Amicus Strikes Back

 

(imdb)

AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS-1973-Catherine (Stephanie Beacham) & Charles (Ian Ogilvy) come to live in the ancestral Fengriffen. No sooner are they there when Catherine becomes mesmerized by a portrait of Charles’ grandfather Sir Henry and a bloody hand tries to grab her. After their wedding, a severed hand is seen crawling across the floor. Later, she sees a ghoulish, eyeless corpse, missing one hand. Then she's scared by Silas (Geoffrey Whitehead), a sinister looking woodsman with a red birth mark, who lives on the estate. After their lawyer (Guy Rolfe) is murdered, Catherine sees more apparitions and the family doctor, Whittle (Patrick Magee) informs the couple Catherine is pregnant. Then Charles and Dr. Whittle discuss telling Catherine some secret about the family. 

When the maid decides to help Catherine, she's killed. The severed hand seems to be controlling things. When her aunt Edith (Gillan Lind) decides Catherine should leave Fengriffen, she dies. When it seems like Catherine is really cracking up, Whittle calls in Dr. Pope (Peter Cushing). In a flashback, Charles reveals his granddad Sir Henry (Herbert Lom) turned Fengriffin into “a house of debauchery” and “filled it with the scum of the earth”. Then on Silas’ father's wedding night, Henry rapes his bride, while his goons hold down Silas. Henry chops off his hand and Silas puts a curse on him. Later, Catherine gives birth to a baby with no right hand and a reddish birth mark. 

Good cast and story but not a great ending. This Amicus production was directed by Roy Ward Baker who also made THE VAULT OF HORROR for the same company in'73. It's based a on a novel by American novelist David Case.

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Martial Arts Vs. Vampires

 

 (themoviedatabase)

LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES-1974-Transylvania 1804. A guy named Kan (Shen Chan) who once presided over the 7 Golden Vampires visits Dracula's castle to ask the king of vampires to help him resurrect the group. Dracula (John Forbes-Robinson) has a better idea. He possesses Kan's “image” and decides to resurrect the 7 himself. After the credits, in Chung King 100 years later, Prof. Van Helsing (who else but Peter Cushing) lectures on the Seven Vampires and his encounters with Dracula. The “sophisticated” Chinese students ridicule him but one student Hsi Ching (David Chiang) visits the professor at night to apol-ogize. He definitely believes in the legend as his grandfather destroyed one of the vampires. He wants Van Helsing to accompany him and his 6 brothers to the village where the remaining 6 vampires rule. Meanwhile, Van Helsing's son Leland (Robin Stewart) gets into trouble with local gangster Leung Hon, when he agrees to escort widowed world traveler Vanessa Buren (Julie Ege) home. They are saved by 2 of Hsi's brothers. Vanessa agrees to finance their expedition provided she's allowed to go. Under the protests of the elder Van Helsing, she is allowed. 

Right off the bat, they are attacked by Hon's gang. The brothers (each has a specialty) plus their lone sister Mei Kwei (Szu Shih) defeat the gang and Hon gets an arrow through his neck. Later, in the village, the group battles the remaining 6 vampires and their undead army. They destroy 3 more then get ready for a final showdown. There's a big violent martial arts battle that ends tragically for some. After the final vampire is put down, Van Helsing meets his arch enemy. Dracula's disintegration scene seems longer than their actual battle. 

This has a little of everything: martial arts, weapons, vampires, walking dead, nudity, dismemberment. No classic but not the shit show it is sometimes described as. However, this was Hammer co-production with The Shaw Brothers studio and there were a lot of “communication prob-lems” between the two directors on the film, the English Roy Ward Baker and the Chinese Cheh Chang. A sequel was planned but poor box office performance shelved that idea.

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Monster Rule Ok!

 

 (imdb)

THE MONSTER CLUB-1981-Aramis (Vincent Price), a vampire bites R. Chetwynd Hayes (John Carradine), the horror writer. Aramis then takes the writer to “The Monster Club” so he can get some ideas and The Viewers do “Monsters Rule OK”. After Aramis explains the genealogy of vampires and werewolves we get our first story in this anthology. A con artist couple have a scheme to swindle a lonely unusual looking guy Raven (James Laurenson) when the girl Angela (Barbara Kellerman) helps him catalog his collections. He creeps her out but she also feels sorry for him. Her boyfriend George (Simon Ward) wants to make a big score and when the guy proposes George wants her to marry him. Raven says he is a “shadmock” and can never whistle. He throws a costume party with his relatives. Angela is caught robbing his safe and he whistles turning her into a monstrosity much to the surprise of George when she visits him. 

BA Robertson performs. Then, vampire/film producer Limton Busotsky (Anthony Steel) shows a scene from his upcoming movie. This is the second story, a young, bullied boy wonders about the night work his father (Richard Johnson) does. His mother (Britt Ekland) says he was a nobleman in Europe. A priest (Donald Pleasence) urges the boy to discover why dad sleeps all day. The boy discovers dad is a vampire and the priest is a vampire hunter. The vampire turns the tables on his hunters in the comical finale. 

Then the band Night performs “Stripper”. The 3rd story is about a “Humgoo”. A grouchy American director (Stuart Whitman) goes to scout a shooting sight in a remote village. An old man (Patrick Magee) tells him the village is run by The Elders. The decrepit townspeople force him to stay. He meets a young girl Luna (Lesley Dunlop) who informs him that the whole village is made up of ghouls. From a diary he learns how some evil ghouls took over the village. The only place they won't go is a church, so he hides out there with Luna, who is half human. They escape but Luna is killed. He's picked up by some ghoul policemen and taken back for “the great eating”. In the end, Aramis makes a great case for allowing a “hume” in the club. Everyone dances to The Pretty Things doing the title song. 

This was the last film produced by Milton Subotsky, who in the 1970's, along with his partner Max J. Rosenberg produced many horror films under the Amicus banner. This was an independent production, however. 

The stories are based on ones written by real horror & ghost story writer R. Chetwynd Hayes who didn't like the movie or Carradine's portrayal of him (he thought the actor too old). The filmmakers had wanted Sir Christopher Lee but he turned it down. It's also the last film directed by the great Roy Ward Baker. Most folks seem to run this movie down and admittedly it's no classic, it's just a fun combo of horror, comedy and music.

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Switcheroo

 

 (imdb)

DOCTOR JEKYLL & SISTER HYDE-1971-During the Jack the Ripper time, Dr. Henry Jekyll (Ralph Bates; in LUST FOR A VAMPIRE the same year) writes a testimonial that turns into a flashback. Jekyll is working on an anti-virus vaccine. When the pompous but crazy Prof. Robertson (Gerald Sim) says it would take too long to perfect his serum, Jekyll becomes obsessed with doing it quicker, working day and night continuously. He's experimenting with female hormones using corpses from a morgue. When he runs out of corpses, he hires Burke (Ivor Dean) & Hare (Tony Calvin) to help him. You know what that means. After some experiments with flies, Jekyll takes his own concoction and becomes a woman (Martine Beswick). She becomes Jack The Ripper in this early gender bender horror story directed by Roy Ward Baker and written by Brian Clemens for Hammer Pictures.

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Amicus Anthology

 

 (imdb)

ASYLUM-1972-A young Dr. Martin (Robert Powell) has a job interview in an insane asylum where the head doctor Rutherford has gone insane and is now a patient. Or so says his replacement (Patrick Magee). He says if Martin can identify the loony doc from the other patients, he gets a position.

The first story, “Frozen Fear” is related by Bonnie (Barbara Parkins) and how her lover Walter (Richard Todd) murdered his wife with an ax, chopped up her body and put it in a freezer. The pieces come back to life and kill hubby. Bonnie has to fight the pieces too and winds up insane and disfigured.

Then comes the tale “The Weird Tailor”. Bruno (Barry Morse), a tailor who can't pay his rent, is visited by a Mr. Smith (Peter Cushing) who wants the tailor to make a special suit for his son. He needs the suit to bring his son back to life. After he accidentally kills Smith, Bruno wants to burn the suit. His wife (Ann Firbank) wants to call the police. Fortunately, she puts the suit on Otto the dummy. An episode of Thriller is based on the same story.

In the third story “Lucy Comes to Stay”, a woman named Barbara (Charlotte Rampling) comes to live with her stuffy brother George (James Villiers) after a mental breakdown. She has an annoyingly cheerful nurse called Higgins (Megs Jenkins). After Barbara takes some pills, her mysterious friend Lucy (Britt Eklund) shows up and convinces her that George is trying to kill her. But Lucy is just an illusion.

Last up is “Manikins of Horror”. Dr. Byron (Herbert Lom) makes little dolls that he says he can bring to life through thought control, which he does in the finale but there's a fatal twist ending for poor Dr. Martin. 

This is a cool horror anthology from Amicus with all the stories written by Robert Bloch who had performed a similar duty the year before on THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD. Director Roy Ward Baker's previous horror movie had been DR. JEYKLL AND SISTER HYDE (1971).

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