The Tingler is a 1959 horror-thriller film by American producer/director William Castle. It is the third of five collaborations with writer Robb White and stars Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman, Patricia Cutts, Pamela Lincoln, Philip Coolidge and Judith Evelyn.

Dr. Warren Chapin (Price) is a pathologist who regularly conducts autopsies on executed prisoners at the State prison. He has a theory that fear is the result of a creature that inhabits all of us. His theory is that the creature is suppressed by our ability to scream when fear strikes us. He gets a chance to test his theories when he meets Ollie and Martha Higgins, who own and operate a second-run movie theater. Martha is deaf and mute and if she is unable to scream, extreme fear should make the creature, which Chapin has called the Tingler, come to life and grow. Using LSD to induce nightmares, he begins his experiment…

In line with several other Castle horror films, including the 1958 Macabre and 1959 House on Haunted Hill, Castle used gimmicks to sell the film. The most well known for The Tingler was called “Percepto!”.

“Percepto!” was a gimmick where Castle attached electrical “buzzers” to the underside of several seats in movie theaters where The Tingler was scheduled to be screened. The buzzers were small surplus vibrators left over from World War II. The cost of this equipment added $250,000 to the film’s budget. It was predominantly used in larger theaters.

During the climax of the film, The Tingler was depicted escaping into a generic movie theater. On screen the projected film appeared to break as the silhouette of the Tingler moved across the projection beam. The film went black, all lights in the auditorium (except fire exit signs) were turned off, and Vincent Price’s voice warned the audience “Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic. But scream! Scream for your lives! The Tingler is loose in this theater!” This cued the theatre projectionist to activate the buzzers and give several audience members an unexpected jolt.

To enhance the climax even more, Castle hired fake “screamers and fainters” to plant in the audience. There were fake nurses stationed in the foyer and an ambulance outside of the theatre. The “fainters” would be carried out of the auditorium on a gurney and whisked away in the ambulance, only to return for the next showing.

Although The Tingler was filmed in black and white, a single color sequence was spliced into each print of the film. It showed a sink (in black and white) with bright red “blood” flowing from the taps and a black and white Judith Evelyn watching a bloody red hand rising from a bathtub filled with bright red “blood”. Castle used colour film to film the effect. The scene was accomplished by painting the set white, black, and gray and applying gray makeup to the actress to simulate monochrome.

The Tingler also features the first mention of LSD in a major motion picture. At the time the drug was still legal. The title of the book Vincent Price’s character reads before taking LSD—”Fright Effects Induced By Injection Of Lysergic Acid LSD25″ —is printed on the back cover of the book, not the front. This appears to have been done intentionally for a better shot for the expositional title of the book explaining the effects of LSD to the audience.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes | Related: Mr Sardonicus | Vincent Price | William Castle

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‘Rapidly paced, luridly plotted, and enthusiastically executed by everyone involved, The Tingler shows off all of Castle’s strengths as a master showman and filmmaker. While Hitchcock was crafting elegant Hollywood entertainment, Castle simply tried to grab his patrons by the throat and give them a rollicking good time, which he delivers here in spades.’ Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital

‘Based as it is around gimmicks and cinema-base stunts, The Tingler is a film that doesn’t have much story and that takes so many narrative short cuts it is impossible to treat it with any seriousness, but it retains the potential to be serious fun.’ Jennie Kermode, Eye for Film

Posted by Will Holland

The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a 1971 horror film starring Vincent Price, Joseph Cotten, Terry-Thomas and Hugh Griffith. The screenplay was written by James Whiton and William Goldstein, with additional uncredited scripting by director Robert Fuest (The Devil’s Rain). Its art deco sets, dark humour and knowing performance by Price have made the film and its sequel Dr. Phibes Rises Again cult classics. The character of Dr. Phibes is inspired by the Biblical ten plagues of Ancient Egypt from the Old Testament for the methodology of his murderous spree.

One of the most stylish and poetic horror films ever made, The Abominable Dr. Phibes sees Vincent Price appearing as Dr. Anton Phibes, presumed to have died in a car crash with his wife, Victoria (played, uncredited, by lovely Caroline Munro), some four years previously. It appears Phibes has somehow survived and he returns, eager to avenge his beloved Victoria, whom he believes to have died at the hands of incompetent doctors on the operating table. Set in England in 1925, a disfigured Phibes sets about killing the doctors he holds responsible by visiting upon them the ten biblical plagues of ancient Egypt. As Phibes’s victims rack up, it becomes a race against time for Inspector Trout and Scotland Yard to stop him before the final doctor and his young son meet their fate.

In this towering achievement of British horror, Vincent Price was at the very height of his powers, in what the film’s producers claimed to be his one hundredth film. The success of the film can certainly be in part attributed to Price, despite the fact that due to his disfigurement, his lines are largely post-dubbed by himself as he can only speak in the film with the aid of an uncomfortable-looking contraption attached to his neck, his familiar, strangled vowels seeming even more otherworldly crawling from the amplification device. The darkly humorous, yet genuinely affecting plot and script are perfectly suited to Price who had long since perfected the art of delivering barbed bon mots whilst giving a sideways glance at the camera.

Buy The Vincent Price Collection on Blu-ray from Amazon.com

Assisted by his silent female companion, Vulnavia (Virginia North), the updated plagues unleashed by Phibes are:

Boils

A tricky one to translate to the screen (indeed it isn’t, it takes place before the film starts), unlucky Professor Thornton stung to death by bees.

Gnats

Gnats proving too difficult to present onscreen, Phibes lowers deadly vampire bats into Dr Dunwoody’s bedroom via the skylight. The ferocious winged  beasts are cute vegetarian fruit bats, but shh, no-one noticed.

Frogs

Right animal this time, stuck-up Dr Hargreaves has his head crushed by Dr Phibes’s constricting frog head-piece at a masked ball. A funny and disturbing scene ensues as assorted horses and birds peer over to view his corpse.

Blood

Stag film loving, brandy-quaffing Dr Longstreet (Terry-Thomas) has his late-night viewing interrupted by Anton and Vulnavia as they carry out an unwanted complete blood donation. So delightful is Thomas, he returned as different character in the film’s sequel.

Hail

Dr Hedgepath is frozen to death in his car, a fiendish ice machine attached to the engine.

Rats

Again, flies too difficult and expensive to convey, rats are secreted into Dr Kitaj’s biplane, despite their fluffy appearance, enough to cause him to spin to the ground (in a hurry, and without applying the brakes). Originally, the rats were to kill the doctor on a boat but it was quickly realised that escape would’ve been relatively simple.

Beasts

Particularly ingeniously, Dr Whitcombe is impaled on the brass horn of an ornamental unicorn, fired from a catapult. Not a real unicorn, that would be silly.

Locusts

Perhaps the most well-known plague, poor Nurse Allen gets a really rough deal, after drilling a hole into her bedroom ceiling, he pours green slime over her sleeping body, a rare treat for the locusts who ravenously follow the liquid, gnawing her face off in the process

Death of the First-Born

Slip-shod policing assumes this to be the already dead elder brother of the doctor, not the actually kidnapped teenage son of lead surgeon, Dr Vesalius. Years before Saw, a devilish trap is contructed, the youngster facing a death by acid lest his father is able to perform a perilously quick operation to find the key to undo his bindings, hidden as it is within his body, close to his heart. Phibes finally comes undone, a daring, high-octane rescue being successful. This just leaves the final plague…

Darkness

Unaware of his failure, Phibes embalms himself, finally joining his darling wife in the greatest darkness.

Buy The Abominable Dr. Phibes + Dr. Phibes Rises Again on MGM DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

The genius of Phibes’s traps and his hideous visage, mostly covered throughout the film by a self-crafted mask and wig, have made the villain one of the most iconic movie monsters outside of the Universal canon. Price is ably assisted by a cast who by turns, play the film completely straight and conversely with an eyebrow permanently raised, in particular Inspector Trout, played by Peter Jeffrey (Countess Dracula, Dr. Phibes Rises Again), who gets most of the juiciest lines. Also worthy of mention are Trout’s assistant, Crow (Derek Godfrey from Hands of the Ripper), the jeweller played by Aubrey Woods and why not, a second mention for the incomparable Terry-Thomas.

Trade ad showing Peter Cushing was originally cast but had to drop out due to his wife’s death

Director, Fuest, had cut his teeth directing many episodes of classic 60s TV show, The Avengers, only slightly suggesting the visual feast and engaging plot he delivers in the film. He also directed the sequel and the enjoyable Shatner/Borgnine romp The Devil’s Rain. The Elstree-filmed sensational ‘thirties era’ set design came from the hands of Brian Eatwell, who also worked on Sam Fuller’s White Dog and the David Bowie-starring The Man Who Fell to Earth. The vibrant colours simply boil on the screen. The eerie cemetery scenes were shot in then partly derelict Highgate Cemetery, North London.

The sound of the film is one of its greatest stars. The music-loving Phibes doesn’t speak until half an hour into the film, indeed there is no dialogue at all for the first ten minutes. Instead we are treated to one of Basil Kirchin’s masterpieces, his score a combination of ominous, thundering organ work and boozy, swooning jazz, enticing and suffocating. Watching Phibes conduct his creepy clockwork orchestra, The Clockwork Wizards, is one of the great cinematic treats of 1970s British film. The drunken trumpet playing ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ over the closing credits absolutely nails the genius of the film; Phibes has indeed been wronged, driven to madness by love and grief – we can’t help but slightly feel for the ‘monster’ just as we had for Frankenstein’s creation, forty years previously.

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How ironic the plaudits were for films such as the original Saw and Se7en, their traps and conceits being hailed as revolutionary. What a shame this film beat them to it with more style and panache they could ever dream of, decades before. As the end credits role (the cast splendidly split into  ’The Protagonists’, ‘The Girl’, ‘The Victims’, ‘The Law’ and ‘Interested Parties’) we hear the unmistakable laugh of Price, indicating his inevitable return. Although there was a sequel, Dr. Phibes Rises Again, this was the only one of many earmarked, said to have been Dr. Phibes in the Holy Land, The Brides of Phibes, Phibes Resurrectus and The Seven Fates of Dr. Phibes. Alas, we can only dream.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Theatre of Blood is a 1973 British horror film starring Vincent Price as vengeful actor Edward Lionheart and Diana Rigg as his daughter Edwina Lionheart. The cast includes such distinguished actors as Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Robert Coote, Jack Hawkins, Michael Hordern, Arthur Lowe, Joan Hickson, Robert Morley, Milo O’Shea, Diana Dors and Dennis Price. It was directed by Douglas Hickox. Price considers it to be his personal favorite of all his films.

When a top London film critic is murdered in a way reminiscent of Julius Caesar’s death in the Shakespeare play of the same name, it is clear that someone is starting to kill off the members of the Critics’ Circle. Could the murderer be Edward Lionheart (Vincent Price), an actor humiliated by the Circle, who apparently committed suicide because they failed to recognise him? Could be…

Lionheart’s theatre hideout was the Putney Hippodrome, built in 1906. It had been boarded up for fourteen years when it was chosen as a location for this film.

When the movie was adapted for the London stage in 2005, Diana Rigg‘s role was filled by her real-life daughter, Rachael Stirling.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes

“Theatre of Blood has it all. It’s extremely gory, and full of dark humor, and wit. Once again Price is allowed to shine. He is at his finest in this role, in one of the few films that can rival The Abominable Dr. Phibes, in its sheer and utter mayhem, served with a touch of class.” Lawrence P Raffel, Monsters at Play.

“The series of reworked murder scenes are clever, but in succession are a bit exhausting, especially as they increasingly rely on contrivance and coincidence. (For the Othello segment, one critic is led, a bit too easily, to murder his wife out of jealousy.) The real pleasure here is watching Price exercise his campy range, not only by hamming his way through the grand speeches of the Great Tragedies but also by appearing in a variety of costumes, in that grand English style of dress-up that extends from Elizabethan men playing Juliet to Peter Sellers and Sacha Baron Cohen.” Henry Stewart, The L Magazine

Post by Will Holland

Dr. Phibes Rises Again!  is the 1972 sequel to The Abominable Dr. Phibes. It was directed by Robert Fuest and stars Vincent Price as Dr. Anton Phibes.

Three years on from being abominable, the conjunction of the planets cause Phibes to rise from his stasis. Finding the house above his lair has been demolished and ransacked of the ancient papyrus scroll detailing the location of the River of Life, he vows to take back what is rightfully his and finally grant himself and his beloved (dead) wife Victoria eternal life. A trip to Egypt is called for and no-one, the thief Darius Biederbeck, who is as desperate as Phibes to find the source, nor Inspector Trout, back again with his superb one-liners and comic misunderstandings, can stop him.

Biederbeck: “What kind of fiend are you?”

Phibes: “The kind that wins, my friend!”

After the success of the first outing, the studio wasted no time in bringing Dr Anton Phibes out of his self-induced hibernation just a year later. The film is enormous fun but it would be remiss of me to insist it’s as stunning as the first; however, there is still much to admire and the film is never anything less than terrific entertainment.

If the Phibes sequel is lacking one element present in the first that sets it down a rung on the ladder, it’s the cohesion the biblical plagues gave it; though the titular villain is still killing with ever more devious traps, it’s rather more indiscriminate and less joyously fiendish. The 1920s setting still allows Fuest’s skill at direction to flourish but the set-up is a little clumsy. Biederbeck provides the opportunity for the always reliable Robert Quarry (Count Yorga, Madhouse) to flex his diabolical muscle but the relationship between himself and his aide, Ambrose (played by Hugh Griffith, who was cast as the rabbi in the first outing) is rather muddy and if anything gets in the way of the plot. An even bigger pinch of salt is required to accept that both Victoria and Phibes’s orchestra, The Clockwork Wizards, are able to be shipped across to Egypt undetected.

What these factors take away are certainly made up for in additions to the cast. Replacing the pregnant Virginia North in the role as Vulnavia is the tremendous Valli Kemp, who was due to remain as Phibes’s assistant for the proposed sequels, which sadly never appeared. Also featuring are the instantly recognisable brute, Milton Reid (The Blood on Satan’s Claw, an alarming amount of British sex comedies of the 70s), paying the price for being Biederbeck’s servant by having his brain bisected by a booby-trapped phone, Peter Cushing as the ship’s captain, Beryl Reid as, well, Beryl Reid (see also the return of Terry-Thomas) and John Thaw, pecked to death by an eagle. Frankie Howerd was also earmarked to star but, alas, we were denied this comedic pleasure.

Though some of the desert scenes were set on location (in Spain), the set design is still sumptuous and Egypt is the 20s looks as radiant as London, the detail of Phibes’s pyramid hideaway being everything you could hope it to be. Allegedly, relations between Price and Quarry were not perfect, animosity largely due to AIP positioning Quarry as the new star of horror, much to Vincent’s chagrin, whilst Quarry felt Price something of a ham. It is said that after giving Price a burst of opera, Quarry announced “I bet you didn’t know I could sing?” to which Price responded “Well, I knew you couldn’t fucking act”.

Buy Vincent Price: The Art of Fear biography by Denis Meikle from Amazon.co.uk

Music is again of critical importance in the film, duties on this occasion taken by John Gale, who surprisingly went on to very little else.  The score is decidedly more orchestral, veering away from Basil Kirchin’s jazz stylings, although the Clockwork Wizards still play a key role. The film does at least provide us with the dizzying wonder of Vincent Price actually singing ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ over the end credits, a fitting end to a series which was sadly curtailed so quickly.

The great haste in which the sequel was made, as well as the noticeable budget cuts, certainly stifle what is still a great film. As a pair, both The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Dr. Phibes Rises Again bring to the screen one of the great villains of horror cinema, a particularly British creation, doused in tragedy as much as pure evil. In-house wrangling at AIP deprived us of the planned sequels; Bride of Phibes has a well-fleshed out plot, seeing Phibes attempting to rescue Victoria from the hands of a Satanic cult; vengeance coming in many forms from being sucked to death by leeches to being smothered in butter and eaten by lobsters (!) Further sequels are scant on detail but were mentioned by both Fuest and Price in interviews; the last mention of the character being attached to George Romero’s Laurel Production company, with David Carradine scheduled to play the lead…

Daz Lawrence

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Hopkins (The Witchfinder General) was released by Lee Dorrian’s doom metal band Cathedral in 1996 on a 5-track E.P. Formed in Coventry, England in 1989 from ex-members of Napalm Death (Dorrian) and  Acid Reign (guitarist, Gaz Jennings), the band sought to ditch the punk and death metal directions their previous bands were heading in and explore slower, ‘doomier’ sounds, being influenced by the likes of Black Sabbath and Pentagram.

Cathedral will release their 10th and final album in April 2013. Hopkins sees Cathedral at their peak, both musically, visually and perhaps most importantly, ridiculously. Intertwining soundbites from Vincent Price  throughout the video from the film Witchfinder General, the video has oodles of everything you could want in a promotional video. Directed by provocative British film-maker and head honcho of the Redemption/Salvation group, Nigel Wingrove, if this doesn’t make you want to watch the film/dance like Dorrian, there’s no hope for you.

The video features ravishing actress and regular contributor to the horror scene, Eileen Daly as well as Cookie, who was often to be seen on the James Whale Radio Show which was a must-watch (it was confusingly titled) for insomniacs and post-pub revellers during late 1980s and early 1990s. Even the black horse was a celebrity, having featured in the Lloyds Bank television commercials.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Welcome to My Nightmare is the eighth studio album by Alice Cooper, released in 1975. This was Alice Cooper’s first solo album (all previous Alice Cooper releases were band efforts). It is a semi-conceptual album; the songs, heard in sequence, form a journey through the nightmares of a child named Steven, although some – ‘Department of Youth’, ‘Escape’ and others – do not seem to be a part of any narrative story. It inspired the Alice Cooper: The Nightmare TV special and a worldwide concert tour in 1975, and the surprisingly lacklustre Welcome To My Nightmare concert film, shot in London in 1976.

The cover artwork was created by Drew Struzan for Pacific Eye & Ear. Rolling Stone would later rank it 90th on the list of the “Top 100 Album Covers Of All Time”. The remastered CD version adds three alternate version bonus tracks. Horror film star Vincent Price provided the introductory monologue in the song “The Black Widow”.

Track listing:

1. “Welcome to My Nightmare” (Alice Cooper, Dick Wagner) – 5:19
2. “Devil’s Food” (Cooper, Bob Ezrin, Kelley Jay) – 3:38
3. “The Black Widow” (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) – 3:37
4. “Some Folks” (Cooper, Ezrin, Alan Gordon) – 4:19
5. “Only Women Bleed” (Cooper, Wagner) – 5:49
6. “Department of Youth” (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) – 3:18
7. “Cold Ethyl” (Cooper, Ezrin) – 2:51
8. “Years Ago” (Cooper, Wagner) – 2:51
9. “Steven” (Cooper, Ezrin) – 5:52
10. “The Awakening” (Cooper, Wagner, Ezrin) – 2:25
11. “Escape” (Cooper, Mark Anthony, Kim Fowley) – 3:20

Reissue bonus tracks:

1. “Devils’ Food” (Alternate Version) – 5:13
2. “Cold Ethyl” (Alternate Version) – 2:56
3. “The Awakening” (Alternate Version) – 4:20

   Buy Expanded and Remastered CD from Amazon.com

Welcome to My Nightmare received generally mixed reviews upon release. Dave Marsh of Rolling Stone called the album “a TV soundtrack that sounds like one. The horn parts are so corny you might imagine that you’re listening to the heavy-metal Ann-Margret.” He noted the absence of the original Alice Cooper band, stating, “without the wildness and drive of the sound the Cooper troupe had, the gimmicks on which Alice the performer must rely are flat and obvious.” He concluded by saying that it “is simply a synthesis of every mildly wicked, tepidly controversial trick in the Cooper handbook. But in escaping from the mask of rock singer which he claimed he found so confining, Cooper has found just another false face.”

In addition, Robert Christgau rated the album a B- grade, stating that it “actually ain’t so bad – no worse than all the others.” He stated that the varying compositions of the songs would potentially cause the album to influence younger listeners, saying: “Alice’s nose for what the kids want to hear is as discriminating as it is impervious to moral suasion, so perhaps this means that the more obvious feminist truisms have become conventional wisdom among at least half our adolescents.”

However, a retrospective review by Allmusic’s Greg Prato was more positive. Prato considered the album as Cooper’s best solo work, despite the absence of the original band: “While the music lost most of the gritty edge of the original AC lineup, Welcome to My Nightmare remains Alice’s best solo effort – while some tracks stray from his expected hard rock direction, there’s plenty of fist-pumping rock to go around.” However, he maintained that “the rockers serve as the album’s foundation – “Devil’s Food,” “The Black Widow,” “Department of Youth,” and “Cold Ethyl” are all standouts, as is the more tranquil yet eerie epic “Steven.” He concluded by comparing the album to Cooper’s next solo efforts by stating: “Despite this promising start to Cooper’s solo career, the majority of his subsequent releases were often not as focused and were of varying quality.”

In 2011, the sequel Welcome 2 My Nightmare was released, after first being announced in the mid-1980s.

Posted by DF

In cinematic terms, it wasn’t a good time to be a witch in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Between 1968 and 1972, more witches were put to death on film than at any time before or since. It truly was the Dark Ages of horror.

Of course, there had been witch-hunts on film before: Benjamin Christensen’s Haxan (aka Witchcraft Through the Ages) is a cheerful romp through the world of the occult dating from 1922, and features plenty of inquisitorial torture by witch finders. This notorious Swedish film caused outrage on its original release, with salacious scenes of Satanic orgies and daring nudity, and even now packs a real punch. A heady mix of documentary, surrealism and sensationalism, the film remains one of cinema’s most unique moments.

1937 saw Maid of Salem, directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Claudette Colbert. The film used the Salem witch trials as the setting for a drama that reflected Arthur Miller’s famed play The Crucible to a large degree. The Witches of Salem (confusingly retitled The Crucible in America, despite not being based on Miller’s play) appeared in 1957 from France. Director Raymond Rouleau adapted a story by Jean-Paul Satre, and the cast was headed by Simone Signoret. But it was the appearance of Matthew Hopkins – Witchfinder General (to give the film its full title) in 1968 that was to open the floodgates to a mini-boom of witchfinder films over the next few years. Michael Reeves had previously directed the Italian horror film Revenge of the Blood Beast and the British made The Sorcerers , starring Boris Karloff. Both films were effective shockers that marked Reeves as a talent to watch. With Witchfinder General, his talent peaked. Sadly, he took an overdose – whether by accident or design -a year after making this film.

Witchfinder General

The film is loosely based on the true-life story of Matthew Hopkins (the screenplay being adapted from the historical novel by Ronald Bassett), who terrorised East Anglia during the Seventeenth century. Together with assistant John Stearne, Hopkins moves from town to town, extracting “confessions” from those accused of witchcraft, before hanging them. Woven around this real life horror is the fictional story of Roundhead soldier Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy), who is part of Cromwell’s army fighting the Royalists. He is soon to marry sweetheart Sara, the niece of Father John Lowes, but whilst he is away on duty, Hopkins arrives in town, summoned by villagers who distrust the priest because of his Protestant leanings. Lowes is tortured, but allowed to live for a while after Sara seduces Hopkins. However, when Hopkins is called away on business, Stearne rapes the girl, and once Hopkins discovers this, he orders the death of the priest.

Witchfinder General

Marshall arrives at the church to discover a distraught Sara, and vows vengeance. He sets off in pursuit of Hopkins, leading to the inevitable showdown. The ending of the film is one of the most powerful moments in horror film history: After being captured by Hopkins and seeing Sara tortured, Marshall escapes and attacks Hopkins with an axe, literally hacking him to death. A Roundhead colleague (Nicky Henson) stumbles onto the scene and, horrified, shoots the witchfinder. The film ends with Marshall’s screams: “You took him from me!” Ironically, this scene was the result of a continuity error. The original script had Henson shooting both Hopkins and Marshall, but Reeves realised that previous scenes had shown Henson to only have a single flintlock pistol. A hasty rewrite brought about one of the great moments in cinema! Witchfinder General is a stunning film. Utterly nihilistic in approach, it has all the power and inevitability of a Shakespeare tragedy. Reeves’ direction is confident and flawless, making a mockery of the low budget. He makes excellent use of the English countryside, contrasting the beauty with the horror that takes place.

Of course, a film like Witchfinder General was bound to run into problems. After all, British horror in 1968 meant The Devil Rides Out, not a brutal, realistic and shockingly angry film like this. Reeves had no time for traditional horror films, as evidenced by a legendary exchange between the director and his star, Vincent Price. Price, well known for hamming it up, was instructed to play the role straight. According to legend, bristling at being told how to act by this twenty four year old director, Price complained “I’ve made eighty-seven films, what have you done?”. Reeves looked at him and replied “I’ve made three good ones.” End of argument! The British censors felt that Witchfinder General was too much to take. The whole despairing atmosphere of the film worried them, as did the effect of Paul Ferris’ haunting score, which censor John Trevelyan felt heightened the violence even further. Major cuts were made, much to the consternation of Reeves, who had stated that “violence is horrible, degrading and sordid. It should be presented as such, and the more people it shocks into sickened recognition of these facts, the better.” Trevelyan accepted Reeves’ arguments, but most of his outraged BBFC staff felt the film was exploitative and needed cutting.

Despite these cuts, the film still caused critical outrage at the seemingly unprecedented violence. In America, the film was retitled The Conqueror Worm by AIP, as a desperate attempt to milk the Vincent Price/Poe connection for all it was worth. To justify the connection, a new prologue was shot with Price reading Poe’s poem. As its reputation grew over the years, many attempts were made to restore the missing footage to Witchfinder General, but to no avail. So it was a major surprise when Redemption announced the release of a restored version in 1995. And not only does this print contain all the cut scenes, but also has some additional nude scenes that were shot by Tigon head honcho Tony Tenser for export versions of the film. This longer version is now widely available.

The film also inspired Witchfinder General, a 1980s British heavy metal doom band, who named themselves after it and courted controversy with sleazy album covers. Sadly, their music did not match the imagery used to sell it!

The success of Witchfinder General inevitably led to imitations. The best known of these was Mark of the Devil, a West German production from 1969. Like its inspiration, Mark of the Devil was directed by a young British director, Michael Armstrong, who had previously made the violent psycho film The Haunted House of Horror. Mark of the Devil tells the story of Count Cumberland (Herbert Lom), who arrives in an Austrian village to become the official witchfinder. At first, his presence seems to bring a degree of justice after the excesses of Albino (played by Reggie Nalder); however, he soon proves to be just as cruel and corrupt. Whilst powerful and well crafted, Armstrong’s film is nowhere near as good as Witchfinder General, though it does share many of its elements. The film has a strong sense of indignation and anger at what it portrays, and is certainly unflinching in its approach: American distributors rated it “V for Violence” and offered vomit bags to patrons, while the BBFC refused a certificate outright (a ban which held until recently; even now the DVD release has around thirty seconds cut). It also makes use of haunting music to contrast with the extreme violence.

Mark of the Devil

Current prints of the film all end rather abruptly. For some reason, the original ending, which featured the dead returning to life, has vanished and cannot be found (although stills exist showing what it looks like). This might not be such a bad thing: a supernatural conclusion would have damaged the story considerably, and the brutal manner in which the film now finishes is strangely in keeping with the cold tone of the movie as a whole. Mark of the Devil started life as a project by ex-matinee idol Adrian Hoven, who had written a screenplay entitled The Witch-Hunter Dr Dracula, which featured the Count as a witchfinder, and which Armstrong describes as “almost hard porn.” Hoven’s producers, Gloria Film, refused to let him direct, and Armstrong was brought in. He immediately rewrote the script (using the pseudonym Sergio Cassner), much to the anger of Hoven, who ended up with a small part in the movie and directed his own scenes after a number of shouting matches with Armstrong.

Mark of the Devil

The success of the film led to a sequel, and this time Hoven did direct. Starring Erica Blanc and Anton Diffring, the film was little more that a lurid rehash of the profitable elements from the first film (i.e. the torture of scantily clad women), without any of the intelligence of power.

Following Witchfinder General and Mark of the Devil, a number of other films would deal with the “witch hunt” theme. However, these differed from their predecessors by giving the witchfinders some justification for existing: in these films, the witches were real. Tigon Films followed Witchfinder General with an unofficial sequel, Satan’s Skin (better known as The Blood on Satan’s Claw) in 1970. Director Piers Haggard follows the visual style of Reeves quite well in this effective study of corruption and evil. Popular jailbait exploitation queen Linda Hayden played the leader of a teenage cult that spreads throughout a village after a demonic skull is unearthed in a field. With some graphic gore and frank sexuality (Hayden strips to seduce a priest in his own church), the film makes a more than adequate companion piece to its more illustrious predecessor.

Blood on Satan’s Claw

The same year saw Cry of the Banshee, with Vincent Price returning as a sadistic witch-finding magistrate. A mixed affair, the film is not without effective moments, but often descends into silliness, with rather contrived orgies and clumsy attempts at shock sequences. Nevertheless, the film remains interesting throughout. Witchfinder General star Hillary Dwyer appeared in the film, adding to the feeling that these movies were all somehow inter-connected (Patrick Wymark appeared in both Witchfinder General and Satan’s Skin).

Cry of the Banshee

Jess Franco, perhaps inevitably,  made a couple of witchfinder films. The more “respectable” of the two, The Bloody Judge (1969) starred Christopher Lee as Judge Jeffreys – like Matthew Hopkins, a notorious real life witch hunter of the Seventeenth century. The film is well shot, and dwells more on the historical elements of the story than the exploitational ones. That said, there were a number of gruesome torture scenes in the German version that didn’t appear in other cuts. Lee claims that the scenes were added without his knowledge. Perhaps he would prefer the American version, retitled Night of the Blood Monster, which removed all the nudity and violence to obtain a PG rating, leaving the film little more that a worthy but dull low budget historical drama. The current UK and US DVDs are restored versions with the extra sex and violence inserted into the longer, tamer edition.

The Bloody Judge

A couple of years later, Franco returned to the theme with The Demons (1972). Here, he again uses Judge Jeffreys, but there the similarity ends. The film was a sleazy, tacky and thoroughly ludicrous slice of sexploitation sleaze, with naked women undergoing various tortures and satanic rituals. Entertaining nonsense for the broad minded, one dreads to think what Christopher Lee would make of it!

Even Hammer dabbled with the witchfinder theme. Twins of Evil was the final film in the Karnstein trilogy, and featured Peter Cushing as a puritan witchfinder who rampages across the countryside burning innocent women at the stake. When one of his twin nieces becomes a vampire, life takes a “difficult” turn for him! One of the best films to emerge from the famed studio, Twins of Evil also starred Playboy centrefolds Mary and Madeline Collinson and David Warbeck.

The best known, and still the most controversial of the witchfinder films, was Ken Russell’s The Devils, based on Aldous Huxley’s historical novel The Devils of Loudon. There can be few of you that haven’t seen this film, which continues to split critical opinion to this day. Russell didn’t shy away from showing excessive scenes of torture and sexual mania, and the film suffered a number of cuts at the hands of the BBFC. Some of this footage has since emerged and appeared on a Channel 4 documentary, but amazingly, Warners still refuse to restore the film to its blasphemous glory, and the recent BFI release is the cut X-rated version that first played UK cinemas.

The Devils

By 1972, this mini genre had burnt itself out (no pun intended). Witch trials still crop up now and again in films, but usually only at the opening of some supernatural tale, setting the scene for the vengeance of the witch’s spirit years later. There have been cinema and TV productions of The Crucible, and the 1985 TV film Three Sovereigns for Sarah starred Vanessa Redgrave and Kim Hunter in the story of a woman who attempts to get a witchcraft verdict against her overturned. At three hours long, this worthy but dull tale often felt like torture itself.

Three Sovereigns for Sarah

Inevitably, the only place left for the witchfinder to go after this was into comedy. As early as 1974, Monty Python and the Holy Grail included arbitrary witch hunting amongst its comedy targets, with the revelation that a witch weighs the same as a duck, and the final significant appearance of the witchfinder came in the form of Frank Findlay, who cropped up during the first series of Black Adder, playing the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, falsely accusing Rowan Atkinson of black magic! A witty spoof, it managed to show the insanity and maliciousness of the witch trials as effectively as any serious exposé.

But after this satire, it seems unlikely that the witchfinder film will make a comeback.

In 2001, the BBC showed Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, a British comedy-horror anthology series created by Graham Duff, and co-written with its star, Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge). The episode ‘Scream Satan Scream!’ directly spoofs Witchfinder General (1968) and Cry of the Banshee (1970). Witch locator Captain Tobias Slater travels the north of England accusing beautiful young women of being witches and to avoid the pyre they must sleep with him, until he runs across a real coven and Slater is cursed.  After all this TV satire it seems unlikely that serious witch finding will ever be in vogue again in cinemas.

In many ways, these films were typical of the horror movies of the time: cynical, hard, cold and dark… a far cry from the glossy shockers of today. The closest we’ve had in recent years seems to be the critically mauled Season of the Witch, with Nicolas Cage as an unlikely medieval soldier transporting a woman who may or may not be a witch to trial. It’s not very good. But with the appearance of more and more of the classic titles on video, a new generation can at least appreciate one of horrors briefest, yet most interesting periods.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

PS. Since this article was posted, in October 2013, news emerged that newly-invigorated British production company Hammer has acquired film rights to Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate, a 2012 novella that is based on an English witch trial from the 17th century. Simon Oakes, Vice-Chairman of Exclusive Media and President & CEO of Hammer, commented on bringing this novel to the big screen:

“The Hammer imprint has really delivered some fantastic new writing and shows the vibrancy and variety of the modern day horror genre. The books under our Arrow Books deal are in themselves a fantastic extension of the Hammer brand, and Jeanette’s novella ‘The Daylight Gate’ is a fresh, exciting and compelling fictional work.”

Here’s the official synopsis for The Daylight Gate: “Set in seventeenth-century England during the reign of James I—the monarch who wrote his own book on witchcraft—The Daylight Gate is best-selling writer Jeanette Winterson’s re-creation of a dark history full of complicated morality, sex, and tragic plays for power.

This is a world where to be Catholic is a treasonable offense. A world where England’s king vows to rid his country of “witchery popery popery witchery” and condemns the High Mass and Black Mass as heresies punishable by torture, hanging, and burning.

Winterson’s literary suspense tale takes us deep into a brutal period of English history, centered on the notorious 1612 Pendle witch trials—an infection of paranoia that crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and set the scene for the Salem witch hunt.

Good Friday, 1612. Pendle Forest. A gathering of thirteen is interrupted by local magistrate Roger Nowell. Is this a coven or a helpless group of women trying to save their family from the stake? Already two stand accused of witchcraft. The wealthy, respected Alice Nutter tries to defend them, haunted by her own past entanglement with magick. She doesn’t believe in the Devil, but as she fights for justice, her life is endangered by forces visible and invisible.”

Source: Hammer press release

House of Usher (also known as The Fall of the House of Usher) is a 1960 American International Pictures horror film starring Vincent Price, Myrna Fahey, and Mark Damon. The film was directed by Roger Corman and its screenplay written by Richard Matheson from the short story “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. The film was the first of eight Corman/Poe feature films. The film was important in the history of American International Pictures which up until then had specialised in making low budget black and white films to go out on double bills. In 2005, the film was listed with the United States National Film Registry as being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”

Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon) travels to the House of Usher, a desolate mansion surrounded by a murky swamp, to meet his fiancée Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey). Madeline’s brother Roderick (Vincent Price) opposes Philip’s intentions, telling the young man that the Usher family is afflicted by a cursed bloodline which has driven all their ancestors to madness. Roderick foresees the family evils being propagated into future generations with a marriage to Madeline and vehemently discourages the union. Philip becomes increasingly desperate to take Madeline away; she agrees to leave with him, desperate to get away from her brother.

During a heated argument with her brother, Madeline suddenly dies and is laid to rest in the family crypt beneath the house. As Philip is preparing to leave following the entombment, the butler, Bristol (Harry Ellerbe), lets slip that Madeline suffered from catalepsy, a condition which can make its sufferers appear dead. Philip rips open Madeline’s coffin and finds it empty…

Wikipedia | IMDb 

Arrow Video Blu-ray Disc Special Features:

• Limited Edition SteelBookTM packaging
• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation
• Optional English SDH subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary with director and producer Roger Corman
• Interview with director and former Corman apprentice Joe Dante
• Through the Pale Door: A Specially-commissioned video essay by critic and filmmaker David Cairns examining Corman s film in relation to Poe s story
• Archival interview with Vincent Price
• Original Trailer
• Collector s booklet featuring new writing on the film by author and critic Tim Lucas and an extract from Vincent Price s long out of print autobiography, illustrated with original archive stills and posters

Buy House of Usher on Blu-ray from Amazon.co.uk

‘Roger Corman never made any other of his Edgar Allan Poe films with the same successful balance of mood and design that he achieved here. What Corman did was to undercut the floridness of Hammer Gothic with the moody intellectual angst of Ingmar Bergman – Corman was a great admirer of Bergman and you can see Bergman’s influence on his work, particularly in The Masque of the Red Death. It resulted in a form that achieved a level of moodily gloom-laden and thunderously overwrought melodrama. Corman accomplishes some nicely subtle effects at times but mostly House of Usher succeeds on its own level of torturous angst – the climax with Vincent Price and the crazed Myrna Fahey fighting as the house burns around them and the house’s final descent to be swallowed up in the tarn is superlative.’ Moria

‘Visually the film is a flurry of rich colour and lighting, with velvet reds and purples being juxtaposed to the grey, crumbling walls and windows. Corman often puts dream sequences into his films and House of Usher is no different with possibly his scariest sequence involving paintings of the family that come to life and have a horribly eerie sound to them. Like most objects in the house, they house an evil in them from the past, often portrayed with Ligeti like vocals in the soundtrack reminiscent (or foreshadowing) the sounds of the stargate sequence from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.’ Adam Scovell, Celluloid Wicker Man

‘ … a masterwork of gothic horror, one of the best such films ever made in America. As mentioned, most of this is due to Price’s masterful performance and Corman’s ability to squeeze the most from a small budget. While not flashy or innovative, his direction is sure-handed in establishing mood and creating atmosphere, letting Price and Matheson’s fine, intelligent script do the rest. There are some nice visuals here to be sure; one scene — the crazed Madeline is caught in a flash of lightning, bloody fingers raised like claws before her face, then lowering them to reveal her maddened gaze — is positively Bava-esque.’ Brian Lindsey, Eccentric Cinema

Buy The Vincent Price Collection on Blu-ray from Amazon.com

Buy Crab Monsters, Cave Men and Candy Stripe Nurses book from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

The Fly is a 1958 American science-fiction horror film, directed by Kurt Neumann. The screenplay was written by James Clavell (his first), from the short story “The Fly” by George Langelaan. It was followed by two sequels, Return of the Fly and Curse of the Fly and was remade in 1986 as a film of the same name by director David Cronenberg.

The surprisingly intricate plot of The Fly sees work-at-home scientist Andre Delambre (David Hedison, billed as Al Hedison) dead in his den with his head and arm crushed in a hydraulic press. Although his wife Helene (Patricia Owens) confesses to the crime, she refuses to provide a motive and exhibits behaves erratically, even for a murderess, with a particular fascination for flies, including a supposedly white-headed fly. Andre’s brother, Francois (Vincent Price), lies and says he caught the white-headed fly and, thinking he knows the truth, Helene explains the circumstances surrounding Andre’s death. Through a flashback sequence, we see Andre experimenting with teleportation, snappily titled the disintegrator-integrator (rappers, take note), first testing out the equipment on a cat (an abject failure) and then a guinea pig (rather more successfully). Happy with his 50% hit-rate, he upscales his efforts to human-sized operations and uses himself as the first passenger – actually the co-pioneer, as an unseen fly also takes the maiden voyage.

The unhappy combination of DNA leaves Andre with the head and arm of a fly, the hideous noggin draped with a black cloth to shield the eyes of onlookers and with a typewriter to hand to communicate the sorry state of affairs to Helene. Elsewhere, a super-intelligent fly with Andre’s head is similarly disappointed with the situation and Andre urges her to catch it so that he can attempt to reverse the experiment. As Andre’s brain becomes increasingly insect-like, he realises that time has run out and he leads Helene to a factory with the aforementioned press so that he can be put out of his misery. As her recounting of the story to the police concludes, she is, perhaps understandably, lead away to a rubber room but in the garden a familiar face makes an appearance in a spider’s web…

The Price of Fear is a horror/mystery radio serial produced by BBC Radio during the 1970s. The host and star of the show was Vincent Price.

This show stands out in Price’s radio career as some of the episodes were based on fictional adventures of Vincent Price himself, playing himself, while others had him merely introducing the macabre tale of the week. Twenty-two episodes were produced; writers on the series included William Ingram, Stanley Ellin, Richard Davis, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, A.M. Burrage, Elizabeth Morgan, Rene Basilico, Roald Dahl and Price himself. Fifteen of the episodes were rebroadcast by BBC Radio 7 in the spring of 2010.

1. Come As You Are by William Ingram
2. Specialty of the House by Stanley Ellin
3. The Man Who Hated Scenes
4. Guy Fawke’s Night by Richard Davies
5. The Ninth Removal
6. Soul Music by William Ingram
7. An Eye for An Eye by William Ingram
8. The Waxwork by AM Burrage
9. Lot 132 by Elizabeth Morgan
10. Fish by Rene Basilico
11. Blind Man’s Bluff by William Ingram
12. Cat’s Cradle from The Squaw by Bram Stoker
13. Meeting in Athens
14. Remains to be Seen
15. The Family Album by William Ingram
16. Not Wanted on Voyage by William Ingram
17. Goody Two Shoes by William Ingram
18. To My Dear, Dear Saladin by William Ingram
19. Out of the Mouths by William Ingram
20. Is There Anybody There? by William Ingram
21. Never Gamble With A Loser

Buy The Price of Fear on CD from Amazon.co.uk

Wikipedia | The Digital Deli

The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo is the seventh incarnation of the Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoon Scooby-Doo. It premiered on September 7, 1985 and ran for one season on ABC as a half-hour program. Thirteen episodes of the show were made. It replaced Scary Scooby Funnies, a repackaging of earlier shows; another repackaged series, Scooby’s Mystery Funhouse, followed.

In the initial episode, the gang are thrown off course on a trip to Honolulu in Daphne’s plane, landing instead in the Himalayas. While inside a temple, Scooby and Shaggy are tricked by 2 bumbling ghosts named Weerd and Bogel into opening the Chest of Demons, a magical artifact which houses the 13 most terrifying and powerful ghosts and demons ever to walk the face of the Earth.

As the ghosts can only be returned to the chest by those who originally set them free, Scooby and Shaggy, accompanied by Daphne, Scrappy-Doo, and a young juvenile Mexican con artist named Flim-Flam, embark on a worldwide quest to recapture them before they wreak irreversible havoc upon the world. Assisting them is Flim-Flam’s friend, a warlock named Vincent Van Ghoul (based upon and voiced by Vincent Price), who contacts the gang using his crystal ball and often employs magic and witchcraft to assist them. The 13 escaped ghosts, meanwhile, each attempt to do away with the gang lest they be returned to the chest, often employing Weerd and Bogel as lackeys.

The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo differed greatly from most previous incarnations of the series, in that it pitted the Scooby-Doo characters against actual supernatural forces. The concept of capturing real ghosts was one that was already familiar in mid-1980s culture after the debut of the film Ghostbusters in 1984; indeed, two other ghost-busting series the Real Ghostbusters (an adaptation of the film) and a Filmation production known as GhostBusters, were also soon to debut.

Story editor and associate producer Tom Ruegger led the overhaul of the property, and the irreverent, fourth wall breaking humour found in each episode would resurface in his later works, among them a Pup Named Scooby-Doo. Of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, Ruegger recalls not being fond of the Flim-Flam character (‘Definitely the product of network focus groups’) or the other added characters in the cast. As with most of the other early-1980s Scooby-Doo entries, original characters Fred Jones and Velma Dinkley do not appear.

13 Ghosts was canceled and replaced by reruns of Laff-a-Lympics in March 1986, before the end of the season. It became the final Scooby series to feature Scrappy-Doo.

Buy The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Wikipedia | IMDb | Official website

The Tingler is a 1959 horror-thriller film by American producer/director William Castle. It is the third of five collaborations with writer Robb White and stars Vincent Price, Darryl Hickman, Patricia Cutts, Pamela Lincoln, Philip Coolidge and Judith Evelyn.

Dr. Warren Chapin (Price) is a pathologist who regularly conducts autopsies on executed prisoners at the State prison. He has a theory that fear is the result of a creature that inhabits all of us. His theory is that the creature is suppressed by our ability to scream when fear strikes us. He gets a chance to test his theories when he meets Ollie and Martha Higgins, who own and operate a second-run movie theater. Martha is deaf and mute and if she is unable to scream, extreme fear should make the creature, which Chapin has called the Tingler, come to life and grow. Using LSD to induce nightmares, he begins his experiment…

In line with several other Castle horror films, including the 1958 Macabre and 1959 House on Haunted Hill, Castle used gimmicks to sell the film. The most well known for The Tingler was called “Percepto!”.

“Percepto!” was a gimmick where Castle attached electrical “buzzers” to the underside of several seats in movie theaters where The Tingler was scheduled to be screened. The buzzers were small surplus vibrators left over from World War II. The cost of this equipment added $250,000 to the film’s budget. It was predominantly used in larger theaters.

During the climax of the film, The Tingler was depicted escaping into a generic movie theater. On screen the projected film appeared to break as the silhouette of the Tingler moved across the projection beam. The film went black, all lights in the auditorium (except fire exit signs) were turned off, and Vincent Price’s voice warned the audience “Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic. But scream! Scream for your lives! The Tingler is loose in this theater!” This cued the theatre projectionist to activate the buzzers and give several audience members an unexpected jolt.

To enhance the climax even more, Castle hired fake “screamers and fainters” to plant in the audience. There were fake nurses stationed in the foyer and an ambulance outside of the theatre. The “fainters” would be carried out of the auditorium on a gurney and whisked away in the ambulance, only to return for the next showing.

Although The Tingler was filmed in black and white, a single color sequence was spliced into each print of the film. It showed a sink (in black and white) with bright red “blood” flowing from the taps and a black and white Judith Evelyn watching a bloody red hand rising from a bathtub filled with bright red “blood”. Castle used colour film to film the effect. The scene was accomplished by painting the set white, black, and gray and applying gray makeup to the actress to simulate monochrome.

The Tingler also features the first mention of LSD in a major motion picture. At the time the drug was still legal. The title of the book Vincent Price’s character reads before taking LSD—”Fright Effects Induced By Injection Of Lysergic Acid LSD25″ —is printed on the back cover of the book, not the front. This appears to have been done intentionally for a better shot for the expositional title of the book explaining the effects of LSD to the audience.

Wikipedia | IMDb | Related: Mr Sardonicus | Vincent Price | William Castle

Buy The Tingler on DVD from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

‘Rapidly paced, luridly plotted, and enthusiastically executed by everyone involved, The Tingler shows off all of Castle’s strengths as a master showman and filmmaker. While Hitchcock was crafting elegant Hollywood entertainment, Castle simply tried to grab his patrons by the throat and give them a rollicking good time, which he delivers here in spades.’ Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital

‘Based as it is around gimmicks and cinema-base stunts, The Tingler is a film that doesn’t have much story and that takes so many narrative short cuts it is impossible to treat it with any seriousness, but it retains the potential to be serious fun.’ Jennie Kermode, Eye for Film

Posted by Will Holland

The Hilarious House of Frightenstein was a Canadian children’s television series produced by Hamilton, Ontario’s independent station CHCH-TV in 1971. It was syndicated to TV stations across Canada and the USA. The producers were fortunate enough to get horror icon Vincent Price to star in introductions for the show’s various segments. Price was attracted to the project because he wanted to do something for kids. He filmed all of his segments (around 400) in 4 days for a fee of $13,000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poW0OJGT9C4

A quirky sketch comedy series that included some genuine educational content among the humor, aside from Vincent Price the show’s cast included Billy Van, Fishka Rais, Guy Big, Mitch Markowitz, Julius Sumner Miller. Van played most of the characters on the show.

All 130 episodes were made in a single nine-month span starting in 1971; the scenes with Price and Miller were all filmed within one summer. The chief character, Count Frightenstein (Van), was the thirteenth son of Count Dracula and was exiled to Castle Frightenstein in Frankenstone, Canada for failing to revive Brucie J. Monster, a Frankenstein-like monster. Assisted by Igor (Rais), an overweight incompetent, and a three-foot-tall mini-Count (Big), each episode followed the Count’s efforts to revive Brucie and featured comedy sketches. Each episode opened and closed with an appearance by the venerable horror star Vincent Price as he recited intentionally silly poetry with toy skulls and shrunken heads in the background. Price also did introductions for segments within the show.

Vincent Price on Horrorpedia: The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo | The Abominable Dr. Phibes | Bloodbath at the House of Death | The Comedy of Terrors | Cry of the Banshee | Dead Heat | Dr. Phibes Rises Again | The Fly | From a Whisper to a Scream / The Offspring | The Haunted Palace | House of Usher | House of Wax | The Last Man on Earth | The Monster Club | Monster Mash (song) | The Oblong Box | The Pit and the Pendulum | The Price of Fear (radio play) | Scream and Scream Again | Tales of Terror | Theatre of Blood | The Tingler | The Tomb of Ligeia | Welcome to My Nightmare (album) | Witchfinder General

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poW0OJGT9C4

‘The Hilarious House of Frightenstein’s cheap production values actually act in its favor and lend to the show’s B-movie charms. I think it’s safe to say that this show was responsible for me developing an interest in and a love for the horror genre. It was really the ideal introduction for a child growing up in the ‘70s – not too intense but just enough of a tantalizing taste of the macabre – albeit with a healthy dose of humor and educational content. There was nothing like it on T.V. at the time and there has been nothing like it since.’ J.D. Lafrance, Radiator Heaven

‘Two things come to mind when I watch it now, one how much fun everyone seems to be having, especially Billy Van who is amazing at ad lib and two, how wonderfully psychedelic it all is. From Brucie’s peace sign necklace to the Maharishi to the wonderful Wolfman music sequences there is no doubt in anybody’s mind what era this came out of.’ Plaid Stallions

‘On the plus side, you have the talented Van in some pretty good make-ups and a heap of different personalities, some pretty impressive soundstage sets for such a moderate show, and there’s the presence of the legendary Vincent Price alone. Although many Canadians and some U.S. residents hold the series as an innovative classic, it’s certainly not for everyone, so even 22 minutes of it might be heard to stomach. TV buffs who grew up in the 70s with horror hosts and monster mags will most likely find this stuff nostalgic, others will find the juvenile and sometimes tedious humor nauseating. It would be interesting to know what a six or seven year old of today thinks of it!’ George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In

Vincent Price on Horrorpedia: The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo | The Abominable Dr. Phibes | Bloodbath at the House of Death | The Comedy of Terrors | Cry of the Banshee | Dead Heat | Dr. Phibes Rises Again | The Fly | From a Whisper to a Scream / The Offspring | The Haunted Palace | House of Usher | House of Wax | The Last Man on Earth | The Monster Club | Monster Mash (song) | The Oblong Box | The Pit and the Pendulum | The Price of Fear (radio play) | Scream and Scream Again | Tales of Terror | Theatre of Blood | The Tingler | The Tomb of Ligeia | Welcome to My Nightmare (album) | Witchfinder General

Wikipedia | IMDb | Frightenstein

We are grateful to Radiator Heaven for some of the images above

Witchcraft – Magic: An Adventure in Demonology is a 1969 spoken word album, featuring the florid tones of horror legend Vincent Price as he discusses the world of witchcraft and the occult in all forms across four sides of vinyl, clocking in at an impressive (and exhaustive) 105 minutes.

While Price would crop up as narrator on albums by Alice Cooper and Michael Jackson (Thriller) in later years, this is his magnum opus – a book length study of witchcraft, produced by Roger Karshner and released by Capitol Records. Terry d’Oberoff is credited as both composer and director, while the impressive stereo sound effects were supplied by Douglas Leedy, a pioneer of late Sixties electronic experimentalism. There is no credit for the text, though it seems likely that this too is d’Oberoff.

The LP consists of Price telling tales of witchcraft and devil worship – not fictional horror stories, but factual (well, factual-ish) accounts of historical events and aspects of the occult, helpfully split into various chapters on the sleeve – ‘Hitler and Witchcraft’, ‘Women as Witches’, ‘The World of Spirits and Demons’ and so on. Price seems to have fun with the more lurid descriptions, his voice and (most likely) tongue in cheek attitude giving a gleefully macabre and somewhat leering tone to lines like “fornication with the Devil, child sacrifice, feasts of rotting human flesh” and “the tearing of her flesh with pincers, her body broken on the wheel, her fingernails ripped off, her feet thrust into a fire, whatever horrors the twisted mind of the hangman could devise” in the two part section entitled ‘Witch Tortures’.

A surprising amount of the album actually seems to be a ‘how to’ guide to witchcraft, with handy chapters on ‘How to invoke spirits, demons, unseen forces’, ‘how to make a pact with the Devil’ and ”Curses, Spells, Charms’. “Of course you should never resort to this… except in the case of the most dire necessity” says Price of selling your soul to Satan, giving a little chuckle as he does so, before going on to give full and frank instructions nevertheless. Oh those Satanic Sixties!

Price’s narration is occasionally interspersed with Macbeth-like witches cackling away in heavily treated manner. These are possibly the most over the top moments of the album, but they work as dramatic interludes.

The music by d’Oberoff is impressively creepy and discordant, as are the sound effects, which float from speaker to speaker in the way that only records from the early days of stereo did – even Price’s voice moves from left to right and back, adding a sense of displacement to the narration.

This is not easy listening, and neither is it the most approachable of audio books. But fans of Price and anyone interested in the occult will probably enjoy it. If nothing else, it’s a curious artefact from a time when public fascination with witchcraft, Satanism and black magic was at its peak.

Originally released as a double album with accompanying booklet, the album has been issued on a CD of dubious legality and can also be found online if you look hard enough.

Review by David Flint

In cinematic terms, it wasn’t a good time to be a witch in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Between 1968 and 1972, more witches were put to death on film than at any time before or since. It truly was the Dark Ages of horror.

Of course, there had been witch-hunts on film before: Benjamin Christensen’s Haxan (aka Witchcraft Through the Ages) is a cheerful romp through the world of the occult dating from 1922, and features plenty of inquisitorial torture by witch finders. This notorious Swedish film caused outrage on its original release, with salacious scenes of Satanic orgies and daring nudity, and even now packs a real punch. A heady mix of documentary, surrealism and sensationalism, the film remains one of cinema’s most unique moments.

1937 saw Maid of Salem, directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Claudette Colbert. The film used the Salem witch trials as the setting for a drama that reflected Arthur Miller’s famed play The Crucible to a large degree. The Witches of Salem (confusingly retitled The Crucible in America, despite not being based on Miller’s play) appeared in 1957 from France. Director Raymond Rouleau adapted a story by Jean-Paul Satre, and the cast was headed by Simone Signoret. But it was the appearance of Matthew Hopkins – Witchfinder General (to give the film its full title) in 1968 that was to open the floodgates to a mini-boom of witchfinder films over the next few years. Michael Reeves had previously directed the Italian horror film Revenge of the Blood Beast and the British made The Sorcerers , starring Boris Karloff. Both films were effective shockers that marked Reeves as a talent to watch. With Witchfinder General, his talent peaked. Sadly, he took an overdose – whether by accident or design -a year after making this film.

Witchfinder General

The film is loosely based on the true-life story of Matthew Hopkins (the screenplay being adapted from the historical novel by Ronald Bassett), who terrorised East Anglia during the Seventeenth century. Together with assistant John Stearne, Hopkins moves from town to town, extracting “confessions” from those accused of witchcraft, before hanging them. Woven around this real life horror is the fictional story of Roundhead soldier Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy), who is part of Cromwell’s army fighting the Royalists. He is soon to marry sweetheart Sara, the niece of Father John Lowes, but whilst he is away on duty, Hopkins arrives in town, summoned by villagers who distrust the priest because of his Protestant leanings. Lowes is tortured, but allowed to live for a while after Sara seduces Hopkins. However, when Hopkins is called away on business, Stearne rapes the girl, and once Hopkins discovers this, he orders the death of the priest.

Witchfinder General

Marshall arrives at the church to discover a distraught Sara, and vows vengeance. He sets off in pursuit of Hopkins, leading to the inevitable showdown. The ending of the film is one of the most powerful moments in horror film history: After being captured by Hopkins and seeing Sara tortured, Marshall escapes and attacks Hopkins with an axe, literally hacking him to death. A Roundhead colleague (Nicky Henson) stumbles onto the scene and, horrified, shoots the witchfinder. The film ends with Marshall’s screams: “You took him from me!” Ironically, this scene was the result of a continuity error. The original script had Henson shooting both Hopkins and Marshall, but Reeves realised that previous scenes had shown Henson to only have a single flintlock pistol. A hasty rewrite brought about one of the great moments in cinema! Witchfinder General is a stunning film. Utterly nihilistic in approach, it has all the power and inevitability of a Shakespeare tragedy. Reeves’ direction is confident and flawless, making a mockery of the low budget. He makes excellent use of the English countryside, contrasting the beauty with the horror that takes place.

Of course, a film like Witchfinder General was bound to run into problems. After all, British horror in 1968 meant The Devil Rides Out, not a brutal, realistic and shockingly angry film like this. Reeves had no time for traditional horror films, as evidenced by a legendary exchange between the director and his star, Vincent Price. Price, well known for hamming it up, was instructed to play the role straight. According to legend, bristling at being told how to act by this twenty four year old director, Price complained “I’ve made eighty-seven films, what have you done?”. Reeves looked at him and replied “I’ve made three good ones.” End of argument! The British censors felt that Witchfinder General was too much to take. The whole despairing atmosphere of the film worried them, as did the effect of Paul Ferris’ haunting score, which censor John Trevelyan felt heightened the violence even further. Major cuts were made, much to the consternation of Reeves, who had stated that “violence is horrible, degrading and sordid. It should be presented as such, and the more people it shocks into sickened recognition of these facts, the better.” Trevelyan accepted Reeves’ arguments, but most of his outraged BBFC staff felt the film was exploitative and needed cutting.

Despite these cuts, the film still caused critical outrage at the seemingly unprecedented violence. In America, the film was retitled The Conqueror Worm by AIP, as a desperate attempt to milk the Vincent Price/Poe connection for all it was worth. To justify the connection, a new prologue was shot with Price reading Poe’s poem. As its reputation grew over the years, many attempts were made to restore the missing footage to Witchfinder General, but to no avail. So it was a major surprise when Redemption announced the release of a restored version in 1995. And not only does this print contain all the cut scenes, but also has some additional nude scenes that were shot by Tigon head honcho Tony Tenser for export versions of the film. This longer version is now widely available.

The film also inspired Witchfinder General, a 1980s British heavy metal doom band, who named themselves after it and courted controversy with sleazy album covers. Sadly, their music did not match the imagery used to sell it!

The success of Witchfinder General inevitably led to imitations. The best known of these was Mark of the Devil, a West German production from 1969. Like its inspiration, Mark of the Devil was directed by a young British director, Michael Armstrong, who had previously made the violent psycho film The Haunted House of Horror. Mark of the Devil tells the story of Count Cumberland (Herbert Lom), who arrives in an Austrian village to become the official witchfinder. At first, his presence seems to bring a degree of justice after the excesses of Albino (played by Reggie Nalder); however, he soon proves to be just as cruel and corrupt. Whilst powerful and well crafted, Armstrong’s film is nowhere near as good as Witchfinder General, though it does share many of its elements. The film has a strong sense of indignation and anger at what it portrays, and is certainly unflinching in its approach: American distributors rated it “V for Violence” and offered vomit bags to patrons, while the BBFC refused a certificate outright (a ban which held until recently; even now the DVD release has around thirty seconds cut). It also makes use of haunting music to contrast with the extreme violence.

Mark of the Devil

Current prints of the film all end rather abruptly. For some reason, the original ending, which featured the dead returning to life, has vanished and cannot be found (although stills exist showing what it looks like). This might not be such a bad thing: a supernatural conclusion would have damaged the story considerably, and the brutal manner in which the film now finishes is strangely in keeping with the cold tone of the movie as a whole. Mark of the Devil started life as a project by ex-matinee idol Adrian Hoven, who had written a screenplay entitled The Witch-Hunter Dr Dracula, which featured the Count as a witchfinder, and which Armstrong describes as “almost hard porn.” Hoven’s producers, Gloria Film, refused to let him direct, and Armstrong was brought in. He immediately rewrote the script (using the pseudonym Sergio Cassner), much to the anger of Hoven, who ended up with a small part in the movie and directed his own scenes after a number of shouting matches with Armstrong.

Mark of the Devil

The success of the film led to a sequel, and this time Hoven did direct. Starring Erica Blanc and Anton Diffring, the film was little more that a lurid rehash of the profitable elements from the first film (i.e. the torture of scantily clad women), without any of the intelligence of power.

Following Witchfinder General and Mark of the Devil, a number of other films would deal with the “witch hunt” theme. However, these differed from their predecessors by giving the witchfinders some justification for existing: in these films, the witches were real. Tigon Films followed Witchfinder General with an unofficial sequel, Satan’s Skin (better known as The Blood on Satan’s Claw) in 1970. Director Piers Haggard follows the visual style of Reeves quite well in this effective study of corruption and evil. Popular jailbait exploitation queen Linda Hayden played the leader of a teenage cult that spreads throughout a village after a demonic skull is unearthed in a field. With some graphic gore and frank sexuality (Hayden strips to seduce a priest in his own church), the film makes a more than adequate companion piece to its more illustrious predecessor.

Blood on Satan’s Claw

The same year saw Cry of the Banshee, with Vincent Price returning as a sadistic witch-finding magistrate. A mixed affair, the film is not without effective moments, but often descends into silliness, with rather contrived orgies and clumsy attempts at shock sequences. Nevertheless, the film remains interesting throughout. Witchfinder General star Hillary Dwyer appeared in the film, adding to the feeling that these movies were all somehow inter-connected (Patrick Wymark appeared in both Witchfinder General and Satan’s Skin).

Cry of the Banshee

Jess Franco, perhaps inevitably,  made a couple of witchfinder films. The more “respectable” of the two, The Bloody Judge (1969) starred Christopher Lee as Judge Jeffreys – like Matthew Hopkins, a notorious real life witch hunter of the Seventeenth century. The film is well shot, and dwells more on the historical elements of the story than the exploitational ones. That said, there were a number of gruesome torture scenes in the German version that didn’t appear in other cuts. Lee claims that the scenes were added without his knowledge. Perhaps he would prefer the American version, retitled Night of the Blood Monster, which removed all the nudity and violence to obtain a PG rating, leaving the film little more that a worthy but dull low budget historical drama. The current UK and US DVDs are restored versions with the extra sex and violence inserted into the longer, tamer edition.

The Bloody Judge

A couple of years later, Franco returned to the theme with The Demons (1972). Here, he again uses Judge Jeffreys, but there the similarity ends. The film was a sleazy, tacky and thoroughly ludicrous slice of sexploitation sleaze, with naked women undergoing various tortures and satanic rituals. Entertaining nonsense for the broad minded, one dreads to think what Christopher Lee would make of it!

Even Hammer dabbled with the witchfinder theme. Twins of Evil was the final film in the Karnstein trilogy, and featured Peter Cushing as a puritan witchfinder who rampages across the countryside burning innocent women at the stake. When one of his twin nieces becomes a vampire, life takes a “difficult” turn for him! One of the best films to emerge from the famed studio, Twins of Evil also starred Playboy centrefolds Mary and Madeline Collinson and David Warbeck.

The best known, and still the most controversial of the witchfinder films, was Ken Russell’s The Devils, based on Aldous Huxley’s historical novel The Devils of Loudon. There can be few of you that haven’t seen this film, which continues to split critical opinion to this day. Russell didn’t shy away from showing excessive scenes of torture and sexual mania, and the film suffered a number of cuts at the hands of the BBFC. Some of this footage has since emerged and appeared on a Channel 4 documentary, but amazingly, Warners still refuse to restore the film to its blasphemous glory, and the recent BFI release is the cut X-rated version that first played UK cinemas.

The Devils

By 1972, this mini genre had burnt itself out (no pun intended). Witch trials still crop up now and again in films, but usually only at the opening of some supernatural tale, setting the scene for the vengeance of the witch’s spirit years later. There have been cinema and TV productions of The Crucible, and the 1985 TV film Three Sovereigns for Sarah starred Vanessa Redgrave and Kim Hunter in the story of a woman who attempts to get a witchcraft verdict against her overturned. At three hours long, this worthy but dull tale often felt like torture itself.

Three Sovereigns for Sarah

Inevitably, the only place left for the witchfinder to go after this was into comedy. As early as 1974, Monty Python and the Holy Grail included arbitrary witch hunting amongst its comedy targets, with the revelation that a witch weighs the same as a duck, and the final significant appearance of the witchfinder came in the form of Frank Findlay, who cropped up during the first series of Black Adder, playing the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, falsely accusing Rowan Atkinson of black magic! A witty spoof, it managed to show the insanity and maliciousness of the witch trials as effectively as any serious exposé.

But after this satire, it seems unlikely that the witchfinder film will make a comeback.

In 2001, the BBC showed Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, a British comedy-horror anthology series created by Graham Duff, and co-written with its star, Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge). The episode ‘Scream Satan Scream!’ directly spoofs Witchfinder General (1968) and Cry of the Banshee (1970). Witch locator Captain Tobias Slater travels the north of England accusing beautiful young women of being witches and to avoid the pyre they must sleep with him, until he runs across a real coven and Slater is cursed.  After all this TV satire it seems unlikely that serious witch finding will ever be in vogue again in cinemas.

In many ways, these films were typical of the horror movies of the time: cynical, hard, cold and dark… a far cry from the glossy shockers of today. The closest we’ve had in recent years seems to be the critically mauled Season of the Witch, with Nicolas Cage as an unlikely medieval soldier transporting a woman who may or may not be a witch to trial. It’s not very good. But with the appearance of more and more of the classic titles on video, a new generation can at least appreciate one of horrors briefest, yet most interesting periods.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

PS. Since this article was posted, in October 2013, news emerged that newly-invigorated British production company Hammer has acquired film rights to Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate, a 2012 novella that is based on an English witch trial from the 17th century. Simon Oakes, Vice-Chairman of Exclusive Media and President & CEO of Hammer, commented on bringing this novel to the big screen:

“The Hammer imprint has really delivered some fantastic new writing and shows the vibrancy and variety of the modern day horror genre. The books under our Arrow Books deal are in themselves a fantastic extension of the Hammer brand, and Jeanette’s novella ‘The Daylight Gate’ is a fresh, exciting and compelling fictional work.”

Here’s the official synopsis for The Daylight Gate: “Set in seventeenth-century England during the reign of James I—the monarch who wrote his own book on witchcraft—The Daylight Gate is best-selling writer Jeanette Winterson’s re-creation of a dark history full of complicated morality, sex, and tragic plays for power.

This is a world where to be Catholic is a treasonable offense. A world where England’s king vows to rid his country of “witchery popery popery witchery” and condemns the High Mass and Black Mass as heresies punishable by torture, hanging, and burning.

Winterson’s literary suspense tale takes us deep into a brutal period of English history, centered on the notorious 1612 Pendle witch trials—an infection of paranoia that crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and set the scene for the Salem witch hunt.

Good Friday, 1612. Pendle Forest. A gathering of thirteen is interrupted by local magistrate Roger Nowell. Is this a coven or a helpless group of women trying to save their family from the stake? Already two stand accused of witchcraft. The wealthy, respected Alice Nutter tries to defend them, haunted by her own past entanglement with magick. She doesn’t believe in the Devil, but as she fights for justice, her life is endangered by forces visible and invisible.”

Source: Hammer press release

Gordon Hessler (12 December 1925 – 19 January 2014) was a British film and television director, screenwriter, and producer.

Born in Berlin, Germany, he was raised in England and studied at the University of Reading. While a teenager, he moved to the United States and directed a series of short films and documentaries. Universal Studios hired Hessler as a story reader for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents television series. He became story editor for two seasons (1960–1962) for that series, then served as the associate producer for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour from 1962 until its cancellation in 1965. He directed episodes of that series and several other shows (including Hawaii Five-O).

His first foray into horror was the low-budget Catacombs (aka The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die, 1964). In 1969, he directed his first widely-released feature film, The Oblong Box, starring Vincent Price. It was the first of three horror films Hessler would direct with the veteran horror star, the other two being Scream and Scream Again (1969) and Cry of the Banshee (1970). He worked uncredited as a director on De Sade (1969) when Cy Endfield failed to deliver the salacious type of movie that American International Pictures (AIP) wanted to release.

A solid, reliable director-for-hire, Hessler’s other work included Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971), murder mystery Medusa (1973), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974 with Caroline Munro, pictured with Hessler above), Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974) Hitchhike! (1974, TV movie), The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978), Tales of the Unexpected (1979, TV movie, co-director), Evil Stalks This House/Tales of the Haunted (1981, TV movie) and The Girl in a Swing (1988) starring Meg Tilly, an adaptation of Richard Adams‘s ghost story novel.

Wikipedia | IMDb

We are grateful to Museu do VHS for the Brazilian video sleeve image.

Sphere horror paperbacks were published in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s. They were hugely popular and many – such as Lust for a Vampire, Blind Terror, The Ghoul, Squirm and Dawn of the Dead – were movie tie-ins and novelisations. The initial novels chosen for publication focused on the occult. Sphere published pulp fiction novels by famous authors, such as Richard Matheson, Ray Russell, Colin Wilson, Graham Masterson, Clive Barker and Robert Bloch whilst also providing a vehicle for British career writers such as Guy N. Smith and Peter Tremayne, plus many lesser known writers whose work received a boost by being part of the Sphere publishing machine. Occasionally, they also published compilations of short stories and “non-fiction” titles such as What Witches Do. In the early years, like many other opportunistic publishers, they reprinted the vintage work of writers – such as Sheridan Le Fanu – with lurid cover art.

The listing below provides a celebration of the photography and artwork used to sell horror books by one particular British publishing company. For more information about each book visit the excellent Sordid Spheres web blog.

1970

John Blackburn – Bury Him Darkly

Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury – Fever Dream

Robert Bloch – The Living Demons

Robert Bloch – Tales in a Jugular Vein

Angus Hall – Madhouse

Sheridan Le Fanu – The Best Horror Stories

Michel Parry - Countess Dracula
Sarban – The Sound of his Horn

Ray Russell – The Case Against Satan
William Seabrook – Witchcraft (non-fiction)
Kurt Singer (ed.) – The Oblong Box

Kurt Singer (ed.) – Plague of the Living Dead

Kurt Singer – (ed.) The House in the Valley
Robert Somerlott – The Inquisitor’s House

1971

Richard Davis (ed.) – The Year’s Best Horror Stories 1
Peter Haining (ed.) – The Wild Night Company
Angus Hall – The Scars of Dracula

Angus Hall – To Play the Devil – Buy on Amazon.co.uk
William Hughes – Blind Terror (Blind Terror film on Horrorpedia)

William Hughes – Lust for a Vampire (Lust for a Vampire film on Horrorpedia)
Ray Russell – Unholy Trinity
E. Spencer Shew – Hands Of The Ripper

Kurt Singer (ed) – The Day of the Dragon

David Sutton (ed.) – New Writings in the Horror and Supernatural 1

Alan Scott – Project Dracula

1972

Richard Davis (ed.) – The Year’s Best Horror Stories 2

Peter Haining (ed.) – The Clans of Darkness

Laurence Moody – What Became Of Jack And Jill?
Ronald Pearsall – The Exorcism

David Sutton (ed.) – New Writings in the Horror and Supernatural 2
Richard Tate – The Dead Travel Fast

Sam Moskowitz (ed.) – A Man Called Poe

1973

Richard Davis (ed.) – The Year’s Best Horror Stories 3
Stewart Farrar – What Witches Do: The Modern Coven Revealed (Non-Fiction)

Brian J. Frost (ed.) – Book of the Werewolf

Melissa Napier – The Haunted Woman
Daniel Farson – Jack The Ripper [non-fiction]
Raymond Rurdoff – The Dracula Archives

1974

Theodore Sturgeon – Caviar

1976

C L Moore – Shambleau
Guy N. Smith – The Ghoul

Robert Black – Legend of the Werewolf

Richard Curtis – Squirm

Ron Goulart – Vampirella 1:Bloodstalk

1977

August Derleth (ed.) – When Evil Wakes
Ron Goulart – Vampirella 2: On Alien Wings

Ron Goulart – Vampirella 3: Deadwalk

Vampirella on Horrorpedia

Ken Johnson – Blue Sunshine

Fritz Leiber - Night’s Black Agents
Robert J Myers – The Slave of Frankenstein

Robert J Myers – The Cross of Frankenstein
Jack Ramsey – The Rage

Ray Russell – Incubus
Andrew Sinclair – Cat

Colin Wilson – Black Room

1978

Ethel Blackledge – The Fire
John Christopher – The Possessors
John Christopher – The Little People
Basil Copper – Here Be Daemons

Basil Copper – The Great White Space
Giles Gordon (ed.) – A Book of Contemporary Nightmares

Peter Haining – Terror! A History Of Horror Illustrations From The Pulp Magazines

Peter Haining (ed) – Weird Tales

Peter Haining (ed) – More Weird Tales
Peter Haining (ed) – Ancient Mysteries Reader 1
Peter Haining (ed) – Ancient Mysteries Reader 2
Richard Matheson – Shock!

Richard Matheson – Shock 2

Richard Matheson – Shock 3

Stephen Marlowe – Translation
Michael Robson – Holocaust 2000
Peter Tremayne – The Ants

Peter Tremayne – The Vengeance Of She

1979

John Clark and Robin Evans – The Experiment
William Hope Hodgson – The Night Land
Robert R. McCammon – Baal

Kirby McCauley – Frights

Kirby McCauley – Frights 2
Jack Finney – Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
Graham Masterton – Charnel House

Graham Masterton – Devils of D-Day
Susan Sparrow – Dawn of the Dead

Gerald Suster – The Devil’s Maze
Peter Tremayne – The Curse of Loch Ness

1980

Les Daniels – The Black Castle
Gerald Suster – The Elect
Jere Cunningham – The Legacy
William Hope Hodgson – The House On The Borderland
Robin Squire – A Portrait Of Barbara

John Cameron – The Astrologer
Robert McCammon – Bethany’s Sin
William H. Hallahan – Keeper Of The Children

Ray Russell – The Devil’s Mirror

Roy Russell – Prince Of Darkness

1981

Basil Copper – Necropolis

M. Jay Livingstone – The Prodigy
Andrew Coburn – The Babysitter
Peter Tremayne – Zombie!

Graham Masterton – The Heirloom
Owen West [Dean R. Koontz] – The Funhouse
William Hope Hodgson – The Ghost Pirates

Graham Masterton - The Wells Of Hell
Graham Masterton – Famine
Marc Alexander – The Devil Hunter [non-fiction]
Guy Lyon Playfair – This House Is Haunted [non-fiction]
Robert R. McCammon – They Thirst

1982

Ronald Patrick – Beyond The Threshold

Peter Tremayne – The Morgow Rises

William Hope Hodgson – The Boats Of The Glen Carrig

Stephen Gallagher – Chimera
Marc Alexander – Haunted Houses You May Visit [non-fiction]
Michelle Smith & Lawrence Pazder – Michelle Remembers [non-fiction]
Dillibe Onyearma – Night Demon
Robert R. McCammon – The Night Boat

Ray Russell – Incubus

1983

James Darke – The Witches 1. The Prisoner

James Darke – The Witches 2. The Trial
James Darke – The Witches 3. The Torture

Basil Copper – Into The Silence
Les Daniels – The Silver Skull

1984

Peter Tremayne – Kiss Of The Cobra

Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 1
Clive Barker - Books Of Blood 2

Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 3
Graham Masterton – Tengu

George R. R. Martin – Fevre Dream
James Darke – Witches 4. The Escape

1985

Peter Tremayne – Swamp!

Peter Tremayne – Angelus!
Stephen Laws – The Ghost Train

Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 4
Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 5
Clive Barker – Books Of Blood 6
Rosalind Ashe – Dark Runner
James Darke – Witches 5. The Meeting
James Darke – Witches 6. The Killing

1986

Christopher Fowler - City Jitters

James Darke – Witches 7. The Feud
James Darke – Witches 8. The Plague

Clive Barker – The Damnation Game
Graham Masterton – Night Warriors
Lisa Tuttle – A Nest Of Nightmares

1987

Peter Tremayne – Nicor!
Peter Tremayne – Trollnight

Lisa Tuttle – Gabriel

1988

Alan Ryan (ed.) – Halloween Horrors

Guy N. Smith – Fiend

Stephen Laws – Spectre
Graham Masterton – Mirror
Eric Sauter – Predators
Robert McCammon – Swan Song

1989

Stephen Laws – Wyrm
Guy N. Smith – The Camp
Guy N. Smith – Mania

Graham Masterton – The Walkers
Graham Masterton – Ritual
Bernard King – Witch Beast

The listing above and many of the cover images are reproduced from the Sordid Spheres web blog. Bar the odd addition and amendment, the list first appeared in Paperback Fanatic 3 (August 2007). For more information about each title, its author and links to reviews, visit Sordid Spheres

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Hopkins (The Witchfinder General) was released by Lee Dorrian’s doom metal band Cathedral in 1996 on a 5-track E.P. Formed in Coventry, England in 1989 from ex-members of Napalm Death (Dorrian) and  Acid Reign (guitarist, Gaz Jennings), the band sought to ditch the punk and death metal directions their previous bands were heading in and explore slower, ‘doomier’ sounds, being influenced by the likes of Black Sabbath and Pentagram.

Cathedral will release their 10th and final album in April 2013. Hopkins sees Cathedral at their peak, both musically, visually and perhaps most importantly, ridiculously. Intertwining soundbites from Vincent Price  throughout the video from the film Witchfinder General, the video has oodles of everything you could want in a promotional video. Directed by provocative British film-maker and head honcho of the Redemption/Salvation group, Nigel Wingrove, if this doesn’t make you want to watch the film/dance like Dorrian, there’s no hope for you.

The video features ravishing actress and regular contributor to the horror scene, Eileen Daly as well as Cookie, who was often to be seen on the James Whale Radio Show which was a must-watch (it was confusingly titled) for insomniacs and post-pub revellers during late 1980s and early 1990s. Even the black horse was a celebrity, having featured in the Lloyds Bank television commercials.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

In cinematic terms, it wasn’t a good time to be a witch in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Between 1968 and 1972, more witches were put to death on film than at any time before or since. It truly was the Dark Ages of horror.

Of course, there had been witch-hunts on film before: Benjamin Christensen’s Haxan (aka Witchcraft Through the Ages) is a cheerful romp through the world of the occult dating from 1922, and features plenty of inquisitorial torture by witch finders. This notorious Swedish film caused outrage on its original release, with salacious scenes of Satanic orgies and daring nudity, and even now packs a real punch. A heady mix of documentary, surrealism and sensationalism, the film remains one of cinema’s most unique moments.

1937 saw Maid of Salem, directed by Frank Lloyd and starring Claudette Colbert. The film used the Salem witch trials as the setting for a drama that reflected Arthur Miller’s famed play The Crucible to a large degree. The Witches of Salem (confusingly retitled The Crucible in America, despite not being based on Miller’s play) appeared in 1957 from France. Director Raymond Rouleau adapted a story by Jean-Paul Satre, and the cast was headed by Simone Signoret. But it was the appearance of Matthew Hopkins – Witchfinder General (to give the film its full title) in 1968 that was to open the floodgates to a mini-boom of witchfinder films over the next few years. Michael Reeves had previously directed the Italian horror film Revenge of the Blood Beast and the British made The Sorcerers , starring Boris Karloff. Both films were effective shockers that marked Reeves as a talent to watch. With Witchfinder General, his talent peaked. Sadly, he took an overdose – whether by accident or design -a year after making this film.

Witchfinder General

The film is loosely based on the true-life story of Matthew Hopkins (the screenplay being adapted from the historical novel by Ronald Bassett), who terrorised East Anglia during the Seventeenth century. Together with assistant John Stearne, Hopkins moves from town to town, extracting “confessions” from those accused of witchcraft, before hanging them. Woven around this real life horror is the fictional story of Roundhead soldier Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy), who is part of Cromwell’s army fighting the Royalists. He is soon to marry sweetheart Sara, the niece of Father John Lowes, but whilst he is away on duty, Hopkins arrives in town, summoned by villagers who distrust the priest because of his Protestant leanings. Lowes is tortured, but allowed to live for a while after Sara seduces Hopkins. However, when Hopkins is called away on business, Stearne rapes the girl, and once Hopkins discovers this, he orders the death of the priest.

Witchfinder General

Marshall arrives at the church to discover a distraught Sara, and vows vengeance. He sets off in pursuit of Hopkins, leading to the inevitable showdown. The ending of the film is one of the most powerful moments in horror film history: After being captured by Hopkins and seeing Sara tortured, Marshall escapes and attacks Hopkins with an axe, literally hacking him to death. A Roundhead colleague (Nicky Henson) stumbles onto the scene and, horrified, shoots the witchfinder. The film ends with Marshall’s screams: “You took him from me!” Ironically, this scene was the result of a continuity error. The original script had Henson shooting both Hopkins and Marshall, but Reeves realised that previous scenes had shown Henson to only have a single flintlock pistol. A hasty rewrite brought about one of the great moments in cinema! Witchfinder General is a stunning film. Utterly nihilistic in approach, it has all the power and inevitability of a Shakespeare tragedy. Reeves’ direction is confident and flawless, making a mockery of the low budget. He makes excellent use of the English countryside, contrasting the beauty with the horror that takes place.

Of course, a film like Witchfinder General was bound to run into problems. After all, British horror in 1968 meant The Devil Rides Out, not a brutal, realistic and shockingly angry film like this. Reeves had no time for traditional horror films, as evidenced by a legendary exchange between the director and his star, Vincent Price. Price, well known for hamming it up, was instructed to play the role straight. According to legend, bristling at being told how to act by this twenty four year old director, Price complained “I’ve made eighty-seven films, what have you done?”. Reeves looked at him and replied “I’ve made three good ones.” End of argument! The British censors felt that Witchfinder General was too much to take. The whole despairing atmosphere of the film worried them, as did the effect of Paul Ferris’ haunting score, which censor John Trevelyan felt heightened the violence even further. Major cuts were made, much to the consternation of Reeves, who had stated that “violence is horrible, degrading and sordid. It should be presented as such, and the more people it shocks into sickened recognition of these facts, the better.” Trevelyan accepted Reeves’ arguments, but most of his outraged BBFC staff felt the film was exploitative and needed cutting.

Despite these cuts, the film still caused critical outrage at the seemingly unprecedented violence. In America, the film was retitled The Conqueror Worm by AIP, as a desperate attempt to milk the Vincent Price/Poe connection for all it was worth. To justify the connection, a new prologue was shot with Price reading Poe’s poem. As its reputation grew over the years, many attempts were made to restore the missing footage to Witchfinder General, but to no avail. So it was a major surprise when Redemption announced the release of a restored version in 1995. And not only does this print contain all the cut scenes, but also has some additional nude scenes that were shot by Tigon head honcho Tony Tenser for export versions of the film. This longer version is now widely available.

The film also inspired Witchfinder General, a 1980s British heavy metal doom band, who named themselves after it and courted controversy with sleazy album covers. Sadly, their music did not match the imagery used to sell it!

The success of Witchfinder General inevitably led to imitations. The best known of these was Mark of the Devil, a West German production from 1969. Like its inspiration, Mark of the Devil was directed by a young British director, Michael Armstrong, who had previously made the violent psycho film The Haunted House of Horror. Mark of the Devil tells the story of Count Cumberland (Herbert Lom), who arrives in an Austrian village to become the official witchfinder. At first, his presence seems to bring a degree of justice after the excesses of Albino (played by Reggie Nalder); however, he soon proves to be just as cruel and corrupt. Whilst powerful and well crafted, Armstrong’s film is nowhere near as good as Witchfinder General, though it does share many of its elements. The film has a strong sense of indignation and anger at what it portrays, and is certainly unflinching in its approach: American distributors rated it “V for Violence” and offered vomit bags to patrons, while the BBFC refused a certificate outright (a ban which held until recently; even now the DVD release has around thirty seconds cut). It also makes use of haunting music to contrast with the extreme violence.

Mark of the Devil

Current prints of the film all end rather abruptly. For some reason, the original ending, which featured the dead returning to life, has vanished and cannot be found (although stills exist showing what it looks like). This might not be such a bad thing: a supernatural conclusion would have damaged the story considerably, and the brutal manner in which the film now finishes is strangely in keeping with the cold tone of the movie as a whole. Mark of the Devil started life as a project by ex-matinee idol Adrian Hoven, who had written a screenplay entitled The Witch-Hunter Dr Dracula, which featured the Count as a witchfinder, and which Armstrong describes as “almost hard porn.” Hoven’s producers, Gloria Film, refused to let him direct, and Armstrong was brought in. He immediately rewrote the script (using the pseudonym Sergio Cassner), much to the anger of Hoven, who ended up with a small part in the movie and directed his own scenes after a number of shouting matches with Armstrong.

Mark of the Devil

The success of the film led to a sequel, and this time Hoven did direct. Starring Erica Blanc and Anton Diffring, the film was little more that a lurid rehash of the profitable elements from the first film (i.e. the torture of scantily clad women), without any of the intelligence of power.

Following Witchfinder General and Mark of the Devil, a number of other films would deal with the “witch hunt” theme. However, these differed from their predecessors by giving the witchfinders some justification for existing: in these films, the witches were real. Tigon Films followed Witchfinder General with an unofficial sequel, Satan’s Skin (better known as The Blood on Satan’s Claw) in 1970. Director Piers Haggard follows the visual style of Reeves quite well in this effective study of corruption and evil. Popular jailbait exploitation queen Linda Hayden played the leader of a teenage cult that spreads throughout a village after a demonic skull is unearthed in a field. With some graphic gore and frank sexuality (Hayden strips to seduce a priest in his own church), the film makes a more than adequate companion piece to its more illustrious predecessor.

Blood on Satan’s Claw

The same year saw Cry of the Banshee, with Vincent Price returning as a sadistic witch-finding magistrate. A mixed affair, the film is not without effective moments, but often descends into silliness, with rather contrived orgies and clumsy attempts at shock sequences. Nevertheless, the film remains interesting throughout. Witchfinder General star Hillary Dwyer appeared in the film, adding to the feeling that these movies were all somehow inter-connected (Patrick Wymark appeared in both Witchfinder General and Satan’s Skin).

Cry of the Banshee

Jess Franco, perhaps inevitably,  made a couple of witchfinder films. The more “respectable” of the two, The Bloody Judge (1969) starred Christopher Lee as Judge Jeffreys – like Matthew Hopkins, a notorious real life witch hunter of the Seventeenth century. The film is well shot, and dwells more on the historical elements of the story than the exploitational ones. That said, there were a number of gruesome torture scenes in the German version that didn’t appear in other cuts. Lee claims that the scenes were added without his knowledge. Perhaps he would prefer the American version, retitled Night of the Blood Monster, which removed all the nudity and violence to obtain a PG rating, leaving the film little more that a worthy but dull low budget historical drama. The current UK and US DVDs are restored versions with the extra sex and violence inserted into the longer, tamer edition.

The Bloody Judge

A couple of years later, Franco returned to the theme with The Demons (1972). Here, he again uses Judge Jeffreys, but there the similarity ends. The film was a sleazy, tacky and thoroughly ludicrous slice of sexploitation sleaze, with naked women undergoing various tortures and satanic rituals. Entertaining nonsense for the broad minded, one dreads to think what Christopher Lee would make of it!

Even Hammer dabbled with the witchfinder theme. Twins of Evil was the final film in the Karnstein trilogy, and featured Peter Cushing as a puritan witchfinder who rampages across the countryside burning innocent women at the stake. When one of his twin nieces becomes a vampire, life takes a “difficult” turn for him! One of the best films to emerge from the famed studio, Twins of Evil also starred Playboy centrefolds Mary and Madeline Collinson and David Warbeck.

The best known, and still the most controversial of the witchfinder films, was Ken Russell’s The Devils, based on Aldous Huxley’s historical novel The Devils of Loudon. There can be few of you that haven’t seen this film, which continues to split critical opinion to this day. Russell didn’t shy away from showing excessive scenes of torture and sexual mania, and the film suffered a number of cuts at the hands of the BBFC. Some of this footage has since emerged and appeared on a Channel 4 documentary, but amazingly, Warners still refuse to restore the film to its blasphemous glory, and the recent BFI release is the cut X-rated version that first played UK cinemas.

The Devils

By 1972, this mini genre had burnt itself out (no pun intended). Witch trials still crop up now and again in films, but usually only at the opening of some supernatural tale, setting the scene for the vengeance of the witch’s spirit years later. There have been cinema and TV productions of The Crucible, and the 1985 TV film Three Sovereigns for Sarah starred Vanessa Redgrave and Kim Hunter in the story of a woman who attempts to get a witchcraft verdict against her overturned. At three hours long, this worthy but dull tale often felt like torture itself.

Three Sovereigns for Sarah

Inevitably, the only place left for the witchfinder to go after this was into comedy. As early as 1974, Monty Python and the Holy Grail included arbitrary witch hunting amongst its comedy targets, with the revelation that a witch weighs the same as a duck, and the final significant appearance of the witchfinder came in the form of Frank Findlay, who cropped up during the first series of Black Adder, playing the Witchsmeller Pursuivant, falsely accusing Rowan Atkinson of black magic! A witty spoof, it managed to show the insanity and maliciousness of the witch trials as effectively as any serious exposé.

But after this satire, it seems unlikely that the witchfinder film will make a comeback.

In 2001, the BBC showed Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, a British comedy-horror anthology series created by Graham Duff, and co-written with its star, Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge). The episode ‘Scream Satan Scream!’ directly spoofs Witchfinder General (1968) and Cry of the Banshee (1970). Witch locator Captain Tobias Slater travels the north of England accusing beautiful young women of being witches and to avoid the pyre they must sleep with him, until he runs across a real coven and Slater is cursed.  After all this TV satire it seems unlikely that serious witch finding will ever be in vogue again in cinemas.

In many ways, these films were typical of the horror movies of the time: cynical, hard, cold and dark… a far cry from the glossy shockers of today. The closest we’ve had in recent years seems to be the critically mauled Season of the Witch, with Nicolas Cage as an unlikely medieval soldier transporting a woman who may or may not be a witch to trial. It’s not very good. But with the appearance of more and more of the classic titles on video, a new generation can at least appreciate one of horrors briefest, yet most interesting periods.

David Flint, Horrorpedia

PS. Since this article was posted, in October 2013, news emerged that newly-invigorated British production company Hammer has acquired film rights to Jeanette Winterson’s The Daylight Gate, a 2012 novella that is based on an English witch trial from the 17th century. Simon Oakes, Vice-Chairman of Exclusive Media and President & CEO of Hammer, commented on bringing this novel to the big screen:

“The Hammer imprint has really delivered some fantastic new writing and shows the vibrancy and variety of the modern day horror genre. The books under our Arrow Books deal are in themselves a fantastic extension of the Hammer brand, and Jeanette’s novella ‘The Daylight Gate’ is a fresh, exciting and compelling fictional work.”

Here’s the official synopsis for The Daylight Gate: “Set in seventeenth-century England during the reign of James I—the monarch who wrote his own book on witchcraft—The Daylight Gate is best-selling writer Jeanette Winterson’s re-creation of a dark history full of complicated morality, sex, and tragic plays for power.

This is a world where to be Catholic is a treasonable offense. A world where England’s king vows to rid his country of “witchery popery popery witchery” and condemns the High Mass and Black Mass as heresies punishable by torture, hanging, and burning.

Winterson’s literary suspense tale takes us deep into a brutal period of English history, centered on the notorious 1612 Pendle witch trials—an infection of paranoia that crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and set the scene for the Salem witch hunt.

Good Friday, 1612. Pendle Forest. A gathering of thirteen is interrupted by local magistrate Roger Nowell. Is this a coven or a helpless group of women trying to save their family from the stake? Already two stand accused of witchcraft. The wealthy, respected Alice Nutter tries to defend them, haunted by her own past entanglement with magick. She doesn’t believe in the Devil, but as she fights for justice, her life is endangered by forces visible and invisible.”

Source: Hammer press release

When the horror compilation Terror in the Aisles proved to be an unexpected theatrical hit in 1984, it was unsurprising that several imitations sprung up, and this 1985 British production is probably the most disreputable of them all – quite an achievement in a world where Terror on Tape exists!

Produced by the infamous Dick Randall and Steve Minasian, the film is directed – if that is the word to use – by Ray Selfe, a veteran of the British sex film (hardcore and softcore) and more recently a film archivist who curates a vast collection of public domain material. Some of that turns up here, but mostly it’s a mix of Randall and Minasian productions / acquisitions and films that have almost certainly not been copyright cleared.

What imitations like this fail to understand about why Terror in the Aisles worked is because it wasn’t just a random selection of clips – instead, the film skilfully intercut scenes from several movies, using an original score, to help build a sense of tension. It also worked as a study (however basic) of the genre. This film, however, is too scattershot and messy, and simply presents rather lengthy clips from assorted films with little or no context.

For his linking scenes Price sits on a throne in a black room, as the camera zooms in and out wildly, introducing a series of clips that often have only the slightest connection to what he’s saying. “These days, special effects are much more believable” says Price at one point, as the film cuts to the ludicrous ‘flying head’ scene from Indonesian supernatural shocker Queen of Black Magic.

Christopher Lee is cheekily made to seem like a co-narrator, thanks to randomly selected clips from the 1975 documentary In Search of Dracula. “Here’s Christopher Lee”, says Price as though he’s a news anchor handing over to a reporter, and we get a couple of scenes that appear to have been taken from different prints of the movie. Price tries a similar schtick by having ‘conversations’ with Boris Karloff, courtesy of Black Sabbath clips.

The editing is terrible – we often cut back to Price when he’s mid-word. The sourced clips are in various aspect ratio, meaning that the 4:3 film frequently has heavily letterboxed scenes, and they vary in quality too.

So what does this badly edited, shoddily produced rip-off have going for it? Well, sex and violence, mainly. If you fancy Randall’s Don’t Open Till Christmas but are unsure about sitting through the whole thing, this is the movie for you, as all the best bits are compiled into one digestible chunk (and the footage here is actually much better than most versions of the film currently circulating), and you’ll get to enjoy the legendary “chainsaw elevator” scene from Pieces again.There are nasty bits from Slaughter High, Mark of the Devil, Last Cannibal World, Bay of Blood and Mother’s Day, as well as clips from Cannibal Man, Friday 13^th 1 and 2, Crocodile and Tombs of the Blind Dead. Most of the clips seem to have been selected on the sound basis of how much nudity and gore they contain.

But also thrown in are scenes from Devil Bat, The Lost World, the silent Phantom of the Opera, White Zombie, Scars of Dracula (the blood puking bat!), Nosferatu, The Thirteenth Guest, Who Killed Doc Robbin and The Ape, presumably because they are either public domain or taken from copyright-free trailers. Most bizarrely, there are clips from Paul Hart-Wilden’s short Horror Film.

Trashy as this outrageous scam is, there’s no questioning that it’s an amusing time waster. Perhaps inevitably, it was never commercially released but is now available via Youtube.

DF