Pirates of Blood River: (1962. dir: John Gilling) How did I go so long without knowing that Hammer made pirate films? Christopher Lee and Oliver Reed are very stylish buccaneers, complete vis ze Frahnch ax-ahnt. The guy who played Zefram Cochrane in Star Trek (he invented the warp drive; you remember, in "Metamorphosis") is here, and so very tree-like that he makes Kerwin Matthews look downright dynamic. You can tell this village beset by wicked pirates is a Hammer Village because the puritanical Huguenot women in it wear delicious dresses showing off their tasty flesh. It's got Michael Ripper and other favorites from the Hammer stable, as well as all manner of nasty behaviour you'd expect from salty scalawags. It has a nicely doubled message about tyranny and the uprising of the downtrodden (a mirrored theme in a Hammer film! such complexity), and the piranha alone are worth the price of admission.
Horror Express: (1972. dir: Eugenio Martin) An ancient and deadly alien life-form thaws from a hunk of Manchurian ice on a train across the frozen steppes of Russia, and in the end there are zombies! Although this sports the ever-delightful team of Lee and Peter Cushing, it's Telly Savalas who steals the show with his late entry as an arrogant Russian soldier, roaring, "What the devil fears is a single honest cossack." And how about this exchange?
Savalas: Shoot whatever moves at that doorway.
Cushing: What if the monk's innocent?
Savalas: We got lots of innocent monks.
Cushing gets my favorite laugh, though. When the police investigator observes that since the alien can shape-shift he might be anyone, Cushing says, "Surely you know we're British!"
And that's not all. There's a groovy mad Russian starets and plenty of gruesome murders, and the scientists find images of dinosaurs and the earth from space recorded in the tissue of the alien's eyeballs. Try and resist THAT.
the Terror of the Tongs: (1961. dir: Anthony Bushell) Watching Lee in interviews, it becomes quickly apparent that he's proud (justifiably) of his dexterity with accents, and that he very much enjoys taking on characters of varying ethnicities. Now, of course, we blink and look away, embarrassed, when a white-skinned anglo darkens up, gets the eyes and moustache done up Fu Manchu (dons the "Yellow Peril drag", as Gary Giddins puts it in Warning Shadows), but 1961 was another galaxy, far, far away. Although this is not one of his Fu Manchu films (he made several), it's in the ballpark.
Hong Kong, 1910. The Tongs are an organization of killers ruled by Lee, who manages to invest even the cheesiest dialogue with importance. I have to say it: the older I get, the more I appreciate that (see review of Wrath of Khan). Any damn fool can make, say, Viola's "make me a willow cabin" speech in Twelfth Night sound wistfully lovely because it was written that way by a genius. It's committing successfully to those "I DRINK your milkshake!" tirades that might convince me to walk barefoot to Daniel Day-Lewis' house in Ireland just to leave his Oscar on his doorstep. And although Lee claims he once did an entire Dracula film without speaking a line because the dialogue as written was so awful, when he does commit, he commits all the way, and no holds are barred.
Hound of the Baskervilles: (1959. dir: Terence Fisher) Peter Cushing was brilliant. It's easy to forget because his choices were always clean and direct. I can remember being so enthralled by a line reading of Grand Moff Tarkin's ("Evacuate? In our moment of triumph?") that I used to mimic it in private, trying to figure out what it was that made it great. (I still don't know, but it is.) Right now he is my favorite Sherlock Holmes, although I have not yet seen Lee's or, to be fair, Robert Downey's. Cushing doesn't forego the rudeness and superiority of Holmes but is himself so personally likable that all is easily forgiven (as opposed to the insufferable pretentiousness of Jeremy Brett in the PBS series).
I consider this a Hammer masterpiece. It's got that richness of colour and atmosphere but they never overwhelm the telling of the story. It's got that mysterious Hammer flesh appeal, somehow seeming almost pornographic but when you go back and try to figure why you can't put your finger on it. The story is altered, but for the better. One of its great flaws has always been that Watson is required to carry too much of it, and, let's be frank: no one goes to Baker Street to spend time with Dr. Watson. In this version, Lee's Henry Baskerville is emphasized during that period of time when Holmes has absented himself, and Lee has the strength of presence to fill the lacuna. The other flaw is Holmes' ridiculous disguise, which has to fool even Watson, and never works on film; Fisher has cut it out, and it is not necessary to the plot. The other major change is in the rewriting of Miss Stapleton as a passionate major player, an alteration that might not work elsewhere but is absolutely perfect for a Hammer outing, and allows for Lee to get some macking in on a gorgeous woman, which he rarely gets to do on film.
Even the dog looks pretty demonic in his little mask. I give it four stars, easy.
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