Brian Hannan

Airport (1970) ****

Thundering entertainment from an era when they made movies to appeal to audiences and not to placate the overweening ego of over-entitled directors. I first saw this in 1970 when it was selected as one of three films (the others being Cromwell and The Virgin and the Gypsy) to open the new Odeon triplex in Glasgow, and, thanks to my own in-built movie snobbery, haven’t seen it since. So this was a revelation.

Let’s start with the running time. Made now this would be an overblown 150 minutes (at least) stuffed full of extraneous scenes. But let’s start with the opening. The screen is dark. Yes, absolutely dark. What? Is this some kind of arthouse venture? And it remains dark for about 20 seconds though by now sound has been added, a general hubbub of commotion. Are you sure this isn’t arthouse? Had this been directed by Scorsese or Coppola (who, in fact, used a similar device to open The Godfather, 1972) critics would have picked it up.

John Frankenheimer for Grand Prix (1966) and Norman Jewison for The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) were praised for their use of the split screen, another aspect ignored here by critics. Yet split screen is not only impressively utilized, but, on occasion, it has a humorous quality, as the screen not only splits in two but accommodates other shapes in between or round about. Did anyone mention the use of the wipe? A cinematic technique scarcely employed in the mainstream since Seven Samurai (1954).

Several narrative plates regarding relationships spin in the air while the movie sharpens focus to concentrate on resolving three major incidents involving airplanes. The first is shifting a jet stuck in the snow during a huge snowstorm and blocking off one entire runway. The airport is already under pressure, what with the storm curtailing other flights and forcing others to dive for cover. Then we have a bomber, planning to wreck the plane mid-ocean to claim on the insurance, but when his plan goes awry and he blows out the toilet of the plane, the crew have to bring it down, safety jeopardized by the jet stuck on the ground.

You always know how disaster pictures are going to end, maybe the only guesswork concerns who will actually survive, and it’s an incredible credit to this movie that I felt the tension constantly rippling through me as we hit the various climactic episodes.

On the ground airport manager Mel (Burt Lancaster) is trying to shift the stuck aircraft while dealing with irate wife Cindy (Dana Wynter) and keeping on track his illicit relationship with PR manager Tanya (Jean Seberg). This is on top of a) wrangling with an airport executive who refuses to expand the airport to meet overwhelming demand and whose only reaction to impending crisis is to close the airport down, b) dealing with local citizens furious that plans are rattling their houses, and c) taking flak from brother-in-law and ace pilot Vernon (Dean Martin).

Up in the air Vernon has his work cut out coming to terms with the pregnancy of girlfriend Gwen (Jacqueline Bisset) – always having used his marriage as an excuse not to get emotionally involved with his string of girlfriends – and with a 70-year-old stowaway Ada (Helen Hayes) and bomber D.O. Guerrero (Van Heflin) and then bringing in the stricken plane.

We’re tossed a few red herrings on the passenger manifest. Spot a nun and a priest in a disaster picture and you’re generally in for cliché overload. Here, instead, they are used for humor, the nun taking a swig of whisky under pressure and the priest whacking a belligerent passenger. And the charming Ada is on land given very sympathetic treatment given the thousands of dollars she’s conned out of airlines over the years, but that’s only to set her up for some harsh treatment on board.

There’s an unexpected twist with the bomber. For a few minutes it looks like the crew are going to win the day but then calamity strikes. Meanwhile, on the ground troubleshooter Joe (George Kennedy), huge cigar constantly in place in the mouth, has taken charge of shifting the stuck plane and in the end has to take drastic action.

And in little telling snippets director George Seaton plays fair with the wives who lose out, Mrs Guerrero (Maureen Stapleton) and Mrs Demerest (Barbara Hale) while allowing Mrs Bakersfield to deliver a come-uppance to her errant husband – she’s been playing away too.

The decision to pack this full of more genuine stars than you ever got in a roadshow – mostly the cast list was padded out with newcomers or stars past their best (Lawrence of Arabia, 1962) – reversed this with genuine stars in supporting roles and newcomers in the leading roles) Both Oscar-winning Burt Lancaster (The Professionals, 1966) and Dean Martin after the Matt Helm series and a bunch of westerns were genuine top-notch marquee names. Jean Seberg had just hit a career box office high with Paint your Wagon (1969). After Bullitt (1968) Jacqueline Bisset’s star was on the rise. Oscar-winner George Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke, 1967) was top-billed in Guns of The Magnificent Seven (1969).

And there was a heck of a strong supporting cast: Van Heflin (Once a Thief, 1965), Dana Wynter (Sink the Bismarck!, 1960), Barbara Hale (Perry Mason series, 1957-1966). Oscar-winner Helen Hayes (she won in 1932) and Maureen Stapleton (Bye, Bye, Birdie, 1963) proved the pick, the former here winning a second Oscar, the latter nominated. Apart from Van Heflin, Seaton had gone for character actors rather than stars – Wynter hadn’t made a movie in a decade, for Stapleton it was seven years, for Hayes 14 years and Hale one film in over a decade.

You’d be laughed out of town these days if (outside of sci-fi) you tried to saddle a star with chunks of exposition or technical detail, but here the force of the screen personalities of Lancaster, Martin and Kennedy makes you hang on their every word.

They didn’t have prizes in those days for ensemble acting, but if they had this would surely be in contention, as director George Seaton, in his capacity as screenwriter, ensures that no one is left out and even if it’s only with a look we learn everything we need to know about a character’s emotional life.

Given this was – to use Christopher Nolan’s favorite phrase – “shot in camera” this is a terrific technical achievement in terms of the airplane action especially the stuck plane trying to hirple it way out of trouble.

Director George Seaton (36 Hours, 1964) took ill during production and exterior sequences were filmed by Henry Hathaway (True Grit, 1969). A mention, too, for the driving score by Alfred Newman, in his last screen assignment. It was nominated for 10 Oscars including Best Picture.

More than demands a reassessment.

Run Wild, Run Free (1969) ****

Surprisingly absorbing, precisely because of the distinct lack of the soppiness or mawkishness associated with the genre. Nature “red in tooth and claw” scarcely puts in an appearance and even then is a good bit less dangerous than a wanton child unable to understand or control his emotions. Parents are very well-drawn, too, in an era that scarcely ran to much comprehension about child psychology, a mother rejecting her son because she is convinced he has rejected her, a traditional father who lacks the skills to convey his love for his son. And you wouldn’t get away these days with an old fellow taking more than a passing interest in a small bewildered boy with the audience immediately conjuring up images of abuse.

The film also prefigures the Gaia movement. Both the old fellow and his young charge are given to lying prostate on the grass, the better to listen to the beating heart of the Earth. And you wouldn’t think of pinning this one on director Richard C. Sarafian, best known for his biker epic Vanishing Point (1971). Far less imagine how you’d get a whole stack of actors to spend a great deal of time wading through a swamp “in camera” rather than utilizing some form of CGI or to volunteer their fingers to be bitten by a predatory bird.

If you’re searching for the kind of twist that’s so common these days, look no further than the location. Those wild moors look fantastic in the sunshine, especially for compositions that outline characters against the sky, but they’re treacherous too, when the fog comes down and you’re trapped without a signpost home, and they’re not all hard grass or spurs or rock but conceal sections of perilous swamp.

Living on the edge of the moors, small wonder Philip (Mark Lester) is attracted, even as a toddler, to the wilderness. That’s exacerbated when he’s afflicted by muteness after developing a stammer around the age of four. It’s assumed there’s a psychosomatic cause, but we’ve got no time and the parents no inclination to dwell upon that.

He develops an obsession with a wild white pony, one of a herd that runs free on the moors, and spends most of his time out trying to find it. Col Ransome (John Mills), nature lover and amateur ornithologist, befriends Philip, helping him to understand nature, and teaching him to ride – bareback – the pony. Ransome also shows him to manage a kestrel.

Scenes of characters working with horses or other animals are usually limited to bit of nose stroking or whispering to calm said animal down, but here we go into a lot more intricate detail of how to win the cooperation of a horse, the kind of lore that nobody’s got much time for these days. So if you want to ride a horse bareback first off you need to just lie on top across its back and stroke its sides. And for a predator, you have to be willing to accept the occasional peck on your fingers while, again, you evoke a stroking mechanism. You might also be surprised to learn that the easiest way to mend a broken wing is by the use of glue.

While Philip and the Colonel and a young girl Diana (Fiona Fullerton) are happily communing with nature, Mr Ransome (Gordon Jackson) and wife (Sylvia Syms) are scarcely able to work out their feelings at being abandoned by their child. The mother tends to get angry, the father, in a very touching scene, is left desolate after Philip ignores a present the father believes would have brought more solidity to their relationship, and in another effective scene it’s the Colonel who explains that it doesn’t take much for a child to understand how devoted an apparently distant father can be.

Any potential soppiness is killed off when Philip in a wild fit of obsession nearly kills the kestrel and in another sequence of disregard almost kills the horse. Occasionally, Philip speaks a few words to the old man but refuses to express himself in front of the parents. So it will come as little surprise that when the parents finally hear the son speak it’s at the quite gripping climax when all the adults have failed to rescue the white horse from a swamp.

And anyone expecting that cute kid from Oliver! (1968) would have their hopes dashed when Mark Lester displays all the natural truculence and wantonness of a child. He’s pretty good, I have to say, in being forced to confine his emotions to facial expression.

John Mills (Guns at Batasi, 1964) is excellent and Sylvia Syms (East of Sudan, 1964), shorn of glamor, and Gordon Jackson (The Ipcress File, 1965) as her emotionally inarticulate husband, both dump their screen personas in favor of highly believable characters. Fiona Fullerton makes her screen debut.

Richard C. Sarafian does a splendid job. Screenplay by David Rook based on his novel.

Emotionally true.

Zulu Dawn (1979) ****

You’d wonder why anyone would want to make a film about this calamitous military disaster, the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879. Yet, such subjects have always attracted Hollywood, especially if some kind of triumph can be snatched from defeat – Dunkirk (1958 and 2017) – or some charismatic figure of the order of General Custer is involved – They Died With Their Boots On (1941), Custer of the West (1967). Or you can make something mythical such as The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) and with the assistance of the screen presence of Errol Flynn tilt it towards glory or you can take the same subject (the 1968 version) and make merry with satire should you wish to poke fun at the British Empire.

The latter could easily have been the starting point for Zulu Dawn, a prequel to the majestic Zulu (1964). However, although the Brits were outthought, out-maneuvered and outnumbered, the errors made on the battlefield were generally not through hubris or commanders competing for glory. And you would have to assume that no matter what the British Army could do, in terms of size it was minute compared to the Zulus, and even armed with rifles and artillery was hardly going to withstand a sustained attack.

So it’s fairly solid stuff, buoyed up by decent performances, though Burt Lancaster playing an Irishman seems tacked on to increase marquee appeal. The final shot of the eyes of Peter O’Toole would easily stand in the annals of war pictures as one of the best testaments to the horror of defeat and impending humiliation.

There is certainly some unsavory business at the start as British commander Lord Chelmsford (Peter O’Toole) and diplomat Sir Henry Bartle Frere (John Mills) unwittingly poke the lion of Zulu King Cetawayo whose rising strength they perceive as a threat to the British colonies in the southern regions of Africa. Chelmsford makes the mistake of invading Zululand.

Hoping to pin down the enemy to the traditional pitched battle on territory that would give him an advantage, he finds he’s chasing ghosts. They can’t locate the Zulus until the enemy wants to be found. And in an echo of the later Lawrence of Arabia, Cetawayo does the impossible and leads his troops on what was considered an unlikely line of attack.

The British strategy of lining up troops in two lines and shooting alternately certainly reduces the oncoming force, but four times the amount of firepower would still have had trouble preventing the onslaught. Critically, in search of more favorable ground, Chelmsford splits his forces, but, again, even had the British been one unit, it would have made little difference.

I’m not sure how true is the portrayal of the officious quartermaster Bloomfield (Peter Vaughn) who, even in the heat of battle, demands soldiers form an orderly queue to receive a supply of bullets, and that may just be a potshot at overbearing bureaucracy.

The narrative flits from various characters, dashing cavalry types like Col Durnford (Burt Lancaster) and Lt Vereker (Simon Ward), commanders Chelmsford and Col Pulleine (Denholm Elliott), those representing different points of view such as Col Hamilton-Brown (Nigel Davenport) and Col Crealock (Michael Jayston), and lowly grunts in the form of Colour Sergeant Williams (Bob Hoskins) and Boy Pullen (Phil Daniels).

There’s certainly a sense of the higher-ups still enjoying the pleasures of life, wine served at dinner, plated service, but the lesser ranks still have largely an easy time of it, when they are not marching spending most of the time in idleness. It’s a very civil environment. Commands aren’t barked out. “I say, would you mind…” is the tone.

But it’s the marching that’s the killer. The heat’s not as bad as in Crimea and there’s no disease decimating the ranks but they still have to do a lot of walking on uneven terrain. There’s enough difference of opinion at all levels of the Army to keep tensions high.

And there’s more of a focus on the brutality of war – Lt Vereker laments the death of a Zulu child, you can easily be killed by your own troops and truth is viciously beaten out captives (who, as it happens, have been sent to become captives and mislead the Brits.) I was wondering if audiences had come to expect a scene with native girls dancing half-naked, as had occurred in the sequel, and the censor turned a blind eye to.

Peter O’Toole (The Lion in Winter, 1968) has the best role, especially when he counts the cost of defeat. Burt Lancaster (Valdez Is Coming, 1971) offers some star power but little else and the rest of the cast is virtually a roll-call of Who’s Who in British acting.

Luckily, the picture is more than even-handed and while not pillorying the Army and the Establishment in the manner of The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968) plays fair with the circumstances and exalts Zulu victory as much as British defeat.

Directed by Douglas Hickox (Les Bicyclettes de Belsize, 1968) with perhaps overmuch concentration on marching. Zulu director Cy Endfield had shot his bolt by this point and wasn’t invited back except in the capacity of screenwriter along with Anthony Storey making his movie debut.

Much better than I expected.

If you fancy checking out how it compares to Zulu (1964), you can check out my review on the Blog.

Countess Dracula (1971) ****

You wouldn’t go looking to British studio Hammer for a subtle treatise on the perils of ageing. Nor might you expect a predator to be so cruelly, and consistently, punished. Nor, for that matter, for a mirror to provide revelation given that in the traditional vampire movie one of the signs you have a bloodsucker in your midst is that a mirror does not show their reflection.

The title is something of a misnomer: while there’s bloodletting aplenty there’s zero actual bloodsucking. Hammer had taken a sideways shift into female empowerment and more obvious sexuality and gender twist with the introduction of the female vampire – beginning with The Vampire Lovers (1970), sequel Lust for a Vampire (1971) and, completing the trilogy, Twins of Evil (1972). For that matter it also pre-empted, in perverse fashion, the body swap genre of Freaky Friday (1976 etc.).

These days this would be termed the expansion of a “horrorverse” or a “Hammerverse” as the studio developed its IP since it had not abandoned the traditional Christopher Lee version, doubling down in 1970 with Taste the Blood of Dracula and The Scars of Dracula and following up with Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972).

While Countess Dracula doesn’t fall into the vampiric category, neither does it so obviously exploit the sexuality and rampant nudity of the female vampire trinity. But there are other shocks in store. Be prepared for emotional punch, not something normally associated with Hammer.

The ageing beauty had been a 1960s trope as Hollywood had come to terms with finding starring roles for 1940s/1950s stars past their box office best but names – Lana Turner and Vivien Leigh among others- with still some marquee lure. And this follows a similar trajectory, older woman falling in love with younger man.

Set in Hungary in the seventeenth century, widowed Countess Elisabeth Bathory (Ingrid Pitt) discovers by accident that a touch of virgin blood rejuvenates her skin and tempts her into stealing the suitor Toth (Sandor Eles) of her 19-year-old daughter Ilona (Lesley-Anne Down). But that means kidnapping Ilona and keeping her imprisoned so Bathory can impersonate her, finding a ready supply of virgins to murder and exsanguinate, enlisting in her scheme lover Capt Dobi (Nigel Green) and maid Julie (Patience Collier).

The ruse appears to work well – at first. Believing Bathory is actually her daughter, Toth is easily seduced. But there’s a downside which is quickly apparent. What spell blood casts, it doesn’t last long. And there’s a sting in the tail. Having acted as a rejuvenating agent, when the virgin blood has run its course transformation goes the other way and turns her into an old crone.

So now, Bathory and her team enter serial killer territory, the disappearances and deaths arousing suspicion among the locals and historian Fabio (Maurice Denham), and her daughter threatening at any minute to escape her captor and turn up at the castle. And Bathory cannot give up the fantasy, not least because when the blood runs out, she’ll be unrecognizable as an old crone.

You can see where this is headed, so that’s not much of a surprise. What is astonishing is how well director Peter Sasdy (Taste the Blood of Dracula) handles the emotion. You might think the special effects do all the work that’s required, but that’s not the case. It’s Bathory’s eyes not her crumpled skin that make these scenes so powerful and in between, apart from the initial transformation, Bathory shifts uneasily between exultation that she is living the fantasy and terror that it will come to a sudden end.

Ingrid Pitt (The Vampire Lovers, 1970) has the role of her career, superbly playing a woman bewitched by her fantasy and the prospect of literally turning back the years. None of the ageing actresses that I previously mentioned manage to so well to portray that specific female agony of a beauty losing her looks. Sandor Eles (The Kremlin Letter, 1970) looks the part and Nigel Green (Fraulein Doktor, 1968), while shiftier than usual, also has to scale more emotional heights than normal, in not just having to countenance his lover going off with another man but helping her to do so. Lesley-Anne Down (The First Great Train Robbery, 1978) makes a splash.

More than ably directed by Sasdy, from a screenplay by Jeremy Paul in his debut based on the book by Valentine Penrose.

I’m not sure how well this went down with vampire aficionados and suspect there was audience disappointment, but there is more than enough depth to make up.

Shelter (2026) **

Even though it’s easily one of the worst in the Jason Statham canon, I feel duty bound to review this because a) it’s set in a remote Scottish location, the Outer Hebrides, famed for the likes of Whisky Galore (1949) and its sequel and b) because I’ve been a paid-up member (possibly one of the few) of The Stath Fan Club. So I was half-expecting to see the imprimatur of Creative Scotland on the credits, but when I checked it out, realized I’d been sold a dummy and that for “tax reasons” it had been filmed in Ireland with an occasional sign slotted in to suggest it was set in Stornoway.

But I’m afraid our Jason has fallen victim to the Dwayne Johnson affliction, whereby the successful action hero believes he has to show he can “act.” In this case, Jason is saddled with a young girl which means, by virtue of Sergei Eisenstein’s dictat, every time he glowers the hostility is softened because the camera cuts to the girl.

The reasons this falls down is not so much that very little makes sense in the first place (even though that’s a very low bar anyway) but that the director loses faith in the original idea and having set up the notion of former Government gun for hire recluse Mason (Jason Statham) battling through the wilderness of the land and seas around the Sottish Western Isles to safeguard his unwelcome charge, the orphan Jesse (Bodhi Rae Breathnach), that’s suddenly abandoned and we are relocated to London for a shoot-out in a nightclub.

The screenplay draws extensively on the Bourne films. Mason has been hiding out in a lighthouse on a remote island, quietly drinking himself to death, because principles got the better of him a decade past and he refused to kill an innocent man so when he is discovered alive when the records have been rigged to show he is dead, MI5 (or MI6) chief Manafort (Bill Nighy) wants him exterminated so, as in the Bourne series, some other assassin’s phone lights up and the hunt is on.

Logic is in complete absence. Mason’s been off the grid for a decade. Give him a few more years and he’d be dead from alcohol poisoning. And if you wanted to eliminate him, all you’d have to do is cut off his weekly supply of food and booze and wait for him to starve to death or sit in ambush till he leaves the island in his tiny boat.

Instead, some unknown person for no apparent reason has fitted (technology-wise) Mason up as a terrorist so MI5 (or MI6) go in all guns blazing only to discover he has an effective web of Rambo-style defences. He’s got a tech buddy (Daniel Mays) on Stornoway who can fix the tech problem but he’s dying of cancer so in no fit state to look after a, no matter how meek, teenager. So after more bloodshed, they’re off to London apparently secure in the knowledge that in the small matter of getting on and off the ferry required to take them to the mainland they can move unseen and that’s despite the fact that he’s been tracked using the tiniest available access points on all sorts of mobile phones and cameras on Stornoway.

Naturally, the only person who can get Jesse to safety in London is a drug trafficker and her freedom is complicated by the arrival of the same shady MI5 (or MI6) guys and genuine MI5 (or MI6) guys who couldn’t spot them traveling on any of the 400-odd miles it took to get them to the capital.

It’s not just Jason Statham going all gooey Dwayne Johnson that doesn’t make it work but the girl is a refugee from The Pony Club or National Velvet, a posh lassie who looks as though she’s had every inch of teenage-ness surgically removed and as if she’s never heard of Home Alone and hardly aware that you’ve got to show some spunk not mooch around complaining you’re going to be left alone while wanting (apparently) to be liked the murdering varmint accompanying you.

So with that relationship in screen terms dead in the water, the movie has to fall back on some garbled secret system called T.H.E.A. and an incredibly young incoming head of MI5 (or MI6) Roberta (Naomi Ackie) who looks young enough to be Jesse’s big sister (Ackie is only 35) whose job is to sort out the resultant mess.

I mentioned in a previous article how some careers were sustained by the overseas market rather than their box office returns in the U.S. and that’s been largely the case with Statham. Shelter stiffed on opening weekend in the U.S. taking just $5.5 million though it’s knocked up another $7.7 million worldwide.

Although Statham has had an unlikely hand up the Hollywood tree by being parachuted into the Fast and Furious franchise and being the leading man (or last man standing) for The Meg duo, his fortunes otherwise at the box office have been variable. The Beekeeper (2024) hit an unexpected $162 million worldwide ($66 million Stateside) and A Working Man (2025) delivered a tolerable $89 million worldwide ($37 million domestic) and even Wrath of Man, despite a poor $27 million in the U.S. crossed the $100 million mark when all other markets were taken into account.

Even so, I doubt if worldwide will redeem this one. I had thought after such a run of duds in January (and you can add Primate to the list) I could depend on Statham to redeem a poor month. Alas, no.

Directed by Ric Roman Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, 2019) from a screenplay by Ward Parry (The Shattering, 2015).

Saltburn (2023) **

With the arrival of Emerald Fennell’s latest epic Wuthering Heights (or to give it it’s full title “Wuthering Heights” – yes, don’t ask me!) imminent I thought I’d go back to Saltburn and see if my second impression was any better than my first.

Alas, I was right first time. Another “visionary” director disappearing up their own backside, despite having a superb cast at their disposal including Oscar-nominated Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein, 2025, and now Wuthering Heights), Oscar-nominated Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin, 2022) and Oscar-nominated Rosamund Pike (Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, 2025).

There wasn’t enough in a second viewing to convince me to spend a whole lot of my time revising my original review, so what follows is an expanded version of my first attempt.

Brideshead Revisited Meets Carry On Downton Abbey. Wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the way it was actually pitched, it’s just so uneven, veering through several different styles without ever finding a target. The shock elements are, unfortunately, just risible. Via the trailer this appeared to be a moody, atmospheric picture about entitlement, the downside, if you like, of Downton Abbey.

Instead, it’s just plain barmy, which might well have worked if its take on the bizarre had been consistent, but, really it’s a contender for the coveted So-Bad-It’s-Good Award with Rosamund Pike odds-on to nab the award for the best Maggie Smith impression. .

Oliver (Barry Keoghan) is supposedly a scholarship student at Oxford, coming from a sinkhole estate in Liverpool, parents drug dealers etc etc. Out of his depth, by chance he latches on to sex god Felix (Jacob Elordi) and is invited to spend the summer at the latter’s stately home complete with sneering butlers and demonic family, all graduates of the Over-Acting Academy.

Turns out we’ve not been watching Downton Abbey at all, but The Usual Suspects, Oliver not an innocent little bookworm after all but an extremely malevolent character who manages – in the absence (luckily) of post-mortem or any forensic examination– to bump off the entire family in order to inherit (don’t ask!) Saltburn in order to, in a bizarre nod to Risky Business, dance naked through it.

The only reason it gets any points at all is Jacob Elordi, who exhibits tremendous screen charisma, and because the barmy extremely self-centred and out-of-it Rosamund Pike does elicit a few laughs and maybe, courtesy of Richard E. Grant, has a haircut to enter some kind of Hall of Fame.

The shock elements are hilarious as though someone of school age has decided they are really going to shock mummy and daddy. So we’ve got Oliver licking up Felix’s leftover sperm in the bath, the various deaths and the stark naked (are you shocked now?) Risky Business homage.

Jacob Elordi has since come good. He was a believable Elvis in Priscilla (2023), excellent in On Swift Horses (2024) and superb as Frankenstein and possibly still in with a shout of becoming our next James Bond. Barry Keoghan hasn’t come good, at least in the commercial sense, second-billed in Bird (2024) and Bring Them Down (2024) and third-billed in Hurry Up, Tomorrow (2025). For all I know he may be content to plough the arthouse furrow but given his presence – and third-billed again – in the forthcoming big-budget Crime 101 that doesn’t seem to be the case, though it is true it sometimes takes a while for new faces to find a way to fit in.

It’s a shame really because spoofing Downton Abbey or Brideshead Revisited for that matter can be done with considerable ease as the recent Fackham Hall has proved.

Behind the Scenes: “Witchfinder General” / “The Conqueror Worm” (1968)

Truth was the first casualty. Matthew Hopkins, the character played in the film by Vincent Price, was 27 when he died in 1647. He had been hunting witches for three years. Price was 57 when the movie appeared. Co-star Ian Ogilvy, aged 25, would have been a better fit, though he lacked the menace. Oliver Reed, who had the swagger and the scowl, would have been the ideal candidate, age-wise, since he was just turning 30. And the movie might well have benefitted from presenting Hopkins as a young grifter who through force of personality and cunning held a country to ransom.

Price wasn’t director Michael Reeves’ (The Sorcerers, 1967) first choice. In fact, he originally wanted buddy Ogilvy, who had played opposite Boris Karloff in The Sorcerers. When that idea failed to float with Tony Tenser – previously head of Compton Films – now boss of British horror outfit Tigon, a challenger to the Hammer crown, Reeves pivoted to Donald Pleasance who, although better known as a supporting actor in the likes of The Great Escape (1963), had headlined Roman Polanski’s chiller Cul de Sac (1966). But when Tenser did a deal with American International Pictures, the U.S. mini-studio insisted on contract player Vincent Price, the mainstay of their Edgar Allan Poe output, with 16 previous films (out of 74) for the company.

Twenty-one-year-old Hilary Dwyer (The Oblong Box, 1969), under contract to Tigon, made her movie debut. Rupert Davies (The Oblong Box) was a seasoned veteran while Nicky Henson (Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, 1967) was a potential breakout star.

Tigon was a relatively new entrant to the horror scene, founded in 1966 by Tenser. Its second picture was The Sorcerers; this would be its fourth. Tenser has bought, pre-publication, the rights to Ronald Bassett’s novel Witchfinder General, published in 1966. Director Reeves faced something of a deadline once Tenser finalized the £83,000 budget. AIP chipped in £32,000 which included a £12,000 fee for Price. While it was Tigon’s biggest film to date, it was pin money for AIP.

The film needed to begin shooting by September 1967 at the latest to avoid the worst of the British cold weather. But the screenplay proved too unpleasant for the taste of the British censor. Reeves had already begun the screenplay with Tom Baker (The Sorcerers) with Donald Pleasance in mind portraying “a ridiculous authority figure” and had to quickly revamp it for Price. The laws of the period required a green light for the script from the British Board of Film Censors, who were repulsed by a “study in sadism” which dwelt too lovingly on “every detail of cruelty and suffering.”

That draft was submitted on August 4, 1967. The second draft, submitted on August 15, proved no more appealing. A third, substantially toned-down version, was approved. This resulted in the elimination of gruesome details of the Battle of Naseby and a change to the ending.

Production began on September 18, 1967. Star and director clashed. Reeves refused to go and meet Price on arrival at Heathrow Airport and told him, “I didn’t want you, and I still don’t want you, but I’m stuck with you.” The star was riled by the director’s inexperience. When told to fire a blank pistol while on horseback, Price was thrown from his horse after the animal reared up in shock at the sound. Price, in real-life a very cultured person, was surprised at Reeves’ attitude because in general he got on with directors.

Price turned up drunk on the last day of shooting, the filming of his character’s death scene. Reeves was planning revenge and told Ogilvy to really lay into the star. But the producer, anticipating trouble, ensured Price was well padded.

Reeves was better known for his technical rather than personal skills. Ogilvy commented: “Mike never directed the actors. He said he knew nothing about acting and preferred to leave it up to us.” That wouldn’t square with him falling out with Price over his interpretation of the character. And Hilary Dwyer saw another side of Reeves. “He was really inspiring to work with,” she said, “And because it was my first film, I didn’t know how lucky I was.” She would work with Price again on The Oblong Box and Cry of the Banshee (1970).

Tony Tenser, egged on by AIP’s head of European Productions, shot additional nude scenes in the pub sequence for the German version, A continuity error was responsible for the freeze-frame ending. There was a short strike when the production fell foul of union rules. Producer Philip Waddilove and his wife Susi were occasionally called upon to act.

Two aircraft hangars near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk were converted for the interiors while a wide variety of locations were utilized for exteriors including Lavenham Square in Suffolk, the coast at Dunwich, also in Suffolk, Black Park in Buckinghamshire, Orford Castle in East Anglia, St John The Evangelist Church in Rushford, Norfolk, and Kentwell Hall in Long Melford on the Essex-Suffolk border. When the operation could not afford a camera crane, the crew improvised with a cherry picker.

Despite the tension on set, Price was pleased with his performance and the overall film. He praised the film in a 10-page letter. Price remarked, “I realized what he wanted was a low-key, very laid-back, menacing performance. He did get it but I was fighting him every inch of the way. Had I known what he wanted I would have cooperated.”

AIP retitled it The Conqueror Worm for U.S. release, hoping to snooker fans into thinking this fell into the Edgar Allan Poe canon, since the title referred to one of the author’s poems, part of which was recited over the credits.

The movie was generally lambasted by critics for its perceived sadistic approach, but is now considered cult. It was a big box office hit, especially considering the paltry budget, gaining a circuit release in the UK – “very good run beating par by a wide margin” – and despite being saddled with the tag of “unlikely box office prospects” by Variety did better than expected business in New York ($159,000 from 28 houses), Los Angeles (a “lusty” $97,000 from 16) and Detroit ($35,000 from one). The final U.S. rental tally was $1.5 million placing it ahead in the annual box office charts of such bigger-budgeted efforts as Villa Rides starring Yul Brynner and Robert Mitchum, Anzio with Mitchum again, James Stewart and Henry Fonda in Firecreek and Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot in Shalako.

SOURCES: Benjamin Halligan, Michael Reeves (Manchester University Press) 2003; Lucy Chase Williams, The Complete Films of Vincent Price (Citadel Press, 1995); “Big Rental Films of 1968,” Variety, January 8, 1969, p15; Steve Biodrowski and David Del Valle, “Vincent Price, Horror’s Crown Prince,” Cinefantastique, Vol 19; Bill Kelley, “Filming Reeves Masterpiece Witchfinder General,” Cinefantastique, Vol 22; “Box Office Business,” Kine Weekly, June 1, 1968, p8; “Review,” Variety, May 15, 1968, p6. Box office figures – Variety, May-August 1968.

Witchfinder General / The Conqueror Worm (1968) ****

For 250 years Europe and America was in the grip of a man-made plague. Ever since Pope Innocent VIII declared war on supposed witches in 1584, tens of thousands were arrested, tortured and hung or burned to death. Although Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible is considered the last word on the subject, in fact it treats very lightly the physical degradation visited upon victims and the corruption that was at the heart of the disaster. And sure, cinema has poked its nose into the area of possession, most recently with the supposed final act of the The Conjuring series, and while items like The Immaculate (2024) and The Handmaid’s Tale series focus on female subjugation, none of these exposes the full horror of witchcraft accusation.

The British censor bristled at the violence depicted in this film, and the picture was censored to a degree, while movie critics howled at the film’s “sadism.” Yet though the film is a raw depiction of the terrors inflicted on the innocent – male and female – by a corrupt male hierarchy, it scarcely touches the surface of the tsunami of wanton killing and terror.

So this serves as a welcome reminder of that awful age. While romantic leads Richard (Ian Ogilvy) and Sarah (Hilary Dwyer) are insipid, Matthew Hopkins (Vincent Price), the self-appointed Witchfinder General, and his gang of thugs led by John Stearne (Robert Russell) are not, and the enormous delight they take in torturing the innocent is what drives the picture. Set in an England in 1645 riven by civil war, where the forces of law and order are in disarray, Hopkins takes delight in profiting from the lack of opposition to his reign of terror.

While Vincent Price (The Oblong Box, 1969) manages to resist the temptation to be overblown and his subdued performance carries ominous weight, it’s the unusual approach of director Matthew Reeves (The Sorcerers, 1967) that makes this a standout. He’s not making a horror picture, but a historical one. Not just are their nods to a specific time period, he bypasses the Gothic, the movie taking place mostly in daylight rather than nighttime, and his visual composition stands comparison with the best of the 1960s roadshows rather than standard Hammer or AIP offerings.

Hopkins delegates the actual torture to his underlings, retaining for himself the more subtle pleasure of blackmailing women into providing him with sex and walking off with a fat purse from local dignitaries for his troubles.

When he descends on any town or village, there will be a price to pay in human ruin. He picks on the village of Brandstone in Sussex and begins to torture local priest John Lowes (Rupert Davies), driving him to exhaustion by endlessly racing him up and down a room before his accomplices can get down to the serious business of plunging long needles into his naked body. Virtually all the weapons in the witch hunter’s armory are of the Catch 22 category. Nothing you do will present as innocent and then you are headed for the gallows or lowered alive into a bonfire.

Luckily for Lowes, his niece Sarah is sweet on Roundhead officer Richard, applauded for his courage in battle, and he attempts to come to her rescue. Unfortunately for her, he is called back to duty before he can save anybody and it’s only by sacrificing herself to Hopkins that Sarah believes she can save her uncle. That turns out to be the worst of the calumnies Hopkins visits upon the innocent, as once he has had his fun he just condemns the old man anyway, and the daughter to boot. And although audiences might wince at the torture it was only fraction of the pain inflicted on the victims who might well end up confessing to witchcraft just to get the agony over with. In my hometown of Paisley, seven witches were executed a few years after Salem on the accusations of an 11-year-old girl – The Renfrewshire Witch Trials has just been published on Amazon should you be interested – which shows the absolute contrivance of the authorities in ruthlessly hunting out victims on the slightest pretense.

It’s a shame that neither Ian Ogilvy (The Sorcerers) nor Hilary Dwyer (The Oblong Box) are equipped to show the depths of despair of their characters, but in some sense this is not their story, except as examples of victims, and the tale really belongs to the venal butchers who took advantage of a climate of fear. These days, it shows up almost as a quasi-documentary and that’s to its benefit.

Written by the director and Tom Baker (The Sorcerers) based on the bestseller by Ronald Bassett. For its U.S. release, AIP snuck in a poem by Edgar Allan Poe which explains the U.S. title The Conqueror Worm.

Interest in this movie is unfairly attributed to the cult status it acquired after the premature death of the director – this was the last of his three films – but in fact it sits easily in the well-wrought historical movies of the period, handsomely mounted and unflinching.

Return to Silent Hill (2026) *

Matt Damon’s contention than in the brand-new cinematic world dominated by Netflix you have to repeat the plot four or five times would have come in exceedingly handy here where storyline and characters are so diffuse a wisp of smoke contains more substance. I saw this on a double-bill with Mercy (2026) so now can claim to have watched the direst double-bill of my movie-watching life, a pair of movies that are so bad they have not the slightest chance of redemption via falling into the So-Bad-It’s-Good category.

I am certainly cautious by now whenever I see a director proclaimed as “visionary” especially as about the only original element of this picture is the title, which has discarded the normal sequel numbered designation (ie. Silent Hill 2 or Silent Hill II depending on your pomposity) in favor of “Return to” which hasn’t been used for decades since Return to Oz (1985) and Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991), neither of them raising expectation that using the “Return to” notion would augur well.

I should perhaps point out that this sequel claims not to be an actual sequel but a “Hillverse” option, taking place in the world of the original Silent Hill (2006) and its sequel Silent Hill: Revelation (2012). And the new movie owes a great deal to the video games developed by Konami, which turns out not be a person but a company. Bear in mind that the game was described as a “survival scenario” wherein the hero has to survive all sorts of monsters without, I would guess, being armed with the kind of weaponry that makes survival a tad easier for video game characters.

So, onto the mess. I’ll try and unravel it for you but mostly the plot is incomprehensible. Alcoholic mentally-ill artist James Sunderland (Jeremy Irvine) is separated from his wife Mary whom he met in a town called Silent Hill. Years later after receiving a letter from Mary he returns to the town to discover it’s covered in fog and ash. (The ash, I did note, was about the only decent visual in the picture).

The town is empty, inhabited only by strange skeletal armless creatures and moths of all shapes and sizes including gigantic. These moths, I should add, are pretty dumb. Shut the door on them and they stay out, apparently incapable of crawling through the myriad tiny spaces in any building which are invisible to the human eye but which (as we all know) seem to pose to no barrier to insects.

*I returned to Silent Hill and all I got was annoyed.*

James turns detective and discovers his wife was part of a cult and recalls that the couple split after she was forced by her father to take part in a ritual. Then it turns out his wife is actually dead and it’s all in his mind that she’s still alive.

This is all just a nightmare, and not just for James, I should add, but for the audience. Flinging all sorts of monsters and strange visuals at an audience isn’t going to keep them entranced. Anybody who can remotely be able to run down a long burning passage indicates to an audience that this can’t possibly be real, especially as the flames are not accompanied by smoke.

So our mentally ill hero has not just revived his wife but made up the various other female characters that appear including a giant moth version of Mary. Luckily, the nightmare triggers further memory and James remembers that, in fact, he killed his wife in some kind of mercy killing because she was so ill after being drugged by the cult. Luckily, too, moth Mary appears so James can apologize for killing her. So it all ends well. He’s not a murderer or mercy killer after all.

There’s a Sliding Doors twist at the end which is as barmy as the rest of the movie.

Director Christophe Gans (Beauty and the Beast, 2014) is mostly to blame.

I know we’ve a long way to go into the 2026 cinematic year, but, goodness, what an awful way to start it off, two prime duds, one of which has been given the full marketing treatment, though admittedly Return to Silent Hill kind of sneaked out.

Just plain awful.

Mercy (2025) *

I’m trying to think of any actor who could carry off the central premise of this picture which is to chunter on for the best part of 90 minutes while remaining seated and staring straight at the camera. I saw this on the fourth day of its opening weekend at my local multiplex and the public had already spoken – it had already been relegated to a 30-seater screen. I can’t believe how it managed to top the U.S. box office charts. Least of all how anybody considered this a candidate for Imax or 3D.

Let me say it again. An actor sits in a chair for the best part of 90 minutes and talks straight to the camera. You what? Is this some new arthouse sensation? Some reimagining of Fred Zinnemann’s western classic High Noon (1952) what with the clock ticking away on screen?

Nope, it’s just the dumbest of dumb ideas. Usually, this kind of picture is buried in the first week of December and doesn’t try to come out all-marketing-guns-blazing in mid-January when audiences might be hoping for a breakout sleeper akin to The Housemaid (2025).

Set aside the nonsensical right-wing satire of the Robocop (1987) variety – “guilty until proved innocent” – and the drone-style helicopters and the mobile-phone style footage of chases and whatnot with a 30-ton truck barreling through Los Angeles and you’re still left with some guy stuck in a chair droning on for 90 minutes straight to camera.

Chris Raven (Chris Pratt) is strapped to a chair facing AI Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) with 90 minutes to explain why he should not be executed for killing his wife Nicole (Annabelle Raven). Chris is an alcoholic cop and his main claim to fame is that he was the first guy to put away a criminal, David Robb, under a new Minority Report-type system of law enforcement where sentencing for violent crime is immediate and without all the boring bits involving a jury. The judge isn’t quite judge, jury and executioner, but comes closes because once the clock stops ticking the suspect is immediately killed via a sonic blast, whatever that is.

So, basically, without being able to move more than an eyebrow, the cop has to scour all sorts of electronic media to put together the jigsaw surrounding his wife’s murder. He discovers she’s been having an affair and there’s something dodgy going on at her work involving stolen chemicals, the kind that could be used to manufacture a bomb. Chris calls in partner Jaq (Kali Reis) to help with the detection.

Would you believe it, turns out Chris’s AA sponsor Rob Nelson (Chris Sullivan) has built a bomb and now hijacks the truck, kidnapping Chris’s daughter Britt (Kylie Rogers) for good measure, determined to blow up the court building (which bear in mind primarily holds AI characters) and get revenge on Chris for putting away Rob’s brother (yeah, the different surnames had you fooled, didn’t they?).

Naturally, it’s all going to be down to police corruption. So that’s the end of the new-look sci-fi legal system. And it’s a dead end for a picture that had nothing going for it.

So, what could have been a relatively acceptable low-level action picture without an ounce of originality – the cop would have fled justice and tried to prove his innocence while on the run (easy!) – is turned into a monstrous mess. It just makes no sense to have the main character stuck on his backside talking to the camera for what seems like forever, with that dumb clock ticking in the corner of the screen, while all the action is shown on postage-stamp images as if viewed through a mobile phone.

Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, 2023) isn’t the most animated of actors, anyway, though I doubt if even Tom Hanks could have carried this off, and Rebecca Ferguson (Dune: Part Two, 2024) often appears too robotic for her own good anyway.

Timur Bekmambetov (Ben-Hur, 2016) directs from a screenplay by Marco van Belle (Arthur and Merlin, 2015).

So you’d be inclined to point the finger at them, but, in reality, you’d be asking who the heck at Amazon/MGM greenlit this shambles.

Mercy!