England's Screaming

A Fictional History of UK Horror Cinema

England’s Screaming

SEAN HOGAN

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For Lynda, whose fault it all is,

and for Evrim

(hopefully I didn’t fuck it up too badly)

FOREWORD

WHY, I WONDER, WAS THE LATE-1950S boom in British horror films met with such savagery and incomprehension by British film critics?

The classic examples are regularly trotted out; they came from a wide range of reviewers, but just confining ourselves to the responses of one will provide the requisite flavour. In 1957, the veteran critic CA Lejeune wrote the following in The Observer: "Without any hesitation I should rank The Curse of Frankenstein (Warner Theatre) among the half-dozen most repulsive films I have encountered in the course of some 10,000 miles of film reviewing. The following year, there was this: I regret to hear that it [Dracula] is being shown in America with emphasis laid on its British origin, and feel inclined to apologise to all decent Americans for sending them a work in such sickening bad taste. And a few months after that: The Revenge of Frankenstein...is, to my taste, a vulgar, stupid, nasty and intolerably tedious business; a crude sort of entertainment for a crude sort of audience; but it leaves me with a sense of nausea rather than horror. I want to gargle it off with a strong disinfectant, to scrub my memory with carbolic soap."

All three of these films—undisputed classics today—were directed by Terence Fisher and came from Hammer Film Productions, with Peter Cushing toplining all three and his regular co-star Christopher Lee appearing opposite him in the first two. The revulsion they inspired was by no means confined to old stagers like Caroline Lejeune, for in Tribune the young Derek Hill was just as enthusiastic in stoking what amounted to a full-fledged moral panic. Reflecting on the third film mentioned above, he wrote: The past months have seen the most relentless corruption of public taste the cinema has ever known. This was just a warm-up, however, for his famous pronouncement in Sight and Sound: Only a sick society could bear the hoardings, let alone the films. And when a controversial Anglo Amalgamated release, directed by no less a figure than Michael Powell, came along in 1960, he delivered himself of the niftiest soundbite of all: "The only really satisfactory way to dispose of Peeping Tom would be to shovel it up and flush it swiftly down the nearest sewer. Even then the stench would remain."

Lejeune, of course, had a word, or words, for Powell’s picture too: "It’s a long time since a film disgusted me as much as Peeping Tom." Indeed, she admitted to having left the press screening before the end. But one of the most telling responses to the film has never, to my knowledge, been reprinted before. It was from Martin Wallace of the Belfast Telegraph, who called it a sad, sick British film which deserves no place on a British screen, summarising it as a symptom, like the current rash of London’s striptease clubs and pornographic literature, of something rotten about latterday Britain.

Something rotten about latterday Britain...This, surely, was the spur behind much of the disgust expressed at the sudden, and wholly unexpected, explosion of British horror films—the mere fact that they were British, that they exposed a different side of Britishness to the cheerful image beamed out by the cosy and conformist likes of Doctor in the House and Reach for the Sky. A side of Britishness that dwelt lovingly on horror, sadism, death and, most unforgivable of all, sex. And the affront was all the greater, it seemed, when the films were set in contemporary Britain rather than, as in the first volley of Hammer horrors, the Gothic past.

It’s these ‘contemporary’ shockers, Peeping Tom included, that Sean Hogan focuses on in the superb, and aptly titled, England’s Screaming. (Count Dracula certainly gets a look in, but only really by way of those memorable moments when Hammer brought him into the 1970s.) And it’s the sheer rottenness underlying the outward true-Brit façade that interests Hogan most of all; the rottenness, in fact, is key.

In these pages he draws a wealth of wildly imaginative links between the characters and events of apparently unconnected films, creating in the process a web of evil both ancient and modern. These links will impress any aficionado of British horror with their waggish audacity; such aficionados, in fact, are likely to be left somewhat breathless by the sheer scope of Hogan’s insight and invention. But they’ll also intrigue readers less au fait with Hogan’s source material through the sheer wit and sprightliness, and often beautifully atmospheric detail, with which he lays them out.

Creating a web of evil from such disparate sources seems quite reasonable given the fact that these films are often much more connected than they at first appear. The recurrence of actors, writers, directors and technical personnel is striking, as are the Home Counties locations that crop up again and again. (Let’s not even try to list all the films in which Oakley Court, adjacent to Hammer’s Bray Studios, appears; even an unsung pile like Pyrford Court in Woking is common to such films as The Mind of Mr Soames, Tales from the Crypt, The Omen and The Cat and the Canary.) The intimate, borderline-incestuous connections thrown up by the British film industry are one thing, but what’s still more remarkable about Hogan’s elaborate web is that he spins it, here and there, not just around British films but also American, Australian and Italian ones.

Worldwide reverberations notwithstanding, something rotten in the state of Britain remains the crucial factor, and in this regard an essential signifier, it seems to me, is the Old Etonian tie—a masterstroke on the part of the film’s wardrobe department—that was worn by Christopher Lee in the 1972 release Death Line. Here Lee played an enigmatic MI5 operative called Stratton-Villiers (the perfect name), a character fused in England’s Screaming with a similar one, Fremont, played by Lee in 1969 in Scream and Scream Again. This is one of Hogan’s own masterstrokes, for this shadowy character—though amounting to not much more than a cameo role in either film—says much about the Establishment corruption underpinning the whole web.

It’s quite a distance, perhaps, from the Some of our people have never had it so good soundbite spoken by Harold Macmillan in 1957 (just a couple of months after the initial release of The Curse of Frankenstein) to the self-serving Let’s get Brexit done inanities spouted by modern-day mediocrities, but Hogan shows that British horror can comfortably encompass both. To this end he focuses, not just on the ‘classic’ period, but also on a number of films thrown up by the new boom of the last 20 years—titles like A Dark Song, The Borderlands, Possum and Under the Skin.

After all, a political reading of British horror films is by no means far-fetched. Take an apparently innocuous example of the type, written by Milton Subotsky in 1971 and drawn from the EC horror comics of two decades before. Tales from the Crypt is an Amicus portmanteau picture comprising five stories, and, despite the fact that Subotsky was as American as his source material, a barbed indictment of Britain’s middle and upper classes is the common theme, especially in stories three, four and five.

Ralph Jason, the self-regarding businessman played by Richard Greene in the fourth episode, is said to have sold arms to far-flung countries, presumably doing deals with dictators in the process (a detail with plenty of resonances some 50 years on). Most memorably, we’re given spectacularly loathsome examples of ‘Young Conservative’ and ‘Old Tory’—Robin Phillips as James Elliot in the third instalment and the superlative Nigel Patrick as Major Rogers in the fifth. Elliot gets a harmless dustman sacked two years before retirement age, depriving him of his pension and, ultimately, his life. Rogers, on the other hand, takes charge of a blind men’s refuge only to systematically whittle down its amenities, notably such minor matters as food and heat, causing the death of one of the elderly inmates. And all the while he continues feeding choice cuts to a pet Alsatian called Shane.

Rogers, in particular, subscribes to an ‘austerity’ narrative that needs no elaboration in the 21st century. In revenge, Jason is reduced to a mess of undying chopped-up body parts, Elliot has his heart ripped out (with explicit reference to his essential heartlessness), and the Major’s outraged charges contrive to feed him to his own dog. Lovely!—though the retribution dished out in horror-movie parables is rarely made available in real life.

Tales from the Crypt isn’t touched upon in England’s Screaming, though a couple of other Amicus anthologies—The House that Dripped Blood and From Beyond the Grave—most certainly are. (The chapter focusing on the latter film is typical of the joy to be found in Hogan’s extrapolations; not only does he fuse together two Angela Pleasence characterisations, he also incorporates a couple of Ian Bannen roles and even throws in Sean Connery for good measure.) The omission of Tales from the Crypt isn’t a problem, however. It just whets one’s appetite for a possible sequel.

What might Hogan make, for example, of the tragically driven surgeon played by Peter Cushing in Corruption? Or the cross-dressing High Court judge (Jack May) in Night, After Night, After Night? Or the elderly hypnotist played by Boris Karloff in The Sorcerers? (Actually, this character gets a tantalising mention in Hogan’s superlative Bernard Quatermass chapter.) What unholy connection might there be between the ringmaster monsters played by Anton Diffring and Joan Crawford, respectively, in Circus of Horrors and Berserk? And where might the repugnant, economy-mad Major Rogers fit into all this? Pretty snugly, I don’t doubt.

These speculations may seem skittish, but England’s Screaming is so stimulating it throws open any number of fascinating possibilities. Who knows? Maybe all those scandalised postwar critics could be worked into the fictional fabric too, wringing their hands over the exposure of England’s underbelly for murky reasons that even Stratton-Villiers might approve...

Jonathan Rigby

February 2020

Jonathan Rigby is the author of several books, among them English Gothic: Classic Horror Cinema 1897-2015, American Gothic: Six Decades of Classic Horror Cinema and Euro Gothic: Classics of Continental Horror Cinema. He has also written Studies in Terror: Landmarks of Horror Cinema and Christopher Lee: The Authorised Screen History.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE

A FEW BRIEF WORDS OF EXPLANATION.

Firstly, I must acknowledge an obvious debt. This book would not exist without the model of David Thomson’s Suspects, which I first discovered in a second-hand bookshop over twenty-five years ago and has been a frequent companion ever since. I could not hope to equal the erudition and graceful finesse of that novel, and while I’m sure Mr Thomson never envisaged his work inspiring someone to take a complementary look at some of the myriad oddities thrown up by UK genre cinema, it was both a pleasure and a privilege to pay homage nonetheless.

In his foreword to Suspects, Thomson writes: ‘Is this a novel, or a non-fiction book about movies? My answer must be both.’ I encountered a similar confusion in the course of writing this book. For myself, I probably leant more towards the pleasures offered by fiction—I hope the delight I took in teasing the dangling strands of these various stories into something resembling a tapestry (however cobwebbed and shabby) is evident—but undoubtedly there are elements of criticism here too. Certainly I have attempted to look at certain questions or issues raised by many of the films included here, and to address illogicalities or inconsistencies where I saw them.

As a general rule, I’ve tried to play fair with chronology, except for where the films themselves made it impossible. The obvious example being the fudged timeline of the Omen trilogy, wherein Damien ages thirty-two years in the space of a mere five, meaning that by the time of the concluding installment, his date of birth has been retconned to well before the Treaty of Rome was signed, thus making a nonsense of the Biblical prophesies alluded to in the first film. Also, if more than one iteration of a character exists, I’ve chosen whichever one suited the story I wanted to tell. For instance, the respective TV and Hammer Quatermass series offer somewhat different incarnations of the professor, and while I’m certain that the small screen Bernard Quatermass would undoubtedly be Nigel Kneale’s preferred version, I’ve played the heretic and gone with the Hammer creation (meaning that mine arrives at an entirely different fate from the John Mills Quatermass).

Is this intended as a ‘Best of British’ then? Not at all. For my purposes, I have mostly restricted myself to dealing with films that were roughly contemporary in their subject matter. This obviously excludes the strain of gothic horror that is so indelibly linked with British genre cinema (and which would probably require another volume to deal with properly). Outside of that, I have made some attempt to be representative and cover the various aspects of UK genre film I thought noteworthy, but in certain cases this meant including works I don’t necessarily hold in the highest esteem...

So—some of the movies included here are masterpieces, others are flawed-but-fascinating, a handful are no damn good whatsoever. Hopefully this book may lead some readers to interesting films they hadn’t previously been aware of, but that was never my main aim. Rather, I was inspired by their stories to tell my own—in many ways, these films comprise a shadow history of this country, and I wanted to see exactly where that history led to.

The answers were not always reassuring—but since when should a horror film be reassuring?

Sean Hogan

July 2019

They’re putting all your names

In the forbidden book

I know what they’re doing

But I don’t want to look

—Night Rally, Elvis Costello

‘I will bring the whole edifice down

on their unworthy heads.’

—The Medusa Touch (1978)

THE DUC DE RICHLEAU

Christopher Lee in The Devil Rides Out, 1968

written by Richard Matheson

based on the novel by Dennis Wheatley

directed by Terence Fisher

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HE IS ALL BUT FORGOTTEN NOW, but the Duc De Richleau was one of our most effective defenders against the dark Satanic forces that burrow beneath our world, like worms in a rotten apple. His failure to prevent their insidious rise to power should not obscure his undoubted bravery and selflessness. He acquitted himself tirelessly against numerous lesser menaces, but in the end, he fell—as would so many others in his stead—to the ultimate evil known to mankind: the Antichrist, Damien Thorn.

An aristocrat of French descent, de Richleau was a scholar and deeply moral man, albeit one whose desire to understand all that was wrong and unjust in the world had led him down some shadowy intellectual trails. An early interest in religion and philosophy had prompted his studies to take a detour into esotericism, and for a time it seemed as though these dark dabblings might irredeemably mark the young Duc’s soul.

However, a subsequent encounter with the black magician Oliver Haddo proved to be a Damascene experience; the utter depravity of the man reawakened de Richleau’s moral urges, and he renounced the Left Hand Path for good, content to simply study and understand the occult from a position of academic remove. Still, while foregoing the power and mastery of the Black Arts that was surely within his grasp may have saved him in the short term, his resultant lack of magical expertise would ultimately lead to his downfall.

De Richleau’s first clash with the forces of darkness came in the mid-1930’s, when his friend Simon Aron fell under the sway of the occultist Mocata. Although he was certainly the pre-eminent English black magician of the period, Mocata was nonetheless something of a dilettante, a moneyed libertine mostly interested in using his sorcerous abilities for his own pleasure and advancement. Had he been more focussed on mastering the occult and serving his diabolical masters, he might have been able to claim Aron’s soul and destroy de Richleau with ease. As it was, the Duc was able to hold his attacks at bay and finally defeat Mocata; albeit only by resorting to his knowledge of the Sussamma Ritual, an obscure invocation that acts to disrupt the laws of time and space. For a relative novice like de Richleau, employing the ritual was incredibly dangerous, and he could count himself highly fortunate that both he and his companions survived the experience. He would not be so lucky again.

Less fortunately, Mocata’s demise left a void in occult circles; one soon to be filled by the ascendancy of Julian Karswell, a far more skilled and dangerous magician than his predecessor ever was. While Karswell was not immune to the comforts and indulgences his abilities brought him, these were not his primary focus as they had been Mocata’s. Rather, his singleminded ambition was simply to further the cause of evil in the world; and he ruthlessly destroyed any enemies or rivals that might thwart that aim.

It was not long before he and de Richleau crossed paths; however, each man recognised that the other might prove to be their equal, and accorded him a certain level of wary respect as a result. Thus, the two adversaries found themselves locked in a cold war; neither moving directly on the other for fear of the possible consequences. Instead, they both schemed and plotted, each using their means and influence to keep careful tabs on the other, scoring small tactical victories when and where they could.

This campaign of attrition continued for years to come, always conducted under a veil of impeccable politeness. Indeed, Karswell always made sure to invite the Duc to his annual Christmas party, and it was said that de Richleau attended on more than one occasion, albeit heavily protected by magical wards and charms whenever he did so.

Years passed, and the Duc eventually eased into a comfortable semi-retirement. He still maintained a close watch on his opponent, but for a time it seemed as though his efforts had at least succeeded in curtailing the occultist’s influence. It was only after de Richleau received a visit from one of Karswell’s former disciples that events escalated disastrously.

The apostate in question arrived at the Duc’s country home one evening in an acute state of nervous collapse. He insisted his erstwhile master had cursed him and that he only had another twenty-four hours to live. But before he died, he wished to atone; to reveal Karswell’s plans to someone in a position to stop them, and by doing so, try and save his own soul.

The man alleged that Karswell was part of a worldwide conspiracy of Satanists, all acting to usher in the Last Hour: the day upon which the Great Beast would be unleashed unto the world. When de Richleau heard this he was seized with horror; he had been successful in thwarting the relatively trivial schemes of Mocata and his ilk, but this was evil on a much grander scale.

If the man was correct, Karswell and his cohorts were conspiring to bring about the birth of the Antichrist, and beyond that, the total destruction of the world, the end of everything: Armageddon.

De Richleau begged the apostate to tell him everything he knew, but before he could learn any more, his informer became terrified of some unseen entity he claimed was watching from the darkness outside. He immediately fled the house, disappearing into the night before the Duc could stop him. The next day, his mutilated body was found in a nearby village, lying on the bed of a pond; the water of the pond had completely evaporated, and the wet mud around him was scored with large cloven hoofprints.

The Duc found himself at a deadly impasse; it was far too dangerous to confront Karswell directly, but he could hardly stand by and do nothing. He attempted to glean further information from his extensive occult contacts, but a thick forest of silence seemed to have sprung up around his enemy. It was only when Karswell came into conflict with the visiting American academic John Holden that de Richleau was offered his chance. Angered by Holden’s dismissal of his magical abilities, Karswell had placed a deadly curse on the man; however, Holden was a wilier opponent than the occultist supposed, and ultimately, it was Karswell and not the academic that fell victim to the fatal spell.

When the Duc read of his opponent’s death in the morning newspapers, he knew he must act quickly. He did not for a moment imagine that Karswell’s passing would halt the malefic conspiracy the occultist had helped foster; the scale of the plan was too great for that. But if he moved decisively now, de Richleau might be able to gain a surreptitious advantage nonetheless.

Later that day, he travelled to Lufford Hall, Karswell’s country retreat. Announcing himself as a close colleague of the deceased doctor, he managed to bamboozle Karswell’s grieving mother into giving him access to his enemy’s office and private papers. Desperately searching the occultist’s files, de Richleau came up empty-handed until he finally stumbled across an unmarked dossier, filled with private information concerning a solitary married couple: an American diplomat named Robert Thorn and his wife Katherine.

There was nothing overtly linking the Thorns with any of Karswell’s other activities; therefore de Richleau felt certain that they must somehow be a vital component in the Antichrist conspiracy, unwitting or otherwise. When he learned that Katherine Thorn was in her ninth month of pregnancy, the Duc became convinced the couple were in great danger. The file stated that the diplomat was currently stationed in Rome, so it was to Italy that de Richleau travelled the very next morning.

His enquiries took him to a large Catholic hospital in the centre of the city, where Katherine Thorn had entered labour some hours before. De Richleau searched the corridors until he finally came across Thorn, in hushed conference with a priest. The diplomat seemed shaken, desperate; was he in the middle of striking some dark covenant?

As soon as their conversation ended, the Duc approached him. Mr Thorn, it is imperative I speak with you.

The man looked at him, tired and obviously distracted. I can’t. Not now. My wife...

This concerns both you and your wife. And your son.

Thorn’s eyes widened in sudden anger. The Duc had somehow touched a nerve. How do you know about my son?

A great many people know about your son, Mr Thorn. If indeed, he can truly be said to be yours.

Urgency had made de Richleau indelicate. The diplomat’s face reddened. He advanced on the Duc, grabbing him by the lapels. Once upon a time, de Richleau would have been more than a physical match for the man, but those days were long past. Mr Thorn, please!

A nurse stepped in to separate them, jabbering furiously in Italian. Thorn gave a cursory apology, then turned back to the Duc. Stay away from me and my family! he barked.

De Richleau watched him stride away down the corridor. He still could not be certain how much the man knew, or to what extent he was involved, but a direct approach was clearly fruitless. He turned to look out of a nearby window, his pulse beating like a heavy cosh at the back of his neck. His gaze drifted to the branches of a nearby tree, where a lone raven kept a careful vigil, as if in anticipation of an imminent death.

The Duc paid it little mind. What could he do? He had little doubt that the Antichrist was here, now, in this hospital. A mere baby, weak and defenceless. He would never have a better opportunity to act.

He had to be sure. He took one of the hospital’s ancient lifts up to the nursery. Finding the room empty of staff, he searched frantically amongst the newborns, certain he would be discovered at any moment. His heart still hammered in his chest; for a moment the Duc was sure he would be felled by cardiac arrest before he could hope to achieve his goal.

Then, at last, he found the boy—a small chart hanging at the end of the cot read simply Thorn.

De Richleau stared down at the child. As a Biblical scholar, he knew that if this was indeed the Beast of the prophecies, it had to bear a Mark. He reached down and began to check the baby’s flesh. The child stirred and started to squall. He must hurry.

And then, he found it, a small birthmark, hidden in the thin nest of the boy’s hair: Six hundred and sixty six. He felt uncontrollably sick, as though he might vomit all over the child. No, he told himself. It was not a child! He should take the creature in his hands right now, just snatch it up and beat its brains against the wall, just...

Signore!

A nurse stood in the entrance to the nursery, her face furious. He had been discovered. Mumbling abject apologies in Italian, he retreated swiftly from the room, his normally aristocratic air suddenly reduced to that of a naughty child being sent for punishment. He hurried away before she could call security and have him removed from the building.

He had failed. If there were Satanists operating in this hospital, he might never be gifted with such a chance again.

As he stumbled down the stairwell, a thought suddenly struck him. The strength ebbing from his legs, he sat heavily down on a stair. It had saved him once before, saved all of them, but dare he?

The Sussamma Ritual.

The risks were immense, but if he could once again reverse time, to before the Thorn child was born, then he would be better placed to act. And if he succeeded? Could he, say, murder a pregnant woman to prevent the birth? He felt numb at the thought.

But what choice did he have? It was not just the lives of he and his friends at stake now, but those of the entire world.

He hauled himself to his feet, feeling every one of his years. The words of the ritual came easily to his tongue—the incantation was almost like holding a loaded revolver in one’s hands; such was its power that it conveyed an almost irresistible urge to use it.

He shouted out the words, his voice echoing emptily down the stairwell. Uriel Seraphim! Io Potesta! Zati Zata, Galatim Galata!

We can only speculate as to the reasons for what happened next. Perhaps the Duc had gambled one too many times with a spell he lacked the true expertise to control. Or perhaps he had simply underestimated the profane power protecting the newborn Antichrist.

Whatever the explanation, the Duc was immediately ripped from his position in time and thrust forwards, not backwards as he had planned.

He materialised in the hospital a full two days later. Ordinarily, this might not have proved disastrous, but what the Duc could not foresee was that the dark forces gathered around the Antichrist had swiftly moved to destroy all evidence of its birth, and had set fire to the hospital as soon as the child had been taken home by his parents.

De Richleau was thrust into the middle of a flaming inferno. He had no time to react before the blaze consumed him. His final despairing thought was that he hoped the hell his failure had consigned him to would not prove to be a dreadful premonition of what awaited the rest of the world.

Then he died, his ashes mingling with the blackened remains of the hundreds of others killed in the fire. Unbeknownst to anyone, the first battle in the war against the Antichrist had been fought, and lost.

HUGO FITCH

John McGuire in ‘The Ventriloquist’s Dummy’, Dead of Night, 1945

written by John Baines

directed by Alberto Cavalcanti

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WHEN THE NAME OF HUGO FITCH first sprang to national prominence, after the shooting of American stage performer Sylvester Kee in the mid-1940s, it was not Hugo himself that made most of the headlines—he was, after all, just a dummy—but that of the ventriloquist who voiced him, Maxwell Frere.

What no one understood was that it was Frere who had been the