#3: Phantom of the Opera

UK  1962  d: Terence Fisher


By the time Hammer got round to their version of Gaston Leroux’s familiar tale of backstage blackguardery their initial cycle of classic horror remakes was running out of steam.  There’s a lot to enjoy in this film and it looks really sumptuous in ‘Hammerscope’ but, bar the odd moment, a distinct lack of oomph.

Anthony Hinds’ script deviates a lot from the book.  For instance at the start of the film, instead of the opera’s leading lady being traumatised by a falling chandelier (that’s saved for later), here it’s a swinging body crashing through the scenery in a moment that would have looked great in 3D:

The most obvious change is in the setting: Paris has been exchanged for a full-blooded 19^th century London, shrouded in fog and populated by classic Victorian grotesques, all played by splendid character actors.

There’s Michael Ripper and Miles Malleson as jolly cabmen:

Scavenging theatre charladies, led by Miriam Karlin:

Renee Houston as a busybody landlady:

And best of all, the great Patrick Troughton as an over-enthusiastic ratcatcher: “They make a lovely pie, y’know!”

Sadly Patrick never gets to have his pie as he’s soon dispatched when a feral dwarf (Ian Wilson) stabs him in the eye – nothing else in the film quite matches this scene, a wonderfully gratuitous moment of grand guignol that’s among Hammer’s most startling moments:

You might well be thinking ‘A dwarf with a knife? I thought this was Phantom of the Opera, not Don’t Look Now’.  Well, the dwarf’s another new addition – he’s the phantom’s sidekick and carries out all the brutal slayings of the film of his own volition, meaning that Herbert Lom as the phantom himself can get on with being all tragic and romantic.  Lom’s really good at this – his resonant voice is especially effective – but one of the reasons the film doesn’t quite work is that his phantom’s just not crazed or vengeful enough.  For the most part he’s a perfectly reasonable chap who’s just had a bit of bad luck in the face department.  There’s a great moment of pure melodrama when the dwarf drags unconscious heroine Christine to the Phantom’s lair while the masked ghoul plays Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor – that favourite of organ-playing baddies everywhere - he doesn’t even have the standard obsessive romantic interest in Christine.  This Phantom’s quite happy for her to carry on seeing handsome leading man Edward De Souza, he just wants to be her voice coach.  Mind you, that’s not all that surprising seeing as Christine’s played by Heather Sears, whose most notable quality is her startling resemblance to 1980s Doctor Who companion Adric.

Uncanny, no? Anyway, neither dwarf nor phantom is the film’s real villain.  That role’s taken by Michael Gough as the wicked Lord Darcy, playing him with the kind of campy relish generally reserved for the role of Abanazer in panto.  Here he is.  Boo! Hiss!

Darcy bought some music composed by mild-mannered, poverty-stricken Professor Petrie for a scandalously small amount and has made a huge amount of money by publishing it in his own name.  Understandably aggrieved, the professor started a fire at the printer’s, but it just resulted in him being hideously scarred and retreating to the sewers to mope about in a mask as the Phantom.  This is all revealed to us in a flashback in the film’s last half hour which badly dents the pacing of the film.  The film’s conclusion is maddeningly unsatisfying: The Phantom turns up at Darcy’s home but rather than getting any real revenge on him is just satisfied with the scare the rotter gets when he pulls off the unfortunate professor’s mask (at this point Michael Gough’s performance goes so far over the top we almost lose sight of it):

Any of the tension you’d expect in the last 15 minutes of a horror film’s completely absent.  Instead we get to see highlights from the Phantom’s opera about Joan of Arc, starring Christine in a wig that makes her look even more like Adric.

The Phantom watches from his balcony with a tear in his remaining eye.  But don’t worry, he doesn’t get a happy ending.  That troublesome dwarf’s up in the rafters and (quite by accident, disappointingly) brings down the chandelier - Adric’s standing right underneath it! Quick as a flash the heroic phantom leaps from his box to get crushed under it instead, considerately tearing his mask off before he does so to let us get a look at his gooey, raspberry-ripple coloured visage.

It’s all quite sad, really.

And here it is for you to see yourself, via the magic of YouTube:

#2: Invisible Ghost

USA  1941  d: Joseph H Lewis

Invisible Ghost’s one of a few Bela Lugosi vehicles from the 40s which have fallen out of copyright and released on a multitude of cheap DVDs, becoming staples of bargain bins everywhere.  Itseems quite appropriate, really, seeing as it was obviously such a cheap film to make.  I’ve got it on DVD as part of a 50-film ‘Horror Classics’ set (both parts of that title are pretty suspect) and the picture and sound quality are abysmal.  Mind you, it seems unlikely that watching a pristine print of Invisible Ghost would improve the experience much.

Lugosi plays old Mr Kessler, heartbroken since his wife left him for his best friend years before.  He tries to pretend it never happened, having dinner with her empty chair every evening.  Unknown to him, his wife’s actually living on the grounds of his big house, being looked after by the old gardener.  It turns out Mrs Kessler had a car accident after leaving, which killed her husband and left her a pale, spooky wreck.  And she’s developed an unfortunate habit of sneaking out and staring up at her husband’s window in the dead of night.

One look at this ghastly apparition staring up at him is enough to send Kessler bonkers.  Going into a classic outstretched-arms trance he wanders the house, killing the first person he sees.  His chosen method is to throw his dressing gown over his victim’s head and then strangle them, which is quite novel I suppose.

First to meet her doom under the dressing gown of terror is Cecile the stroppy maid.  It’s good news for the audience but bad news for Kessler’s daughter’s fiancé – Cecile was an ex of his who was making his life hell, so he’s the prime suspect.  He’s arrested and eventually executed.  Fortunately he has a lookalike brother (played by the same actor, of course) determined to avenge his death.

Invisible Ghost is a very short film but feels like a very long one.  The long scenes of Lugosi going into a murderous stupor and stalking zombielike through his house are repetitive – literally so in the case of his wife’s second appearance, where the footage from the first time round is just reused.  The performances are mostly as stilted as the film itself.  Betty Compson in particular is a hoot as  wide-eyed Mrs Kessler.   Probably the most enjoyable performance is from Clarence Muse as the butler, Evans.  For a black character in a film at this time he’s extremely dignified, although he does say ‘Do I look pale to you?’ at one point.  I think that’s what they call off-colour humour.  As for Lugosi, well, he’s pretty subdued throughout, but then he does spend a lot of the film in a daze.  He does pull some brilliantly hammy facial expressions though, especially in the final scene where he realises he was the mad killer all along.  His reading of his final line, ‘I knew you’d come back.  Nothing can part us now, my darlink’ is pretty special too.

If Bela Lugosi looking confused a lot sounds like something you’d enjoy, this is definitely the film for you.  You can even watch it here if you feel so inclined (sadly there aren't really any invisible ghosts in it:

#1: Attack of the Crab Monsters

USA  1957  d: Roger Corman

If you exchange the b in the title for a p you get a cruel but accurate description of many 50s sci-fi movies.  Not this one though.  Being a Roger Corman film it’s cheap and cheerful but far more inventive and enjoyable than other B movies of the kind.  And the monsters are great.  Ridiculous but great.

The film begins with an amazing opening credits sequence featuring fabulously weird paintings of bizarre undersea creatures which sadly don’t turn up in the film itself.  Here are some of them:

Being only 67 minutes in length the film rushes us into the plot without any ado.  It’s a well-trodden one: A group of scientists travel to a remote island to find out what happened to the previous expedition.  Underneath the water a baleful eye opens and the first victim is claimed: A crew member who took a dive is pulled up to the surface minus his head. 

The scientists and the sailors who escorted them become trapped on the island and besieged by hideous giant crabs, the result (of course) of nuclear testing in the area some years before.

The scientists are a diverse bunch: There’s the regulation heroic leading man scientist, Dale (Richard Garland), whose most notable feature is the dashing cravat he wears throughout. 

Glamorous lady scientist Martha (Pamela Duncan) is his love interest.  Serious Germanic scientist Karl (Leslie Bradley) does most of the explaining what’s going on for us.  Botanist Jules is played by Mel Welles, best known as the put-upon florist in Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors, trying out a French accent.  And then there’s Dr Carson (Richard Cutting), who’s mainly distinguished by his bad foot, which of course leads to his sticky end.  Our other main character is ship’s captain Hank (Russell Johnson), who falls quietly in love with Martha and then sacrifices himself to save her life.  The cast all do a good job, and special mention should go to Richard Garland, not just for his marvellous neckwear but for his ability to deliver a line like ‘Once they were men, now they are land crabs’ with something approaching conviction.

That brings me to the film’s most agreeably ghoulish idea: Once the crabs have eaten their victim’s head they absorb the poor unfortunate’s memory and are able to speak in their voice.  They use this power in an attempt to lure the remaining scientists to their doom.  But just for good measure they use their giant claws to smash through their shack as well.  Mel Welles gets an especially good ‘screaming while being grabbed by a giant claw’ moment, and his character’s demise leads to the wonderfully strange situation of a giant crab monster talking in a cod French accent: ‘You ‘ave deestroyed  zem and tried to deestroy me.  Zees, mes amis, was a great meestake’.  There aren’t enough monsters who sound like Hercule Poirot.

The crabs are kept offscreen for a while, and it’s rather charming how the early ominous moments are followed by shots of ordinary-sized crabs going about their business.  When the creatures finally make themselves known Dale, the biologist, tells us they’re just ordinary crabs who’ve grown to enormous size.  They certainly don’t look like it.  They’re more like huge, grumpy spiders with big claws.  As well as their scary mental powers the crabs are completely immune to bullets.  Eventually the scientists are able to fight back after discovering that the crabs carry a negative charge, and crumble to dust when given an electric shock.  The film ends apruptly with a pylon falling on the last remaining crab and Dale and Martha embracing, exhausted.  That’s the great thing about this film: It doesn’t waste a second.

 I don’t have this film on a proper DVD, I recorded it from the Zone Horror channel (is that still going?) years ago while staying at my dad’s.  You’ll notice the logo on the pictures I’ve taken.  So I've started off by cheating a little bit.  My PC flatly refused to play the disc after the first fifteen minutes – which is why they peter out.  You don't need the DVD to watch it either - you can see it here if you wish: