Taste Of Fear AKA Scream Of Fear (1961)

An interesting psychological thriller from Hammer, this film has been recommended to me a number of times and I'm glad that I finally got around to seeing it.

The plot sees young, wheelchair-bound Penny Appleby (Susan Strasberg) returning to her family home after the recent death of a friend. She wants to reconnect with her estranged father and is also willing to find out more about her new step-mother, Jane (Ann Todd). There's a friendly young man named Robert (Ronald Lewis), a concerned doctor named Pierre Gerrard (Christopher Lee) and her father. Well, her father doesn't seem to be alive when Penny sees him, but everyone else claims that he's just fine. And his body is surprisingly mobile for a dead man. What's going on?

Directed by Seth Holt, and with a script written by the talented Jimmy Sangster (who also wrote the excellent The Nanny), Taste Of Fear may have many elements in place familiar to fans of psychological thrillers, but they're all executed pretty perfectly. In fact, the big finale earns it a whole extra one or two points thanks to how entertaining and nicely constructed it is.

The cast all do a decent job, with Strasberg particularly good as the vulnerable and frayed lead. Christopher Lee puts on a slightly clumsy accent, but he does very well with a role quite unlike most of his other work for the studio, and both Todd and Lewis are fine.

With a nice feeling of unease from start to finish, some moments of genuine tension and a couple of impressive jump scares, Taste Of Fear is a superior example of this kind of film. It's a film, along with the aforementioned The Nanny, that I wish we'd seen a lot more of from a studio that made so much money from vampires, Frankenstein's monsters and other supernatural creatures.

8/10

http://www.amazon.com/Icons-Horror-Collection-Hammer-Mummys/dp/B001B9ZVVC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1374774432&sr=8-1&keywords=scream+of+fear

The Nanny (1965)

The Nanny is a great film, one of the very best to ever come from Hammer Studios, in my opinion. It deserves to be up there with Peeping Tom and The Innocents, it's such a fine psychological horror/drama.

Bette Davis gives the greatest performance of her career without any of the eye-rolling or razor-sharp dialogue that we've become accustomed to (and that is always thoroughly enjoyable) as she plays the titular character, an elderly woman locked in a battle of wills with a small boy named Joey (William Dix). Joey has been away from home for two years, after his younger sister tragically died in the household bathtub, and returns with the same bad attitude he went away with. He blames everything on the nanny and sets out to remove her power at every turn.

What is the reality of the situation? An evil young lad forcing an elderly woman to squirm under his fist or a manipulative old woman doing her best to silence her young charge? The movie is impressively ambiguous for the first hour or so until we get to a finale that manages to shock, disturb and churn a stomach more effectively than many of the most modern releases.

An incredibly brave, complex psychological horror, this movie unsettles in almost every scene, whether it's due to the behaviour of an unruly child or watching a sad mother (played by Wendy Craig) revert to a state more childish than her own son. The supporting cast - including Jill Bennett, James Villiers and Pamela Franklin - are solid but this really boils down to an amazing two-hander between a petulant child and . . . for the love of God . . . BETTE DAVIS! Hard to believe that this movie was released by "the studio that dripped blood" and even harder to believe that many people may be unfamiliar with it.

Director Seth Holt treats the material well, but he's given a flying start by the fantastic script from Jimmy Sangster (adapting the novel by Marryam Modell). What starts off as a look at a stiff, unsympathetic family unit with a brat at its core slowly but surely turns into something mesmerising, tense and also quite sad. See this film as soon as you can, it's an absolute classic.

NB - the ONLY reason I don't give the movie a perfect 10/10 score is because of my gut instinct to Joey's brattish behaviour in the first half of the movie.

9/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Nanny-DVD-Bette-Davis/dp/B000KRMZPG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369042213&sr=8-1&keywords=the+nanny

Blood From The Mummy's Tomb (1971)

Directed, with a distinct lack of flair, by Seth Holt (who died before shooting was completed so I will say no more as I don't want a bad reputation for speaking ill of the dead - some scenes in the film were shot by producer Michael Carreras), this is a bland Hammer movie trying to pretend it's something more exciting than it actually is. No, I was not expecting a bandaged, shambling figure to be centre stage here but I WAS expecting something with a bit of mystery and suspense.

The plot is all about lovely Margaret Fuchs (the beautiful Valerie Leon, not a great actress though), the daughter of Prof. Julian Fuchs (Andrew Keir, the man who stepped in after Peter Cushing had to leave the movie). Many years ago, the professor went on an expedition to Egypt and uncovered the tomb of Queen Tera, a woman interred after the removal of one hand. It was at the exact moment that Tera's name was spoken that his daughter was born and it has become more and more apparent over the years that the two are somehow linked. When the time is right, with thanks to her dad carelessly giving her a big ring found in Egypt, Margaret is possessed by the spirit of Queen Tera (you can tell because of the thin line of blood that starts appearing at her wrist) and seeks out the expedition members. She wants to reclaim the relics that were found in her tomb and to bring herself fully back to life.

There's really not a lot to be said about this film without turning things into some written form of monotone. It's as bland as bland can be. The acting is so-so; Keir is solid, Leon is not, James Villiers is good fun as a shady figure who knows what's going on, Hugh Burden is not given much to do except a little overreaction to get people's attention and Mark Edwards is just the standard class A ineffectual boyfriend. Nobody is memorable anyway.

The story is nothing new, especially to fans of any Mummy movies, and it's development is pretty clumsy and obvious. You know from the very first scenes exactly what is going to happen here, no subtlety or attempt to raise tension is used at all. I have no idea how close the script by Christopher Wicking is to the source material (The Jewel Of Seven Stars by Bram Stoker) but I'm going to assume that it's not half as faithful as it could be. Although it does show the seven featured stars on a few occasions.

Then we have the horror and scenes of bloodletting . . . . . . which count for nothing. There IS no horror here, nothing to instill fear in even the most sensitive of viewers and the death scenes are all shot without actually showing you anything that could provide some technicoloured entertainment. It's one of those many horror movies with a trailer promising so much and delivering so little. Nothing lurid, livid or lively here and it practically defines the word "insipid".

A disappointing Hammer movie, that at least features the lovely Leon as eye candy and has some nice moments of drama dotted there and there, and a disappointing Mummy movie. There is some appeal here for less discerning viewers, like myself, but it's extremely limited.

5/10

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-From-Mummys-Tomb-DVD/dp/B000KRMZCE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1352930202&sr=8-1