By Roy Mathur, on 2024-02-15, at 23:00:00--23:47:12 GMT, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
I have found a nice spot in 1980's Hyde Park to park the VIMANA and Herr Fygor Gestalt setting up the refreshments essential to any discussion of the sublimely trashy horror that is Hammer House of Horror. It's October, so I'm guessing a hot beverage is in order.
My multiversal malaise has taken an even more unfortunate turn, which is what happens when you jaunt one too many times around the multiverse, though fortunate for you the listener as I'm podcasting more than ever to take my mind off things.
Notable Cast: Graham (Leigh Lawson; Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight's squire Humphrey), Sarah (Angela Bruce; well known actress, inc. Red Dwarf's female Lister), Mark (Michael Culver; The Empire Strikes Back's Captain Needa, Space: 1999: Guardian of Piri's Eagle Pilot Pete Irving), Phil (Michael Deeks; Dick Turpin's Swiftnick), Inspector Franks (Jeff Rawle; Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire's Amos Diggory), Secretary (Mandy) (Janet Fielding's TV debut, Doctor Who's Tegan Jovanka)
Director: Robert Young (also Hammer's Vampire Circus)
Writer: Bernie Cooper (inc. 2 Man in a Suitcase), Francis Megahy (also a director inc. The Great Riviera, Taffin)
Producer: Roy Skeggs; ex-Hammer Films, formed spin-off Cinema Arts, returned to Hammer, moved production to Buckinghamshire and created Hammer House of Horror.
Locations: Various in and around Buckinghamshire (1980). This episode (source IMDB): Hampden House, (Uncle Jack falls and interior), Hill Avenue, Amersham (Heinz's antique shop), Peterley Manor House, Peterley Lane, Prestwood (Graham and Sarah's flat), Aylesbury Road, Great Missenden (road rage), The Holloway, Whiteleaf, Princes Risborough (Sarah's crash) in BUCKS.
Production: Hammer Films, Cinema Arts, and ITC Entertainment
Distribution: ITV
Music: The memorable theme music was composed by ex-Jazz pianist Roger Webb.
Broadcast: Episode 6 of 13, first broadcast 18 October 1980, 54 minute running time (c. 1 hr inc. ads), follows The House That Bled to Death covered in 520.Media: DVD Hammer House of Horror: The Complete Collection (2002), Blu-ray Hammer House of Horror: The Complete Series (2017) (worth buying because the series was shot on 35 mm film), ITVX in the UK (2023), Apple TV
Number 1 in the UK was still The Police's Don't Stand so Close to Me, as it was for The House That Bled to Death.
Uncle Jack falls from his roof while adjusting a TV aerial.
Later his nephew Graham arrives to inspect his inheritance of his late Uncle's art. His wife Sarah names a magical African fetish doll from the collection Charlie Boy and they keep it. On the way home they are the victims of rage rage. Later Graham stabs Charlie Boy imagining it to be the man who attacked them. In real life the same man is stabbed to death.
His brother Mark inherits his uncle's estate, but reneges on an earlier deal to invest in Graham's film production company. Jobless and furious he stabs Mark in a photograph that includes Mark, Graham's director Phil, Uncle Jack's housekeeper Gwen, Sarah, and himself, then repeatedly stabs the doll.
Mark is killed when he flies off him horse, when it jumps a hedge, and is impaled on farming equipment. Phil is killed on set by a crossbow bolt. Graham is convinced that it is the work of the doll and that everyone in the photograph will die. The next victim will be Gwen. Unable to remove the knife from the doll or contact Gwen, Graham rushes to the estate, but finds her dead after she had cut her wrists.
Heinz, his uncle's art dealer says his only hope is to burn the doll, but it has been missing after a burglary due to Heinz letting slip to a crooked friend its location. Graham fights the crook, retrieves Charlie Boy, and drives past Sarah's crashed car, unaware that she is dead. Back at their home he tries to burn it, but dies as he clutches the statue bristling with blades, trips over a hatchet and slams into the floor, driving the blades into his chest.
The main couple, Graham and Angela stood out because there were not many mixed couples in the Early 80s. Also, partnerships that span the class divide are rare even today.
The Charlie Boy prop is shockingly bad and unintentionally very funny. I pointed out in a Tweet that it looks like he's wearing WayFarer-like RayBan sunglasses. I Googled other African fetish dolls and all are far less comical and have far more artistic merit. Even surrounded by other African art he sticks out like a sore thumb. In the context of schlock, however, it works.
The statue is morally neutral. While most don't didn't deserve their fates, the maniac driver was a maniac of exactly the type I was almost killed by once and Mark the elder brother is cruel to his horse and an utter rotter in breaking his business partnership with Graham.
A deceased uncle, noteable for buying my my first bicycle, also owned an a white Austin Mini like Angela's. It had a happier fate though, as he loved the car so much, that when he left England he took it home with him.
It's the usual on the nose script writing when scriptwriters can't think of a sub-plot and write about something they are familiar with, i.e. Mark starting a production company and the film set scene. It's too easy, but it does also cut down on the cost of props. See also Hammer House of Horror: Witching Time where the protagonist is a sound designer and his wife an actress. How about all that sound equipment in Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Doctor Who: Logopolis uses a few BBC Micros and Sony monitors.
Janet Fielding's role is minor. Mandy is Phil's set admin. It's clear they have a relationship from the irritated look she gives Phil as he flirts with a cast member, telling her, "Ooo! What lovely rosy pippins you got there." Mandy is also pleased when he tells her some good news.
The deaths were horrific, though three were also very funny. We start with Uncle Jack's clumsy fall. Really, a character wobbling about high up isn't long for this world in anything made by Hammer. Then there's Mark's bloody end, after he flies off his horse, as it clears a hedge, and then is impaled onto a tractor rake is nasty, is so richly deserved that one can't help but laugh. Finally we have cheerful chirpy Londoner director Phil, rehearsing his cast for the William Tell shoot (pardon the upcoming pun). The tension ratchets as he swaps positions with the boy who's to balance the apple on this head, saving the child, but condemning himself when a carelessly preloaded crossbow fails and it's quarrel pierces his side. The jaunty almost Carry On music makes the scene hilarious.
I liked that the magic worked in a very literal mechanistic, almost non-mystical manner. Stab the statue once and one person dies. Stab it five times and five people die.
I had one more point to make, but I couldn't read my handwritten Filofax notes. It appears to say, "Springy bily." Write in with your guesses.
The main plot with magic, gore is a good one, decent acted, though an average and unlikely tacked on ending.
According to hammerhouseofhorrortvseries.co.uk, the awful Charlie Boy prop was made by classic Doctor Who's John Friedlander. Friedlander was a mask maker, creature and prosthetics designer for Frontier in Space, Death to the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks' Davros, and The Sea Devils, and VFX for The Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment, and Colony in Space. Maybe he had an off day or an evil sense of humour.
Charlie Boy is currently owned by Simon Greetham, of whom I know nothing, except that he was involved with Hammer Studios publicity.
I have absolutely no clue and I make no promises what I'll do and when I'll do it, but you won't have long to wait.