MIRANDA (1948)

The one and only Glynis Johns as Miranda, a lonely mermaid who's out to catch herself a man.

Ever since I was a little boy I have loved and been fascinated by the lore of the mermaid, an interest likely sparked by the adorable Neptina, the tastefully topless half-fish girlfriend of early anime hero Marine Boy. I was one of the rare little boys who never found girls to be "icky," so I was fascinated by the female from Day One, plus I had a deep interest in aquatic lifeforms that led my earliest job aspirations to lean toward marine biology, so the concept of a magical creature that combined my two loves into one was bound to appeal. From the early days of watching Marine Boy and Neptina "fighting evil 'neath the sea," I moved on to reading world mythology and absorbing the many cultural variations on the mermaid, and as I got older I sought out any movies that had to do with them, nearly all of which revolved around mermaids falling in love with men from the surface world. The list of the genuinely good films in this niche category is rather small and until now I held the Daryl Hannah vehicle SPLASH! (1983) as the exemplar of the form, but now that I've seen Britain's 1948 cult classic MIRANDA (based on a stage play by Peter Blackmore), Madison's reign is over and her Cornish predecessor has taken her place in my heart and mind.

Dr. Paul Martin (Griffith Jones) fails to entice his wife, Clare (Googie Withers), into joining him for a fishing trip to Cornwall, so he leaves by himself for a bachelor's holiday. While out angling in a boat, Paul's line is snared by what he presumes to be a very large fish and he is pulled overboard, where he is promptly seized and spirited away to the underwater cave of Miranda Trewella (Glynis Johns), a lonely mermaid who's looking for a man — she'd previously caught other men but threw them back because they were too short — and instantly takes a liking to the married doctor. She makes it very clear that she intends to keep the doctor forever and he is absolutely not immune to her considerable charms while stuck in her hideout (despite his love of his wife, which he immediately tells Miranda about), so, understanding Paul's fidelity (which is fighting a losing battle against her otherworldly allure), Miranda agrees to set him free, provided he takes her back to London with him for a three-week stay. She wants to see and experience all of the things she's read about in books and magazines found mostly on ships, and she would be willing to pretend to be an invalid during her stay, covering her fish tail with long dresses and blankets while riding around in a wheelchair or being carried. Paul agrees to her request and brings the beautiful creature to the London flat that he shares with his wife and their live-in servants, butler/chauffeur Charles (David Tomlinson) and maid Betty (Yvonne Owen), with Miranda playing the role of a patient who needs Paul's care over a specifically-stated period of three weeks. 

During the course of her stay, every male that she meets is completely enthralled with Miranda and not one of them stands a chance against her spell (though Paul puts up the most resistance). She bewitches Charles — who's engaged to Betty — and Nigel (John McCallum), an artist who's betrothed to Clare's best friend, snobbish hat designer Isobel (Sonia Holm), and enters into affairs with both, which of course results in all sorts of romantic mishegoss that postwar British society found scandalous and wholly inappropriate. Yet as all of this extracurricular spit-swapping occurs with the two mesmerized young men — and, to a certain extent, Paul as well — Miranda remains as sweet as honey and it's impossible to hate her for what appears to be simple (albeit powerful) sex appeal, and not even the women whose men she's stealing really hold it against her (their ire is instead directed at their helpless paramours). Especially not Clare, who eventually twigs to Miranda's secret, realizes there's some form of magic involved in all of the seduction going on, and settles back with an amused eye to watch what she knows will be an inevitable emotional train wreck (or as much of an emotional train wreck as the British stiff upper lip of 1948 would allow). It all amounts to a (mostly) one-set sex farce that leads to a rather surprising ending, especially for a film of its vintage and country of origin.

MIRANDA is a delight from start to finish and it wastes absolutely no time in getting the ball rolling, with Miranda coming into the narrative about two minutes after the opening credits. Highlights include:

• The eerie-but-charming siren song that Miranda sings at night, a strange melody heard by the entire household.
• The depiction of Clare and her performance by Googie Withers. It would have been easy to portray Clare as a shrewish wife who sought to tear down the invalid Miranda for her obvious effect on Paul, but Clare is both very smart and realistic, gradually realizing there's more going on than her husband's head, and the heads of the other men, being turned by a pretty wheelchair-bound girl. A refreshing change from what's expected in this kind of scenario.
• Miranda's adventures around London while chauffeured by the increasingly-smitten Charles, especially her argument with a sea lion after she orally catches and swallows a fish meant for it during feeding time, an argument loudly conducted in fluent sea lion, no less.
• Miranda's prodigious appetite and consumption of raw seafood.
• Miranda revealing in a throwaway line that she is the bastard daughter of her mermaid mother and a Covent Garden chorus boy named Matthew Trewella.
• British cinema legend Margaret Rutherford as Nurse Carey, the health care professional whom Paul brings in to attend to Miranda's "special needs" who is ideally suited to the case, thanks to her "eccentric" nature. She believes in mythical creatures, so her reaction to the reveal of Miranda being a living, breathing mermaid is one of utter delight, so it is never in doubt that she will keep Miranda's secret.
• The early pairing of Glynis Johns and David Tomlinson, some sixteen years before they were cast as Mr. and Mrs. Banks in the Disney classic MARY POPPINS. Witnessing a still-gentlemanly Tomlinson overcome with lust for the lovely mermaid and losing his battle with himself is very funny.
• The running gag involving Miranda treating the Martin's well-populated fishbowl as a candy dish. At the beginning of the film there are around ten fish in the bowl. By the end...not so much.
• As her time on land grows short, Miranda gifts her three men with neck-worn tokens containing locks of her hair, in celebration and remembrance of "a love that might have been."
• The scandalous notion that Miranda, while owning other undergarments, does not own a single pair of panties, much to the shock of Clare and her maid.
• "Sea Cow?!!? SHE KNOWS!!! If you think you're going to take a peek at my tail, you're very much mistaken!"
• Miranda's tail, which looks exceptionally realistic when its seen flopping about in water. The tail is even afforded an onscreen credit for its maker, namely Dunlop.
• The black and white photography lends the story a dreamlike aesthetic that greatly benefits the proceedings.

One of the things that most fascinates me about this film is that when looked at from the point of view of a rather jaded audience member some 65 years after its release, it's fun to ponder just how risque this movie must have been when it hit the U.K.'s screens during its original release. For one thing, you get a mermaid who's topless when she's seen in the water (though her hair is always strategically placed), and piled on top of that there are several references to fish (and their smell) and wetness that bear intentionally vulgar connotations, and Miranda's sweet-faced, very matter-of-fact sexual aggressiveness, which brings me to the film's ending.

WARNING!!! HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!!!

Far from being merely the male sex fantasy adventures of a beautiful horny mermaid on the loose, Miranda's sexual campaign is revealed near the end of the film to be her acting not only on her personal loneliness, but also taking action to ensure the survival of her species. She earlier states that her mother had an affair with a human man, and she also mentions that mermen do exist but their unattractive looks make them unappealing to her — and presumably other females of her species — so she's opted to mate outside of the more obvious choice, and her dalliances with the three men under her thrall are an effort to widen the genetic options. It's never explicitly stated as such, but that's exactly what's going on. And while the goal of conceiving a child out of wedlock via three different men was probably scandalous enough for its era, an aspect that absolutely would never have flown in an American film, it's the film's very last shot that really raises eyebrows. When Miranda escapes back to the sea after Clare subtly calls her out for being a mermaid — and there is no malice about that; Clare is fascinated, but she wants to make the discovery public, which Miranda (and Paul) is not at all thrilled about — we see Miranda swim away, after which there is a flash-forward that shows a very happy Miranda on the shores of Majorca with a mer-baby on her lap. So in a film made by one of the most propriety-obsessed European societies during the postwar/pre-Profumo era, we get a feel-good story about a hot chick who gets knocked up by one of three possible babydaddies and we're happy to see the unashamed result.

How in hell did they get away with that in a 1948 British comedy, and did it ever get an American release? (I'm guessing that it was okay by virtue of Miranda not being a human woman, but even so it's still a bit of a shocker for its time.)

The movie is dominated by the performance of Glynis Johns as Miranda, and I defy you to find any straight guy who wouldn't willingly end up a slave to the character. She's beautiful, dryly funny, has eyes that draw one in like quicksand, has charm to spare, and she's horny as hell in a classy British way. And while Miranda is a natural-born seducer — which may be magically assisted, though it's never explicitly spelled out — and knows full well that's she's messing with men who are all involved in very committed relationships, she doesn't have a malicious bone in her body, so her man-stealing ways are impossible to hate, especially once we get that she's doing what she's doing by way of acting on a biological imperative. In short, she's an ideal fantasy creation who carries equal irresistible appeal for both adults and kids. This movie can be run for kids and not be considered salacious because when viewed through innocent eyes, Miranda's romantic entanglements can be seen as simply kissing and such, the kind of thing that mermaids get up to in even G-rated kiddie flicks, and the scene fades out during the three instances when it's obvious to adult audience members that the Beast with Two Backs is about to be made. (Don't ask me exactly what the logistics of achieving successful intercourse between a human male and a mermaid may be in this specific instance. Unlike Madison in SPLASH!, Miranda does not have the ability to become bipedal below the waist, so I'd say that magic is a definite factor here. That, or a process similar to the fishy mating process involving the female's eggs being fertilized by the male's milt, which when translated to this sort of scenario would amount to bukkake, which is something best not thought about in this movie's charming context.)

MIRANDA proved popular enough to generate a Technicolor sequel, MAD ABOUT MEN (1954), which brought back Glynis Johns and Margaret Rutherford, but it appears to be unavailable on DVD in an official release, either domestically or in a foreign edition. That makes me quite sad because I loved MIRANDA and I've read several reviews that cite MAD ABOUT MEN as being superior to the original, so I'm anxious to see it. Anyway, take my word for it and check out MIRANDA for yourself. It's a rare and unique treasure. I would love to see it rediscovered because it really is a classic deserving of wider recognition on these shores. (Then again, the one possible negative byproduct of MIRANDA getting rediscovered is that some Hollywood douchebag will greenlight an unnecessary remake, replete with modern day raunchy humor and fart gags, so maybe it's better off staying in relative obscurity.)

Poster from the original theatrical release.

COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES (2012)

Alan Ford as Ray Macguire, perhaps the most badassed granddad in cinema history.

In London's East End, a a questionable group of (mostly) well-intentioned working class criminals plan and execute a bank robbery, the spoils of which are earmarked to prevent the demolition of a home for old age pensioners where the beloved granddad of the robbery's masterminds is spending his autumn years. Upon making off with 2.5 million pounds, the robbers exit the bank and find themselves in the middle of a full-blown zombie infestation, a state of affairs caused when a construction company discovers and opens a vault where zombies were entombed in the 1600's. Once the first zombie tastes construction worker flesh, the undead plague spreads exponentially and in no time the East End is a living nightmare populated by hordes of ravenous revenant flesh-eaters and the living who are trapped with them once the government contains the infestation by sealing off the area. With all hell breaking loose around them, the robbers prepare to head to the old folks' home with the intent to rescue the trapped geezers, but first they must contend with the reckless and homicidal madness of one of their crew, Mental Mickey (played to the brain-damaged hilt by Ashley Bashy Thomas), the pair of hostages he takes, and other assorted mishaps. When they finally make it to the seniors, the hinted-at hard nature of several of the old folks comes to the fore as the robbers and the pensioners fight their way out with enough firepower to stage the coup of a small third world nation.

A few months ago, when I first heard of the British COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES, I was intrigued by its potential as a character piece set during a zombie outbreak. The setup involving the pensioners looked like a great idea because instead of the now rote zombie shooting gallery tropes that are now a part of the horror story playbook, we would see how senior citizens, people whose bodies and agility had fallen victims to the  infirmities wrought by the aging process, would handle an ever-advancing maelstrom of famished fiends. As the story progresses, we're shown just how fucking tough some of the seniors are, especially foul-mouthed alpha fogey Ray Maguire (Alan Ford, whose Bricktop from SNATCH is now something of a cult hero), who was apparently some kind of fearsome gangster back in the days. No details about exactly what Ray and his cronies got up to during their heyday but it's made quite clear that there were illegal dealings aplenty and Ray and friends were not afraid to get murderous if it suited their agendas. That kind of character setup greatly appealed to me, plus the film was a zombie infestation comedy, British-style, so I eagerly anticipated the film getting a release in the States. Any film that might vie for the crown of the beloved SHAUN OF THE DEAD stood to be of interest and a potential ton of fun.

Unfortunately COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES, while not terrible by any means, is rather a disappointment. The comedy is mostly tepid — and I say that as a lifelong lover of British humor — the younger characters are far less interesting than their elders, and while it's great to see Alan Ford's performance as Ray, the film pretty much squanders the presence of Honor Blackman as Peggy, whose level of comfort with an AK-47 raises many questions that receive not even the tiniest crumb of an answer. I can't speak for the rest of you but Honor Blackman has been one of my favorite actresses since I was a kid, thanks to her turn as Hera in the Ray Harryhausen masterpiece JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963), and her role as the infamously-monikered Pussy Galore in the Connery-era James Bond classic GOLDFINGER (1964), the part for which she will never be forgotten. As of this writing she's 87 years old and still as bright-eyed and charming as ever, so her relatively limited screen time was both disappointing and a waste of a great opportunity. 

 Honor Blackman, age 87 and still kicking ass.

Nonetheless, she does sort out zombies with a heavy mallet and the aforementioned machine gun, plus we get to hear her say "fuck," so it's not a total loss.

While SHAUN OF THE DEAD has nothing to fear from it, COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES does include a few genuinely inspired bits, chief among which is the ultra-slow chase scene involving a hobbling ancient codger (Richard Briers) on a walker being pursued by an equally-snail-paced zombie, and the creative use of an orally-administered hand grenade. 

 The film's most inspired moment.

And enough cannot be said of Alan Ford as Ray. He's far and away the character everyone who sees this film will remember and root hardest for, and I wish he'd been the film's straight-up protagonist. Aged though he may be, Ray is one tougher-than-leather East End motherfucker and you'd better believe he's not going to tolerate legions of zombies fucking up his town.

The bottom line on this one is that it's worth sitting through for Ray and a few bright spots, but don't believe the online hype about it from its native U.K. The reviews I saw COCKNEYS VS ZOMBIES online describe it as "fantastic" and "hilarious," so I wonder if that level of enthusiasm for it has to come from being part of the culture that spawned it and having a familiarity with and ingrained understanding of Cockneys as simply another flavor of being English and not as poorly-depicted and often badly-acted stereotypes/caricatures. I'll give the characters this: they are definitely not the broad and stale Cockney sitcom types that Americans have seen over the decades, and the more natural human approach was definitely welcome. Anyway, I give the film a grudging recommendation for zombie completists and followers of the horror-comedy sub-genre. As previously stated, it's not a bad movie, just flawed and more than a bit of a misfire. That said, there are infinitely worse ways to pass 87 minutes. (Provided you can find it, that is. The film has yet to receive a U.S. release, theatrical or on DVD/Blu-Ray.)

Cover art for the U.K. DVD release.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 31: HORROR OF DRACULA (1958)

Along with THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1957), this was one of the films that heralded Hammer Studios as a revolutionary force to be reckoned with in the post-war horror cinema landscape. Less a faithful adaptation of Bram Stoker's classic novel, DRACULA, than a mid-20th century re-jiggering of many of its elements for an audiences that might find Universal and Lugosi's take on the Count to be a tad stage-bound and genteel, HORROR OF DRACULA is the simplest iteration of the classic vampire yarn's tropes imaginable and can be seen as the template for how to tell a vampire story to a modern audience until stuff like FRIGHT NIGHT and Anne Rice happened.

Recounting the plot is pointless as it's all essentially a template that boils down to a bitter war between Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) and Count Dracula (Christopher Lee), with good inevitably triumphing over evil; something we've seen before, certainly, but it's the atmosphere, the look of the film, and the brisk telling of the tale that make this iteration of it a classic. Dracula's castle is a triumph of set design and realization, his dark-haired and very hungry bride is quite memorable, and the events that transpire once the undead suckface reaches England are just a horror fan's banquet of the basics done right. We also get the one-two punch of Lee and Cushing in career-defining roles that they would both go on to repeat several times (in some cases to diminishing returns, if truth be told), and of many, Lee's Dracula is the definitive screen version of Bram Stoker's arch-vampire, and I can totally understand why. He's very tall, urbane, imposing and regal as all get out, but once his facade of aloof nobility is seen through and the vampire stands revealed, Lee's Dracula very much takes the fight to his human opponents and gets very physical indeed, seeming all the while to actually revel in being darkly, irredeemably evil.

I mean, look at this fucking guy! I'd be scared of a vampire if I ran into one in real life anyway, but Lee managed to fairly radiate a palpable, primally-chilling malevolence that even later vampires that had shape-shifting makeup and animatronic technology to bolster them could not begin to approach. Lee's Dracula was a menace of the first order that needed to be expunged from the face of the earth, and Cushing's Van Helsing was just the dude to handle that thankless task. Though a man of cold, hard science and rationality, Van Helsing was smart enough to call a spade a spade when he saw one and thus he dealt with Dracula with the single-minded focus of a master surgeon eliminating a particularly stubborn cancerous growth.

HORROR OF DRACULA is absolutely worth your time if you've never seen it (and even if you already have), both as a textbook example of how this kind of thing can be done right and with no extraneous bullshit, and more importantly as a reminder that vampires are supposed to be fucking scary, not sparkly and all Emo, unlike those found in a certain tamponathon franchise whose name I will not besmirch this review with.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 25: HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959)

In the late 1950's, the horror films generated by Hammer Studios upped the level of violence/gore and sex/gratuitous female flesh by degrees that only increased with each passing year, especially as the Fifties gave way to the Sixties, and with that popular acceptance and box office success came films that took advantage of that new leniency. The most infamous from that early wave of British responses to the trend is this nasty little shocker that possesses several moments that everyone who's seen it has permanently burned into their memories, especially if they encountered HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM during their impressionable childhoods. That's when I first saw it — I was around eight years old — and look at what happened to me...

The horror begins in London when a pretty young woman receives a package containing a pair of binoculars. Intrigued, she puts the binoculars to her eyes, which are suddenly penetrated by pressure-sensitive spring-loaded six-inch spikes, causing her agonized death.

One of the most shocking moments of 1950's horror cinema (or any other era, for that matter).

As the detectives of Scotland Yard begin to investigate this crime, the third horrific murder in two weeks, creepy, sensationalistic true crime author Edmond Bancroft (Michael Gough, aka Alfred in four of the Batman films) arrives to pump them for information, an enthusiastic gleam in his shifty eyes. Quite familiar to the police due to his constant sniffing about for gruesome case details to use in his books and magazine articles, Bancroft lives and breathes crime and to all observers, he is unhealthily obsessed with crime in general and with the current murders in particular, resulting in his health being endangered from his alarmingly high blood pressure. Needless to say, Bancroft's obsession is so intense because he's the vicious maniac the police are searching for but he's beyond suspicion due to his ubiquity at the station and also thanks to his pronounced limp. But despite his frail physicality, Bancroft is one sick, sick motherfucker who orchestrates the murders so he'll have new material to write about, and also keeps a "black museum" in the basement of his house, a sanctum decorated with classic instruments of torture and accented with life-size manikins demonstrating what happens to those who endure the wielding of such contraptions in the hands of sadistic torturers. Bancroft also employs a young assistant named Rick (Graham Curnow), to whom he administers mind-controlling drugs that turn the lad into a programmable killer that Bancroft dispatches to commit a series of ever-escalating slayings. (When under Bancroft's murderous influence, Rick's complexion turns green and wrinkly for no apparent reason.)

But Bancroft's dark path is not without its obstacles. He pays rent for and gives cash to his sleazy, gold-digging blonde bombshell girlfriend, Joan (the lusciously curvaceous June Cunningham), but she's tired of being a kept woman in an isolated flat who's never taken anywhere and only used as a sex toy (strongly implied but not explicitly stated). Joan also viciously insults him as being "less than a man" (we know what that means) and makes fun of him being a "cripple," but the real problem lies in her knowledge of the dark deeds Bancroft gloats about while drunk and her intention to leave him, possibly to spill what she knows, all of which only adds fuel to the fire of Bancroft's oft-stated hatred and distrust of women. (He may be a misogynistic pig but at least he's up front about it.) Bancroft also buys the signature weapons used in the killing spree from an aged antique dealer who's smarter than she initially lets on, and once she realizes that the goods she sold to Bancroft are the same ones used in the murders, she seeks to cushion her retirement with cash extorted from her customer. (She doesn't go to Scotland Yard to rat Bancroft out because she fears guilt by association for selling the items to him.) Bancroft's personal physician is also no slouch in the reasoning department and after a recent examination of his patient, he begins to suspect the writer of being involved in activities that are considerably less than savory. Then there's Rick's burgeoning romance with a pretty young thing that threatens to upset his boss' control over him and possibly expose Bancroft's twisted activities. With all of that mishegoss threatening to boil over, it's only a matter of time until it all ends very, very badly.

Marvelously and unashamedly lurid, HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM is like the cinematic cousin to the gory horror and crime comics that led to U.S. Senate sub-committee hearings in the early 1950's, only much better written than those often hacked-out efforts (pun most definitely intended), so check it out if you've never seen it. I promise you won't be disappointed, and how could you not be hooked after that hideous opening scene?

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 20: THE GORGON (1964)

This is one of the lesser efforts from Hammer that pales in comparison to its Dracula and Frankenstein series, and that's rather a shame because it's a solid little creeper in its own right.

In the early 1900's in the remote village of Vandorf, the details in a series of very bizarre deaths are swept under the rug by the local constabulary and medical/psychiatric authorities. Local legend has it that a hideous spirit roams the land during full moons and over the course of several years it has been responsible for the inexplicable deaths of several locals. The story proper kicks into gear when a young artist is informed by his girlfriend that she's pregnant, so the artist storms off into the night to tell her father that, poor though he may be, he intends to do the right thing and marry the girl. Worried that her father will kill her lover when he finds out what's happened, the girl tears of into the night to stop her boyfriend. Unfortunately for her, she runs into something quite horrible (that the audience does not see) and when she is later found by the authorities, her body has somehow been turned to solid stone. That aspect of the case is kept from public knowledge and the girl's lover is shortly thereafter found hanged by the neck from a tree, a suicide. Using the convenient death of the young artist as a scapegoat, the authorities and the creepy head of the local mental hospital (Peter Cushing) spin the events to make it look like the artist killed the girl and then, "in an act of remorse," offed himself as well. News of this obvious bullshit reaches the artist's understandably irate father, who arrives to challenge the lies and clear his son's good name, much to the annoyance of the locals who seek to drive him out. During the course of his investigation, the father learns of a local legend that claims a nearby abandoned castle is home to Megara, one of the famed Gorgon sisters from Greek mythology (the most famous of whom was Medusa, the one beheaded by the hero Perseus) whose gaze turned the beholder into solid stone, and his findings are met with apparent disbelief by the head of the mental institution, but he clearly knows more than he's letting on.

Lesson learned from this film: a slow death by being turned to solid stone would really, really suck.

While searching the castle, the father has the misfortune of running into Megara and he begins to slowly, agonizingly petrify, but not before making his way back to his lodgings where he manages to write his remaining son a three-page letter outlining his findings and suspicions. (His turned-to-stone death is falsely and ridiculously officially deemed death by heart failure, which his son quite correctly points out as bullshit because no one takes the time to write a detailed three-page letter while suffering a heart attack.) The remaining son receives the letter and arrives in town to discover the particulars of the mysterious deaths of his brother and dad, but is met with resistance from the aforementioned authorities. Meeting with the head of the mental hospital, he realizes the man knows more than he's letting on, and that the fellow is rather possessive of his beautiful assistant, who was once one of his patients (but she got better). The sparks fly between the son and the assistant, which does not sit at all well with the doctor, and things take a turn for the worse when the young man encounters the Gorgon but does not get a direct look at her face; he glimpses her reflection in a pool of water and rather than turn to stone, he is visibly aged by the terrifying experience. As he convalesces in hospital and comes to love the doctor's assistant (a love that is reciprocated), his favorite college professor and friend of his late father (Christopher Lee) arrives to see just what the fuck is going on and, taking one look at the now aged face of his student, decides to take charge of the situation, and believe me, he's badass enough to do it (which does not please the doctor or the authorities).

Megara, revealed in full.

All of this snowballs into a rather predictable reveal regarding the identity of the Gorgon and culminates with her inevitable beheading, but it left me with a number of unanswered questions:

• Exactly what the fuck is an ancient Greek monster doing in a German village in 1910?
• The Gorgons of classical mythology were Medusa, Stheno and Eurayle, so where the hell did this "Megara" come from? Gorgons were not exactly common or in any way numerous.
• We all know the fate of Medusa and now that of "Megara," but what of either of the remaining sisters? Perhaps they remained unexplored in hope of a sequel?
• In a small village, details of bizarre deaths would be virtually impossible to cover up, plus in this case there were several now-granite bodies remaining as evidence, so I don't buy the story not getting out past the borders of the place.
• If the bodies of Megara's victims are fully petrified — as is seen and demonstrated when one of them has a finger accidentally snapped off — how did the undertakers get the bodies into standard coffins for burial? Dealing with a certain amount of rigor mortis is standard, but how does one straighten out the solid stone corpse of a guy who was seated at a desk, hunched over to write a letter? When his son digs up his grave to see the body for himself, we see the rock-pop laying straight as an arrow.
• Since the doctor and the chief constable are aware of exactly what's going on, why didn't they consult the mythology books in the local library and find someone brave enough to pull a Perseus and have done with it rather than let statue after statue be generated?

But perhaps I'm examining this too closely and nitpicking far too much. This is, after all, simply meant to be a fun little chiller and it certainly succeeds at that, so maybe I should just shut my gob. Bottom line: if you enjoy Hammer horror films and the flavor they bring to the horror-scape, you'll probably get a kick out of this. Just don't expect any of the usual gory violence and ample, heaving bosoms that the brand became justly famous for (although we do get to see Megara's detached noggin and it's pretty damned goofy-looking).

For all you DOCTOR WHO fans out there: the chief constable, the guy in the helmet, is Patrick Troughton, who would go on to be the second actor to play the Doctor. His tenure in that role lasted from 1966-1970. He was also the blind seer Phineas in the classic JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS (1963), as well as the alchemist Melanthius in SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER (1977).

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 17: NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957)

I'm afraid this is going to be a short one but that's not without good reason. Simply put, NIGHT OF THE DEMON, known in the U.S. as CURSE OF THE DEMON, gets my vote as the best black magic-oriented horror film ever made, and I would be a colossal asshole worthy of a well-aimed ski boot right to the balls if I revealed more than just the briefest outline of its particulars... Ya know, ROSEMARY'S BABY is also right up there and now that I think about, the great narrative strength of both films stems from their fantastic/supernatural events being set firmly within a then-modern 20th century world in which the characters (and by association, the audience) simply cannot believe in the likes of superstition and Satanic cults because they supposedly know better, only to be proven completely and utterly horribly, horribly wrong. Here it is in brief:

Dr. Julian Carswell (Niall MacGinnis) is the head of a devil-worshiping cult who by means of the darkest of "olde magicks" disposes of those who would ridicule his activities as bunk or try to expose him, which we witness during the opening moments of the film. Basically, Carswell is quite capable of summoning a demon straight from Hell itself to tear his enemies limb from limb, and next on his list is American psychiatrist and debunker of mystical shit, Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), who is in England to follow in his now-dead predecessor's footsteps in exposing Carswell as a presumed bullshit artist during an international convention of assorted learned types. When Holden scoffs at Carswell's ominous cease-and-desist warnings, he finds himself immediately plunged headlong down a path of events that any rational person would deny were happening, and though joined by his dead colleague's niece (Peggy Cummins) who has come to believe in a lot of dark shit after reading her uncle's journal and notes, the guy has to be convinced the hard way that his world has now got enough evil in it to fuel twenty King Diamond albums and that his demise at the talons of a thirty-foot demon is imminent...

Fuck with Julian Carswell and this is what you get.

I assure you that I have not given away any of the whys and wherefores of the story and now I urge you to get your hands on it immediately. I had not seen this film since I was a kid and even though I enjoyed it back then, it's that much more potent when experienced from a grownup's perspective. Trust me, you will not be disappointed.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 12: THE VULTURE (1967)

THE VULTURE is a film that made a huge impression on me as a very young child — I was five when I first saw it — and it held me riveted from start to finish. Seeing it again some forty-one years later, all I could ask was "What the fuck was I thinking?" It's ridiculous concrete proof that just because a Horror film is British in origin, it won't necessarily be as good as even the weakest entry from Hammer Studios.

Taking place by the seaside of Cornwall, THE VULTURE opens with a great and very spooky scene in which a woman on a bus is warned by the superstitious driver not to take a shortcut through the local graveyard when she gets off, advice she chews the guy out for. Of course when she ignores his advice, she walks through the graveyard and witnesses the earth near a grave pushing upwards as though something buried there was fighting its way out. Well, guess what? Something was under there fighting its way out, and from the sparse visual clues we're given, it's quite big and it can fly (we only see the woman's horrified reaction to it, and not a glimpse of the creature itself). The woman is of course driven instantly insane by the sight, and ends up in a mental institution.

That sequence was terrific and still holds up, and it led me to believe my fond memories from just over four decades past were accurate. Too bad for me that from that point on the film takes a precipitous nosedive straight down the cinematic toilet in a maelstrom of boredom and narrative stupidity.

Anyway, the local authorities believe the grave had been broken into instead of broken out of and in no time at all a series of bizarre murders begins, each targeting the Stroud family. A couple of centuries previous, the Strouds were responsible for burying alive an evil Frenchman who was found guilty of practicing witchcraft, and along with him was buried his supposedly satanically-tainted treasure of gold coins and his pet vulture (?). As the dirt was piled atop him, the evil Frenchman cursed the Strouds and vowed eventual vengeance upon them, so the modern day murders look to be a centuries-old curse in all-too-gruesome action.

I'll spare you the rest of the tedious story and simply tell you that the monster turns out to be an aged descendant of the evil Frenchman who happened to be a nuclear scientist dabbling in teleportation experiments in hope of transmitting himself into his ancestor's grave and absconding with the gold. What he didn't count on was the presence of the pet vulture's corpse, so for some idiotic reason his molecules fuse with those of the dead carrion-eater, and thus is born a pissed-off giant vulture with the fully-functioning head and mind of an old bald dude, plus it's big and powerful enough to carry away full-grown adults to its cliffside cave lair.

Is she registering terror or sheer hilarity?

So what we have here is a would-be horror-mystery that ludicrously cribs from THE FLY (1958) and doesn't even give us the courtesy of showing us the monster in full. Considering how feeble the rest of the film is, would it really have made much of a difference to have crafted even a cheesy marionette of a buzzard with a bald old man's head on it? I think not and I say we got gypped, bigtime. To put it bluntly, this is exactly the kind of thing that Count Floyd would get stuck with running on MONSTER CHILLER HORROR THEATRE. So much so that I could practically hear him grousing about its shoddy quality throughout its running time.

Damn, I wish Count Floyd had been on hand for this mess. Then there would at least have been some kind of excuse for it.

31 DAYS OF HORROR-DAY 8: THE MUMMY (1959)

Hammer horror films were a singular flavor within the genre that more often than not delivered the goods, especially when re-inventing the stable of classic Universal monsters — Dracula, Frankenstein, what have you — for a late-1950's audience, and this take on the whole mummy thing gets my vote as the very best of the many ancient shambling Egyptian dude flicks to grace the screen. The original Boris Karloff version from 1932 is atmospheric as hell and visually stunning but the simple fact of the matter is that simply is not scary (the exceptional resurrection scene near the beginning notwithstanding) since it's basically intended to function as a supernaturally-tinged romance, which it accomplishes quite well. Hammer's version, on the other hand, goes straight for the jugular and does not pussy about with anything even remotely dreamlike. This working of the basic mummy movie tropes gives us a mummy that is not only relatively fast-moving for a bandaged and preserved corpse of a couple thousand years of age, it's large, imposing, implacable, and absolutely worthy of our most primal fear. (Not so, Karloff's wistful Imhotep.)

I don't really have to go into the plot particulars here because the film is pretty much a textbook example of what you need to have in a film of this specific horror sub-genre, so I won't. Instead I'll just give you the short list, so included among its many tropes are:

• A pack of British archaeologists who desecrate an ancient Egyptian tomb despite the warnings of an in-the-know local, only to face very dire consequences.
• Some form of "scroll of life" that handily re-animates the titular bogeyman.
• Some poor son of a bitch being driven insane by witnessing the mummy coming back to life. (The 1932 version of this trope is the best such ever to grace cinema and all we see of the mummy in that one is his hand and some trailing bandages. "Hee hee hee...He went for a little walk! You should have seen his face!")
• An ancient curse that proves all too real.
• The story's heroine bearing a marked resemblance to the mummy's ancient and forbidden love.
• A flashback to how the guy who became the mummy fucked up back in the days and ended up as a shambling mass of dangerous bandages.
• Loads of people meeting a gruesome demise at the hands of the mummy.

Christopher Lee as the vengeful mummy, Kharis.

This time around we get Peter Cushing as the lone expedition member who, luckily for him, was unable to enter the tomb thanks to an injury that kept him sidelined, so he pretty much does his usual Van Helsing thing, only now it's about a mummy rather than the lord of all vampires. Christopher Lee is also on hand as Kharis, the hulking mummy, and he's a monster to be reckoned with. Physically powerful and dogged in his mission of sacred retribution, Kharis is by far the screen's scariest mummified engine of destruction and he's just an actor in grimy wrappings. No amount of CGI can come close to what Lee brought to the role, and you can quote me on that.

There were subsequent Hammer mummy films, but they kinda bite the big one in comparison to this and are best ignored. Rent this and you won't be disappointed, plus it's suitable for the whole family (provided the little ones can handle a genuinely scary mummy).

PEEPING TOM (1960)

For years I’d held the opinion that Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece PSYCHO was not only the prototype for the slasher movie genre, but also that it was the best of the many psychological horror films featuring a creepy, sexually fucked up protagonist.

Allow me to state right here and now that I was dead wrong.

Over the weekend I made my way through some of the ever-growing stack of movies on DVD that threatens to bury me here in the Vault, and I just sat through a film that I last watched during my “lost” (read “stoned out of my goddamned mind”) years, but I remembered it for its basic plot despite not being in any fair shape to judge. Now that I’ve seen it with a clear mind, I would like to direct any of you who have not encountered it to Michael (THE RED SHOES) Powell’s PEEPING TOM, an unjustly maligned and reviled work that met a sorry fate and languished in semi-obscurity before getting a shot in the arm from very vocal fan Martin Scorsese.

Sharing a few themes with PSYCHO — yet pre-dating it by some three months — and disturbing the living shit out of just about everyone who saw it when it came out, I have to admit that it’s a much better film than its American-made contemporary in many ways; not an easy thing for me to say, because PSYCHO was my favorite Hitchcock work for much of my life (only recently getting edged out by FRENZY, PSYCHO having lost much of its impact for me since its big shocks have now entered the pop culture lexicon, neutered by nearly fifty years of references and parody).
PEEPING TOM tells the story of Mark (Carl Boehm), a creepy focus puller at a movie studio who sidelines as a photographer for a small-time pornography racket operating out of a local newsagent’s.

Carl Boehm as the tortured Mark.

Thanks to a highly questionable series of endlessly filmed experiments that he endured through childhood at the hands of his uncaring and twisted psychologist father, Mark is socially maladjusted (to say the very least) and obsessed with the act of “looking,” a conditioning that allows him to be able to deal with the world only when perceived through the camera’s lens. Taking a handheld camera with him wherever he goes, Mark embarks on a quest to document the human fear reaction, coldly murdering women with a blade concealed in one of the legs of his camera’s tripod, capturing their sheer terror as they are fatally penetrated by his surrogate phallus.
Having inherited his father’s spacious house and acting as landlord, Mark occupies the upper floor, a space filled with his father’s books on his studies and a fully equipped film studio, complete with dark room and screening area. Mark spends all of his off time in his film lab, watching the footage of his victims and slowly editing it into a documentary of the darkest order. The rest of the house is rented to various boarders, including Helen (Anna Massey), a friendly girl whom Mark meets as he spies upon her twenty-first birthday party through the window.

Helen (Anna Massey) unwittingly enters the world of a madman.

The two develop a friendship that blossoms into a sweet relationship, the first normal one Mark has ever had, but Mark is very much aware his own madness and calmly accepts that it’s only a matter of time until the police catch up with him. The story dovetails into a deeply disturbing tragedy that leaves viewers drained by just how bleak, sick, and sordid it all is, all factors that lead to PEEPING TOM being shot down in flames by critics and defenders of common decency all over Britain when it was released some forty-eight years ago. Long known for its stringent censorship of films and a general snobbish uptightness when it came to the more visceral elements of horror, the British film industry and critical body deemed PEEPING TOM to be a morally bankrupt and vile bit of business, utterly crucifying it with scathing reviews and withdrawing it from release after a mere two weeks in theaters, a backlash that virtually destroyed director Powell’s career. The British press spared no vitriol in the pillorying of the movie, as seen in these quotes from contemporary reviews:

"The sickest and filthiest film I remember seeing"
-Isabel Quigly, The Spectator 

"I don't propose to name the players in this beastly picture"
-C.A. Lejeune, The Observer

"sadism, sex and the exploitation of human degradation”
-Leonard Mosley, Daily Express 

"from its slumbering, mildly salacious beginning to its appallingly masochistic and depraved climax, it is wholly evil"
-Nina Hibbin, Daily Worker

“As a shocker, it succeeds only in being nauseating for the sake of nausea. This is a sick film - sick and nasty.”
-Derek Monsey, Sunday Express

“However intriguing psychologically, the film is frankly beastly. De Sade at least veiled his relish with pretensions to being a moralist. It might have been even worse but for the discreet playing of Carl Boehme (sic) in the main role.”
-David Robinson, Financial Times

“This account of a young psychopath (Carl Boehm) who butchers girls with an ingenious killer-camera, then watches their last moments on a home screen, is not only drivel, it is crude unhealthy sensation at its worst. A sad discredit to a fine producer's reputation, - and I was appalled to find such delightful artists as Moira Shearer and Anna Massey mixed up in this sickly mess.”
-reviewer unknown, Sunday Dispatch

“Given some of the home-grown films we have had lately it's hard not to sound repetitively querulous. What-are-we-coming-to questions are apt to sound nannyish, like complaints about muddy boots, but after a film like Peeping Tom ('X' Certificate) it's a question to ask quite straight. What are we coming to, what sort of people are we in this country, to make, or see, or seem to want (so that it gets made) a film like this?”
-Isobel Quigley, The Spectator

“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.”
-Derek Hill, The Tribune

The reasons why the film offended so mightily during its initial run are many and have been discussed in much detail by film scholars far more qualified than Yer Bunche, but I’ll attempt to provide a short list of possible causes:

• The film makes the viewer aware of cinema as a voyeuristic act, using it to make us complicit in Mark’s crimes by allowing us to see them as they unfold, culminating in the “money shot” of his victims’ horror as seen from his P.O.V. through his camera’s viewfinder.

This approach would be appropriated to much lesser artistic effect in many of the slasher films that followed in the wake of the box office garnered by FRIDAY THE 13TH (1980), a film concerned with nothing other than depicting gory murders with a bare minimum of plot upon which to hang the carnage. Back in 1960 nothing like PEEPING TOM had ever been seen before, and its borderline-pornographic approach to the murders was considered especially distasteful.

• Unlike Norman Bates in PSYCHO, the audience knows from the beginning that Mark is an insane killer, and the entire film makes us intimate with the causes of his madness, and reveals a lonely, damaged young man who has little hope for a healthy emotional life until Helen enters his world. Mark is not a ravening madman by any means, but is quite thoughtful and even artistic, elements not usually found in such characters, and as we get to know and understand him we feel a great deal of sympathy for him. Aware as he is of his deep psychosis, Mark even considers going in for psychoanalysis thanks to Helen’s influence in drawing him out into the world at large, proving he is not beyond some kind of redemption. The idea of having sympathy for a twisted, somewhat perverted murder was pretty much unheard of in 1960, and in a British film such a notion was unthinkable.

• PEEPING TOM wallows in voyeurism, and that aspect is ripe for the depiction of Mark’s work as a porn photographer. Working in a cheesy studio that would have made Irving Klaw laugh his ass off, Mark shoots his subjects with a clinical detachment, only moved by one model’s disfiguring harelip and the inevitability of shooting another for his lethal home movie. The sequences in the studio reek of sadness, the boredom found during photo shoots, and a palpable sleaziness that must have been quite provocative in 1960, especially the bit with famous 1950’s/1960’s nude model and pinup girl Pamela Green splayed out for Mark’s camera before she meets her off-camera demise. That scene was shot in a negligee-clad version and one featuring Green’s all-natural awesomeness, the latter version supposedly being the first female nude shot in a British film not aimed at the “naturist” market.

The stunning Pamela Green as the ill-fated Millie.

The first female nude shot in mainstream British film.

• The message of “your parents sure can fuck you up” probably wasn’t a crowd pleaser back in the days.

• The symbolic link between Mark’s camera and stiletto tripod and his warped sexuality is uber-Freudian and more than a bit obvious, and the camera as murderous cock imagery is pretty damned sleazy, no matter how utterly appropriate for the story. After seeing PEEPING TOM two days ago I very much doubt that I’ll ever look at my own camera the same way again.

The extent to which we are given admission to Mark’s psyche really amps up the film’s twitchy, somewhat anxious tone, whereas in PSYCHO we don’t learn much about Norman Bates’ issues until the big reveal during the last five minutes, after which we’re given a weak bit of psychoanalytical explanation that comes across as “Here’s some psychobabble to excuse the violence and twisted, pervy shit you just sat through.” That explanation felt like it was added almost as an afterthought and doesn’t give anywhere near the rich detail that made Mark a far more rounded and human character than Norman, but whatever the case PSYCHO went on to box office success and a solid place in film history as the cross-dressing granddaddy of the stalk-and-slash school of horror while PEEPING TOM remained largely unseen and unappreciated for far too long. Now available in a terrific Criterion edition, I can’t recommend this film highly enough, especially to students of the slasher genre.

The Criterion edition.

PEEPING TOM proves that the lurid nature of the field’s material can yield a classic if the elements of a quality script, a talented cast, and a director who isn’t afraid to “go there” with his subject are in place, and that was certainly the case here. Definitely not a feel-good movie, do yourself the favor and rent this very sick puppy immediately. TRUST YER BUNCHE!!!

BEAT GIRL (1960)

A classic example of early U.K. exploitation filmmaking, 1960's BEAT GIRL, aka WILD FOR KICKS, is a fascinating (if rather caricatured) time capsule of post-war England and its head-on collision with the newly-minted rock'n'roll youth culture.

BEAT GIRL takes place in 1959/1960 and relates the story of a hateful and ultra-cunty high school-aged spoiled rich brat named Jenny (the Brigitte Bardot-esque Gillian Hills) a completely unlikeable, unsympathetic asshole of the highest order.

Gillian Hills as Jenny, a real rotter of girl who could use a good, swift kick in the box with a steel-toed Doc Marten.

It's bad enough that she's rude and generally nasty — in other words the total antithesis of what a nice British girl is supposed to be — but her sizable mean streak is aimed squarely at Nicole (Noelle Adam), the new 24-year-old French bride of her architect dad (David Farrar), a man who's too focused on designing the ultra-modern and sound-proofed "City 2000." When dad brings his newlywed Gallic sweetie home to his posh Soho house after being away from his daughter for five months, Jenny is not at all pleased to meet the woman who is taking the place of her presumably-dead mother (her mom's absence is never explained, but it's obvious that she's history), and from the instant they are introduced, Jenny is at all-out war with her step-mom. When not verbally abusing her step-mom, Jenny whiles away her time at the local "beatnik" club, the Off-Beat (which is located across the street from a seedy strip joint called Les Girls), with her cadre of too-cool-for-school chums, all of whom seem to have escaped from some mis-translated Anglo version of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE or a garden variety Elvis time-waster.

As the story (such as it is) progresses, the central point is Jenny's cruelty toward Nicole and her discovery of Nicole's past as a stripper and occasional prostitute in Paris, facts she uses to blackmail her stepmother into staying out of her life and stop trying to make friends with her. As it becomes clear that Nicole is determined to win both her favor and her respect — a losing battle if ever there was one — Jenny's rebellious intentions become further skewed upon investigating her step-mom's past association with a stripper named Greta (Delphi Lawrence), which brings her into direct contact with Kenny (Christopher Lee), the oily owner of Les Girls, who immediately sets his vile sights on the underage and not necessarily disinterested Jenny. All of this is interspersed with looks into Jenny's self-destructive social life, featuring "wild" dancing to "jive" music (in actuality that jazz/early guitar rock fusion common to Britain of the late-1950's), drunken speeding, Jenny and friends playing "chicken" by resting their heads on a train track as a speeding locomotive approaches, unauthorized house parties, stylistically-inaccurate Teddy Boys, wanton destruction of property, strip-teasing, and eventually murder, and it all entertains in that uneasy way found on U.K. sleaze flicks of the period, like HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM (1959) and the epochal PEEPING TOM (1960).

Much like American-made films that milked juvenile delinquency, hippies, bikers, black people and punks for exploitation fodder, BEAT GIRL does likewise with its late-1950's British "youth gone bad" and the results, though rather tame by today's standards, must have been a solid punch in the guts to its contemporary audience (or those among the audience who took it as an accurate representation of reality). With its ludicrous aping of American beatniks and their "hip" lingo, the film comes off as not unlike REEFER MADNESS for the British rock scene of the pre-Beatles era, especially in the scenes involving Jenny's friends, who are sort of led by the uber-douchey Adam Faith as Dave, the would-be rocker of the crew, and as such he's both tepid and kinda THUNDERBIRDS marionette-looking.

Adam Faith, part of the wave of post-Elvis/pre-Beatles U.K. rockers in the Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele mold. All that this guy's missing is a blue International Rescue flight suit and cap.

The thing that renders him so grating is his exaggerated attempts at laid-back "cool" that only make him come off as a dick who you just want to punch in the face as hard as you can. (It always brings a smile to my face when three Teds take his ever-present acoustic guitar and smash it to pieces as a challenge to fight, which he predictably pussies out of.) And as for Jenny, she's perfectly brought to vicious life by Gillian Hills, who enacts her with all sly looks, haughtiness and verbal abusiveness that makes one wonder how any of her friends can tolerate her at all. To the British of the time, her behavior must have been some pretty shocking stuff, what with a theoretically-"proper" upper class spawn like Jenny aggressively and stupidly chucking her father's wealth and position in favor of hanging out with unsavory types who directly prefigure the punks of the 1970's by a generation. Their look may be more proto-preppy than post-apocalyptic tribal, but the mindset is exactly the same, as is the self-pitying whining, only this time it's coming from a bunch of kids who were born during World War II and feel (incorrectly) that they have nothing to live for other than "kicks."

The thing that got me interested in this film in the first place was the early soundtrack work by John Barry, the guy whose music indelibly set the tone for the Connery-era James Bond films and is one of my very favorite composers, for film or otherwise. I'd heard of the movie ages ago, but what steered me toward Barry's soundtrack for it was discovering the film's theme tune as covered by The Damned on the B-side to their 1986 12" single for their cover of "Eloise." (The Damned loved doing covers.) Upon hearing the tune I said to myself, "Holy fuck, that sounds like a John Barry tune from an early James Bond movie!" so I looked at the songwriting credit on the vinyl's label and, sure enough, there was Barry's name. I filed that bit of info away for future soundtrack hunting and eventually got my hands on the CD in the early-'90's, and the wait proved to be well worth it. I didn't see the film itself until sometime later, and it was then that I discovered that the album versions of the soundtrack's music were slicked-up re-recordings, but I didn't mind because all of it was one short evolutionary step away from the signature sound of '60's 007 music. Just check out the studio version of the title track and you'll see what I mean:

Adam Faith's Dave in action, with a very young Oliver Reed as "Plaid Shirt" (which is how he's listed in the credits).

Now, is that or is that not pretty much a dry run for the whole Bondian musical aesthetic?

So I recommend BEAT GIRL as a curiosity for those interested in U.K. exploitation movies and most especially for those who are only familiar with John Barry's James Bond scores. Either way, it's a win for the viewer. Oh, and while doing a search of her filmography, I just found out where else I've seen Gillian Hills before: she's the blonde in the record store sequence in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971).

Gillian Hills (the blonde), still associating with savory characters in the classic A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971).

Poster from the original British theatrical release.

THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS (1996)

The toothsome Alex Kingston as the title character.

British actress Alex Kingston made one hell of an impression on me with her appearances as the enigmatic River Song in recent years on DOCTOR WHO, so, spurred by my enjoyment of her in those, I researched her filmography and found out she'd appeared in a reportedly lusty adaptation of Daniel Dafoe's 1722 novel THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS. As a British friend of mine put it, "the British love 'sauce'," so I was eager to see just how saucy this bit of MASTERPIECE THEATER fodder was. Well, lemme tell you in no uncertain terms that it's the most lurid and engrossing item to appear on that show since I, CLAUDIUS originally aired and it's loaded with Restoration-period costumed romance, humor, and surprisingly graphic sex. In short, it was not at all what I expected from MASTERPIECE THEATER.

The story, told in four episodes, is recounted by the title character (who frequently breaks the fourth wall to directly address the viewer) while she languishes in prison, awaiting her imminent date with the hangman. Born to a criminal mother in the very jail where she later ends up imprisoned, the infant Moll is taken from her mother (who is deported from England to the Virginia colonies) and spends her first eleven-or-so years raised by gypsies, after which she's adopted as a servant into the family of a pious mayor. Moll's servitude goes well enough, until she blossoms into lush young womanhood and catches the eyes of the mayor's sons. In no time, Moll embarks on what becomes an unusually epic sexual and criminal journey for a woman of the eighteenth century, initiated into carnal adventure by the elder brother, who promises to marry her when he receives his inheritance.

Moll's adventures begin in earnest. Remember, kids, this is MASTERPIECE THEATER.

Upon discovering that her first love never really intended to wed her, Moll launches a campaign to marry well, but on her own terms, and from there it's a chronicle of serial marriage and gold-digging, accented by the inevitable abandonment of the numerous children she bears (around seven by my reckoning) to her five husbands. There are numerous shakeups in Moll's level of social status and respectability and along the way we are treated to shocking cuckoldry, the game of "Mind the Pistols," forays into professional thievery and prostitution, a poignant lesbian dalliance (that's markedly less explicit than the heterosexual encounters), by-name mentions of fellatio and cunnilingus, polygamy in that she is not actually a widow as she repeatedly claims to be, an unexpected reunion and even incest. The TV version's content is supposedly the closest adaptation of the novel to date, so I'm amazed that Dafoe got away with this kind of thing in the early 1700's.

And while Moll Flanders is indeed a woman of lusty adventures and considerable amorality, she's also a very likable character and I found myself rooting for her despite some of her more distressing actions (the repeated and quite unrepentant abandonment of her kids being the worst of it). When things are going well for her, she's very sweet, quite cute — I love her soulful eyes and out-of-control mop of hair — and an unabashedly sensual creature, and I genuinely envied all of the men whom she took to her bed. And while she always married with an eye on financial security being the goal rather than actual love, she did manage to get with one man whom she considered the love of her life: Jemmy (Daniel Craig, aka the most recent man to play James Bond), a handsome fellow who genuinely loves her. Sadly, Jemmy is in actuality deeply in debt and marries Moll for money he believes she has, but upon finding out she's penniless he leaves her after one day of marriage to become a highwayman.

Moll (Alex Kingston) and Jemmy (Daniel Craig), the self-admitted love of her life. Yes, geeks, it's River Song and 007 getting it on, the kind of thing that "fanfic" is made of.

But don't be too sad; the two meet again a few times, most notably in the funniest highway robbery scene since the BLACKADDER III episode "Amy and Amiability" (though minus anything as caustically hilarious as that episode's immortal line, "Aaah, shut up, you pregnant junkie fag-hag!").

Moll's story is a roller-coaster ride that's a women's answer to the many male rogues' adventures set during the same period, and while there's no fighting or swashbuckling, it's every bit as exciting and involving as any of those tales and a damn sight better than a lot of them. There have been other films about ladies of questionable virtue and morals taking place in those days, but this is the one I enjoyed the most and this adaptation has gotten me interested in reading Dafoe's novel, making it one of three MASTERPIECE THEATER series to so intrigue me. (The other two were I, CLAUDIUS, which was adapted from the titular novel and its continuation, CLAUDIUS THE GOD, while the other was WHITE TEETH.)

So I heartily recommend THE FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES OF MOLL FLANDERS, a totally entertaining (and enjoyably sexy) way to spend 190 minutes. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

After filming, Daniel Craig's wig was released into the wild, where it maimed and devoured several rustic villagers before being put down by a special task force deployed by the SAS.