Thorley Walters – The Magnificent 60s

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) ****

Hugely enjoyable, mainly because it throws away the standard template for this kind of horror picture. Long before Hollywood got into the habit or remaking or reimagining hit films, Hammer was constantly finding a reason to revive a character who in his previous iteration had met a sticky end. Even though Baron Frankenstein was not one of those villains who always managed to escape at the end of every episode, audiences had no trouble accepting him in whatever guise, era or location he turned up in.

But this is a considerable reinvention of the accepted characterization. Usually, Frankenstein is represented as somewhat academic arrogant scientist, not suffering fools gladly, but rarely has he been given such a wealth of finely tuned insults to offer. Nor has he ever exhibited what you might term passion. You’d never wonder, for example, who he fancied. But that’s all changed here. When he takes a woman here, it’s an extension of his power as much as his passion, and although the sex takes the form of rape, it does reveal him (if that’s not too awful to contemplate) as more human than before.

And the young couple in love, dragged into his web, are far from the usual innocents. On top of that, there are scenes of tremendous pathos when a wife cannot accept the husband brought back from the dead. And there’s quite a brilliant, if ironic, climax that you would not see coming.

In addition, at times the direction by Terence Fisher exhibits tremendous confidence, not just following a structure that brings out far more emotion than is generally accorded the genre, but surprises with flashes of humor and the kind of editing that would generate acclaim had it been in anything other than this.

This time round Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) is in London, haunting the streets with a scythe to lop off the heads of passing pedestrians on dark nights. While he’s employed in this endeavor a burglar discovers the secrets of the baron’s cellar and inadvertently destroys the monster undergoing creation. Frankenstein hides out in a boarding house run by Anna (Veronica Carlson), whose fiancé Dr Holst (Simon Ward) is stealing drugs from the mental asylum where he works, thus making him easy prey for blackmail. The baron wants to kidnap asylum inmate and former colleague Dr Brandt (George Pravda) to find the secret formula for their previous work together.

With Holst soon knee-deep in murder, Anna an accessory to the drug theft, the “innocent” pair are dragged further into the baron’s web. When Holst pleads with Frankenstein, “Let her go, you don’t need here,” the baron replies in deliciously supercilious tones, “I need her to make coffee.”

During the escape from the asylum, Brandt has a heart attack so Frankenstein arranges to transplant his brain into the body of Professor Richter (Freddie Jones). Brandt’s wife Ella (Maxine Audley), initially delighted to find her husband not just alive but cured of insanity, nonetheless is later repulsed by this “creature”, even though in appearance he is not awful, just not the husband she knew.

The plot quickly turns. Frankenstein rapes Anna. In turn, she wounds the creature. And the baron murders Anna, meanwhile realizing that Holst cannot be trusted. The creature, turned away by Ella, and now determined to gain revenge, sets a fiery trap for Frankenstein and in a superb ending hauls the baron into a burning house.

As I said, the structure takes a considerable detour from the standard Frankenstein picture, in particular taking time out from the main plot of the “innocents” escaping and/or thwarting the baron in order to focus on the relationship between Ella and the creature. Her rejection of him, his disgust with his new appearance, and the emotional loss of his wife moves into territory you wouldn’t normally associate with the genre, much closer to the more contemporary reading of the original tale.

Every now and then we dip into a subplot of a police investigation aided by the thief and Ella as witnesses. At first the pompous Inspector Frisch (Thorley Walters) seems little more than a comedic diversion, but actually he’s more switched-on than you’d expect and his detective work adds more tension.

Making Frankenstein more human – even if it’s just him giving into evil impulse – works to the movie’s advantage, as it allows him to pepper his lines with rapier wit. Peter Cushing (The Skull, 1965) has never been better but Freddie Jones (Otley, 1969) as the victim steals the show with a performance of tremendous pathos.

Simon Ward should count himself lucky that Richard Attenborough overlooked his performance and saw something in him that made him the ideal candidate to play Young Winston (1972). Veronica Carlson (Hammerhead, 1968) became the latest Hammer Scream Queen.

Occasionally inspired direction from Terence Fisher (The Devil Rides Out, 1968) in allowing the characters to develop and relationships to foster. Screenplay by Bert Batt, in his debut, and producer Anthony Nelson Keys (Pirates of Blood River, 1962) and based, somehow, on the original by Mary Frankenstein.

Surprised how much I appreciated it.

Suspect / The Risk (1960) ****

Marvellous long-forgotten character-driven espionage drama exploring the twin themes of guilt and duty. It would appear to be stolen by two supporting actors, Ian Bannen and Thorley Walters, but in fact both play roles that have significant bearing not only on the narrative but on our understanding of the most important characters. Not only do we have the main plot, but we also have two well-worked sub-plots, one concerning disability and the other of more sinister relevance – a 1984 Big Brother theme.

Basic tale concerns a laboratory that has discovered a bacteria that can cure plague. Hopes of a celebratory drink all-round and academic kudos on publishing his paper for top boffin Professor Sewell (Peter Cushing) are dashed when the Government in the shape of the pompous Sir George Gatling (Raymond Huntly) steps in, steals the discovery and makes the staff sign the Official Secrets Act.

*Romance No 1 – Virginia Maskell and Tony Britton in the lab*.

While the revered professor takes it on the chin, colleague Bob Marriott (Tony Britton) is outraged so vocally in public that he attracts the attention of the shady Brown (Donald Pleasance) who suggests to the dupe that there is a way of getting the information out to the wider scientific community, especially to plague-ridden countries.

However, don’t let Sir George’s pomposity fool you. He doesn’t trust this bunch an inch and puts the Secret Service on their tail to assess “the risk” and we dip into the dark kind of web (not that kind of dark web) and the mundane business of deception and betrayal shortly to be explored by the likes of John Le Carre (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, published in 1963) and Len Deighton (The Ipcress File, published a year earlier).

Rather than this outfit being headed by a version of the prim George Smiley, Mr Prince (Thorley Waters) has a lot more in common with the unkempt Jackson Lamb of the Slow Horses series. His incompetence is an act to make visitors to his shambles of an office under-estimate him. But he’s got that Columbo knack of asking the most important question just when an interviewee thinks the interview is over.

Also in the background, coming more increasingly into the foreground, is an unusual love triangle between colleagues Bob and Lucy Byrne (Virginia Maskell), who kiss and hold hands in the cinema, and Lucy’s flatmate, the disabled war vet Alan Andrews (Ian Bannen). The fact that Lucy and Alan live together at a time when such a relationship was frowned upon and would be career death in certain circles and that they were once engaged to be married gives it an edge. That Alan has lost an arm and a hand so needs to be cared for – fed (as in food spooned into his mouth), washed (you can guess that aspect), cigarette lit and removed between puffs, dressed – suggests significant intimacy for an adult.

Obviously, she’s the kind of lass who couldn’t abandon him to the welfare system, and he’s the kind of man who broke off their engagement so she wouldn’t feel tied to him for the rest of her life. But he also hates what he’s become, his desperate reliance on her, what he’s lost, and that’s turned him into not just a bitter individual but a particularly cunning one, who has developed the trick of torpedoing any nascent romance. “You can’t compete,” he gloats to Bob, “because you can’t make her feel good.”

*Romance No 2 – Ian Bannen and Virginia Maskell.*

But when that doesn’t work, he befriends Bob and surreptitiously eggs him on to betray his country and in so doing, hopefully, kill off the romance.

Mr Prince is a delight. Accorded the best lines, he makes great use of them. When his subordinate Slater (Sam Kydd) abrasively brings Dr Shole (Kenneth Griffith) in for questioning, he reprimands him with the rather coy, “Oh, you haven’t been rough again.” To Dr Shole (Kenneth Griffith), the most susceptible of the professor’s acolytes, he warns, “Tell him (Sewell) not to be a fool or you’ll smack him on the backside.” Though Dr Shole has a superb retort, “We’re not exactly on those terms.”

Professor Sewell appears mostly on the back foot. While quietly seething at being denied his professional day in the sun, he accepts duty. Even so, he’s smart enough to outwit Prince when the traitor is caught.

The background of the wheels-within-wheels of Government, the silent overseeing of ordinary lives, the authorized level of spying, comes as something of a shock, since despite George Orwell’s best efforts Big Brother was seen as a clever fiction that could not occur in this most democratic and upright of countries where “fair play” was the rule. Visually, this is well done, we see eavesdroppers in mirrors in pubs and, as I said, Prince seems the least effective of operatives but with the kind of personality that you could easily have built a series around.

Disability from war was a constant of post-war British pictures, most often demonstrated by a character with a limp, as with general dogsbody Arthur (Spike Milligan) here. The Oscar-winning The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) was the most effective at dealing with the physical after-effects of the Second World War. But there, the worst-affected soldier, had prosthetic hands. Here, Alan does not, so the scenes of him being tended to by Lucy are emotionally more powerful.

She tends to his emotions, too, and will embrace him and kiss him on the mouth though he’s not dumb enough to read true romantic commitment into those demonstrations of affection. Clearly, there is emotional residue from their engagement, from which you guess she will ultimately be unable to entangle herself, unless he can find a more brutal way of helping her out of the dilemma.

The lab aspect is surprisingly well done. We don’t get any real information on the scientific breakthrough. Mostly, what we view is the grunt work, the laborious checking of thousands of samples for another experiment. At one point Bob thrusts his arm into a contraption packed with buzzing flies as if he was a competitor in I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

Ian Bannen (The Flight of the Phoenix, 1965) is the standout but character actor Thorley Waters (Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace, 1962) runs him close. Tony Britton (better known later for television comedy) has the least interesting role, but Virginia Maskell (Interlude, 1968) has too much to do without dialog to demonstrate her dilemma. Peter Cushing (The Skull, 1965) is solid as always and Spike Milligan provides light relief.

Joint direction by the Boulting Brothers (The Family Way, 1967), Roy and John. Screenplay by Nigel Balchin (Circle of Deception, 1960) based on his own novel.

Exceptionally solid stuff. I was very much taken by the unusual approach, the themes and the acting.

Worth a look.

Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962) **

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be turning in his grave. Workmanlike at best, awful at its worst, or a “so-bad-it’s-good” candidate? Christopher Lee goes through the motions, there’s an oddly inserted heist, the continuity goes haywire, and the deduction would not have troubled a child. Even the great sleuth having to match nemesis Moriarty in cunning fails to lift this turgid tale. Despite being made in Germany, all the actors, save Senta Berger, appear injected with a fatal dose of stiff upper lip.

A corpse in the water alerts Sherlock Holmes (Christopher Lee) to the presence of Moriarty (Hans Sohnker) who is hunting Peter Blackburn (Wolfgang Lukschy) who has appropriated Cleopatra’s necklace from an archaeological dig. This takes them to Hampshire where corpses abound but the necklace is gone. Holmes burgles Moriarty’s apartment and steals back the necklace which is sent, in heavily protected police van, to an auction house. Holmes outwits Moriarty by infiltrating the heist the villain has planned.

The best scene comes at the beginning when boys throw stones at something floating in the Thames only to discover it’s a corpse. After that, you can choose from any number of bad scenes. Where do you start? The disguises? Holmes is first seen wearing a false nose to pass himself off as dock worker. An eyepatch is enough to convince Moriarty’s henchmen that Holmes in one of their kind. Bare-handed, Holmes kills an obviously plastic snake. To find out what Moriarty is up to, they listen down a chimney!

The deduction is so awful Dr Watson (Thorley Walters) could have done it. A dying man who manages to whisper one word is unable to whisper two and instead still has the strength to flap his hands in a way that any child in the audience familiar with shadow play would have known signaled a bird. Holmes follows bloody footsteps over grass in the darkness. The hands of a corpse are too calloused to be a high-class gentleman. And that’s as much of the detective’s genius as is on show. Moriarty, who is meant to be ever so bright, offers Holmes £6,000 a year to enter into a criminal partnership with him.

Did I mention the continuity? Holmes, in docker’s disguise, turns up outside his apartment lying on the pavement calling for help. Wounded, perhaps? A bit of a joke? We never find out. Once inside, he just turns back into Sherlock Holmes. In the middle of the Hampshire countryside, Scotland Yard’s Inspector Cooper (Hans Neilsen) turns up in a trice.

The film has also been dubbed so the performances are all flat except that of Ellen Blackburn (Senta Berger), the only character who injects emotion into the picture. Everybody else is wooden. Christopher Lee bases his entire interpretation of Holmes on his costume, deerstalker prominent and always puffing on his pipe. Austrian Senta Berger at least shows promise and manages to project some personality into her small part.

Made in a Berlin studio, with some location work in Ireland, this German-made movie has a screenplay by Curt Siodmak (The Wolf Man, 1941), purportedly based on the Conan Doyle tale The Valley of Fear. British director Terence Fisher (Sword of Sherwood Forest, 1960) is generally assumed to have helmed this project but the actual credits on the picture have him sharing duties with Frank Winterstein, so perhaps Fisher can be absolved of the complete blame.

The so-bad-it’s-good category had obviously not been invented in the early 1960s so this picture was shelved in Britain for six years, although shown in Germany and France before then.

CATCH-UP: If you’ve been tracking the often subtle performances – for a glamour queen – of Senta Berger through the Blog, you can also check out my reviews of The Secret Ways (1961), Major Dundee (1965), Cast a Giant Shadow (1966), The Quiller Memorandum (1966), and Bang! Bang! You’re Dead (1966). If you’re a Berger fan or fast becoming one to can see one of her later performances in Istanbul Express (1968) which, by coincidence, is reviewed tomorrow.