RISE BLOOD HUNTER (DVD Review) - 26/11/07

This Unrated Undead Cut of "Rise Blood Hunter" strays into "The Hunger" territory and unfortunately is nowhere near as good! Coming over as a female Blade Lucy Liu's undead female ex-reporter Sadie Blake goes on a mission to kill the vampires that created her armed with a crossbow. Throw in Michael Chiklis as an embittered cop who lost his own daughter to the vamps and there you have it. Dragging itself over it's 2 hour running time with too much exposition and back-story and little action you can see why this went straight to DVD. Badly edited and badly cut, the story rambles back and forth as characters come and go, subplots appear and disappear in this total shambles. Even the ending has it's predictable cliche. Boring and mostly pointless I can only presume the studio heavily edited even this supposedly Unrated edition with it's extra 25 minutes of footage. Also has a handful of Special Features as well bunged on this Region 1 (USA) DVD.

HOGFATHER (DVD Review) - 25/11/07

This came out last year as a special Sky One Production and with Christmas approaching rapidly again for this year it's shot back into the DVD charts. Like a large, sumptuous Black Forest Gateaux all covered in fresh cream and cherries; when you get it home out of the package . . . it turns out to be a cheap sponge with faux cream and tasteless jam. If your not at all familiar with the works of Terry Pratchett's Discworld you will be completely lost with this - But that is not to say it's all bad. The Special Effects which bring THIS version of Discworld to life are fantastic, a quality cast rounds out the Set Design with people like Ian Richardson and David Jason holding their own but running in at 3 hours or so it's just so dull. Plodding from scene to scene I harked back to the book which I found mildly amusing but found this Live Action 2-parter not to my taste. This is the single edition DVD to get all the Special Features you will have to fork out for the 2-Disc Set.

Hogswatch (Christmas) is approaching and the Hogfather has gone missing. Death steps into the breach with his servant Albert to save Hogswatch, while meanwhile the Auditors and the Assassins Guild are planning to stop the festivities for good. Death's granddaughter Susan is looking into the mystery at the Tooth Fairy's castle and with the help of the Wizards from the Unseen University hope's to put a stop to their wretched plans. Ho! Ho! Ho!

FUTURAMA: BENDER'S BIG SCORE (DVD Review) - 25/11/07

So welcome back Futurama in the first of four feature-length movies with "Bender's Big Score" and it's like they have never been away! 20th. Century Fox ( Or should I say 'Box'?) have the piss ripped out of them royally over their moronic decision to cancel the series in the first place. Eh? Executives in suits that really don't have a clue??? We have an excellent package here starting with a hologram cover of Bender on the slip-out cardboard case and the fold-out has various scenes from the film on it. We have the tale of the Planet Express crew fighting off nudist alien scammers with a pastiche of the gamut of sci-fi films from Star Wars to the Terminator in between the laughs in this time travel saga. The general cynicism is still there with the gross-out humour intact and a nice package of extras. With the 5.1. Dolby Audio, Captioned and Subtitled in English, Spanish & French with a Widescreen Ratio of 1.78:1 running at 89 minutes in colour it's great that Futurama is at last back! This is the Region 1 (USA) NTSC version 2007. SPECIAL FEATURES: Commentary, a live Comic Book reading by the cast of Futurama, a full-length episode of Hypnotoad (Tedious!) With Deleted Storyboard Scenes, an Animated Promo from Al Gore, first draft of the Original Script plus 3D Models/Turnarounds with New Character/Design Sketches and more. With the other 3 films coming in 2008 - I say hurry up!

SHARPE (DVD Review) - 24/11/07

This was a bit naughty because while they were flogging this in the shops as the "Sharpe Collectors Edition" {Of 15 Discs} next to it in the display case was the latest "Sharpe's Challenge" mind you the last Collectors Edition only had 14 Discs [Maybe they will add 'Complete' to the wording?] so still not 'quite' a Collectors Edition yet!

From the beginning of this boxset we get a dramatic reconstruction of the era between 1800 and 1815 with Sharpe and his "Chosen Men" ending up in one battle after another and dealing with aristocrats (Generally preening fops, cowards and idiots) who seem intent on getting themselves killed and everyone around them. Double-dealing spies, traitors and betrayal also go into the mix; with a pinch of romance, love, honour and hate and sometimes outright evil.

The cast inhabit their roles completely and the taste it gives for the whole period seems spot on. The evocation of battle and the glories of war seem a different matter when you see the wounded with missing legs as a result of cannon or musket fire. Certainly worth a watch for sheer quality viewing.

30 DAYS OF NIGHT Film Review - 23/11/07

Starting off feeling very much like "The Thing" in it's isolated landscape with an eerie air of foreboding as the sun dips below the horizon for the next month and the inhabitants of an outpost town out in the snowy wastelands soon have more than the cold to deal with. A stranger turns up and systematically cuts the town off from outside communication piece by piece. Then shapes appear speeding out of the gloom and snatching and savaging people one by one. The menace gets stronger and the fear factor builds as the town's power & lights fail and then suddenly "30 Days Of Shite" (Ooops! "Night") falls totally flat. All the cliches are there among it's good points as the townsfolk (Extras with no-names destined as slaughter victims) play cat and mouse and string this out for over 2 hours. The top-notch effects are superb from the sinister looking vampires that seem partly human & partly animal with razor sharp teeth and claws with a guttural language partly of shrieks and cries. Several decapitations and body parts are strewn around - But the story just doesn't make any sense? In fact it's: Vampires close off town, vampires eat people, vampires leave. Having not read the graphic novel this film is based on I cannot comment on the book and the ending will leave you gobsmacked (...and not for the right reasons!) Having spent a lot of cash on this film I feel it was a wasted chance for something better and leaves too many questions that a good film should have answered. At least I got to see the new Trailer for "Alien Versus Predator Requiem" so it wasn't an entire loss!

SAW 4 Film Review - 20/11/07

If you are not a SAW Fan or you have not seen the first three movies - then I would not bother with this one at all as it will make absolutely no sense to you whatsoever? A bit like reading a series of books and starting at book number seven; where you would be wondering - Who was who? Why did they do that? Why is that happening? Starting off with an autopsy on the killer Jigsaw we rapidly get drawn into events past & present as sleight of hand from previous films suddenly takes on greater significance in the scheme of things as various torture devices slice and dice various victims. Flashbacks further flesh out Jigsaw's behaviour and characters flash before our eyes in seconds taking on even greater meaning.

I left the cinema desperately pondering how this all literally falls into place and how the puzzle pieces fit into Jigsaw's game plan. I read further online and then everything fell into place as though a curtain had been drawn back in front of my eyes and the truth was shining through. I won't spoil it for anyone but it is a worthy contender in the SAW pantheon and STILL leaves several stones unturned for the future!

Jigsaw the killer and his apprentice are dead but something is afoot and pointers lead to several subjects as the horrifying games (Tests) begin once again and many people get caught in the web as it expands out catching many unaware.

FILM REVIEW - HOME TO DANGER (1951)

*Possible Spoilers*

A young girl called Barbara Cummings (Rona Anderson) arrives back in England on hearing of her estranged father's apparent suicide. She inherits his country house in Sussex and his share of a business which he ran in partnership with a man called Wainwright (Howard Lister). During a shooting party, an unknown man with a scarred face is found shot dead in the marshes. But, Willie (Stanley Baker), the family's handyman tells Barbara that he saw Wainwright talking with the murdered man in the grounds of the house that day. In addition, he also tells her that it was he who found her father's body and in his dying words he uttered to him "its in the office safe." With the aid of her crime writer boyfriend, Robert (Guy Rolfe), she turns detective and the pair enlist the help of a chirpy safe cracker (Denis Harkin) to break into the safe. They learn that the office is being used by a drug racket for storing dope and the safe contains a list of names that the consignments are to be dispatched to. It is now clear that Barbara's father was killed for discovering this. In an attempt to bring the murderer out into the open, Jimmy happens to know one of the people on the consignment list so he approaches this person and tells him that his drugs are ready to be collected. Robert, Barbara and Jimmy tail him through the dark London streets but the killer is aware of the set up and strangles the man. Back at the house, Robert and Barbara force Wainwright to confess that he was involved in the dope racket, which he does, but it transpires that there is a man higher up than him, a Mr Big, but he has never met this person before. However, Mr Big is frightened that they will be able to unmask him and Robert, Barbara and Wainwright end up fighting for their lives when the killer prowls the estate with the intention of murdering them.

This obscure little British quota-quickie crime thriller was directed by Terence Fisher before his career breakthrough came with the Hammer gothic chillers such as The Curse Of Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy. These were groundbreaking films that launched the British horror boom of the fifties and sixties but in the years prior to that, Fisher directed numerous features for the British quota-quickie market. Many of these films were not all that interesting although they were very typical of their type usually featuring an imported American star who was past his/her prime. Nevertheless, there were one or two exceptions in this phase of Fisher's career and Home To Danger stands as one of his better early films. The story is your average crime plot but Fisher creates more suspense and tension than one would normally expect of this kind of picture and he actually got to film Barbara's country estate on location as well as the shooting party sequence rather than having to rely on a dodgy, fake studio setting allowing the film more production value and aided by Reginald Wyer's b&w cinematography, there is a good feeling for place and a sense of doom and the mysterious hanging over the proceedings. The casting is also above average with Rona Anderson and Guy Rolfe offering bright and believable performances in the two lovers who unwittingly get caught up in murder and London's underworld whilst a young Sir Stanley Baker offers a touching performance as the addled handyman, Willie, who plays a big part in saving Barbara's life before sadly losing his own. The film does betray its poverty row, b-movie origins from time to time and the identity of the killer really isn't that difficult to work out. In addition, in the opening scenes where Barbara is met at the airport by Wainwright, they are being followed by the guy with the scarred face and the actor playing the part is wearing a trench coat and a Al Capone style hat. This to me shows a hopeless attempt to make a low budget crime b-pic look like the American crime movies and it does not work and many a British b-movie has done this among others besides importing a fading American movie star. Nevertheless, Home To Danger, is still an undeservedly neglected film as it indicates that Fisher was certainly an up and coming talent as he gave material like this better direction than it perhaps deserved. And with its moody atmosphere and tension that lurks throughout and with an interesting cast to boot, this is one b-picture that is above the tawdry standard that one usually associates with British b-movies.

FROSTBITE (Frostbiten) (DVD Review) - 18/11/07

With the current influx of vampire movies abounding over the last couple of years or so this Swedish Vampire flick had been on my radar to watch for a while. Forget the low budget and the fact it was made in Sweden and not Hollywood and you get a genuinely jumpy thriller with some terrific Special Effects/CGI sequences with vampires that actually look horrific. Unfortunately the script wobbles all over the place and near the end falls apart - Also the large streak of comedy was not to my liking. If they had cut the comedy and tightened the story better I think this could have been a great vampire movie instead of an interesting one. As it is all the cast & crew have made a real effort on this and it is certainly worth a watch and also catching the "Making Of" covering the Special Effects and Background shooting to see the time & effort they put into bringing this all together.

Starting off with a Nazi SS Troop fleeing enemy forces in 1944 across snow-blasted wastelands they end up breaking into a deserted log cabin deep in the forests but something catches up with them. Jumping forward to the present day a mother and her daughter have moved to an isolated town for a new start; with the mother having a research job at the local Genetics Institute. Meanwhile the daughter makes friends with some of the local youths and then things start to fall apart as animals and people start to disappear. . . . . .

EDMOND (DVD Review) - 11/11/07

Stuart Gordon (Director of "Fortress") takes on David Mamet's (Writer & Director) Screenplay of his work adapted from the stage. "Edmond" truly is bizarre; white-collar worker William H. Macy (Who holds the whole film together) loses it big-time slips off the straight & narrow and ends up downtown in the tawdry part floating with pimps, whores & the usual dregs. Not really understanding what is happening to his head he totally flips - Beats the crap out of a pimp, slashes a nice & pleasant girl he has just had sex with to death, finds god after berating a poor woman on the subway then ends up in jail being buggered by a big black dude. Quite what anyone can make of it I don't know? A hard & tough film to watch with a mental instability gradually getting worse with sexual & racist overtones. Maybe it is trying to say "Live Your Life" instead of the shallow wanderings of Macy's character of Edmond.

Joe Mantegna (A Mamet regular puts in a cameo) with Denise Richards playing a nasty slut, Ling Bai as a peep-show hostess and Mena Suvari also cropping up. Certainly not Family viewing and hard to understand the emotional context - Maybe some people are just emotionally stunted in their lives?

MICHAEL HARRIS' FILM DIRECTORS - FREDDIE FRANCIS (1917-2007)

There are two important stages to the long career of Freddie Francis which spanned over sixty-years. First there is his Academy Award winning work as a cinematographer and secondly, one cannot ignore his prolific output as a director of low budget British horror films. During this phase of his career, Francis worked for both the Hammer and Amicus studios turning out some notable box office hits during the British horror wave of the 1960's-70's.

Francis began his career as a Clapperboy at 17 and was ready to become a Camera Operator by 1939, but war service interrupted his progression and he served with the Army Kinematographic Service. At the end of the Second World War he resumed his career as an operator on such films as The Small Back Room (1946), Mine Own Executioner (1947), Moulin Rouge (1952) and Moby Dick (1956).

In 1956, Francis became a fully fledged Cinematographer with A Hill In Korea and from here on he built himself up a reputation as a highly sought after lighting cameraman. Notable credits include Room At The Top (1959), Saturday Night And Saturday Morning and Sons And Lovers (1960) for which he earned his first Oscar for Best Cinematography.

With an Academy Award to his name, Francis turned to direction realising that he needed to be recognised as a director rather than a cameraman. Apart from his debut feature, which was a rather troubled romantic comedy called Two And Two Make Six (1961), the vast majority of Francis' directorial output was horror films and even though he openly admitted that he had no great affection for the genre, he nevertheless enjoyed some substantial box office hits. These make up the best of his work including the Amicus portmanteau horrors, Dr Terror's House Of Horrors (1965), Torture Garden (1967) and Tales From The Crypt (1972). The latter includes a particuarly moving performance from Peter Cushing as a rubbish collector driven to suicide by his ruthless neighbours who wanted his property, which had considerable land value. But on St Valentine's Day, Cushing rose from his grave to deliver his tormenters a particuarly nasty Valentine card! For Hammer, Francis directed such notable horrors such as Paranoiac (1963), The Evil Of Frankenstein (1964) and the enormously successful Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (1968).

But despite the success of these films, Francis was firmly "typecast" as a horror film director much to his chagrin and he fell into this trap where nobody would give him the backing to make anything unless it was a horror film. Indeed the best of Francis' work has considerable visual style that papers over the basic material but all too often, he found himself lumbered with inferior projects and as a result of this the quality of his direction varied. For instance, anybody who has seen Son Of Dracula (1974), a dire rock and roll horror film with Ringo Starr as Merlin the Magician and Harry Nillson as Dracula's son would most probably agree. The Creeping Flesh (1972) with Cushing as a Victorian scientist who discovers a skeleton that grows flesh when it makes contact with water stands as one of his best works. Here his style and a stronger script than usual allowed him to overcome the undeniable absurdities of the basic premise. The twist at the end here is completely unexpected! However, by the mid-seventies, the British horror wave was long forgotten and he had been offered nothing but inferior projects that were unworthy of his talents. Therefore, Francis elected to give up the director's chair and go back to working as a Cinematographer.

This decision proved to be the right one because Francis' profile increased with such films as The Elephant Man (1980), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) and Dune (1985). In 1989, he collected his second Oscar for his colour camerawork on Glory (1989). In his later years, Francis won numerous lifetime achievement awards and was generally regarded as one of Britain's finest cameramen. His last credit was for David Lynch's The Straight Story (1989) before his death on 17 March 2007 as a result of complications following a stroke.

In conclusion, Francis may well be better acclaimed as a Cinematographer, but the strength of his best works as a director lead me to believe that he would have enjoyed an equal amount of acclaim in both capacities had been given the opportunity to direct an assignment away from horror that was right for his considerable talents.

MICHAEL HARRIS' FILM DIRECTORS - TERENCE FISHER (1904-80)

British director who is best remembered for launching the British horror wave of the 1950's-60's via the Hammer studios. After working as an editor for a number of years, Fisher became a director in 1947 at the age of 43. Between then and 1956 when he directed The Curse Of Frankenstein, which smashed box office records and firmly established Hammer as Britain's number one purveyors of horror, Fisher's career was set firmly in the second feature market. Most of these with the exception of Stolen Face (1952), about a plastic surgeon (Paul Henreid) who recreates the face of the girl he loves on a deformed petty criminal and Four Side Triangle (1953) about two young scientists who create a machine that can duplicate people did not indicate the direction that Fisher's career would take once he had found his niche with the gothic horror film genre. Indeed a number of them with one or two possible exceptions were not all that good.

Following the unexpected success of Frankenstein, Fisher went on to direct what is generally considered his masterpiece, Dracula (1958 - see separate review), which succeeded in bringing out the underlying sexual element of the vampire myth in that Christopher Lee's Count, tall, dark and handsome was attractive to his female victims. In addition, it is interesting to note that the genre was considered by many critics to be crude sensationalism but time has revealed Fisher's contributions to the genre to be anything but. With their lavish Technicolor camerawork, a preference for a historical setting and excellent storytelling in which the age old battle between good and evil was a strong theme throughout, Fisher's films had the appearance of gothic Victorian novels in pictures and in a genre that veered heavily towards sex and gore, his approach was restrained and he brought more intelligence and craft to these films than one might have expected.

Following the initial breakthrough films of Frankenstein and Dracula, Fisher would remain with Hammer for much of the remainder of his career and obviously his career went through highs and lows. The best of his later works include The Gorgon (1964), Frankenstein Created Woman (1967), The Devil Rides Out (1968), a powerful adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's occult novel with Lee as the Duc De' Richeleau proving that he could play good guys with the same conviction as bad guys as he protected his friends from a coven of satanists lead by Charles Gray's Mocatta. The Hound Of The Baskervilles (1959) was an exciting adaptation of Conan Doyle's classic detective story and the film is considered by some to be the best ever Sherlock Holmes film. It is certainly a strong contender with Peter Cushing making a fine impression as the Baker Street sleuth, a role he was later to repeat in a successful BBC TV series. Other notable films include a sadly underrated version of The Phantom Of The Opera (1962), with an unfairly neglected performance from Herbert Lom which was deemed a failure due to the fact that the Phantom himself was treated too sympathetically.

Terence Fisher directed his last film in 1973, Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell, which although made on an obviously low budget during Hammer's waning years, marked a welcome return to the style of the company's earlier gothic horror films and was better than much of the company's early 1970's output. Fisher died in 1980 following a long battle with cancer.

CLASSIC BRITISH HORROR REVIEW - DR TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS (1965)

** This comment contains spoilers**

Five strangers share a compartment on board an evening express train and are shown the future with Tarot cards by a sinister eccentric who introduces himself as Dr Shreck (Peter Cushing).

Werewolf: An architect called Jim Dawson (Neil McCallam) returns to his ancestral home in the Hebrides to discuss structural changes with the new owner, the wealthy widow Diedre Biddulph (Ursula Howels), who turns out to be a revenge seeking werewolf.

Creeping Vine: Civil servant Bill Rogers (Alan Freeman) returns home with his family from a holiday to discover a killer plant growing outside his house. After strangling a research chemist and the family dog, the plant grows to frightening proportions and traps the family in their home.

Voodoo: Jazz musician Biff Bailey (Roy Castle) steals a piece of music from the voodoo god, Dambala, whilst touring Haiti with his band. Despite warnings from his fellow band mates, Bailey goes ahead and incorporates the music into his act and on his return to London, Dambala seeks vengeance against the musician.

Disembodied Hand: A snobby art critic called Franklyn Marsh (Christopher Lee) is humiliated by artist Eric Landor (Michael Gough) at an art exhibition. Enraged, Marsh runs the artist down with his car and Landor has to have his hand amputated which means that he can no longer paint. Devastated, the artist commits suicide but the severed hand starts to torment Marsh wherever he goes and finally causes him to crash his car leaving the critic blind.

Vampire: A young American doctor called Bob Carroll (Donald Sutherland) returns to his home town with his beautiful bride, Nicole (Jennifer Jayne), whom he discovers is a vampire. He turns to his partner, Dr Blake (Max Adrian), for advice. Blake tells Bob that he must drive a wooden stake through her heart which he does. However, when the police arrive, Dr Blake refuses to back up the young doctor's story. As the police drag Carroll off to jail, Dr Blake transforms himself into a bat and flies off into the night - he is a vampire himself!

Dr Shreck turns the next card and it reads the same fate for all of them - death! The mysterious doctor disappears leaving only his Tarot cards behind. The five men realise that they have no future but death and expect their train to crash. However, the train suddenly pulls into a station. Thinking that they have arrived safely at their destination they alight from the train. But the evening breeze sends a newspaper flying down at their feet and it reads "Train Crash Leaves Five Dead". At that moment Dr Shreck reappears but now his face has taken the form of a skull, the five men realise that they have died and that their mysterious passenger was death himself!

Dr Terror's House Of Horrors was the first portmanteau horror film from Amicus, Hammer's only major rival horror film production company throughout the sixties. It is somewhat patchy because the Creeping Vine and Voodoo stories are poorly plotted, uninspired in their direction, lacking atmosphere and the standard of acting from non-actors such as DJ Alan "Fluff" Freeman and all round entertainer Roy Castle is only barely serviceable. Werewolf is admirably atmospheric whilst Disembodied Hand is a fun variation of The Beast With Five Fingers with Lee on good form as the pompous art critic who gets more than he bargained for and Gough is noteworthy as the ill fated artist. Vampire features a good performance from Donald Sutherland here making his first English language film and would subsequently go on to be a superstar with roles in The Dirty Dozen and Mash. There is a good joke at the end of this one where Max Adrian's Dr Blake turns to the camera at the climax after he has sent Sutherland to jail and says "This town was not big enough for two vampires and two doctors" before turning himself into a bat and flying off into the night. Director Freddie Francis displays his visual flair especially with the linking story and the climax is genuinely creepy gothic stuff with Cushing outstanding as the quietly sinister Dr Shreck, the dealer in death.

Overall, whilst the film is of a varying standard, it is good fun throughout and serves as a useful reminder of a generation of filmmaking that has long since gone and looks set never to return. But I would have preferred it if the stories had been a little tighter and without the Voodoo and Creeping Vine ones that slow the project down and distract from the stronger tales in the package. Such was the success of this film that Amicus went on to produce several more portmanteau horror films including Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), Asylum and Tales From The Crypt (1972).

New STINKY PIG'S Logo Unveiling....

Here we have our new STINKY PIG'S Logo kindly drawn up by Little Digger: Who now joins the illustrious ranks of Franky The Squirrel, Mr. Periwinkle & Our Wife. Expect to see it in some odd places?

MICHAEL HARRIS' HAMMER CLASSICS - DRACULA (1958)

**This review may contain spoilers**

Transylvania 1885: Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) goes to Castle Dracula posing as a librarian with the intention of destroying Count Dracula (Christopher Lee), the monarch of all vampires. Unfortunately, Harker succumbs to the bite of the Count's vampire bride and realises that it is only a matter of time before he himself joins the ranks of the undead. While his senses are still his own, Harker realises that he must find the tomb of Dracula and drive a wooden stake through his heart before it is too late. He succeeds in finding Dracula's lair in a dark crypt with two sarcophoguses, one for his bride and the other for him. Harker begins by staking the bride who lets out a grisly scream before her corpse degenerates from that of a beautiful young woman into that of an old crone. But what Harker does not realise is that the sun is going down and Dracula has woken up. He turns to the Count's coffin and to his horror he has gone! Then suddenly the Count appears from the shadows -Harker has been overpowered. Enter Dr Van Helsing (Peter Cushing), a friend and colleague of Harker's who has come into the country to investigate his disappearance. He finds the villagers at the local Inn reluctant to give him directions to the castle as they are afraid of the evil that lurks there. Nevertheless, Van Helsing discovers the castle's location and finds to his horror that his oldest friend has joined the ranks of the undead and he duly releases his soul by driving a stake through his heart. Back home in Klausenberg, Van Helsing goes to Harker's fiancee', Lucy Holmwood (Valerie Gaunt) and her brother Arthur (Michael Gough) to inform them of Jonathan's death. Lucy has been struck with a strange sickness that shows symptoms of amnemia but the local GP, Dr Seward (Charles Lloyd-Pack), is unable to get to the bottom of what is causing it. Arthur Holmwood's wife, Mina (Mellisa Stribbling) calls Van Helsing in for a second opinion and he believes that Dracula is seeking to avenge the death of his bride by selecting the late Jonathan's fiancee' as a replacement as there are two puncture marks on her neck - the trademark of the vampire's bite! Van Helsing tells Arthur and Mina to keep all doors and windows locked shut at night and to place garlic flowers in Lucy's room. Unfortunately, Lucy pleads with the maid to take the flowers away and to open the window and the next morning she is found dead. Van Helsing enlists the help of Arthur Holmwood to whom he explains about vampirism and how it relates to the deaths of both Lucy and Jonathan. At first, Arthur is reluctant to trust Van Helsing but after the two men keep a moonlight watch on Lucy's tomb, Arthur realises that the doctor is right because as he predicted, Lucy has risen from her grave as an undead at night in search of victims. To their horror, Lucy is preying on the young daughter of the Holmwood's maid. They succeed in luring Lucy back to her tomb and driving a stake through her heart before the child can become a victim of the Count's new bride in blood. But little do they imagine that the Count has now turned his attention to Mina. Dracula has abducted her and Holmwood and Van Helsing realise that they must trace the Count back to his lair and destroy him before it is too late to save Mina from becoming a member of Dracula's obscene cult...

Following the runaway success of The Curse Of Frankenstein, Hammer turned their attention to another classic of English gothic literature, Bram Stoker's Dracula. It is perhaps the best horror film that the company ever produced and it is certainly the most significant of all Hammer's Dracula films. Director Terence Fisher's feeling for the gothic and period atmosphere was never better than it was here and he succeeded in bringing out the sexual element within the story in that Lee's Dracula, tall, dark and handsome as opposed to the elderly man with a white moustache who progressively gets younger as he drinks more blood in the novel, is attractive to his female victims. For example, the scene where Valerie Gaunt's Lucy Holmwood lies waiting in her bed for Dracula to come is a good example of this. Mina and Arthur bid her goodnight and as they exit the room she says "Jonathan will be coming back soon I know it" as if she is longing for her lover's return. But after they have gone with a sudden burst of energy, she has been struck by amnemia where the vampire has taken blood from her, leaps out of bed to open the window so that her nocturnal visitor can enter before returning to lie on her bed and feels the puncture marks on her neck. There is an expression of wild, sexual excitement on her face in that she is longing for the Count to come and romance her prior to taking blood from her. This scene also displays another theme in Fisher's work that evil is more seductively attractive than good. The significance here is that in life, Jonathan Harker was a man on the side of virtue, but Lucy has now succumbed to the evil of Dracula and could no longer care less about Jonathan.

In a genre that veered heavily towards gore and sex, many critics attacked Fisher's work including this one as "crudely sensational" at the time. But time has revealed Fisher's approach to the tale as anything but crudely sensational. In fact, it shone a whole new light on the story. In the original novel, the sexual side of the story was practically non existent, but it was without doubt there and waiting for somebody to place an emphasis on how Dracula's evil was attractive to his victims. In Fisher's hands, it is handled in an inteligent way and much of it is suggested rather than going all out for sensationalism. One of the joys of Fisher's films was that they always had more style and inteligence in their material than one might have expected from a genre that was attacked as being "poorly made trash for specific audiences". The whole film has the feel of a Victorian gothic romance in terms of Jack Asher's lush Technicolor cinematography, Bernard Robinson's lavish sets and the attention to period detail such as costumes. Hardly the low budget tosh some spoke of back then. Peter Cushing makes a perfect screen hero as Dr Van Helsing and Lee was arguably the screen's greatest Count. Unfortunately, although the actor would go on to repeat the role six times, he was increasingly given little to do as the scripts tended to reduce his appearances to a supporting character whilst he hypnotised others to carry out his bidding for him.

The film has recently been re-released in selected cinemas across the UK for Halloween and to celebrate fifty-years of Hammer horror in a newly remastered print. Let's hope it finds its way on to Region 2 DVD some time soon.

TRIBUTE TO A CINEMA - THE CARLTON (1934-2007)

Carlton cinema images: 1.) The cinema as the single screen Classic cinema in 1981. 2) Film fans queue outside the Carlton on the final night 1 November 2007. 3.) The Carlton pictured after the bomb struck in 1940. 4.) A recent picture of the Carlton prior to closure

I am sad to have to report that the Carlton Cinema, High Street, Cosham, Hampshire is closing down on 1 November 2007 after seventy-three years of showing movies. This news comes after the local council rejected an application to demolish the cinema and build a block of student flats on the site. This was due to the fact that the land was considered unsuitable for housing and in addition the Carlton stands on a early Medieval site. So it looks like the building will stand derelict after the closure unless somebody comes along and decides to take up the reigns after the current operator closes the doors on Thursday night.

The Carlton first opened its doors on 28 February 1934 as a single screen art-deco cinema with a seating capacity for almost 2000 patrons. The opening ceremony was performed by the then film star, Jack Buchanan, whose film, That's A Good Girl, was the first film to be shown here. The cinema suffered incredible bomb damage during WW2 (see top photograph) and had to be rebuilt. Like so many cinemas that began life as large single screen complexes, the Carlton was tripled to create three cinemas in 1982. The circle was split into two auditoria whilst the former stalls area became the largest main screen. Over the years the Carlton changed hands many times and went through numerous name changes such as Essoldo, ABC, Odeon, Classic and Cineplex.

In January 2003, the cinema was operated by Odeon who decided to give up the lease and close the site because it was unprofitable. This resulted in a petition by local people campaigning to keep the cinema open and a small independent cinema chain agreed to take on the lease. Within the space of four years, the Carlton changed hands no less than three times and support for the Carlton was poor. This was mainly due to the fact that there are two multiplexes in the Portsmouth area, which meant that the Carlton was under severe competition from the major cinema operators.

Over the past four years I have supported the Carlton as much as I could because I loved the venue. It has always been run as a traditional picture house and I always enjoyed the screen tabs going up and down between the ads and the main feature accompanied by the music as the certificate came up and the curtains began to part. The cult film nights were always worth catching. It was here where I finally got to see The Exorcist on the big screen, a film that I had never dared to see before and I was delighted to be seeing it for the first time in a cinema rather than on the TV and where better to see it than in Screen One at the Carlton, a traditional cinema in every way?

In conclusion, it is a great pity that this splendid venue looks set to go the way that so many of the High Street traditional cinemas have gone over the years. I think that if the cinema was to go in the art house direction it could stand a good chance of survival. Indeed many of the traditional cinemas that have survived are now art houses and I could quote you quite a few examples of this all day. I will greatly miss this venue because I have never been keen on multiplexes, which are just boxes with no presentation or atmosphere with a super duper Digital sound system that has been turned up far to high and popcorn thrown about the floor. The film to be shown at the Carlton is to be The Majestic starring Jim Carrey. This is a very good choice as its plot deals with the reopening and restoration of an old movie house, The Majestic of the title. Alas, I am saddened that I will not be able to attend the final night so I decided to do a small tribute to one of my favourite cinemas here.