By Roy Mathur, on 2024-07-27, at 23:07:29 to 23:29:21 BST, for Captain Roy's Rusty Rocket Radio Show
One episode down and only this and the last to go and I'm faltering.
At 1900 I was yet to watch The Two Faces of Evil because of a nap I had after the edit and upload of Visitor from the Grave.
Will I complete HHOH by Sunday? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.
Notable Cast: Martin: Gary Raymond; Acastus in Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Janet: Anna Calder-Marshall; Cathy in Wuthering Heights (1970), Hargreaves: Philip Latham; Klove in Hammer's Dracula, Prince of Darkness (1966)
Director: Alan Gibson; Dracula A.D. 1972, The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
Writer: Ranald Graham; creator, writer, and producer Dempsey and Makepeace (1985–1986)
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: 1980 in and around Buckinghamshire. The hospital is Hampden House, the hitchhiker is picked up at a crossroads near Hampden House, holiday cottage at Great Hampden, hospital carpark at Great Missenden
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 12 of 13, first broadcast 29 November 1980, c. 54 minute running time (c. 1 hr inc. ads), following Visitor from the Grave (pod 549).
Media: DVD Hammer House of Horror: The Complete Collection (2002), Blu-ray Hammer House of Horror: The Complete Series (2017) may be worth buying because the series was shot on 35 mm film, Streaming on ITVX in the UK (2023) and Apple TV
Abba's Super Trouper knocks Blondie's The Tide Is high from it's number one perch.
A family on their way to a holiday cottage in Buckinghamshire give a lift to a hitchhiker they almost hit in the rain. The hitchhiker goes berserk, grabs the face of the husband driving and they crash.
The wife comes to in a local hospital. She is told her husband had a minor throat injury. A policeman tells her the hitchhiker was killed in the crash.
The woman and her son arrive at the holiday cottage, shortly thereafter joined by her husband. Images of the crash and the attacker are jumbled, in her mind, and she is terrified when she notices her husband has the same claw-like fingernail as the hitchhiker.
Later, at the hospital, she misidentifies the body of the dead killer as her husband. A doctor assures her that any thought of evil doppelgangers is only fiction.
Reassured, she returns the cottage, but finds her husband's previously excellent teeth discoloured and misshapen. He is a doppelganger and attacks her. She sends her son running for help, escapes and seeks refuge in a stable. There she finds what she thinks is her son, but he is another doppelganger with bad teeth. Her real son is unconscious nearby. She runs into the arms of the farmer who let them the holiday cottage and faints.
When she is later taken away by ambulance, she sees that the driver is her doppelganger.
This is my favourite trope: identity, the doppelganer, the evil twin, the changeling.
The doctor who convinces her that doppelgangers are fictional is Philip Latham. With his white hair, trimmed goatee, and long features, I thought of him unfairly as a cut-price Christopher lee; not quite as posh, polished, or as handsome. Sorry.
A suspicious tree (the birthplace of the doppelgangers?), a line about how doppelgangers and pods are fictional in the script, suspicious behaviour of the ward sister and doctor, and the weird physical anomalies like bad teeth and nails (reminiscent of The Invaders); this is Hammer's take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers. What makes it unique is the way it effectively dresses pure science fiction as pure horror.
Buckinghamshire is a beachhead for alien invasion?! That would not surprise me in the least. I have often felt a little not of this world...
Hampden House is an Elizabethan country house in Great Hampden village in Buckinghamshire named after the aristocratic Hampden family who loved there until 1938. They then let the property due to financial troubles, first to a girls school, then Hammer Film Productions from 1978 to 1982. Hammer used it heavily in their films, this series, and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense.
My final revist and wrap up of Hammer House of Horror.