Film Reviews by NP

Doug (Jody Quigley) and his beautiful fiancée (Katrina Law) have their blissful engagement party interrupted by a former boyfriend, which despite Lori’s tearful apologies, incites Doug to drive really fast and accidently kill her. It’s hard to sympathise much with such petulance, despite the audience being treated to many subsequent images of Doug struggling to continue life alone … whilst apparently being haunted. Wrong of me, isn’t it, to mention Doug is far from heart-throb material, and how lucky he is to be with Lori and that perhaps should have exercised a little more humility?

Crusty old Woody (Thomas Roy) in the hardware store warns of vengeful spirits residing where Doug is living. Certainly Doug’s dreams are persuasively creepy. And yet his waking hours are cheered slightly by the affectionate neighbour Jamie (Lili Bordán), herself suffering the repercussions of a troubled past – and inevitably, sex is had, with Lori barely cold in her grave.

The spirit, which appears to be Lori and screeching newborn daughter, is not happy about Jamie. The familiar conflict between what is real and what is being imagine ensues – but to the film’s great credit, it is never specifically indicated that the hauntings and violence are entirely in Doug’s mind. Although there is a great temptation to think of the film as too restrained in its horrors, it is a persuasive examination of grief and mourning. Only when (SPOILER) Doug - who has mentally tortured himself that he killed Lori - also kills Jamie, do things become intriguing on a different level. The final scene with Doug enjoying family time with the three dead people in his life, redeems some of the film’s earlier uneventfulness.

This micro-budget independent film opens with the grisly murder of a young lady, involving the removal of one of her eyes, sewing up of the mouth and the slashing of the tendons. The miscreant is one of two brothers who spend much of the running time committing similar atrocities, while wearing a variety of masks – a skull-fashioned motorcycle helmet and an elaborate welding/gas mask.

Jack Chaplin (Robert Render) continues to investigate the case despite being officially sacked from the force, aided by the sometimes incomprehensible Detective Hatcher (Dutch actor Jean-Paul Van Der Velde). The macho, New York style of tough-talking dialogue would be difficult for anyone to perform, and often sounds very unconvincing from this cast.

The masks are removed earlier than is the norm for such reveals, and the acting from the two mentally deficient young miscreants is the best seen throughout the run (the two feral brothers eventually fall out over a pretty blond. This leads to one killing the other), although they appear too well groomed to be the outcasts they are supposed to be - in fact, the police are more dishevelled. The end reveal may or may not have an explanation for that …

The reason for the killings is finally explained in a heavy stream of dialogue that reveals a twist so utterly bizarre, it is likely that no-one will expect it. Many will be unable to take it seriously, but it might explain some of the stilted line delivery of Hatcher. These scenes are classic examples of the villains taking time to explain the plot to the hero moments before the game is up. In-keeping with the difficult-to-stomach style of the film, and the mind-blowing revelation about Hatcher (which I won’t reveal), his being carted off to face justice is … going to be difficult to carry out.

‘The Blood Harvest’ is a strange mix of styles, a far from obvious way of telling a slasher story. Director, producer and writer George Clarke makes incredibly good use of the £10, 000 budget, his mix of close-ups and shaking camera movements creating a sense of pace, even when the plot simply lines up one victim after another. This is a refreshing way of presenting horror and that alone makes up for the film’s short-comings.

As evil towers go, the one featured in this film certainly earns its stripes in the opening scene. Stabbings, spiders, dismemberment, naked corpses and lots of blood ensure our attention is immediately grabbed.

So too are the familiar faces for the time – Anthony Valentine, William Lucas, Derek Fowlds and Dennis Price head a superficially impressive cast. Superficial, because the younger characters, the ‘kids’ are neither so well-known nor as compelling. Wrestling with dialogue that makes the excesses of ‘Dracula AD 1972’ positively conservative, these kids are a dull, casually randy bunch (the cod American accents don’t help). The females are especially tiresome – as part of a group sent to investigate grisly murders on Snape Island, they are only ever concerned with the sexual failure of their partners and the affairs they plan to have. Who thought Free Love could be so spite-fuelled?

One reason why the opening sequence is effective is because the island, and the waters surrounding it, are swathed in foggy darkness. Exposed to ‘daylight’, the cheapness of the sets and back-projection becomes hugely apparent. A cut-price film is no bad thing, but when the characterisations and plot is equally threadbare, attention falls away pretty quickly, despite the cackling killer-on-the-loose.

The frank attitude to sex is surprising for a British 1972 film. The feeling I get is that Director Jim O’Connolly over-spiced the dialogue with references to sex and drugs in a bid to compensate for the lacklustre budget and plot. Despite an effectively fiery ending and the reveal of a secondary killer, the 90 minutes running time seems a lot longer.

Produced and directed by Hammer executive Michael Carreras, this film opens up in classic low-budget style: footage of camels tearing across a real desert fade into close-ups of blacked-up actors in a studio set, where the elderly father of drippy, fickle-hearted heroine Annette Dubois (Jeanne Roland) is killed and has his hand removed by ruffians. Carreras also wrote this under the pseudonym Henry Younger.

‘The Curse…’ has not found a huge amount of favour from fans over the years, but I really like it. Apart from the opening sequence, it looks to be an expensive production, features a first rate cast, features some gruesome moments – and features Michael Ripper as a wonderful (if unlikely) wide-eyed Arab called Achmed.

George Pastell makes an appearance, the second cast member from Hammer’s original Mummy film to appear here. Fred Clarke, renowned American comic actor, plays the larger than life Alexander King (who, it seems, invented the term Turkish Delight in this film) arrogantly determined to milk as much money from the Mummy as possible, but lives (or dies) to regret it. Jack Gwillim is very good as pickled, deflated Sir Giles Dalrymple (whose demise is the film’s highpoint in my view), whilst underrated actor Terence Morgan excels as villainous and debonair Adam Beauchamp, who is more interesting than stuffy square jawed hero John Bray (Ronald Howard).

The Mummy (Dickie Owen) is a curio. He seems slight compared with the usual culprits, and has a clay-like face, giving him a Golem-like aspect. But he is directed very well, and his kills are often accompanied by nothing but the sound of his deep, rhythmical breathing, which makes up for his less than intimidating bearing.

It is true to say that the story takes a while to get going, but is a solid telling of typical Mummy revenge, and certainly livens up once the resurrected Ra-Antef begins his killing spree, and remains compelling until the exciting sewer-based finale, in which Beauchamp is also relieved of his hand.

This wonderfully directed zombie film is the sequel to 2010’s ‘The Dead’ which featured an army of the living dead making their deadly way across Africa. Here, as you might imagine, a similar cataclysm has infected India.

What I really enjoy about this is Directors Howard and Jonathan Ford’s worthy use of the incredible landscapes, and the clever way in which such sun-drenched open spaces can either be breathtakingly beautiful or deadly and remote.

The casting is very good, with Joseph Millson as the only Westerner Nicholas Burton – a refreshingly likeable, ego-free central character – and Ishani Sharma (Meenu Mishra), his pregnant girlfriend. Unsurprisingly, her condition does not please her father (Sandip Datta Gupta), who is otherwise concerned with his own infected wife (Poonam Mathur).

Where this stumbles a little is in the actual storyline, which is basically Burton and the appealing orphaned boy Javed (Anand Goyal) with whom he meets, continually attempting to escape the attentions of unthreatening, lurching zombies. Instead of a progressing narrative, certain set-pieces stand out – Ishani’s questioning of Hinduism and its teachings of reincarnation which is in direct contrast to the walking cadavers causing carnage around them, for one. Another involves a mother and daughter trapped in a car with the corpse of the husband and father, with the living dead trudging ever forward. Telling them to cover their ears whilst he shoots away the lock to the seat that traps them, Burton then shoots them both dead instead. And, although the zombies are not always the most frightening or energetic, scenes of them standing, swaying, waiting, scattered across the unforgiving landscape while Burton attempts to escape them are very effective.

From the opening credits, this could only ever be a Hammer film. James Bernard’s trademark scores, a matte paining of a castle in the distance (which makes a very effective screensaver), a young girl in distress and Peter Cushing tinkering in an ornate laboratory: formulaic such an intro may be, but it produces an instant warm glow in retrospect – which is probably the polar opposite of the effect hoped for back in 1964.

Wheeling in a fresh corpse, Nurse Hoffman (Barbara Shelley) is somewhat alarmed when the hand that falls from the stretcher breaks in half, as if it is made of stone. Pretty soon, the dead girl’s bohemian fiancé has hung himself, revealed in close-up. The warm glow becomes distinctly frosty.

So too, are the characters we meet in this production. On seeing the Medusa, or more specifically her glare, characters become aged. That is, they appear to be sprinkled with talcum powder in a cheap looking effect that is never convincing. Christopher Lee’s Professor Karl Meister comes already doused in talc, to lend maturity to such a man of learning, pompous and aloof. Even the avuncular Cushing is starchy in this. Only Richard Pasco succeeds in injecting some naturalism into his role, the almost-hero Paul Heitz. We cry out for a Michael Ripper or a Miles Malleson cameo to lighten up the mood.

Whilst professional and polished, the production is somewhat perfunctory, and there is a damning coolness to the sporadic ‘scares’ – whereas in reality, only the finale, with Barbara Shelley’s transformation into the deadly Megaera, succeeds in providing any shivers, and the less than stellar realisation of the creature – complete with adorable plastic snakes - ensures that even the climactic scares are pretty bloodless (which, considering Hammer caused a sensation in the late 1950s with its blood red horror that in turn both repulsed and fascinated audiences, is disappointing). Like ‘Curse of the Werewolf (1960)’, the thrills are strictly confined to the last ten minutes, which is asking too much of this particular audience member.

The term exploitation has been used to lump together softcore horror films, mainly from Europe during the 1960s and 1970s, although Hammer also became bitten by the bug in its latter years. Now, we feel we have progressed so smoothly that the term isn’t used any more. And that’s because such a titillating way of teasing the audience with choreographed sexuality has become the norm. Here, we have the dreaded ‘group of friends’, one celebrating a birthday, who go looking for a beach house and instead discover The Lake House. As one character, superficially hard-to-please Stacey (India Autry) says, “A beach house needs to have a beach.” The reply, “Yeah, I got that memo.”

The friends here are the usual stylised, buff bodied, greased back, laconic, horny collection torpidly passed off as ‘normal’. Teens of indiscriminate age whose idea of a really good put-down is to say accusingly “You let me work out on my own today.” To break the perfect collective, there is a moderately over-weight guy who ‘gets by’ by constantly making apologetic weight jokes to justify his inclusion.

The story: years ago, a young boy was drowned in the lake on Clinton Road and may be haunting the Lake House. As nothing in particular happens, these forever wholesomely tattooed 24-hour party people fill the running time by having cosmetic arguments, only to later reward each other with themselves. When one of their number – Jillian (Leah Jones) - threatens to tarnish the perfect party bubble by not feeling well, a lethargy sweeps across the ensemble. After a while, they no longer even have the energy to twerk (dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance).

Away from the sporty birthday revellers, the location is, as is often the case, a blessed relief. Scenic, expansive and remote-looking enough to convince of sinister goings-on far away enough from society to be, in theory, moderately effective. You’d hope. Still, the mood slithers from high-spirited party action to posture and ponder-ment now things aren’t quite excellent anymore. When one sleek bodied seductress disappears – you know, the one who wasn’t feeling well – the reaction from the others is minimal. A manly hand-slap and they continue as before. Camaraderie for those left behind, whilst the birthday boy laments his suddenly imperfect celebrations.

“I ain’t scared of s**t. That’s white people’s s**t. Coloured people don’t do ghosts.” Pure poetry.

Without listing further non-eventful contrivances, ‘Lake House’ proves to be an excruciating and anaemic haunting effort with a little scary music interrupting the rap beats and lead-ups to sex scenes that don’t happen. A little high-speed body-distortion (owing a lot to various exorcism films) and that’s your lot as far as ‘scares’ are concerned. Suddenly, the inclusion of some uplifting music alerts us to the fact the film is ending. But wait! A post-credits sequence features desperately overlong web-cam footage of another car full (of what appear to be four twelve-year olds driving to Clinton Road, mocking the existence of any haunting. This scene seems to go on forever. For a lead-up to any threatened sequel, it spends its entire duration overstaying its welcome). It’s difficult to know how an audience is supposed to react to this film, if at all, but who cares? Horrifying, for all the wrong reasons.

Greece, 1912. It must be pretty miserable to hear that a spreading plague necessitates strict confinement to your home; when one of your house-guests is Boris Karloff, that misery takes on a new dimension.

‘Isle of the Dead’ is an RKO horror film, one of a series produced by Val Lewton. Whereas Universal had cornered the monster market, with increasingly exploitative meet-ups between Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster and The Wolfman, Lewton specialised in less obvious, more psychological dramas. The horror here is more prevalent in what you don’t see. Whereas 1942’s ‘Cat People’ may be the most successful example of this approach, Lewton produced a hugely impressive body of work, among which this production stands tall.

When the shadow of Gen. Nikolas Pherides (Karloff) falls across a scene, there is an instant atmosphere of jeopardy, of cruelty, disease and fear. Pherides has a reputation for cruel efficiency, and he brings this to his authority when dealing with the house-full of potential plague carriers, himself amongst their number.

The stand-out scene for me is when Katherine Emery as Mrs. Mary St. Aubyn (Katherine Emery) falls into a cataleptic trance, is subsequently buried, and wakes screaming in her casket. We hear her fear and desperate scratching as the camera lingers on her incarcerated wooden tomb, the shadow of blowing branches fallen across it, relentless drip-dripping of the damp stonework upon it. The box splinters and is pushed open as the camera maddeningly pulls away to another scene. Her friend Thea (Ellen Drew) goes in search of the escapee in a perfect studio-set nightmare, her white nightdress blowing in the wind – St. Aubyn has seemingly been driven out of her mind by the experience and parades the house and its surrounding grounds like a vengeful ghost. No-one is safe it seems, especially Pherides, who, for all his sins emerges as a kind of misunderstood anti-hero …

Melodramatic it may be, there’s no denying the intensity brings with it a true spirit of dread.

Baroness Varga was put to death 400 years ago for her Bathory-style attraction to human blood, and she put a curse on the place. She promised to return one day, and it appears that time has come.

Hungarian actress Nadja Henkowa plays Frau Wanda Krock, the housekeeper, who bears a passing resemblance to singer/songwriter PJ Harvey. She is is head of a coven of stern eye-browed maidservants who ‘welcome’ a disparate crew of travellers forced to seek refuge in her castle due to stormy weather (Henkowa’s performance is my favourite in the film – a fine balance of brooding menace, fearsome rage and passionate sensuality). The characters address each other with exquisite politeness, but a tone of condescension and abhorrence. In the great cellars of the castle, you see, erotic rituals are taking place that imply the maidservants are not so straight-laced after all.

Apart from Henkowa, who steals every scene she is in, Marie Forså is very good as Helga. Her transformation from seemingly ‘innocent’ to something far more provocative is well played.

Everything you need for a typical Euro-horror is here – much stilted acting, bare-breasted erotica, unconvincing day-for-night shots and a genuine crumbling castle set in spacious, beautiful locations.

This Swedish/Swiss/German collaboration is directed by Joseph W. Sarno, who began his pioneering work in the sexploitation genre in 1961 with ‘Nude in Charcoal’, before venturing into more explicit territory.

The story is regularly padded out/interrupted/enlivened (the choice is yours) with lingering sex scenes of varied persuasion. The resulting film is vastly overlong and has a disappointingly low-key ending, but nevertheless, is a very enjoyable example of its genre. The physical and mental connection between vampire-like curses and sensuality has always been a selling point, and is portrayed quite explicitly and very effectively here. Although it could be argued that the whole venture is just an excuse for lots of heaving breasts and softcore activity, and that the performances (from a cast who are not speaking in their native tongues) are typically ‘Euro trashy’, this is a powerful meeting of sexuality and dark rituals - complete with phallus-shaped candles and a tribal drum-beat that will stay with you long after the film has ended!

Of all films I have seen helmed by Spanish Director Jess Franco, this is far and away my favourite. It may lack the exotic juxtaposition of horrific incident occurring in beautiful sun-kissed arenas, but what we have here is a satisfactorily recreated Victorian London, with a talented cast, and a consistent story that doesn’t meander.

Many events take place in the spacious ‘Pike’s Hole’ tavern, a convincingly cockney meeting ground, where ‘Jack’ finds many of his victims. The death of Marika (Lina Romay) is the most gratuitous of all, with a protracted scene suggesting Orloff has violent sex with his victims as the life fades from them. Inspector Selby (Andreas Mannkopff) proves to be a very effective foil for Orloff. Hans Gaugler is also excellent as Breidger, the blind man. In fact, the cast as a whole is very good, and a lot better than usual with Franco projects. Probably this is because he is working with a larger budget here – and it shows in other ways too. Beams of smoky light casting shadows through the branches of trees. Apart from a few panoramic shots of Big Ben and various London buildings, the bulk of this is shot in Zuerich Switzerland, and there is much genuine night-time filming, a very expensive procedure.

The storyline is a good one. There’s no point in trying to do a ‘whodunit’ – when you cast Klaus Kinski in a film about Jack the Ripper, he could hardly be playing a peripheral character. The intrigue is why he commits his atrocities, why does he appear to carve chunks off his victims while they are still (barely) alive? Inspector Selby’s girlfriend Cynthia (played by Charlie’s daughter Josephine Chaplin) appears to have the answer due to her resemblance to his mother. With his final victim finally degraded, it is apt in a way that he be captured and taken away in a finale that is disappointingly tame compared to the effective macabre nature of the rest of the picture.

Back in 1999 we were all a lot younger. Then, the found-footage genre was virtually unknown, and ‘The Blair Witch Project’ all but introduced it to us. Meeting with critical acclaim and box office success upon its release (albeit helped by a carefully orchestrated internet build-up), it was a phenomena that spawned countless other found-footage productions of variable merit. Now 17 years later, does this second sequel emerge as Daddy to the genre, or is it just another shaky webcam outing? The answer is pretty much both – it would be grossly unfair to expect it to provide the same level of hype or impact as the original, and indeed it does not. But it is very enjoyable.

James (James Allen McCune) leads an expedition into the legendry woods to locate Heather, his sister, who went missing in the original. Of the group, poor Ashley (Corbin Reid), more than most, has reason to regret her decision to partake in this venture. Her spreading foot wound provides the goriest moments this film has to offer, and yet ultimately, nothing really comes of this, other than to make us wince.

Why does James wait 16 years before trying to find his sister, and what reason would he have to think that she is still alive and in the woodlands after all this time? He was 4 when she disappeared, so perhaps his parents insisted he waited until maturity hits him before he embarked on the mission, but a word explaining this would have been appreciated.

The group are a fairly agreeable bunch – certainly they are fairly attractive, which is a concession for mainstream films now, but they are not the catwalk fodder we have been ‘treated to’ in other productions. And yet, where we got to know only three of them in the original, and they were all fairly strong characters, here there are more of them and naturally they have to share the screen time which means we care less about them as individuals. Perhaps Peter (Brandon Scott) stands out the most: initially heavily sceptical of the mission (and understandably, because local boy Lane’s (Wes Robinson) sincerity is sometimes a little intense – although Peter is equally flawed in being so blatantly scorning of him) he nevertheless succumbs to growing fear.

Of the original, the most effective element was knowing that each subsequent night the lost teens spent in the forest would provide terrors ever worse than before. Here, that is not an issue, because frighteningly, the night never ends, throwing the characters into disorientation. Something achieved very effectively here is their hopeless situation – for all they try and do to escape events, we know they may as well just lay down and die. The poor sods.

Towards the end, once they find the abandoned building (that according to investigations, does not actually exist), everything is thrown at the production: the haunted house, disembodied screams, a thunderstorm and manic confusion.

The subtlety that made the original so terrifying is sadly not in evidence here. Instead of the distant rustling in the trees and the possibility of human cries, everything is turned up to eleven – the creepy effects and the hysteria are all loud and all-surrounding. By the end, we are treated to some almost organic sounds suggesting the Blair Witch is all-encompassing, the house’s corridors comprised of ‘her’ innards. This and the endless night scenario expands on the hallucinogenic supernatural events prevalent in the unfairly lamented ‘Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows (2000’). Here, the climactic maelstrom is chaotic yet nicely frightening and leaves the story over for now but not disallowing the idea of a sequel. I hope we see one. This may be flawed, but it could have been one heck of a lot worse.

1971. No wonder so many horror films released at this time sank without trace. No DVDs, no VHS releases. The only time to catch these films was by seeing them at the cinema (or waiting for a possible television showing years later) – and there were so many. 1971 was like an Indian summer for horror – something of a last gasp, but a hugely prolific one.

This Belgian/Italian offering is directed by Jean Brismée and also known as ‘La Terrificante Notte del Demonio’. It boasts a terrific soundtrack composed by Alessandro Alessandroni (with mesmerising vocals from his sister Giulia.) Following a harrowing scene were, during a World War 2 air-raid, a woman dies delivering a child which is then stabbed to death by Baron von Rhoneberg (Jean Servais), we are brought up to date when a bus load of lost tourists arrives at the Baron’s castle, in search of somewhere to stay for the night. He is an alchemist in the grip of a curse involving a deal with the Devil, who has demanded the eldest daughter of each generation becomes a succubus.

As the tourists are shown to their rooms, the sinister butler Hans (Maurice De Groote) gives them a gruesome history of each room – such morbid, relentless tales become somewhat ludicrous in the telling; there is barely a curtain or a slab of stone that doesn’t hold some macabre secret – and each time, a claw-like pattern is left at the scene.

Into this classic setting, the tourists – including a feuding husband and wife, two attractive young women who discover they are lesbians (leading to inevitable softcore scenes), and a Richard Chamberlain-like priest – then meet a new guest. Lisa Müller (Erika Blanc) immediately attracts attention from the men and a certain jealousy from the women. Blanc’s sultry, pout-some presence and typically exotic, revealing clothing – as well as the way she moves lizard-like amongst them – sets her apart from the ordinary. Could she be the legendary succubus?

Her transformation from lithe, mysterious seductress into a mad-eyed, chiselled malignant spirit is hugely effective, a triumph of minimalist make-up and a powerhouse performance. Scary and deadly as she is, she isn’t quite the main monster here, for Satan himself appears. Another supremely frightening performance, this time from the skeletal (Daniel Emilfork) ensures we don’t forget the appearance of the Devil in any hurry – it is he who orchestrates events that land the tourists into the castle in the first place, and then to a more permanent state in a twist ending.

Ironically, only Müller and the priest (Jacques Monseau) remain at the end. Only after reading a synopsis of ‘The Devil’s Nightmare’ did I realise a further detail to this excellent, underrated euro-film – each death represents one of the Seven Deadly Sins, with the Priest volunteering to sacrifice his soul to save the others, representing Pride. A highly recommended low budget frightener.

This is another found footage film, where a convincing, likeable young couple stay in a remote house, hear noises at night, get up to investigate and find nothing. It is familiar territory and the frights are sparse, but it’s done so well, making such good use of what is a genuinely creepy Dartmoor location, it provides some good chills.

Tam Burke (Lachlan Nieboer) is a fledgling psychic investigator, and his cheerful, silly girlfriend Rose Ellis (Lisa Kerr) becomes increasingly unnerved by his insistence to stay in the remote country house – and understandably so: when Rose, with tears in her eyes, tells Tam that she wants to go home, we are all with her. To such an extent that we resent both Tam and Harvey Waller (Nick Julian) – a friend who shows up and is initially thought to have caused sinister damage in the kitchen (cutlery attaching itself to the ceiling and walls) – for ensuring that they all stay ‘just another night.’

As events threaten to overwhelm them, experts Professor Chessman (Robert Daws) and medium Muriel Roy (Kitty McGeever, in her last role) open up a dialogue with the spirit, or spirits. Once we have reached this plateau of tension, the film doesn’t quite know how to proceed, it seems to me. And so it stumbles slightly, falling back on shaky camera/screaming/blurring of events to cause familiar audience unease. Also familiar is Rose distancing herself from her friends as she seems to develop a ‘bond’ with whatever spirits are in the house.

I was not sure of the relevance of the seemingly imminent nuclear war, which is broadcast in radio snippets throughout, other than to give the owners of the house a reason to leave (to see their families). Ultimately, it is this background threat that envelopes them all, which somehow over-eggs the plot, and side-lines the carefully built-up supernatural element.

In a celebrated opening scene, two grave-robbers scamper over an impressive night-time cemetery scene, into the tomb of the Talbots. They plan to steal valuables from the corpse of Laurence Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr), four years dead – and see the plaque bearing the rhyme: ‘Even a man who’s pure of heart, and says his prayers at night, may become a wolf when the wolfs bane blooms, and the moon is full and bright.’

As the camera reveals, that night boasts a full moon. Not only that, but removing the wolfs bane appears to bring Talbot back to life.

It doesn’t matter that Talbot’s left hand reaches out of the tomb for one of the grave robbers, Freddy (Cyril Delevanti), and yet the hand that grabs him is revealed to be his right. It doesn’t matter that the Welsh village of Llanwelly is peopled with Scots, cockneys and Americans, but no Welsh. It doesn’t even matter that Talbot, in his white nightwear, changes into a black shirt and trousers-sporting Wolfman and then back again. Because, despite the first two Universal Frankenstein films being my favourite movies ever, this is the most ‘fun’ of all the entries. And yet, the finished picture could have been so much different.

As at the end of the previous ‘Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)’, The Monster has Ygor’s (Bela Lugosi) brain in his head, and speaks with his voice. After considering using Chaney to play both Wolfman and Monster (both roles he had played before), it was decided subsequently to use Lugosi. Scriptwriter Curt Siodmak wrote dialogue for the Monster (“Help me to get up ... Once I had the strength of a hundred men … it's gone ... I'm sick …”), but at a premier, studio executives found a talking Monster hilarious (displaying a lack of memory and imagination, it seems) and all dialogue, and scenes including it, was cut. There’s a POV that says the Monster’s dialogue was removed because it sounded too much like the rantings of Hitler. Siodmak says Lugosi’s accent made the words too ‘Hungarian funny’. A little ungenerous of him. Also cut were references to the Monster’s blindness, and the restoration of sight and strength at the film’s climax.

Lugosi, who was over 60, suffered from exhaustion during filming, and reportedly collapsed on set at one point. This is the main reason extensive use was made of stuntmen to double for him.

So, does Frankenstein actually meet the Wolf Man? Yes, she does. Ilona Massey, lovely as Baroness Elsa Frankenstein, is visited by Talbot, who is desperate to find her father’s books, believing they can help rid him of his lycanthropic curse. Talbot is a morose, moody figure, a far cry from the buoyant flirt from his first outing. Lugosi’s much criticised Monster, is a spitting, snarling thing. His uncertain stretch-armed stiffness seems over-the-top with all explanation for his blind groping removed – none of which is Lugosi’s fault. He is the wrong shape for the Monster, and Jack Pierce’s make-up (a make-up designed for more slender features) but is performance does not deserve the criticism it gets; he breathes life into the creature, more so than Chaney did in the previous instalment.

Lon Chaney is excellent as Talbot, in what is essentially his film (with the Monster’s role sadly reduced). He is intense and brought low by his predicament, and Chaney does a good job of some exposition-heavy lines.

The rest of the cast comprise of stalwarts Lionel Atwill, Dwight Frye and Patric Knowles as all-rounder Doctor Mannering. Beginning the picture as the doctor tending to Talbot, he then becomes an investigator who follows him to Vaseria and finally, for no particular reason, the mad scientist who cannot resist bringing the Monster to full strength before the tremendous and hugely entertaining final battle.

Beth Riesgraf is excellent as agoraphobic Anna, who has spent years looking after her dying brother Conrad. On the day of his funeral, three men forcibly enter her home, believing her to be away. They intend to rob Anna of the money she has stashed away in the house, a detail revealed to them by Dan (Rory Culkin – MaCauley’s brother), who delivered food to Anna.

Toying with her and her illness, Perry (Martin Starr) throws her outside the house, where she panics and almost has a seizure. Little gestures like Anna self-consciously pulling her skirt over her knees after she has involuntarily wet herself really endear her plight to us. The thugs are hateful, as is the duplicitous Dan, but it isn’t until Perry casually bludgeons Anna’s pet canary to death that we are really clamouring for his suffering.

We are given plenty of reasons to spur Anna on to kill these low-lives. Apart from Perry and the slimy Dan, the ‘leader’ is convincing hard-man JP (Jack Kesy) and right hand Vance (Joshua Mikel). Bad enough they strive to rob someone who is at the funeral (they think) of the long-suffering brother they have cared for, but the powerful acting gives them an extra edge of nastiness. Their inevitable demises are, if anything, not horrible enough.

The house, in which the whole thing is set, provides an effective maze-like prison for them all as they begin to realise that Anna’s intimate knowledge of the place has its advantages, and the building, it seems, has secrets of its own.

This is another ‘home invasion’ project, where the comforts of a familiar environment are turned on their head upon the arrival of uninvited ‘others’. Although the format itself may be limiting, it clearly works if used well and interspersed with interesting, well-defined and finely acted characters and sinister dilemmas. Happily, this is one such film.