resents no longer being the sole center of attention and sets out to make Lucy's life hell. Unfortunately for Angela, it seems that Lucy has been studying up on books belonging to her witchcraft-enthusiast mother. And "Hollywood 1936" has ludicrously-toupeed ham actor Valentine De'ath (Donald Pleasence) orchestrating the "accidental" death of his more famous wife Madeleine (Catherine Begin) on the set of his latest film DUNGEON OF HORROR. After a grieving period of a few minutes, De'ath insists to the producer (John Vernon) that the show must go on and suggests his wife's role be recast with his younger mistress Edina (Samantha Eggar), a woefully untalented ingenue who immediately moves into the De'ath mansion, much to the disapproval of Madeleine's beloved cats.
Director Denis Heroux and Samantha Eggar on the set of THE UNCANNY.
Written by Michel Parry (XTRO) and directed by Denis Heroux (JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS), THE UNCANNY has a few trips and stumbles along the way--while the grisliest segment by far, "London 1912" drags on too long, and there's some really bad dubbing of some of the supporting cast for no apparent reason, particularly Holden and Franks--but looking at it now on Severin's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead), it's somewhat of an unsung gem from the waning, life-support days of the British portmanteau. It's always great to see Cushing in these things, and it's fun watching him be regarded with the kind of sneering, pompous derision that was late-career Milland's bread-and-butter. Anthology horror fans will also get a kick out of seeing a teenage Franks getting her just desserts several years after her unforgettable turn as Christopher Lee's witchcraft-practicing young daughter in the "Sweets to the Sweet" segment of THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD. Like any decent film of this sort should do, they save the best segment for last, with some absolutely terrific work by Pleasence and Eggar, both of whom get to show off rarely-utilized comedic skills as, respectively, the hapless Valentine De'ath--known as "V.D." to industry insiders--and his unbelievably dim mistress. Seemingly patterning her performance on Judy Holliday in BORN YESTERDAY, Eggar's scream queen screech is even worse than that terrible actress at the beginning of Brian De Palma's BLOW OUT, and is prone to obliviously saying things like, "Oh, V.D., I love you!" Lost in the shuffle thanks to a drastically changing genre landscape following the demonic horrors of THE EXORCIST and THE OMEN, THE UNCANNY probably seemed hopelessly antiquated in 1977, and it's little wonder why it completely bypassed American theaters. But time has been kind to it, and looking at it now reveals a surprisingly enjoyable mix of horror and inspired humor that's deserving of some appreciation. And of course, it doesn't miss the opportunity to deploy "What's the matter...cat got your tongue?" as an EC Comics-worthy punchline.
THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES aka THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA (UK/Hong Kong - 1974; US release 1979) Directed by Roy Ward Baker. Written by Don Houghton. Cast: Peter Cushing, David Chiang, Julie Ege, Robin Stewart, Shih Szu, John Forbes-Robertson, Robert Hanna, Chan Shen, James Ma, Liu Hui Ling, Liu Chia Yung, Wong Han Chan, Chen Tien Loong, Fong Kah Ann. (Unrated, 89 mins/R, 75 mins) With 1970's THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, Hammer Films started spicing up their horror offerings with generous doses of skin and sex in an attempt to inject new life into their product. They made a play for the youth market by benching Peter Cushing in favor of Ralph Bates as a much-younger Dr. Frankenstein in 1970's little-loved HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN, and while they didn't replace Christopher Lee as Dracula, they did transport him with Cushing's Van Helsing to mod, swinging London in all its Austin Powers glory for 1972's DRACULA A.D. 1972 and 1973's THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA. Neither film was a hit, and while Cushing soldiered through them, Lee made sure to voice his displeasure with Hammer and the DRACULA series to anyone who would listen. Warner Bros. shelved SATANIC RITES in the US, where it wouldn't be released for another five years, and when pandering to the counterculture demographic failed, Hammer took an even more unpredictable approach by partnering on two 1974 projects with Hong Kong's Run Run Shaw, whose Shaw Brothers outfit was for responsible much of the burgeoning martial-arts craze: the horror/kung-fu hybrid THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES and the Stuart Whitman-starring Hong Kong-set actioner SHATTER.
Hammer was in a strange place by 1974. THE EXORCIST was enough of a game-changer that "classic"-style horror was falling out of fashion. Cushing returned to his Dr. Frankenstein role for one last time with 1974's FRANKENSTEIN AND THE MONSTER FROM HELL, by far the goriest entry in the series and the same year saw the release of their most inspired film in years with Brian Clemens' horror/swashbuckler cult classic CAPTAIN KRONOS: VAMPIRE HUNTER, which was actually completed in 1972 but Hammer didn't have any confidence in it and shelved it for two years. Bad decisions, diminishing returns, and a changing genre landscape would eventually cause the company's classic incarnation to fold after 1976's TO THE DEVIL...A DAUGHTER, but THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES, like CAPTAIN KRONOS, was a film tragically unappreciated in its time and one that has aged remarkably well over the decades.
It would've been even better had Lee returned as Dracula, but he was so fed up with whole thing after SATANIC RITES that he walked away and refused to have anything more to do with the series, and it's doubtful that he would've been wooed back by the prospect of Dracula in a kung-fu setting. While Cushing returned as Van Helsing, Dracula was now played by jobbing British character actor and one-and-done trivia question response John Forbes-Robertson, the George Lazenby of the Hammer DRACULA series. Since Dracula's screen time is limited to the beginning and the end, the actor doesn't have much of a chance to make an impression beyond his excessive rouge and pasty makeup. And on top of that, he's dubbed over by veteran voice actor David de Keyser, whose familiar tones can be heard revoicing John Richardson in THE VENGEANCE OF SHE and Gabriele Ferzetti in ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE. Forbes-Robertson has very little to do here, and it's likely Dracula would've received more face time had Lee agreed to be in it, but with the end result, it hardly matters. Directed by the venerable Roy Ward Baker (ASYLUM, THE VAULT OF HORROR, AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS), with uncredited assistance from top Shaw Brothers director Chang Cheh, who handled the action sequences, THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES is a dark horse underdog in the Hammer canon that's long overdue for respect and appreciation. As recently as 2018's comprehensive, 992-page chronicle Hammer Complete: The Films, The Personnel, The Company, author Howard Maxford calls the film "a letdown on almost every level." Quite the contrary...it's clever, wildly entertaining, paced like a freight train, and better than at least the last four of Lee's DRACULAs.
Disregarding the A.D. 1972 and SATANIC RITES continuity even though, like those two, it was written by Don Houghton, 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES opens in 1804 Transylvania, where Chinese priest Kah (Chan Shen) awakens Dracula (Forbes-Robertson) to beg for his help in resurrecting the legendary "seven golden vampires." A weakened Dracula decides to use Kah as a vessel to strengthen his own evil spirit and to use the seven golden vampires to wreak his vengeance on mankind (having Dracula possess Kah is also a convenient way around Forbes-Robertson being cast late in production). 100 years later, Van Helsing (Cushing) is in Chung King as a guest lecturer on the subject of vampirism, telling his students of the legend of the seven golden vampires who have terrorized the remote village of Ping Kwei for the last century. Most scoff and walk out, but one, Hsi Ching (David Chiang) knows he speaks the truth: his family comes from that village and his grandfather lost his life battling the seven golden vampires, but not before killing one of them. Van Helsing, with his son Leyland (Robin Stewart) and wealthy, widowed Scandinavian socialite Vanessa Buren (Julie Ege), who thinks "a vampire hunt sounds exciting," agrees to accompany and advise Hsi Ching, his six brothers, and their ass-kicking little sister Mei Kwei (Shih Szu) on a treacherous journey to Ping Kwei to find and destroy the six surviving golden vampires while frequently fighting off a growing army of their undead victims, now resurrected as kung-fu zombies.
I'm not sure how "Peter Cushing leading a band of sibling martial-arts warriors against vampires and kung-fu zombies" wasn't the most slam-dunk cinematic sales pitch of 1974. It's handsomely-produced and stylishly shot in garish greens, blues, and reds, with spirited performances (this is one of Cushing's best turns as Van Helsing, even taking part in some of the kung-fu fighting) and a sharp use of the region and its iconography (Van Helsing warns that crosses are useless against these vampires, who can only be warded off by Buddha imagery), but THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES was met with general apathy by UK audiences. Like THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, it was shelved in the US by Warner Bros, who ended up selling both films to the short-lived grindhouse outfit Dynamite Entertainment. They eventually released SATANIC RITES in 1978 as COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE, while 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES underwent a drastic restructuring into the cheesily-titled THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA, which hit theaters in the summer and into the fall of 1979. It's one of the worst botched re-edits of all time, gutting the film from 89 to 75 minutes, losing tons of exposition and shifting scenes around to the point where the story makes no sense at all. This had to be part of the reason the film was dismissed as gutter schlock and was maligned for so long by American audiences until Anchor Bay's original DVD release in 1999 finally made the original 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES cut widely available (the butchered 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA was included as an extra, and both cuts are present on Scream Factory's new Blu-ray, because physical media is dead). Considering how well-crafted the original version was, and that kung-fu films were all the rage in 1974--especially with Warner Bros., who had huge hits with 5 FINGERS OF DEATH and the landmark ENTER THE DRAGON--shelving the film in the first place was an astonishingly bone-headed decision, let alone Dynamite's later catastrophic mangling of it, basically reducing it to fight scenes and T&A, with one topless shot of a woman repeated three times. Forget the 7 BROTHERS cut unless you need to analyze just how badly a good movie can be fucked up beyond recognition. THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES is an absolute blast and a worthy conclusion to Hammer's DRACULA series, and it's time for it to be given its rightful place among the studio's crowning achievements.
The butchered 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA version
opening in Toledo, OH on 10/5/1979
DRACULA A.D. 1972 (UK - 1972) Directed by Alan Gibson. Written by Don Houghton. Cast: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Stephanie Beacham, Christopher Neame, Michael Coles, Marsha Hunt, Caroline Munro, Janet Key, William Ellis, Philip Miller, Michael Kitchen, Stoneground. (PG, 96 mins) By 1972, Christopher Lee wasn't even trying to hide his seething contempt for Hammer's ongoing DRACULA series. He portrayed the Count in five Hammer productions going back to 1958's HORROR OF DRACULA, and in between two entries in 1970 (TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA and SCARS OF DRACULA), he went to Spain to star in Jess Franco's COUNT DRACULA with the promise that it would be the faithful-to-Bram Stoker adaptation that he'd spent years pleading with Hammer to make. Hammer still wasn't listening, and in 1972, following their attempts to capture the youth market with the increased T&A of HORROR OF FRANKENSTEIN and THE VAMPIRE LOVERS, they decided to move Dracula to mod, swinging London in all its Austin Powers glory with DRACULA A.D. 1972. It's not a bad idea, and the film's an entertaining time capsule that's proven to have significant longevity as a genre cult favorite, but it just doesn't have enough of Lee, who's in it so sporadically that there's no way he was on the set for more than a few days. That was likely by design, as Lee made it clear he didn't want to do the movie, even though it marked the return of Peter Cushing, as Dracula's arch-nemesis Van Helsing, to the franchise after 12 years away following 1960's Dracula-less THE BRIDES OF DRACULA.
A.D. 1972 gets off to a roaring start with a prologue set in 1872, with Dracula (Lee) and Lawrence Van Helsing (Cushing) fighting on a runaway coach as daybreak approaches. The coach crashes, with a broken wheel impaling Dracula in the heart as the rising sun turns him to dust, with Van Helsing soon succumbing to his injuries. A Dracula disciple (Christopher Neame, really busting his ass to be the next Malcolm McDowell) arrives on the scene, gathers some of Dracula's ashes in a vial and buries them at the perimeter of a churchyard cemetery that's Van Helsing's final resting place. 100 years later, that seemingly undead disciple is revealed to be Johnny Alucard (clever!), a black-mass enthusiast who hangs out with a group of Chelsea hippies that includes Jessica Van Helsing (Stephanie Beacham), who lives with her grandfather Lorrimer Van Helsing (Cushing), a descendant of the legendary vampire killer. Alucard needs Jessica for his master plan: the resurrection of Dracula for his master's ultimate revenge on the Van Helsing family. She proves difficult to pin down and get alone, thanks in part to her boyfriend Bob (Philip Miller) but more to her skeptical, overprotective grandfather, who's convinced something isn't right, especially when her friends start turning up dead. As Dracula takes refuge in the ruins of the church located at the cemetery where Lawrence Van Helsing is buried, Alucard tries to placate him with offerings like Jessica's friends Laura (Caroline Munro) and Gaynor (Mick Jagger's then-girlfriend Marsha Hunt, considered by many to be the inspiration for "Brown Sugar"), but the Count remains adamant that he must have Jessica. Alucard attempts to stage the dead bodies of the victims as cult-like sacrifices, but Lorrimer, working with Scotland Yard's Inspector Murray (Michael Coles) has studied his ancestor enough to recognize the work of Dracula when he sees it.
Christopher Lee can barely contain his enthusiasm in this
DRACULA A.D. 1972 publicity shot, accompanied by Caroline Munro,
Stephanie Beacham, Marsha Hunt, and Janet Key.
Given Lee's surly attitude toward the franchise and the character at this point, it's little wonder that most of the heavy lifting is left to the presumably less mercurial Cushing. Lee may have hated doing these movies, but the film has a noticeable spark whenever he's onscreen, particularly when he's with his good friend Cushing. There's a lot of time devoted to Jessica and her friends, including a ridiculously drawn-out sequence involving American rock group Stoneground, and the detective subplot with Van Helsing teaming with Murray serves to advance the plot, but A.D. 1972's best scenes involve Dracula, with Lee channeling his frustration into a portrayal of the Count that's arguably his meanest and cruelest yet. He doesn't even seem grateful for his disciple's 100 years of service to his memory, instantly dismissing him upon his Alucard-instigated resurrection and taking credit for it himself ("It was my will," he scoffs, waving Alucard aside). The problem is that Dracula has so little screen time (after the prologue, he has one appearance in the next hour) that, like many of Lee's performances during this period, is really little more than an extended cameo spread out enough to make it look like he's in the whole thing. It's difficult to tell if this is the result of his frustration or the root cause of it, considering that he actually had a lot of screen time in SCARS OF DRACULA. DRACULA A.D. 1972 was a box-office disappointment in both the UK and in America, where it was released by Warner Bros. Nevertheless, Hammer wasn't deterred, as Lee, Cushing, Coles, writer Don Houghton (DOCTOR WHO), director Alan Gibson (CRESCENDO, GOODBYE GEMINI), and the contemporary setting would all return for 1973's THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA.
DRACULA A.D. 1972 opening in Toledo, OH on 4/6/1973
THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA aka COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE (UK - 1973; US release 1978) Directed by Alan Gibson. Written by Don Houghton. Cast: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Michael Coles, William Franklyn, Freddie Jones, Joanna Lumley, Richard Vernon, Patrick Barr, Barbara Yu Ling, Lockwood West, Richard Mathews, Maurice O'Connell, Valerie Van Ost. (R, 88 mins) If it was a stretch to imagine Dracula going after "London's hotpants," as the DRACULA A.D. 1972 poster promised, then who knows how they came up with the insane plot of THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA? It's crazy enough to admire, but it never quite pulls its various threads together, and like A.D. 1972, it still doesn't have enough Christopher Lee, who doesn't even enter the story until 30 minutes in and then isn't seen again for another half hour. Indeed, anyone watching SATANIC RITES' first 25 minutes might think they've accidentally stumbled on a Michael Coles police procedural, as his returning Inspector Murray catches a case involving a dead SIS agent's undercover investigation of a Satanic cult that's populated by a quartet of prominent Londoners, among them Nobel Prize-winning biochemist and germ warfare expert Prof. Keeley (Freddie Jones), real estate mogul Lord Carradine (Patrick Barr), government security analyst Dr. Porter (Richard Mathews), and military honcho Gen. Freeborn (Lockwood West). A stumped Murray and SIS official Torrence (William Franklyn) decide to consult occult expert Lorrimer Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), who happens to be an old college chum of Keeley's. Van Helsing discovers that Keeley has been secretly developing a new and ultra-lethal strain of bubonic plague that could wipe out mankind on the 23rd of the month--known in the occult world as "The Sabbat of the Undead," all under the auspices of a secret foundation bankrolled by enigmatic, reclusive Howard Hughes-like tycoon D.D. Denham, whose skyscraper headquarters is located at the location of the demolished church from A.D. 1972.
Once Van Helsing gets wind of "The Sabbat of the Undead," he immediately concludes that Dracula is somehow involved, which is confirmed when he's granted a personal meeting with Denham, who's revealed to be--you guessed it--Dracula. His latest plan--apparently concocted after seeing too many 007 movies in his downtime--is to unleash a bubonic apocalypse that will wipe out humanity and yet, he still needs to abduct Van Helsing's granddaughter Jessica (future ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS star Joanna Lumley replaces Stephanie Beacham) and take her as his bride, which will render the two of them immune from the apocalypse, carried out by his own personal "Four Horsemen." The bonkers SATANIC RITES fared even worse at the box office than A.D. 1972. After a disastrous reception in Europe, Warner Bros. shelved it in the US, eventually selling it to exploitation outfit Dynamite Entertainment, who belatedly released it on the American drive-in and grindhouse circuit in the fall of 1978 as COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE. Once SATANIC RITES bombed, Lee, who's again terrifically snarling once he finally shows up (and his Bela Lugosi accent as D.D. Denham is...something), finally reached his breaking point and refused to appear in the next film, the 1974 Hammer/Shaw Brothers horror/kung-fu hybrid THE LEGEND OF THE 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES. In it, Cushing's Van Helsing teams with a family of Bruce Lee-like karate experts to take on Dracula, now played in a bland and ineffective fashion by Lee's one-and-done replacement John Forbes-Robertson. The film was recut and retitled THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA for its 1979 US release, but by that time, the franchise and Hammer itself were over. With genre trendhops like SATANIC RITES' outlandish 007 plot and the ENTER THE DRAGON-inspired martial arts action of 7 GOLDEN VAMPIRES, it would've been inevitable that Dracula and Van Helsing would've somehow ended up in space if the series was still going when STAR WARS came around in 1977.
THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA's biggest problem is that it's never as fun as its crazy story makes it sound. It's also pretty stupid: why would Dracula and his surrogate Renfield in the form of Chin Yang (Barbara Yu Ling) keep his vampire brides stashed away in a basement with a fully-functioning and easily-accessible sprinkler system when water is lethal to the undead? And for someone with the means to create the ultimate weapon in germ warfare, Dracula seems to be off his game here, especially when Van Helsing tricks him into walking directly into a giant prickly bush like a cloddish oaf and getting caught in its vines and branches in what could very well be Dracula's dumbest-ever movie demise. Under both of its titles, SATANIC RITES ended up falling into the public domain and was available in various versions on any number of cheap, bargain-bin DVD sets over the last 20 years. It's just out now on Blu-ray from Warner Archive, who also released a spiffed-up A.D. 1972 last month (a double feature set would've been perfect). To see the constant posts on Hammer's fan page on Facebook over the last year, you'd think SATANIC RITES was some lost classic or something akin to THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND of Hammer horror. Calm down, guys...it's not that good, but it's a must-have for completists, especially with it looking better that it ever has in this new edition. I like the Dracula-as-Blofeld idea of THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA more than what it ultimately turns out to be. But for all its faults, it's always a joy to see the two horror legends together (they also starred in HORROR EXPRESS, NOTHING BUT THE NIGHT, and THE CREEPING FLESH during this same period), and ever the stalwart, Cushing again seems more accommodating to the filmmakers than the disgruntled Lee, playing it totally straight and never once letting on how ridiculous he likely found the entire project to be.
THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, under its US title
COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE,
opening in Toledo, OH on 10/13/1978
BIGGLES (UK - 1986; US release 1988) Directed by John Hough. Written by John Groves and Kent Walwin. Cast: Neil Dickson, Alex Hyde-White, Peter Cushing, Fiona Hutchison, Marcus Gilbert, William Hootkins, Alan Polonsky, Francesca Gonshaw, Michael Siberry, James Saxon, Daniel Flynn. (PG, 93 mins) Based on Captain W.E. Johns' long-running series of Biggles adventures for young readers, published from 1932 until several years after Johns' death in 1968, BIGGLES had a strong foundation in British pop culture, even though the books--nearly 100 altogether--were largely unknown in the US. Focusing on the ongoing adventures of WWI fighter pilot James "Biggles" Bigglesworth, the books moved ahead with the times (Biggles would later fight in WWII, and so on), and remained popular throughout its publishing run. There was a short-lived British TV series in 1960, but wasn't until the mid-1980s until someone attempted a movie adaptation and by then, Biggles had grown passe and British youth had moved on. To make it more commercially appealing to the savvy, video-game kids of the '80s, the producers of BIGGLES decided to add sci-fi and time-traveling to the script since BACK TO THE FUTURE was a huge hit at the time. Now, before we get to Biggles himself, we're introduced to this film's Marty McFly in Jim Ferguson (Alex Hyde-White), a rising TV-dinner executive in NYC who's repeatedly sucked back in time to WWI France, where he keeps meeting Biggles (Neil Dickson). Ferguson is informed by elderly Col. Raymond (Peter Cushing), who was Biggles' commanding officer in the war, that he and Biggles are "time twins," with one summoned through holes in time to help when the other is in life-threatening danger. Ferguson eventually travels to London to be instructed in the ways of time travel by Raymond, and goes back to 1917 to accompany Biggles and his pals Algy (Michael Sibbery), Bertie (James Saxon), and Ginger (Daniel Flynn) on their mission to thwart evil German pilot and recurring Biggles villain Eric Van Stalhein (Marcus Gilbert), who has created a lethal sound weapon whose intensity is such that it can burn and melt flesh.
Though competently made and inoffensively watchable, BIGGLES is an almost total misfire. It's never able to overcome the black hole at the center that is Hyde-White's bland, boring shrug of a performance. Ferguson is a passive observer throughout the film, so much so that the time travel element is completely superfluous and comes off as exactly what it is: an obvious, desperate attempt to collect some BACK TO THE FUTURE table scraps. Ferguson never really serves a purpose once he's back in 1917 with Biggles other than functioning as anachronistic comic relief, such as when he hurls an electric razor at some German soldiers and they think it's a bomb. And humor's really the only reason for Biggles to eventually go through a hole in time and end up in present-day London, where he flies a high-tech helicopter back through to 1917 and promptly freaks everyone out with what they call a "flying windmill." British kids weren't reading Biggles adventures by 1986 anymore and the sci-fi and time travel elements come off as cynical ploys to cash in on a recognizable brand name. Someone like Terry Gilliam probably could've made a fun BIGGLES that was true to the stories, or at the very least, made the time-travel angle work, but John Hough, a journeyman who's made some revered cult classics over his career (TWINS OF EVIL, THE LEGEND OF HELL HOUSE, DIRTY MARY CRAZY LARRY), is in total yes-man, director-for-hire mode here. It looks pretty cheap, too, with some stock footage shots of NYC followed by an obvious London backlot that looks even less convincing than the NYC neighborhood of DEATH WISH 3, and the "lightning bolt" time travel visual effects are rudimentary at best. While Hyde-White is a complete blank as Ferguson, Dickson, who went on to a busy career in ADR and video game voice work, has some fun as Biggles, and the iconic Cushing, in what would prove to be his final film appearance (he retired from acting after BIGGLES and died in 1994), lends some authoritarian gravitas and genuine emotion to his few sporadic appearances as Raymond.
The film kicks off in the most 1986 way imaginable, with a rarity in the theme song "Do You Want To Be a Hero?" by then-Yes frontman Jon Anderson. There's also contributions from Deep Purple ("Knocking at Your Back Door") and Motley Crue ("Knock 'Em Dead Kid"), and the closing credits song "No Turning Back" ended up being the entire output of The Immortals, a one-off supergroup assembled just for the soundtrack, featuring Queen bassist John Deacon and occasional Alan Parsons Project vocalist Lenny Zakatek. BIGGLES tries to be a hip adventure epic for '80s audiences, but the dated source material just doesn't gel with the hard rock, special effects presentation. It was also another in a brief craze of wartime aviation adventure stories being made at the time: in addition to BIGGLES, there was SKY BANDITS and the John Hargreaves-starring SKY PIRATES, all of which bombed at the box office in 1986. Even boasting a tie-in video game, BIGGLES was an expensive flop in its native UK and it took two years before the short-lived New Century/Vista dumped it in a few US theaters with no publicity at all in early 1988. Running 108 minutes in the UK, the film was cut down to 93 and rechristened BIGGLES: ADVENTURES IN TIME for America, since no one in the States knew anything about the Biggles stories. Upon a cursory mention, the goofy name "Biggles" might've even led people to think it was another GREMLINS knockoff along the lines of GHOULIES and MUNCHIES. While it never really comes together as far as purpose and storytelling are concerned, BIGGLES does earn a little cred for some spectacular aerial sequences and some effective use of the ruins of the Beckton Gasworks, a location memorably featured as Hue City in the second half of Stanley Kubrick's FULL METAL JACKET. BIGGLES was recently rescued from obscurity by Kino Lorber, who released it on Blu-ray in its 93-minute American cut (the packaging erroneously lists it as the 108-minute version), with new interviews with Dickson and Hyde-White, both of whom have fond memories of the shoot and working with the legendary Cushing, even if the movie wasn't a success. The genre-hopping Hough, who enjoyed a brief tenure in the late '70s and early '80s as a go-to guy for Disney live action (he directed ESCAPE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN, RETURN FROM WITCH MOUNTAIN, and THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS), next helmed a pair of 1988 horror films--the underrated AMERICAN GOTHIC and the dismal HOWLING IV: THE ORIGINAL NIGHTMARE--before mainly focusing on TV movies. Now 76 and apparently retired, he hasn't directed since the low-budget 2002 Patsy Kensit horror movie HELL'S GATE.
HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS (UK - 1983; US release 1984) Directed by Pete Walker. Written by Michael Armstrong. Cast: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Desi Arnaz Jr, John Carradine, Sheila Keith, Richard Todd, Julie Peasgood, Louise English, Richard Hunter, Norman Rossington. (PG, 102 mins)
When it came to ninjas, Namsploitation, and breakdancing, Menaham Golan had his fingers on the pulse of what audiences wanted to see. But just as often, he'd keep Cannon cranking out increasingly geriatric Charles Bronson actioners directed by an aging J. Lee Thompson, cheapjack franchise offerings like the one-and-done MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987) and the ill-advised SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE (1987), and misguided attempts at arthouse legitimacy that played to smaller and smaller audiences. When Golan decided to make an all-star horror movie with the screen's titans of terror in 1983, he didn't come up with the kind of horror movie that 1983 audiences had in mind. HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS was born when screenwriter Michael Armstrong (director of the 1970 barf-bag classic MARK OF THE DEVIL) and cult British horror filmmaker Pete Walker (DIE SCREAMING MARIANNE, FRIGHTMARE, HOUSE OF WHIPCORD, THE CONFESSIONAL) came to Cannon with an idea for a gory horror movie called DELIVER US FROM EVIL. Golan rejected the idea and told them he wanted a vintage "old dark house" story with all the classic horror stars, so Armstrong and Walker concocted a script inspired by the 1932 James Whale classic THE OLD DARK HOUSE and based largely on the oft-filmed 1913 George M. Cohan play Seven Keys to Baldpate, itselfbased on a novel by Charlie Chan author Earl Derr Biggers. According to legend, Golan demanded Walker and Armstrong cast Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in this all-star horror summit, and was not deterred by minor inconveniences like Karloff's death in 1969 and Lugosi's a decade before that in 1956.
HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS publicity shot
While Karloff and Lugosi were out of the question, Golan did manage to snag four living horror legends: 72-year-old Vincent Price, 61-year-old Christopher Lee, 70-year-old Peter Cushing, and 77-year-old John Carradine. The big selling point of HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS--a playful nod to how beloved its stars were--was these iconic figures not just being in the same movie together, but finally having significant amounts of screen time interacting with one another. Of course, Lee and Cushing were paired up many times over the years (this would be their last movie together), and Cushing co-starred with Price in 1974's MADHOUSE and Price with Carradine in 1981's THE MONSTER CLUB, but usually, it would be a case of them being in the same movie but having no scenes together, like Price, Lee, and Cushing in 1970's SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN or Price and Cushing in 1972's DR. PHIBES RISES AGAIN or Cushing and Carradine in 1977's SHOCK WAVES. There was also Price and Lee in 1969's THE OBLONG BOX , where they had one brief scene together very late in the film when Price finds Lee's dead body. In that respect, HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS was sort-of the old-school horror EXPENDABLES of its day. And of course, upon its US release in the spring of 1984, it bombed with critics and audiences, who loved these old-timers on late-night TV and Saturday afternoon Creature Features, but didn't venture out to see a new movie with them in theaters. A gothic Hammer/Amicus throwback didn't really appeal to the slasher and special effects crowd. LONG SHADOWS was recently released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber and on one of the two commentary tracks, film historian David Del Valle and moderator Elijah Drenner also cite Cannon's poor marketing campaign: a tongue-in-cheek, old-fashioned horror mystery set on a dark and stormy night, the film has enough of a playful atmosphere that it never really takes itself too seriously, though it never quite takes the plunge into all-out comedy. Cannon didn't seem to know whether to sell this as a mystery, a horror movie, or a spoof.
Best-selling novelist Kenneth Magee (Desi Arnaz Jr) is good at cranking out books but really only cares about the money. His British publisher Sam Allyson (Richard Todd) wants Kenneth to challenge himself and after dissing the likes of Wuthering Heights, Kenneth bets Sam $20,000 that he can write an old-fashioned gothic novel in 24 hours. To get in the right frame of mind, Sam arranges to have Kenneth spend the night at a desolate Welsh estate called Baldpate Manor, which has been empty for 40 years. After he's interrupted by Sam's secretary Mary (Julie Peasgood), sent there to distract him, things get weird when Baldpate becomes the location of an impromptu family reunion of the Grisbanes: patriarch Lord Grisbane (Carradine), eldest son Lionel (Price), younger son Sebastian (Cushing) and daughter Victoria (Walker regular Sheila Keith). Baldpate Manor was home to the Grisbanes until a terrible scandal brought shame upon them in 1935: the youngest of the Grisbane sons, black sheep Roderick, raped and killed a 14-year-old village girl. The horrible crime was covered up by Grisbane and his other sons, who dispensed their own family justice by sentencing Roderick to live in chains in a hidden, locked room on one of the upper floors of the manor. For over 40 years, Roderick has resided in the dilapidated manor alone, surviving on food brought by Victoria or snacking on whatever rats he encounters, and tonight is the night the Grisbanes confront him and come to terms with their ugly past. Also complicating matters is the arrival of Corrigan (Lee), a sneering businessman who plans to buy Baldpate Manor to demolish it and develop the surrounding area. It doesn't take long before they're all being picked off one by one by an unseen Roderick, who's gotten out of his room, cut the phone line and slashed the tires on everyone's cars, and won't stop until he gets his revenge.
Critics savaged HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS, with Arnaz's performance inexplicably singled out as the film's biggest problem (from the film's listing in the Leonard Maltin guide: "Arnaz Jr. singlehandedly sinks this adaptation..."). He's not the most magnetic lead actor, but he does what he's required to do and graciously steps aside at the right time and lets the masters do their thing. Del Valle, a longtime friend of Price's, even recalls the legendary actor defending Arnaz and his performance in the film. Both Del Valle and Drenner are incredulous over the amount of heat Arnaz took for his work here, and they're right: he didn't deserve the pummeling he got and isn't bad at all. You could almost compare him to Michael O'Keefe in CADDYSHACK: he plays the central character and he's the real star of the movie, but you're actually there to see everyone else around him. Walker and Armstrong do take too long to get all of the players together (it's nearly 50 minutes in and the film is half over when Lee first appears), but they all get some time to shine and seem to genuinely enjoy working off of one another. Cushing amuses himself by adding an Elmer Fudd-type speech impediment, Carradine is befuddled and cranky, Lee is huffy and pompous, and Price is gloriously florid and over-the-top as Lionel Grisbane, gravely intoning "I have returned" upon his arrival and admonishing Magee for asking a question during his eulogy for the Baldpate Manor of old with a hand wave and a firm "Please...don't interrupt me whilst I am soliloquizing."
Cannon could've easily put these guys in a gory, T&A-filled slasher movie, which probably would've been more in line with Pete Walker's comparatively trashy and sleazy B-horror films of the 1970s. HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS was practically a departure for the director, whose cult status has grown in the subsequent decades. A true indie auteur accustomed to working on his own and outside the system, LONG SHADOWS was Walker's first and last gig as a hired gun director--he retired from filmmaking afterwards and in the decades since, has had success owning a chain of movie theaters in London. He remains active in the cult movie scene, recording DVD and Blu-ray commentaries for Redemption's "Pete Walker Collection," and he's on hand for a commentary track on the LONG SHADOWS release. LONG SHADOWS does demonstrate some infrequent concessions to the times in which it was made--there's a couple of mildly gory deaths and a few curse words (where else will you hear Vincent Price hiss "bitch" to Christopher Lee?), but it's a throwback before nostalgic throwbacks became a thing. It unfolds less like a Cannon production and more like a vintage Hammer or Amicus chiller and it does right by its cast, respecting them and the history they bring instead of derisively dismissing them, and when the actors are the butt of jokes, they're in on it.
Drenner points out on the commentary that it's easy to look back at the film now with a sense of nostalgia while seeing that it had to be very out-of-touch with where horror was in the early 1980s. Indeed, while it was enjoyable in 1983, it's a film that's improved over time and it's a rare instance where nostalgia is enough to carry it through. Of course, the story and the final twist are predictable, but watching these legends together is truly a joy that's helped the film out in the long run, especially now that a significant chapter of genre history has closed with the passing of Lee in June 2015 (Carradine died in 1988, Price in 1993, and Cushing in 1994). HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS has aged like fine wine and sentimental feelings have won out over jaded cynicism, earning it a loyal cult following among classic horror fans enjoying the masters having one last hurrah without the baggage and expectations that came with its era. It may have been released in 1983 but it certainly wasn't made for 1983, and just about everyone back then--critics, audiences, and Cannon--was wrong about HOUSE OF THE LONG SHADOWS.
