Hammer House

 

HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR: S1 E7: THE SILENT SCREAM-1980-In this episode  Chuck, an ex-con (Brian Cox) gets a job helping a seemingly innocent pet shop owner Mr. Martin Blueck (Peter Cushing), tend to his animals, believing him to be a concentration camp survivor. However behind his stock of birds and dogs and cats the man is harboring a menagerie of wild animals like panthers, lions and leopards. It's all part of his behavior experiments. He hires Martin to feed the beasts. When Chuck decides to break into his safe the trouble starts. Martin is not what he seems and tragedy strikes. It was directed by Alan Gibson who made the feature films DRACULA AD 1972 and CRESCENDO for Hammer.

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Drac vs. Mods

DRACULA AD-1972-A group of Mods perform a black mass in an abandoned church. Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame)), their leader mixes his blood with the dried blood of Count Dracula and brings him back to (un-dead) life. His first victim is played by Caroline Munro. Van Helsing's grandson (Peter Cushing) has a daughter Jessica (Stephanie Beacham) Drac wants. He kidnaps her but granddad tracks them down and he and Drac have a showdown where Van Helsing uses a silver dagger, holy water and a shovel to beat the king of vampires and reduce his body to ooze. 

This, the seventh Dracula Hammer film and the sixth to star Lee in the title role was directed by Alan Gibson who would also direct the last of the series THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA the next year. Screenwriter Don Houghton also penned SATANIC RITES, SHATTER and THE LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES and many episodes of Doctor Who. For years DRACULA AD has been much maligned by critics and fans. There's really nothing to it but in retrospect it's an enjoyable time capsule.

In America DRACULA AD played on a double bill with CRESCENDO (also directed by Gibson).

http://moviemeltdown.blogspot.com/2017/01/hammer.html 

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Hammer

CRESCENDO-1970-Susan Roberts (Stephanie Powers) goes to France and lives in the house of a dead composer to do research on his life. The place is overseen by the composer's strange mother Daneille (Margaretta Scott from the 1936 version of THINGS TO COME) and her wheelchair bound son Georges (James Olsen; in THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN the next year), a drug addict who has nightmares about making love to a mannequin. Their maid (Kristen Lindholm) gives him drugs and has sex with him. Meanwhile the family butler Carter (Joss Ackland) hangs around and calls the maid a slut. Later she's stab to death while taking a nude swim. Georges has another dream that he and Susan are shot while having sex. They kind of fall in love but it becomes apparent he can walk. There's another big twist in the insane mother's plan to get an heir. At the end, Susan just runs away.

Although this oddball mystery almost seems like an above average made for TV movie, it was actually made (in England) by Hammer studios and played on a double bill with DRACULA AD 1972. The original script was written years before and was a project Michael Reeves planned to make before his untimely death. Producer James Carreras tried unsuccessfully to get Joan Crawford in the role of the mother and later had Jimmy Sangster re-write it. Director Alan Gibson also made DRACULA AD 1972 and many BBC programs. It's a decent psychological thriller but the ending is a little abrupt. However the biggest surprise to me was that Powers who has a brief topless scene was in the Disney production THE BOATNIKS the same year! 

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