Jay's Movie of the Week #13: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee are as comforting a team as Abbott and Costello, Martin and Lewis, or Steve and Edie. Hammer films, be they horror or a mystery-thriller like this, are as comforting as house slippers. Mannered, stage-bound, and always hinting at much darker thrills than they show, this studio produced gem after gem. All together, it's a match-up equal to chocolate and peanut butter.

The Hound of the Baskervilles is perhaps the most famous of the Sherlock Holmes stories, and this is one of many versions of the film. Cushing as Holmes and Andre Morell as Watson, however, have a take on the characters that seems somewhat... breezy. Cushing's Holmes is more a sharp and insightful showoff than someone truly driven by their genius intellect and preternatural powers of observation. Just the smartest man in a roomful of dim bulbs.

He's also a fairly emotional Holmes who makes some rash mistakes and assumptions, which is a dimension you don't see enough in this character. Invited to investigate the death of the lord of Baskerville Hall, where the prologue showed us a murder committed by the debauchery-minded Sir Hugo, who was then himself killed by "something."

Sherlock Holmes, never one to suffer fools gladly in any incarnation, agrees to investigate the death and descends upon Sir Henry (Christopher Lee). The son of the deceased Sir Charles, he's the new lord of Baskerville Hall, and a bit of a jerk. (Okay, he's a big jerk.) Sir Charles dropped dead, perhaps running from the mythical hell hound that curses the family. It's equally possible, though, an escaped murderer named Selden might have had a hand in the proceedings. So is the threat something supernatural, or just a prosaic murderer? Worse, will the family heart condition knock off Sir Henry before anything else gets a chance?

One A Week Reviews #18: Shock Waves

Look, I know this review is 2 weeks overdue, and you know this review is 2 weeks overdue. I got a lot going on. I promise 52 by the end of the year... I shoulda just been less specific about when they'd be coming out (heh). Enjoy!

"Sea spits up what it can't keep down."

There's high-concept movies, and then there's Shock Waves. An Elite Squad of Underwater Nazi Zombies.
 A 1977 schlock-feast that opens with a teaser regarding a group of never-captured Nazi Stormtroopers, then moves on to a pretty messed up pretty lady who's been adrift for who knows how long on the ocean, namely Brooke Adams, who spends a short period of the film in a teeny bikini so memorable you'll think she wore it exclusively through the whole thing. She's on a cruise with Luke Halpin, of Flipper fame, and a motley crew of unknowns that happens to be skippered by John Carradine.

After a disturbing, dreamlike afternoon, they find themselves rammed by a "Ghost Ship" in the middle of the night. As their little ship has suffered major hull damage they have to row out -in the least sea-worthy dinghy imaginable - to the nearest island. They lose their skipper, as bony old Carradine has drowned, and come upon a beautiful, dilapidated old Biltmore Hotel. The hotel is a major find as a location. One scene, where the passengers find an old Gramophone playing is actually and effectively spooky. It's air of decadent indulgence gone to seed serves it's resident well, as this scene also leads to the introduction of big, bad Peter Cushing. As characters start to turn up dead, the others start to investigate and quickly learn their host, Cushing, is a Nazi commander who's been exiled on the island for years. He led a squad of engineered troops who're now the undead, the "todenkorps"(? - my spelling is phonetic and I know barely any German). He sank their boat 30 years prior and now they're back... and their timing sucks.

Ghostly, underwater photography of walking and creepily swimming Nazi Zombies is quite effective. It's almost overpowered by the droning score, but still manages to be genuinely creepy. There's an overall dreamlike feeling to the film. It starts out leisurely and engaging, but eventually just seems damn slow. Sadly, it's slow enough you have time to think about the plot holes. Things like Why do the zombies look so good after being underwater for 30 years and uh, dude, what happened to their boat tend to spring to mind. If you ask the questions, chalk them up to "Dream Logic" as it fits the movie nicely.

That said, if you're in the mood to give yourself over to a story with a leisurely pace, you can do a whole lot worse. Shock Waves is a '70's curio but a pretty good time with great atmosphere... especially when you consider that more that 95% of this flick takes place in the daylight. It's pacing reminded me of Let's Scare Jessica To Death, another love-it-or-hate-it mood piece (one I happen to favor).

In the end, though, this really reminded me of something along the lines of an old eight-page EC Comics moralizing horror story stretched out to 85 minutes. Is it still worth a watch? Yes.

The Yucky Movies of October: The Flesh And The Fiends

4) The Flesh And The Fiends

The Flesh And The Fiends is a creepy black and white horror take on the Burke and Hare bodysnatching murders starring Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, and Billie Whitelaw. In the late 1820s, Burke and Hare played first body snatchers, then murders, to supply a medical school with fresh cadavers to dissect. Enterprising capitalism, no doubt. Though there's a compression of the time frame of real events, on the whole it hews to the facts pretty closely.

There's some moody atmosphere, downright unsettling corpses, and excellent performances. It's really more a historical thriller than a horror film, though the matter at hand is pretty ghastly. Donald Pleasence is amazing as Hare, a reminder of what a good actor he was, even if he was well known for doing anything for a paycheck. I know Whitelaw mostly from her later roles, so her rawboned, youthful beauty is something of a shock. Cushing's Doctor Knox (a real person, and a real monster in my opinion) is just as condescending and elitist as you could imagine such a man would have to be. How much he knew about the provenance of the bodies he bought in real life, I don't know, but I hope he was more in deep denial than total collusion. Through the course of the film up to the last five minutes, I couldn't quite put my finger on what was unsettling me about his appearance, but using make up to create a heavy left eyelid was a subtle external gesture towards the deformed man inside that really worked for me.

A real quality gem of a film, I'd heard of this one though never seen it before now. Seek it out as it's definitely worth a look.