QUATERMASS AND THE PIT/THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW: A TERRIFYING DOUBLE BILL OF HORROR FILM REVIEWS BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. (1967) HAMMER FILM PRODUCTIONS. DIRECTED BY ROY WARD BAKER. PRODUCED BY ANTHONY NELSON KEYS. WRITTEN BY NIGEL KNEALE.
STARRING BARBARA SHELLEY, JAMES DONALD, JULIAN GLOVER AND ANDREW KEIR.
THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW. (1971) TIGON BRITISH FILM PRODUCTIONS. DIRECTED BY PIERS HAGGARD. WRITTEN BY PIERS HAGGARD AND ROBERT WYNNE-SIMMONS.
STARRING PATRICK WYMARK, SIMON WILLIAMS, LINDA HAYDEN, MICHELE DOTRICE AND ANTHONY AINLEY.
Ah, just thinking about these two marvellous films from the golden age of British horror cinema gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling in my stomach. I'm lumping them in together for a big fat double review because I watched 'em both recently on the big screen at the Irish Film Institute as part of their HAUNTED LANDSCAPES season.
They held a folk horror festival in the middle of July entirely with my blessing. It certainly shortened the long dreary summer which I normally spend just counting down the days to Halloween, haha.
Being able to see films I've loved for years on a giant cinema screen was an indescribable pleasure. You notice all sorts of things you've missed on titchy little DVD machines...!
QUATERMASS AND THE PIT is a sequel to earlier HAMMER films THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT and QUATERMASS 2. It's a terrific blend of horror and science fiction with some top-notch acting from some great English actors thrown in for good measure.
Basically, what happens in it is that the London Underground is being dug up for the purposes of extending it. Tell me about it. If any of you guys have visited Dublin any time in the last year or so, you'll know that it's all been dug up to actual buggery as our LUAS lines are extended, slowly and painfully. The LUAS is kind of like our London Underground, except that it's above ground. Ahem.
Anyway, the difference between our LUAS works and the excavations in the film is that, in the film, an ancient Martian spacecraft is discovered amongst the rubble, along with the remains of early human ancestors in excess of five million years old. That's quite the archaeological find, naturally, or it would be if there wasn't a dreadful evil emanating from the discoveries in waves.
Professor Bernard Quatermass, who has uncovered a disturbing connection between the remains and pagan beliefs in the devil as related to the mythology of London, clashes with the military's Colonel Breen on the matter. Breen, an obnoxious autocratic snobbish type, refuses to believe that the spacecraft is anything but a Nazi missile left over from World War Two. Typical toff. Always bloomin' thinking they know what's best for everyone.
Barbara Shelley is wonderful as Dr. Roney's assistant, the woman who has a kind of 'shining' thing going on with the spacecraft and the remains. The scene in which she and Sladden, the drill operator, get caught up in a terrifying windstorm emanating from the missile is probably the best and most nail-bitingly exciting scene in the film.
The scene where the good old British bobby gets freaked-out by the obviously nearby presence of evil in Hob's End always gives me a chill too. 'Hob used to be an old name for the Devil...!'
Other great scenes include poor Dr. Roney's ultimate act of heroism and bravery and also the removal of the huge oozing grasshopper thingies from the spaceship. And, by the way, the film was introduced by novelist and critic Kim Newman, whom some of you might recognise as having written for EMPIRE magazine. He turned up wearing a big wide-brimmed hat which would have been useful for keeping the sun off his bonce. I think we might have had our summer that day...!
THE BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW is a sexy film, not a science-y film, heh-heh-heh. Yeah, that's right, start paying attention now, you pervy readers, you! It was made by TIGON, the British film production and distribution company that brought us WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968) and THE
CREEPING FLESH (1973), two of my favourite horror films from that period.
What happens is as follows. An entire village falls victim to an outbreak of demonic possession, caused by the unearthing of a deformed skull imbued with a malign influence. In this, we observe the similarities to QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, in that everything is grand until people go digging shit up which was better left alone, if you get me.
Maybe someone should show these two films to Dublin City Council or whoever's responsible for the LUAS works that have made our city virtually impassable in the last year, grumble grumble grumble. Yeah yeah, I know, the march of progress and all that, and I won't be complaining when I have a dozen new ways next year to get to another pointless new shopping centre on the outskirts of the city, I know, I know...!
Anyway, the malignant influence has a terrible effect on the young people of the village in particular. They're behaving oddly, going insane for no reason, holding black masses, sprouting demonic-looking fur on parts of their bodies where certainly there was no fur before, weird stuff like that.
They're even skipping the Reverend Fallowfield's excellent religious instruction lessons, and those used to be a huge draw for the kids before Beelzebub came to town. Not, snigger.
It's up to good old Patrick Wymark as the local Judge to track down the source of the evil and attempt to eradicate it. Will he be successful? Before he's even had time to plonk his Judge wig down on his noggin, though, there will be an horrific rape in the village that would never have happened before the Devil strutted into town on his cloven hooves. Wait a minute, where's everyone gone? Oh right. Off to You-Tube the horrific rape. Ye naughty little brats, ye...!
Michele Dotrice, who's probably best known for portraying Frank Spencer's long-suffering wife Betty in superb '70s sitcom SOME MOTHERS DO 'AVE 'EM, plays an unexpected blinder in this film as a young 'un who's been- ahem- filled with the Devil. Her lascivious expressions when she's watching the rape would have scandalised poor Frank, who was always very modest and shy when it came to sexual matters, hee-hee-hee.
'Betty' does an amazing job in the scene where she's fleeing from the savage dogs who are pursuing her, a suspected witch, through the olden days woods. The scene where she's having 'the devil's skin' excised from her leg was so real and powerful that I ended up grabbing the arm of the bloke next to me in the cinema and squeezing the bejeesus out of it. I'd love to be able to tell you that it was the start of a beautiful love-story but, sadly, I won't be seeing him again. Not until my court date, anyway.
I have two more things to say about this film. Firstly, that long dark wig that Simon Williams (he played a posh toff in drama serial UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS) is wearing makes him look like a pre-moustache Freddie Mercury. You know, like when he wore the white lycra suit and played the piano in the video for BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY? Yeah, back then...!
Secondly, the gorgeous Linda Hayden's nude scene, in which she tantalises and teases the mortified Reverend with her delectable wares, would surely make red-blooded men long for the days when women had actual pubic hair.
Seriously, do you know that there's a whole generation of blokes growing up today who think that women naturally don't have hair down there? Think about it. You know it's true. Women today are shaved, waxed, tanned, straightened and sanitised almost out of existence. And who's it all benefiting, anyway? Mainly the grooming industry, as far as I can see.
Here's a naughty thought. Perhaps some of the Devil's leftover furry bits could be donated to the women of today who've all but forgotten how to grow good honest pubes? We could have a sort of charity drive or something, you know, the way people do.
Finally, because I'm in the mood for a little tantalising and teasing myself, here's a full list of the other films that featured in the folk horror festival. How green is everyone's faces right now...?!
WITCHFINDER GENERAL- 1968.
THE WICKER MAN- 1973.
VALERIE AND HER WEEK OF WONDERS- 1970.
HAMMER'S THE DEVIL RIDES OUT- 1968.
NIGHT OF THE DEMON- 1957.
THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT- 1999.
Au revoir, horror buddies, until we meet again.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment