Barry Forshaw
Three new studies of the cinema of the macabre each illuminate the fashion in which talented filmmakers have enriched and repurposed the genre: Gothic for Radicals: The Horror Films of Gordon Hessler and Christopher Wicking by Steve Haberman, The Cinema Coven: Witches, Witchcraft and Women’s Filmmaking by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and an entry in the ‘British Cult Cinema’ series, The Hammer Thriller by Bruce G. Hallenbeck. While each of these writers has their own individual take on the genre, they are united in the perceptiveness of their analysis and the individuality of their approach.
Steve Haberman is celebrated as one of the most perceptive commentators on the horror genre, and Gothic for Radicals, a study of the collaboration between two British filmmakers, director Gordon Hessler and screenwriter Christopher Wicking, is – at a stroke – the definitive study of the four original essays in the macabre that the duo made for the independent production company American International Pictures: The Oblong Box, Scream and Scream Again, Cry of the Banshee and the more Poe-based Murders in the Rue Morgue. Over lunches, this writer would discuss with the late Chris Wicking the making of his films (and Steve Haberman quotes the conversations with him I recorded in my British Gothic Cinema). Such discussions were often a wry commentary on how his work was compromised by the demands of the production company – Chris would never, for instance, claim that The Oblong Box was the film they both intended. But he was prepared to accept praise from people like myself that Scream and Scream Again was one of the most intriguing and complex entries in the genre – even though he would lament the interference that this film received. However, Wicking’s customary interest in investigating the darker recesses of the human psyche still leaves its imprint on this flawed but provocative film.
For this writer, it was in a little place off the Edgware Road (to quote Graham Greene) – in a long-vanished cinema – that I had a disquieting experience (but of a pleasurable kind), seeing, on its first run in 1970, Scream and Scream Again. Like most viewers of the day, I would have had a variety of expectations on entering the cinema: the producer was Milton Subotsky, behind the various Amicus anthology movies (of varying quality but always offering something of interest), while the film appeared under the American International umbrella (of which the same might be said). And then there was the cast, featuring the three most prestigious names in horror films of the day: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. The scenario – as far as one could tell – concerned a vampiric killer wreaking havoc in London. All of this pointed to an intriguing hour and thirty-five minutes, no doubt along generic lines, but delivered with some panache. But while the second half of that sentence is true, the actual experience of the film is quite unlike anything most of the stars had been involved in before.
In Wicking’s screenplay for Scream and Scream Again, there were certainly the requisite horror elements, but the film is in fact science fiction. And in the numerous ways in which it both subverts the expectations aroused by the genre and even audaciously frustrates what might appear to be its own narrative trajectory, the film is in many respects a rule-breaker – it’s not hard to see why producer (and original writer) Milton Subotsky was unhappy with the result. And one of the pleasures afforded by the piece is not just the participation of the three starry principals (two of whom, while excellent, are essentially cameo players – their presence here is as much for marquee value as anything else). The central character is a tough, no-nonsense cop, Detective Superintendent Bellaver, played by the excellent British character actor Alfred Marks, for whom this is something of a career best. Having established him as a brusque protagonist, Wicking then proceeds to have him fall victim to one of the film’s superhuman killers – a Janet Leigh-like premature demise that leaves the audience gasping (and, what’s more, rather cast adrift). The police are on the trail of a young man (played by Michael Gothard) who is haunting the discotheques of London and is possibly the blood-drinking killer who has already committed murder (the first killing we see in the film is grimly squalid – nasty, unspecified things happening to a young woman in a suburban tunnel).
The sheer complexity of the various narratives here perhaps reflects the cineaste tastes of its creators. Christopher Wicking (who, like most of his generation, had grown up on the challenging films of Alain Resnais and Michelangelo Antonioni) was excited by the possibilities of non-linear narrative. But an alertness to developments in European art cinema was not the only characteristic that Wicking shared with director Gordon Hessler; both were well aware of the imperative that a science fiction/horror scenario such as this would have to deliver a specific source of evil and mayhem.
This is not to say that we’re talking about a perfectly realised, organic piece of work here. Like all films that attempt to reflect fashion trends, the look of the film (which was made in 1969) is now one of its less-endearing features, with the gaudy velvet jackets of some of the male characters and (in particular) the discotheque scenes looking notably dated. But the jittery combination of an arthouse ethos and almost continuous hyper-violence (not to mention female nudity in the autopsy scenes) makes for a peculiarly unique combination – one that is quite deliberately worrying in some aspects (such as the tricky S&M elements in the various murders).
‘Our efforts,’ Chris told me, ‘were not received well by our bosses (Milton simply didn’t get it), but I’m pleased to see that the reputation of the film continues to grow with the years. We subsequently worked on Cry of the Banshee (1970), but the final results were deeply compromised – and by this time, the high esteem in which we were held by AIP had become something different, and Gordon and I had to learn to guard our tongues. We had a notion of drawing modern political parallels with the Banshee script, but we realised we would have to keep that quiet.’
Steve Haberman’s persuasively written study of the Hessler/Wicking corpus of films is second to none, illuminating every nook and cranny while also setting the films in the context of genre cinema of the day – and pointing out how they repeatedly invert and repurpose familiar tropes. This, of course, will be no surprise to those familiar with Haberman’s trenchant commentaries for a wide variety of Blu-ray discs.
Similarly, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is one of the most insightful commentators on genre cinema, both in her books and in her informed but approachable commentaries provided for Blu-ray discs. Her latest book, The Cinema Coven: Witches, Witchcraft and Women’s Filmmaking, supplies both a panoply of the treatment of witchcraft in the cinema and, pertinently, an analysis of the contribution of female filmmakers to the field. It is obviously a truism to say that the treatment of women in popular culture can reflect such things in wider society, and the subjugation of the female sex – which still holds sway in many areas today – is, and should be, an element in the examination of gender issues. Heller-Nicholas interprets with keen perception how the admixture of women and the supernatural can be used to interrogate gender issues, and the complexity of various presentations in horror films is ripe for study. Key films in this study include The Blair Witch Project, The Craft and Suspiria (both the original 1977 version and the 2018 remake), perceptively examined by Heller-Nicholas.
The initial chapter focuses on The Blair Witch Project, with its theme of a woman attempting to finish shooting a documentary. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s film functions both as a flesh-creeping entertainment and – perhaps unwittingly – as an examination of the limits placed on female achievement. But, as the author says, if this film is anything to go by, becoming a film director is hardly a wise career path for young women; the distressed heroine accepts responsibility for what is happening to her and her male colleagues. ‘I was very naïve and very stupid and I shouldn’t put other people in danger; it was all about me and my selfish motives.’ But Heller-Nicholas avoids drawing a simplistic dichotomy between male oppression and female vulnerability; she is primarily concerned with female possibilities, and while the text is couched in ‘academic light’ mode, it is always intelligent and provocative.
It’s always a source of interest to UK writers like myself that American film critics such as Bruce G. Hallenbeck are such admirers of the very British products of Hammer Films, but perhaps the perspective granted by being across the ocean ensures that such books as Hallenbeck’s The Hammer Thriller are full of new insights. Hallenbeck’s book is an essential purchase for anyone interested in the thriller (as opposed to the horror film), a very particular byway of Hammer Films – but then that’s true of all three books discussed here. Hammer’s inconsistent, but often highly accomplished, black-and-white psychological horror subgenre began with the sublimely chilling Taste of Fear, directed by Seth Holt in 1961. A vulnerable young heroine (Susan Strasberg) is under extreme psychological strain, in a film that borrows from two prestigious exemplars – Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (out of Boileau and Narcejac) and Hitchcock’s Psycho – and adopts the notion that mental illness (usually reluctantly described as schizophrenia) is the source of disturbed or violent behaviour. Seth Holt’s Taste of Fear remains the among the best: derivative, certainly, but with the director’s casual mastery of suspense effortlessly elevating the film above most similar fare. (Later entries, such as those directed by Freddie Francis – Nightmare (1964) and Paranoiac (1963) – are more fitfully successful but have their virtues.) Hallenbeck’s comprehensive study takes in both the early straightforward thrillers and lovingly celebrates every Hammer entry in this subgenre with the same mix of perception and enthusiasm that he brought to The Hammer Vampire and The Amicus Anthology.
Gothic for Radicals: The Horror Films of Gordon Hessler and Christopher Wicking by Steve Haberman is published by BearManor Media
The Cinema Coven: Witches, Witchcraft and Women’s Filmmaking by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas is published by McFarland
The Hammer Thriller by Bruce G. Hallenbeck is published by Hemlock Books