TASTE OF FEAR. (1961) DIRECTED BY SETH HOLT. PRODUCED BY JIMMY SANGSTER AND MICHAEL CARRERAS. SCREENPLAY BY JIMMY SANGSTER. STARRING SUSAN STRASBERG, RONALD LEWIS, ANN TODD, FRED JOHNSON AND CHRISTOPHER LEE.
THE REPTILE. (1966) DIRECTED BY JOHN GILLING. PRODUCED BY ANTHONY NELSON KEYS. WRITTEN BY ANTHONY HINDS- WRITING AS JOHN ELDER.
STARRING RAY BARRETT, JENNIFER DANIEL, NOEL WILLMAN, JACQUELINE PEARCE, JOHN LAURIE, MARNE MAITLAND, MICHAEL RIPPER AND GEORGE WOODBRIDGE.
These are two fantastic Hammer Horror movies that are simultaneously very different from each other but which also share some of the distinct trademarks that made Hammer one of the most successful film production companies in British history.
The black-and-white TASTE OF FEAR, known also in some circles as SCREAM OF FEAR, is the story of a young disabled woman called Penny Appleby (channelling her inner Jackie O throughout the film!) who returns to her family home after several years away. Having been crippled since a riding accident almost a decade ago, it's understandably left her mopey and touchy, not to mention a tad paranoid and suspicious of other peoples' motives.
I'm afraid the mopiness and seeming inability to crack a smile (she does it just once in the film) have turned me right off Miss Penny Appleby, unfair as that may sound. After all, everything she's been through in the past surely entitles her to be a narky auld bitch, haha. But nope, I still can't bring myself to like her too much as a character.
Still, there's no doubt that she's put through the wringer in the lovely big old house shared by her father and Penny's stepmother Jane. She's been told that her Pops has gone away on business, so why does she see his extremely dead corpse propped up around the house in odd places? That can't be right. Can it...?
Deeply suspicious of her stepmother, who really does seem too good to be true, Penny's only ally in finding out what the hell is going on in her old home is the family chauffeur, Bob. Bob is young, handsome, strong and brave and the young pair are instantly drawn to each other.
Together, they try to unravel the mystery of what's going on. Has Jane killed her husband and Penny's father? And is she in cahoots with Pierre Gerrard, her hubby's devastatingly attractive doctor, played by Hammer actor Christopher Lee? They certainly seem to be as thick as thieves with each other, in poor Penny's disturbed and confused mind. And why are they going to such lengths to convince Penny of the fragility and suggestibility of her mental state...?
Jimmy Sangster apparently wrote this terrific script by way of taking a break from the more Gothic Hammer film scripts he'd been working on, scripts like THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957) and the iconic, game-changing 1958 DRACULA, starring sex symbol Christopher Lee as 'the terrifying lover who died... yet lived!'
The plot has so many superb twists and turns that it's highly unlikely you'll be able to work out exactly what's happening in it until it's all been revealed to you by the clever film-makers, and even then you'll have to wait till the last frame or two for the dénouement you'll be craving.
Christopher Lee said of this film that: 'TASTE OF FEAR was the best film I was in that Hammer ever made.' It's rather clunkily put, but we surely get the gist, dear Sir Chris...!
I must confess to preferring THE REPTILE, quite simply because the Gothic films that good old Jimmy Sangster was attempting to take a wee break from are by far my favourite Hammer films. This one is as deliciously Gothic as it gets. It's got everything in it that I'd personally require from a Hammer film production, except of course for the gorgeous Christopher Lee himself as the Caped and Fanged One...!
It's got fabulously crumbling old country mansions that have dark and terrifying secrets at their core. It's got isolated moors at dusk that make a body afeard to walk abroad, as it were. It's got darling pub landlord Michael Ripper washing glasses and dishing out homespun wisdom and words of warning along with a pint of best bitter. (Whatever THAT is...!)
It's got a nice blonde rather virginal-seeming heroine and a sexy, dark-haired smouldering kind of heroine with a frightful secret. It's even got the man you think is evil but it turns out that he's only trying to protect the village from the awful secret he harbours in his breast, the one he manfully struggles to keep from everyone but, as we all know, secrets, like blood, will always out...
Newly-weds Harry and Valerie arrive at a fictional, delightfully rustic little village in Cornwall to take possession of Harry's deceased brother's cottage. The brother died of a horrible affliction the villagers rather misleadingly refer to as 'the Black Death.'
This is misleading because the Black Death was an actual real disease that had very specific symptoms, was carried in a particular way and killed thousands of people in the grim and not terribly sanitary Middle Ages. I'm thinking that that the film-makers here might have thought up a less confusing name for their affliction. What about 'the Green-and-kind-of-Grey-as-well Death,' because that's the colour it turns peoples' faces...? Not very catchy, though, is it?
Anyway, as well as various natives dropping dead of this icky plague, there's certainly something fishy going on at the nearby mansion home of local bigwig Dr. Franklin and his beautiful daughter Anna. There's no point asking him to have a look at your bunions, by the way, as he's only a doctor of theology, haha. And he's dead surly to boot, a proper grump.
And he treats his daughter Anna with harshness and cruelty, even though she's a lovely young woman who doesn't seem to have done anything wrong. And who's the strange Indian chap who hangs around them like a bad smell? And why are there so many small animals locked in cages on the premises? It's almost as if... as if they're there to feed something...?
Michael Ripper is truly marvellous in this, digging up corpses in the dead of night in a rainstorm with gusto. Well, he was really with Harry, but whatevs. He's such a good actor. He's the perfect inn-keeper or pub landlord in whatever Hammer production you see him in. When you see him behind the bar there with his dish-rag, you get a lovely sense of familiarity and comfortableness and you know that everything's blissfully all right with the world of Hammer.
Jennifer Daniel (Valerie) and Noel Willman (Dr. Franklin) are great in this, but they were also brilliant together in Hammer's 'THE KISS OF THE VAMPIRE' from 1963. In this movie, a young honeymooning couple in turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Bavaria found themselves in the deadly grip of a vampire cult, led by the wealthy and seemingly respectable Dr. Ravna. That was a great one, that was, one of my personal favourites, even though it starred neither Christopher Lee nor Peter Cushing.
Anyway, there you go, fellow Hammer fans. Two brilliant films from your favourite film studio to sink your fangs into. A 'Sixties mystery thriller, which Hammer could also do with flair and panache, and one of the marvellous Gothic monster/demonic creature movies which you might prefer, like myself, and be more used to. Happy (Hammer!) viewing...!
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
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