MANIA, or THE FLESH AND THE FIENDS. (1960) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

MANIA, or FLESH AND THE FIENDS. (1960) DIRECTED AND WRITTEN BY JOHN GILLING. BASED ON TRUE EVENTS. STARRING PETER CUSHING, DONALD PLEASENCE, GEORGE ROSE, JUNE LAVERICK, BILLIE WHITELAW, MELVYN HAYES, DERMOT WALSH, JOHN CAIRNEY AND GEORGE WOODBRIDGE.

**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

I absolutely love this dark little gem of a film, from the Golden Age of British Horror, which most people agree was 1959-1966. Peter Cushing gives an immaculately controlled and polished performance as Dr. Robert Knox, a sort of Dr. Frankenstein character but located in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1828.

He’s a renowned anatomist who lectures young college lads who want to be doctors, and he does everything he can to advance the cause of modern medicine. Doctors and medical students are only legally permitted to dissect corpses who were either suicides, or criminals, in life and have been cut down from the gallows after death or released from a hospital mortuary.

But Knox is not scrupulous about where his cadavers-for-dissection-and-learning have come from. In the interests of medicine, he’ll take them anywhere he can get them. In the film, he gets them from William Burke and William Hare, two horrible grave-robbers or ‘resurrection men,’ men who steal the corpses from their very graves and flog them to doctors for at least five guineas apiece.

When demand for the corpses exceed the legal supply, that’s when Burke and Hare get the idea of resorting to murder most foul in order to keep Dr. Knox in the stiffs he so desperately craves. That’s also when the stakes are considerably raised for Dr. Knox.

If it’s clear as day that a man has been murdered without benefit of law when he arrives in corpse form at Dr. Knox’s dissecting rooms and the said doctor turns a blind eye, pays for it and says ta very much, that makes Dr. Knox an accessory to murder. And they were very tough on crimes like murder in those days…

Burke is a grotty, grotesque and greedy little man, well suited to murder, and **his end on the scaffold in the film rather eerily overshadows the real life death suffered by the actor George Rose in May of 1988.** Hare is superbly portrayed by Donald Pleasence, who’s probably best known for playing Dr. Loomis in John Carpenter’s *HALLOWEEN* movies. **But Dr. Loomis ain’t never been *this* messed-up…**

Pleasence gives an excellent performance, truly one of his best, even though this film doesn’t seem to be terribly well known. His obsequious behaviour to Dr. Knox and his betters would make your hair curl, and the manic little dance he performs while his colleague murders someone? *That* would send a shiver up your spine, portraying sheer manic insanity the way it does. **Or a *mania*, if you will. See what I did there…?**

The other stand-out performances in the film come from, firstly, George *‘Hammer Horror’* Woodbridge as a fellow medic and member of the Medical Council, no less. He is outraged at Dr. Knox’s disregard for the disrepute into which he’s knowingly bringing their honourable profession, by associating with dirty grave-robbers like Burke and Hare.

Secondly, we have the beautiful Billie Whitelaw, known for her superb appearances in *THE OMEN* (1976) and *THE KRAYS* (1990), playing a feisty Scottish prostitute. Mary Patterson falls for one of Dr. Knox’s medical students, Chris Jackson, and Chris falls pretty heavily for her too.

But you can’t put an exotic bird like Mary Patterson in a cage, even a gilded one. Is the relationship between Mary and Chris doomed, as doomed as one of the doctor’s favoured ‘fresh’ and ‘juicy’ cadavers? Let’s hope it doesn’t end up on one of his slabs, or rolled in the brine…

I love Esma Cannon as poor old Aggie, the old dear murdered by the repulsive and immoral Burke and Hare. You might remember her as Hattie Jacques’ diminutive little helper, Flo Sims, in *CARRY ON CABBY* (1963), and in fact she appeared in several other *CARRY ON* movies as well, being the excellent comedy actress that she was.

Melvyn Hayes, famous for playing Gunner ‘Gloria’ Beaumont in sitcom, *IT AIN’T HALF HOT, MUM,* appears here as a mentally disabled boy known generally as Daft Jamie, who meets his end courtesy of our resident pair of ghouls, Burke and Hare. *‘Oh, get me out of this green hell, I’m going out of my mind…!’* Talk about Amateur Night in Dixie…

This film is exquisite. Immaculate acting, gorgeous dark and shadowy sets and terrific costumes. I don’t know why it’s not better known. A fantastic all-star horror cast as well, in Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, **whom I beg leave to state is Mr. Cushing’s equal in performing his craft of acting to perfection,** and the marvellously fiery Billie Whitelaw. Go out of your way to find it and watch it. It’s just sheer quality.

**AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.**

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
Her new book, *THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER,* is out now from *POOLBEG BOOKS:*
https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

CRUCIBLE OF TERROR. (1971) A BRILLIANT BRITISH HORROR FILM REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

crucible marcia

CRUCIBLE OF TERROR. (1971) DIRECTED BY TED HOOKER. STARRING MIKE RAVEN, JAMES BOLAM, MARY MAUDE, JUDY MATHESON, BETTY ALBERGE, JOHN ARNATT, RONALD LACEY, BETH MORRIS, MELISSA STRIBLING, KENNETH KEELING AND ME ME LAI.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

‘Let me immortalise you.’

‘He’s lit the furnace, you know.’

‘It’s a doll, Dorothy, a cheap ugly rotten plastic doll!’

‘To me, a beautiful woman is worth more than rubies.’

‘One thing I learned out East. Never underestimate the power of revenge.’

‘Tonight, I’m a man inspired. After all these barren years, you have inspired me.’

‘The power of evil is always stronger than that of good. If you ask me, it was pre-ordained.’

This is an absolutely fantastic British horror film from the period when British horror was at its finest. It stars Mike Raven (who also did I, MONSTER for AMICUS and LUST FOR A VAMPIRE for HAMMER) as Victor Clare.

Victor is a reclusive and bad-tempered painter-sculptor. He lives above an abandoned and supposedly haunted sea-side tin-mine in Cornwall, where a terrible accident years ago caused the mine to be shut down.

The accident isn’t really integral to the plot, it’s just a really cool place for a mad (sorry, didn’t I mention that he was stark raving mad, do please forgive the omission!) sculptor to have his workshop. He paints in the house but he has a forge in the mine for when he feels inspired to sculpt and immortalise the figures of beautiful female models in the bronze medium he favours.

His current gorgeous young hot artist’s model is the sultry but rather sulky Marcia, who is Victor’s lover as well as his model. You can’t really blame Marcia for being sulky, as she has a lot to put up with. The handsome devil-bearded black-clothed Victor is the worst kind of sexual predator, only barely on the right side of being an actual rapist.

All beautiful nubile young women are his prey. He feels entitled to harass them, feel them up, embarrass them with his sexually suggestive line of chat and bully them into posing naked for him. If they demur, he makes them feel bad for being so unsophisticated and unworldly as to have a problem with posing nude for an artist. I’m telling you, that’s what they’re like, all men. Gaslighters all.

He has ‘gaslighted’ his poor wife Dorothy into a state of dementia to the point where she has regressed back into her childhood, dressing her hair in girlish bunches and playing with dolls and cuddly toys.

He abuses her verbally, calls her old and ugly and yet he won’t give her a divorce, as her money has been what’s allowed him to live as he has done for all these years, not working a boring nine-to-five job but just concentrating on his art. Well for some…

Anyway, down to Cornwall from the big city come the seriously messed-up alcoholic Michael, Victor’s failure of a son, and an art dealer called John Davies (James ONLY WHEN I LAUGH Bolam in a Fu Manchu moustache).

Michael has stolen some pieces of art from his father, whom he loathes and detests at least partially for Victor’s foul treatment of Michael’s mother, but also because Victor makes him feel like shit about himself, and given them to John Davies to sell in his gallery.

The pieces have sold surprisingly well, the paintings and a stunning bronze sculpture of a naked woman that seems to draw men to her. John and Michael have made such a tidy profit that they’ve decided to drive down to Cornwall with their wives and beard the lion in his den.

That is to say, they’re going to go to Victor directly and ask him if he’ll agree to sell some of his stuff to them legitimately- as in, they’re not nicking it this time- so that John Davies can sell it on in his gallery and they’ll all make a neat profit, Victor included this time.

John’s beautiful young brunette wife Millie is targeted immediately by the lecherous wolf that is Victor. Pose for me, darling, he begs her from the moment she arrives in Cornwall.

She’s repelled by him, as well she should be, but he keeps on and on at her, even pursuing her through some dangerous sea-side cliff caves while her husband John is driving back up to town to get Victor Clare the money he’s demanding for his art.

John isn’t much of a husband to the beautiful Millie. He practically pimps her out to Victor, so desperate is he to keep Victor sweet and get his hands on some more of Victor’s artistic endeavours. Don’t you dare piss him off while I’m away, he warns his wife, who’s in severe danger of being raped by Victor, for all her husband gives a shit about it.

Mike’s marriage to his wife Jane is so unpleasant to witness. They hate each other. Jane even agrees to pose for Victor just to spite her hubby, whom she doesn’t respect one iota for his drinking and his inability to make anything out of himself. Unlike his father, who at least is a gifted artist, even if he’s a total shit and a sleazebag as a person.

Meanwhile, a cold-blooded killer is cutting a murderous swathe through the many inhabitants of Victor’s house for some reason and it’s also gradually becoming clear that Victor’s works of art, in particular his amazing sculptures, have their basis in the foulest of foul deeds. Is Millie, his current prey whom he’s most enthusiastically pursuing, next on the list for Victor Clare’s particularly deadly brand of immortalisation…?

The caves that run through the cliffs and lead to the house are amazing. The whole film has tons of atmosphere and the seagulls squawking and screeching over the cliff-tops made me think of THE WICKER MAN (1973), another fantastic British horror film that features cliffs and caves as well. Oh, and by the way, there’s a supernatural element to the film too in the shape of a haunted kimono from a flea-market. I’m just throwing that out there.

I like the military man Bill, the collector of strange Eastern military memorabilia, who’s been Victor’s friend and poor abused and cuckolded Mrs. Clare’s only champion for years.

The gorgeous Melissa Stribling (DRACULA, 1958) plays Joanna, one of art dealer John Davies’s backers, and she’s as lovely as when she first trembled in Count Dracula’s arms and raised her limpid, shining eyes to his before he bit down hard on her swan-like neck…

Eeeeeeeeh, I’ve made myself all excited now. I’ve got to go off and watch some DRACULA to calm myself down. In the meanwhile, you guys enjoy CRUCIBLE OF TERROR, the titular ‘crucible’ being a heavy bronze bowl of sorts used for nefarious purposes, as opposed to a place where men play snooker finals. It’s a fantastic film. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

And just to add that the marvellous actor Mike Raven, who was actually a sculptor himself in real life and who sadly didn’t make nearly enough films for us to remember him by, is buried in a grave he dug himself for himself. How freakin’ hardcore is that…?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger, poet and book-and-movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens’ fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

NIGHTMARE. (1964) A VINTAGE HAMMER HORROR REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

NIGHTMARE. (1964) DIRECTED BY FREDDIE FRANCIS. WRITTEN AND PRODUCED BY JIMMY SANGSTER. STARRING JENNIE LINDEN, MOIRA REDMOND, CLYTIE JESSOP, BRENDA BRUCE, GEORGE A. COOPER, IRENE RICHMOND AND DAVID KNIGHT.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is a terrific old vintage Hammer Horror that’s similar in theme to another of their films, TASTE OF FEAR (1961), in that it deals with a woman who is a victim of the phenomenon known as ‘gaslighting.’

The term derives from the 1938 Patrick Hamilton play GASLIGHT and the two subsequent film adaptations of the play in 1940 and 1944. The 1944 film starred Ingrid Bergman and was a huge hit.

The term ‘gaslighting’ means to make another person doubt their own sanity or perceptions of reality by, basically, playing tricks on them and causing them to think that they’re losing their mind. It’s a nasty, despicable thing to do and is nearly always carried out for nefarious reasons and not for good ones.

Women are usually the victims and men the perpetrators, certainly in films anyway. I suppose you could ‘gaslight’ a man but it would just be harder, naturally, in view of their being made of sterner stuff than we hysterical, weak-minded females, who are so vulnerable and impressionable compared to our male overlords. Hahaha…

Anyway, NIGHTMARE is a gorgeously gothic and atmospheric black-and-white horror film in which a young woman at boarding/finishing school, Janet, is haunted by the shadowy memories of something that happened to her in her past.

Janet saw her mother stab her father to death when she was only eleven years old. The mother was declared insane and locked up in an asylum for life. Janet not only has the nightmares about the stabbing to contend with, but she’s also plagued with the most terrible fears that she’s going to end up like her mother, that she’ll inherit her mother’s insanity and end up going out of her mind and being incarcerated for life just like her Mum. They do say that these things run in the family, don’t they?

A nervous, impressionable young girl like Janet, with all her doubts and fears and issues regarding her traumatic past, would be a prime candidate for a spot of gaslighting. After a particularly severe bout of nightmares, Janet is sent home from school and back to High Towers, her old home, where she is now under the care of a man called Henry Baxter. Quite how he became her guardian after the death of her father and the incarceration of her mother I’m not exactly sure, but her guardian he indisputably is and he decides what’s good for her.

Accompanied by her teacher, Miss Lewis, Janet returns to High Towers to be greeted by the housekeeper, Mrs. Gibbs, and the chauffeur-cum-gardener-cum-handyman John, played by the wonderful character actor George A. Cooper. These two are old family retainers and are faithful friends to Janet and staunch defenders of hers as well. They give her all their loyalty, which is lovely to see.

There’s a new member of staff at High Towers now too though, an attractive nurse called Grace Maddox whom Henry Baxter has hired to be Janet’s ‘companion.’ Once she’s installed back home, however, Janet’s nightmares only seem to worsen.

Now she’s seeing a white-shrouded woman with a hideously scarred face roaming around the house wherever she looks. Janet feels like she’s going crazy with fear and doubt. These visions culminate in a horrible, unforeseen murder at High Towers. Who is the murder victim?

And who is the real victim here, the victim of a cruelly sadistic gaslighting campaign that causes a young woman to be locked up in an insane asylum and two vicious murderers to crawl out from under their stones for a brief period of basking in their mutual cleverness?

Of course, the evildoers in films nearly always get their richly-deserved come-uppances, as you know, and NIGHTMARE is no exception to this rule. I won’t tell you what happens but the ending is brilliantly worked out.

Those ingenious Hammer lads, Freddie Francis and Jimmy Sangster, have done it again. NIGHTMARE is well worth your time, and it’s vintage Hammer gold as well. Make sure you watch it.