Roger Dicken - special effects from THUNDERBIRDS to ALIEN



Roger Dicken in Starburst #15



Roger Dicken's skills as a sculptor, designer and fabricator of creature effects were on show in Alien, for which he built the very first Chestburster and Facehugger. They're still scuttling around our nightmares, but weren't the first monsters that he'd made for horror films...

Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind showcased visual effects that had never seen before. Specialist magazine Cinefex launched in 1979, to describe in detail breakthrough effects work in the latest movies. It devoted issue 1 to Star Trek - The Motion Picture and Alien. 

Pictured amongst the genre heavyweights working on Alien, was Roger Dicken, who I recognised from his work on children's films. Here he was, having built the first Facehugger and Chestburster, creatures that immediately lodged in our psyches and grew into long-lasting cultural icons of fantasy fiction.

I'd like to look back at some of the other highlights of his previous ten years of movie work, most of it using similar effects techniques to his work in Alien. Dicken's career is an example of the many who alternately worked on TV series and low-budget British features, as well as 'Hollywood' blockbusters that were filmed in London studios.

One of my earliest movie memories is this Martian rock snake that loomed up in the cinema and opening one huge red glowing eye before unleashing a torrent of fireballs! It appears halfway through Thunderbirds Are Go (1966), the first of two Thunderbirds feature films that presented the TV characters in widescreen and colour. I've only recently learned that Roger Dicken made these creatures, based on Derek Meddings' design. He seemed to specialise in creatures that appear to be made of rock.  

Stanley Kubrick was fully aware that some of the best model makers in the business had worked on Thunderbirds. He employed Roger's sculpting skills for about a year to help build the surface of the Moon seen through the portals of some sets, early in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Dicken also sculpted some glittery, humanoid aliens when Kubrick was still planning to show them at the climax of the film.

World of Horror #7

He also worked on practical effects in horror films, like the lightning climax in Hammer's Scars of Dracula, for which he also built a large bat (above), capable of 'biting' and licking blood. He'd previously built the moth monster for The Blood Beast Terror (1968). The same year, he worked on practical effects for Witchfinder General (1968) for the hanging and burning scenes, as well as the very effective and subsequently censored 'pricking' tortures. He later sculpted the impressive, evil-looking skeleton for The Creeping Flesh (1973).

House of Hammer #12

Making the models of a variety of dinosaurs, including a plesiosaur and a chasmosaurus, led to an Oscar-nomination on Hammer's When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth. Superbly detailed models and impressively smooth stop-motion animation by Jim Danforth (above, right) easily rivalled Ray Harryhausen's work at the time. 

Dicken's love of rocky-looking creatures can be seen in the design of the large crab monsters (above) that hunt cavemen on the beach.

I was first aware of Roger's work when he briefly became a familiar face as a dinosaur-maker for Amicus Films' The Land That Time Forgot. He was photographed with his creations for magazines and newspapers, as well as appearing on children's TV in Clapperboard (I think). While stop-motion animation was still the most convincing way to show huge prehistoric animals, the producers at Amicus couldn't afford the time and expense.

World of Horror #7

Instead, Roger suggested large, realistic puppets, operated from the inside or by simple rod and line manipulation - methods where there was very little to go wrong that could hold up filming. He didn't even trust remote-control technology. Each model was around four feet long and could be operated from the inside, or underneath. 

But once he'd made them all, including two triceratops, and a pair of tyrannosaurs, the effects team decided they would operate the models themselves, annoying Dicken so much that he turned down all work on the follow-ups The People That Time Forgot (which featured far fewer monsters) and At The Earth's Core (which overused men-in-suits). 

For The Land That Time Forgot, it was James Bond veteran John Richardson who built all of the full-scale animals, like the pterodactyl and plesiosaur (above), which had to interact with the cast. 

Roger built all the scaled-down creatures, that were then placed among matching-scale table-top jungles, looking especially realistic in the night-time scenes. Above are two styracosaurs caught in the submarine's spotlight. The ensuing mortar attack is quite upsetting, as the animals are blown to pieces.

The Land That Time Forgot was a 'U' certificate (the equivalent of a 'G' now) but the story is quite downbeat, sticking closely to Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel, with a high body count decimating the characters. 

Despite the obviousness of the techniques used, it was fast-paced fun and hugely popular with children. The Land That Time Forgot led to three similar films, Dicken working on the last of them, Warlords of Atlantis (1978), where he designed and built mythical creatures living around the underwater city. 
 

Film Review, August 1978

Again, the puppets were manipulated by hand and, again, he wasn't allowed to do it himself. Again, actors mostly interacted with the models using back-projection techniques that were fooling nobody, not even the children.

Film Review, Sept 1978

But Roger's fine detailing made the creatures look exceptionally good in publicity photos, especially this giant octopus that engulfs a ship.

The same year, he started work on Alien, hired to build the Chestburster, Facehugger and humanoid stage of the alien. As is often the case, he was having to make three-dimensional objects from someone else's (two-dimensional) sketches, left to add his own design ideas and how they might function.

Being such a high-profile production, and with director Ridley Scott terrified that he'd get a monster that would get laughs, it was an exceptionally high pressure assignment. Dicken was being supervised by a committee, when he was used to working alone. There was a meeting with writers, producers and the director, where they all fired their ideas at him at once, about what the Facehugger should look like. He was at a loss how to proceed. Dan O'Bannon thankfully combined all the suggestions from the meeting into one drawing, something Dicken could try and work with.

Giger's idea was something much larger, but it was simplified into just hands and a tail. Giger approved O'Bannon's design and Dicken's work. Dicken had wanted to emphasise the creature's knack for self-defence, by adding sharp barbs to the tail, preventing anyone pulling it off. He also had to rig his Facehugger model (above) so that it could 'bleed' acid in this scene.

Photo of Roger Dicken on set for the Facehugger scene in the Weyland-Yutani archives 

The Chestburster had originally been envisaged by Giger as something looking like a blind, fat, featherless turkey with teeth. Dicken made something faithful to that design, with the neck wide enough to fit his hand inside, but Ridley felt it could look too comical. 

Dicken streamlined it so much that his hand no could longer fit inside, and the necessary mechanisms barely could either. The outside was finally so smooth and organic-looking that it was also very hard to hide any joins. His idea to give it little arms so that it could pull itself out of the chest was rejected. But this time he got to operate his creation for the infamous scene in the film (above).

Dicken's early chest-burster sculpts in the Weyland-Yutani Archives 

Dicken took the first attempt at building the full-size alien, working with Bolaji Badejo's body-mould to make a faithful representation of the phallic creature that Ridley liked so much in Giger's artbook, 'Necronomicon' (above). But keeping to that same scale, the head was quite enormous.

According to the Cinefex article, owing to the strain of working for a 'committee' as well as building the smaller creatures, Dicken quit his work on the final-stage, humanoid alien. An unpopular move, but he was exonerated when the project finally needed H.R. Giger to come over from Switzerland, plus a whole team working under Carlo Rambaldi, to complete the suit. Rambaldi's expertise provided the immensely complicated jaw mechanism inside the head. 

Photos of Roger Dicken's first attempts at a full-size alien on the Alien Explorations blog  



A filmography to be proud of. Dinosaurs, vampire bats, crab monsters, rock snakes and xenomorphs. I've enjoyed his work in many movies, whether I knew it at the time or not.

(I referred to contemporary magazines for research; interviews with Roger in Starburst #15, Film Review magazine (September, 1978) and a great pre-Alien career article in Photoplay Film Year Book (1979). As well as the Alien coverage in Cinefex #1, and Cinefantastique volume 9, number 1. His work is barely mentioned in the original Book of Alien!



Here's my further look at the earliest Alien merchandise and magazine coverage.

AMICUS: HOUSE OF HORRORS (2012) - heartfelt fan-made documentary

AMICUS: HOUSE OF HORRORS

(2012, UK)

Attempting to document the famous horror studio

For British horror films of the 1960s and 1970s, Amicus Productions rivalled Hammer films by taking a different approach with considerable success. Amicus brought horror to mostly modern day settings, like the living rooms of The Skull, the film studios of Madhouse, the high-tech werewolf hunt of The Beast Must Die... They also monopolised on the 'portmanteau' horror, a film made up of short sharp shocks, held together by a linking story - Dr Terror's House of Horror's lead to the first EC Comics adaptions of Tales From The Crypt, Vault of Horror and beyond to Tales That Witness Madness and The Monster Club.

Strangely, the company started and ended with child-scary family adventures, from Dr Who and the Daleks to Warlords of Atlantis. Amicus made a lasting impression on several generations of filmgoers and late night TV horror fans.

Geoffrey Whitehead from And Now The Screaming Starts

On a limited budget, writer and director Derek Pykett has made dozens of interviews on home video around England. But looks like he was unable to pay for any expensive archive materials to portray a more complete story with behind the scenes footage, movie clips or old interviews. Instead he gives us some valuable time with many surviving cast and crew members who worked on the films.

I wish he'd spent a little more time on editing and deciding on a target audience. The running time is unnecessarily inflated by introducing many extremely familiar plots and people. Worse still, by repeating facts and introductions as if we've not been paying attention. His pieces to camera are also very downbeat, as he repeatedly reminds us who's dead, in stark contrast to the many chirpy interviewees who remember the good times they had while they colleagues were alive.

The variable sound levels also make this contrast with the flashy DVD extras that we're used to on special editions.

But.

No-one else has got these interviews or even some of the interviewees that he has here. No one's bothered to go this far down the cast list and persuaded the directors and cameramen to talk about these almost forgotten films.

This could have been slicker, and a bigger budget could have pulled in better interviews and bigger names, Christopher Lee and Stephanie Beacham are absent. But there are no other Amicus documentaries out there anywhere!

It starts a little confusingly by introducing Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg, the two producers who started Amicus. But then fast-forwards through the whole story of Amicus by telling us their entire life stories upto their deaths. Making me think the whole documentary was going to be a series of biographies all told in voiceover...

The style then settles down with a great remembrance from Milton Subotsky's widow who thankfully has great recall about his heyday. Then we get into the main meat of the programme, split over two discs, an exhaustive film-by-film account of the entire Amicus filmography, related by an impressive roster of surviving cast and crew members.

Angela Pleasence and father in From Beyond The Grave

I was particularly pleased to see interviews with Geoffrey Bayldon (Asylum, Tales From The Crypt, The House That Dripped Blood), indeed he introduces it. Also a pleasure to see Angela Pleasence (a stark presence in From Beyond The Grave) who's still out there working!

Actors who only appeared in one scene in one Amicus film are also delightful, partly because someone else remembers their characters as vividly as I do. Angela Grant as Ian Hendry's girlfriend in Tales From The Crypt is famous (to me) because I've seen it so often, and the shocking scenes that she's in. It's surprising just how much insightful material can come from someone who worked with Amicus so briefly.

Some are character actors who were more famous for their non-horror roles, like Jeremy Kemp (Dr Terror's House of Horrors) who regularly appeared as German commanders. Kenny Lynch (also Dr Terror) and Geoffrey Davies (Vault of Horror, above) were far better known for light entertainment and will only otherwise be recognised by those who remember 1970s' TV.

Crew members include production designers, cameramen and a couple of directors, like Kevin Connor (From Beyond The Grave, The Land That Time Forgot) and Stephen Weeks (I, Monster). There are of course many other interviewees and even a couple of visits to filming locations.

Director and voiceover Derek Pykett keeps appearing to fill in gaps in the timeline where he has no relevant interviewees, most annoyingly on my favourite, Tales From The Crypt, giving the first of a seemingly endless, dour reminder of how wonderful Peter Cushing was and reminding us that he's dead. I'll forgive him all this because Derek also wrote this invaluable paperback guide, British Horror Film Locations.

I won't forgive that Derek skips over the Amicus monster movies far too quickly, even though he's interviewed their director, Kevin Connor. The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot, At The Earth's Core, and Warlords of Atlantis are scarcely covered. They were the few Amicus films that I saw at the cinema and indeed the only ones I was allowed to see at the time. They were also a large part of Amicus' success in the 1970s, and just as much a part of producer Milton Subotsky's love affair with fantastic literature.

So, after the extended run through most of the Amicus filmography, it then circles a little randomly for a while with another downbeat Cushing tribute and some leftover bits of interviews to try and sum up.

For enthusiasts who know these films and recognise these actors from relatively small roles, this is a treat. But it's a rough introduction to the subject, with not enough enticingly presented clips (just trailers) or thorough enough background, to please newcomers.

But there's more good stuff in the DVD extras! Also included are two rare archive interviews with Peter Cushing! The first is from 1990, and both are introduced by the interviewers as they are today.

While many of us are more than aware of how the death of his wife severely affected him, it's rare to see Peter talking about it at any length. And rather than being overly sentimental, he remains composed, self-deprecating and even humorous about what was a disastrous and prolonged grieving process of nearly thirteen years! He admits he tried to kill himself. Too cowardly to throw himself into the sea, he ran back home and tried to bring on a heart attack by running up and down the stairs! Which is quite an admission, that he treats with a smile. To slowly get over Helen's death, he threw himself into work and said yes to any and all offers. 

The second is a 1983 interview, with a young inexperienced interviewer who Peter politely but occasionally catches out. This was crucially filmed just at the end of his 13-year exile from the public. Perhaps it's Peter easing himself back into talking about things. This is a slightly more guarded interview, but reveals he actually doesn't like watching horror films! He prefers war, drama, comedy, westerns. Though he makes a point of gratefully acknowledging the horror fans who enjoy his work. He only watches his rushes but not his films.

Amicus: House of Horrors is only sold in the US, but the DVDs aren't region-coded. They can be bought direct from Oldies.com in the US, or you can easily get them via Amazon.co.uk, if you're in Britain.

The DVD set makes a great companion to this similarly covered Little Shoppe of Horrors' magazine recent Amicus special.

See many more of the classic Amicus movie posters here at The Wrong Side of the Art.

THE PSYCHOPATH (1966) - Amicus horror not on DVD

THE PSYCHOPATH

(1966, UK)

A twisty, twisted tale...

Amicus Studios became successful once Hammer Films had attracted international attention to British horror in the 1950s. Continuing through the 60s and 70s, Amicus didn't copy Hammer's style, distinguishing themselves with modern settings and their 'short sharp shock' compendium horrors.

Like Hammer, most Amicus films have been released on DVD, but I've just been reminded by dedicated horror publisher Johnny Mains (on Twitter as @noose&gibbet ) that a couple have been left behind. Sometimes, when  nostalgic mini-genres are plundered, they leave out the shit ones. That's not the case here, The Psychopath deserves to be regarded as an Amicus classic.

A small group of suited men collect in a drawing room to play a music recital (it gets better). But one seat is empty, the violinist late. Because he's been savagely run down in the street, repeatedly run over by a car. The police investigate immediately, a Detective (Patrick Wymark) quizzes the victim's fellow musicians. None of them have watertight alibis, all of them act suspiciously. The killer has also left a doll at the scene of the crime, an exact likeness of the dead man. This isn't the work of a murderer, but a psychopath...

Yes, it starts as a murder mystery, but in the same way that later Italian giallo amp up the violence and variety of the murders, The Psychopath is easily elevated horror status. There's also a depiction of madness which, taken to extremes by a few masterful actors, gives us what I lazily call 'horror acting'. Many performances by Michael Gough, Conrad Veidt and Freda Jackson can be described as over-acting. To me they're reaching the glorious heights of their characters' insanity, and briefly taking you with them.

One such performance in The Psychopath reminded me strongly of the style of acting in Psychoville 2, which I've only just watched. Several other elements of the film, like the old lady talking to her dolls, and the effete owner of a toyshop, convinced me that this has to be in the collections of either Reece Shearsmith or Steve Pemberton, formerly of The League of Gentlemen.

Patrick Wymark plays the police inspector who should really be fired because so many people are dying while he's still puzzling it all out. Wymark is the anchor of the film, seedily brilliant in both Polanski's Repulsion and Amicus' The Skull, but just as happy in a wig in period horrors Witchfinder General and Blood on Satan's Claw (1971). Sad to note he passed away aged 50, in 1970 when he was still in demand for a wide variety of work.

Among the suspects are Alexander Knox, who I mainly know as the US President from You Only Live Twice. Hammer regular Thorley Walters (Vampire Circus, Frankenstein Created Women) doing less comedy schtick than usual. Judy Huxtable, so unlucky in Scream and Scream Again (1970). 

The distinctive-looking Robert Crewdson, again sporting his weird beard and grey hair - a look I thought he'd created for the alien, Medra, in The Night Caller (1965) - but this must be how he looked that year!

Particularly good to see Margaret Johnston again, after her subtle menace in the classic Night of the Eagle (1962), and a youthful John Standing before his creepy turns in Torture Garden (1967) and The Legacy (1978).

The Amicus atmosphere is evoked by a soundtrack from Elisabeth Lutyens, who did such wonderful work on Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965), writer Robert Bloch (The House That Dripped Blood, Torture Garden and of course Psycho) and director Freddie Francis, here given time to take care over the 2.35 compositions, even though he wasn't behind the camera. There's a wonderful scene in the house of dolls that mirrors a moment in Blade Runner, when it's hard to distinguish the mannequins from the real thing.

Director Freddie Francis in a publicity shot in Kine Weekly

The vicious opening murder by car pre-empts the very similar start of Terence Young's Hollywood thriller Wait Until Dark (1967). And there's a prominently bare-backed young lady, the year before Vanessa Redgrave caused a fuss by being similarly undressed in Blow Up.

The Psychopath is for fans of the Hammer 'psycho' films, 1960s British horror, German krimis and early giallo. I believe it's shown by Turner Movies in some countries. Sometimes, it appears on YouTube, slightly cropped at the sides. Of course, I'd really love it on blu-ray. Amicus boxset anyone?

Update, November 2013
A Twitter colleague suggested this Italian DVD of The Psychopath, titled La Bambola Di Cera. It has English audio, but with the same tight framing at the sides (from 2.35 to 16:9?). The picture is also soft and the colours weak. But it's the only known DVD out there. Until a properly framed restoration happens I'll still, cheekily, list this as not-on-DVD.

TALES FROM THE CRYPT (1972) - 40 years old and now on Blu-ray

TALES FROM THE CRYPT

(1972, UK)

Another look at the first EC horror comics movie

To mark the 40th year of Amicus Films' Tales From The Crypt, I watched the recently released Australian blu-ray, a very welcome HD upgrade. With so many darkly-lit horror films, there's sometimes 'picture lag' on DVD, where the shadows and darker areas freeze and shift, moving differently to the lighter foreground. Probably a combination of DVD compression and viewing it on an LCD screen, made even more noticeable by a larger screen-size. Blu-ray lessens the problems with its higher storage capacity.

Roy Ashton make-up study

There's a little grain, as expected, and the print seems to have been in good condition. It's a slightly lighter presentation than I'm used to, Peter Cushing's 'black eye' masks are even more noticeable now. Of course, it's easy enough to adjust the contrast and brightness at home to make the scene suitably murky. Grimsdyke's scenes are so brief, I wish they'd just painted his eyes black and guided Cushing into doing the scenes completely blind. Okay, I think about that scene too much... but it's still one of the greatest-looking zombie make-ups.

The dead walks!

Tales From The Crypt of course has other undead characters... Plus of course the glorious, restored, censor cut that appeared in all the DVD versions. It used to be a huge jumpy film splice when it screened on TV in the 70s and 80s.

Late 1970s TV Times clipping

The Joan Collins segment really grabbed me. My first taste of a yet-to-be-named 'home invasion' story. Almost a silent movie, the story unfolds as we share her character's thoughts, communicated through some great visual storytelling. She discovers there's a raving lunatic just outside the house (dressed as Santa Claus), and quickly has to secure the house, barring the windows as he stalks around looking for a way in. All this is conveyed through her eyes and reactions. There's no dialogue, just an ironic roster of jolly Christmas carols playing on the radio.

Publicity foldout, and the original paperback novelisation

It's not the only story with effective, lengthy, wordless scenes. Ian Hendry's Maitland stalks around after a car crash, but we only see the horror develop through his point-of-view. In the final story, Major Rogers runs a home for the blind by skimming the money for himself. He pays for his crimes, locked in a solitary cell, again with no-one to talk to. Along with him, we experience his punishment gradually and silently.

While the original EC Comics stories would have a cruelly witty captioned commentary from the Crypt Keeper, the film presents him as a character inside the action, rather than a TV host. He's presented as a marvellously mysterious and ambivalent figure. What's missing in this early visualisation of Tales From The Crypt is humour, but that's certainly a benefit. Without the release of laughter, each ghastly twisted ending remains more haunting.

What a knight for a Crypt Keeper...

While IMDB currently lists the UK release as "October 1972", the UK premiere was September 28th (according to a contemporary issue of Films & Filming). In London that month, Crypt was up against John Boorman's wilderness classic Deliverance, Michael Ritchie's brutal Prime Cut and Ken Russell's angrily artful Savage Messiah. Tough, grim competition, but Crypt continued the success of the many short story horror films from Amicus Productions.

Australian Blu-ray, but the title heading is from the TV series

I was initially reluctant to order this Australian blu-ray, released by Shock Entertainment, because of the mixture of right and wrong artwork on the sleeve. There are photos from both the 1972 film and the 1990s US TV series. On the front cover is the poster from the film, but the typeface and green gloopy art is from the TV series. The front cover gives 50/50 odds as to which movie it contains. Thankfully, it's the Amicus film, but these confusing errors must have lost them sales.

More lobby cards, more facts, more of a review about Tales From The Crypt in Black Hole Movies here

The 1964 Ballantine reprint

In other trivia, the Wikipedia piece on the movie reports that writer/producer Milton Subotsky based most of his script on this 1964 volume of reprints because the original comics weren't available. Explaining the coincidence of why this paperback (published in the UK and US) has four out of the five original comic strips. (The fifth story was picked from the 1965 Vault of Horror reprint).

More about Grimsdyke's simple but effective make-up on the Peter Cushing blogspot and Grimsdyke rises again (publicity photo)...

Tales from the Crypt is uncut on DVD in the US and UK

Tales From The Crypt on DVD in the UK, pictured at the top

Tales From the Crypt on DVD in the USA, double-bill with Vault of Horror

1972 Jack Oleck novelisation, back cover

The Ghouls: Book Two - more inspiring horror stories

THE GHOULS: BOOK TWO

The Stories Behind Classic Horror Films

The Body Snatcher by Robert Louis Stevenson

The Beast With Five Fingers by W. F. Harvey

The Fog Horn by Ray Bradbury

The Fly by George Langelaan

Viy by Nikolai Gogol

An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce

The Colour Out Of Space by H. P. Lovecraft

The Skull Of The Marquis De Sade by Robert Bloch

The Oblong Box by Edgar Allan Poe

In the first volume of The Ghouls editor Peter Haining collected short stories that inspired horror films from the 1890s to the 1940s. This second paperback involves more familiar films, from 1945 to 1970, the idea being a sequential look at the history of horror films. Published in hardback in 1971, I bought them as paperbacks in 1974.

Here's the remaining nine stories and the films they inspired...

THE BODY SNATCHER

(1945, USA)

Based on The Body Snatcher (1884) by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Stevenson is well known for the novels Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. His short story The Body Snatcher is about the relationship between Dr MacFarlane and a medical school friend of his, Fettes, who both studied under Dr Knox (the real-life surgeon who employed the graverobbers Burke and Hare). Both copies I have of The Ghouls have all references to Knox obscured to read as 'K----', presumably to sidestep an old legal issue, even though it was written over fifty years later.

The film expands on Stevenson's story adding layers to the characters. Stevenson portrays the doctor and the body snatcher as scheming partners-in-crime. The film adds a middle-man, Fettes (Russell Wade), studying under an upright Dr MacFarlane (stony-faced Henry Daniell), while Gray (Karloff) is the more obvious villain. The script cleverly, slowly implicates MacFarlane as being equally responsible for Gray's crimes, adding shades of self-delusional morality to his character. The student Fettes is attracted to MacFarlane's immense knowledge and skill, but hesitates to chase after medical advances with such freshly obtained 'research material'.

This is a different angle from the subsequent adaptions of the 'Burke and Hare' story in that it portrays that characters that knew them rather than following the original events. For an American production, it displays enough authentic detail to represent the Scottish locations.

The Body Snatcher is a jewel of 1940s horror, as you're no doubt aware, it's one of Val Lewton's productions for RKO. While the budgets were low, the directing, lighting and acting were all superb. The scripts had psychological layers, moral ambiguities and regularly challenged 'untouchable' authority figures (notably in The Ghost Ship). Lewton's works are the 'films noirs' of horror.

Gray is a purely evil role for Karloff (also detestable as the asylum owner in Lewton's Bedlam), when the actor usually gave his mad doctors and monsters a sympathetic angle. Even here he initially throws us off guard by being friendly to a little girl. Compared to Karloff, Lugosi's role is tiny, with scarcely any dialogue (though the posters and trailers made it look like they were the two stars). I love their confrontational scene - it symbolically brings their much-publicised 'rivalry' as horror actors to a definitive end.

THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS

(1946)

Based on The Beast With Five Fingers (1928) by W. F. Harvey.

The story of a disembodied hand haunting the nephew of the dead owner is given a slightly more logical basis in the original. Because Adrian Borlsover is blind, but very good with his hands - he can read braille, feel his way around, and as he's slipping away, develops the talent for 'automatic writing', jotting down thoughts when he's unconscious. In this way, his hand changes his will and requests its freedom after his death. The hand then starts causing trouble in the library...

The movie dispenses with the blindness, making the hand's many skills more mysterious, but adds the Uncle's skill of great piano-playing. This is used to great effect in a key scene where his nephew (Peter Lorre) hears music when there's no-one sitting at the piano... But is Uncle exerting some kind of power over his legacy from beyond the grave, or is it all his nephew's paranoia?

The studio wanted this to be a comedy as much as a horror thriller, watering down the film's original dramatic intent. The film lurches between romantic comedy and gothic horror, at its most potent in the hallucinatory death scene - a disorientating, lurching camera and distorted music made all the more intense by Max (King Kong) Steiner's soundtrack.

Peter Lorre (The Raven, M, Maltese Falcon) is acting his heart out as the librarian on the verge of a nervous breakdown, is cruelly interrupted by Robert Alda (MASH actor Alan Alda's dad) pursuing a light-hearted romance, and J. Carroll Naish spending too much time making a joke of everything in a hokey Italian accent. This spoils what it could have been, but the antics of the hand, running around behind the books in the library (an idea from the story) and locked in a safe nailed to a block, make it strong enough to seek out. I was thrilled to see another hypnotic performance from Victor Francen, who was beyond excellent in the sound version of the extraordinary anti-war movie J'Accuse (1938).

The story was plundered by many other films, especially a great episode in Dr Terror's House of Horrors, with Christopher Lee being terrorised. The central uncertainty of whether Lorre's character is imagining the roving hand was also exploited in Oliver Stone's horror The Hand (1981). But the first 'nod' was the most popular - the character of 'Thing' which made itself so handy around The Addams Family TV household (1964).

While this was included in William K Everson's Classics of the Horror Film, The Beast With Five Fingers has never been released on DVD, but it's out there somewhere, maybe hiding in your bookcase...

THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS

(1953, USA)

Based on The Fog Horn (1951) by Ray Bradbury.

This very short story, first published in a newspaper, describes one evening where two lighthouse keepers see something in the stormy sea attracted by their fog horn.

Written by his childhood friend Ray Bradbury, this single scenario grew into the basis for Ray Harryhausen's first chance to work on his own movie project, setting a template for many more in which he had huge creative input, but without actual onscreen credits for script, producing, or directing. He created spectacular results on low budgets for his fifties sci-fi movies, practically single-handed. The lack of money isn't even that noticeable, especially compared to many other monster B-movies then and since. Even the scenes of panic in the streets were memorably done.

Testing nuclear bombs in the Arctic activates and releases a frozen dinosaur (whoops). It decides to rerun to its old haunts which are, unfortunately, where Manhattan presently is. Cue mass panic, a useless army and navy and a mad old professor trying to save the citizens of New York...

I still marvel at how Harryhausen integrated the animated model of the monster into footage of the streets in a daytime scene. Matching the lighting on the creature to the sunlit street scenes even makes frame blow-ups look good today. This rampage was a step up from the nocturnal metropolitan exploits of the giant monsters seen in The Lost World (1925) and King Kong (1933).

The monster's visit to Coney Island is admittedly at night, but that's mainly to show up the flames, when a wooden rollercoaster is burnt down. I believe this location is still there, though the rollercoaster is long out of use. There's another smaller rollercoaster still operating at the Coney Island fair - just as terrifying as any modern ride, because it's old, creaky and wooden.

The success of this movie, and particularly the idea of a radioactively reactivated dinosaur, directly inspired Japanese producers to make the first Godzilla (1954).

THE FLY

(1958, USA)

Based on The Fly (1957) by George Langelaan.

Playboy isn't just about the bunnies and the centrefolds, it has articles, interviews and short stories. This is how The Fly first appeared, nestled between the delicately touched-up breasts in Hugh Hefner's groundbreaking magazine for men.

The story reads much like the film, starting with the mysterious murder of Andre Delambre by his wife, with a steam hammer. We know whodunnit, but why did Helene kill him, and why use the hammer twice when his head was crushed the first time?

Andre's brother Francois and the police talk to Helene about her husband's experiments, wondering why she's so fraught whenever there's a fly in the room. It turns out he was experimenting with matter transportation and something went terribly wrong...

The highlight of reading the story again was discovering that the family cat, Dandelo, is actually accounted for... though it's not a happy ending (in the film he simply disappears into an other-worldly meow). Mostly, the story and the characters are very closely adhered to - if it's not broke, don't fix it. Though the ending was tweaked to adhere to the motion picture code.

The 1958 version is completely different from the Cronenberg remake. It's much like the experiments of many other white-coated scientists in the sci-fi boom of that decade. A close comparison would be Leo G Carroll's storyline in Tarantula (1955). The addition of widescreen, vibrant colour, and a good cast set it above many contemporaries, and the concept of teleportation still fascinates.

The scene of the monster's unveiling is a genre highpoint, but I'm equally unnerved by the scientist hiding under a black veil, unable to talk to his wife, his humanity ebbing away.

Vincent Price isn't the mad scientist here, it's nice to see him as a sympathetic character for a change. It's Patricia Owens (as Helene) who has the task of carrying the whole fantastic story in and out of the flashbacks. David Hedison (as Andre) may have thought this was going to be his most unbelievable role, not realising he was about to enter Irwin Allen's lost world, and endless voyages to the bottom of the sea. 

This original version of The Fly spawned two sequels - detailed here in my the trilogy of Fly films.

VIY: SPIRIT OF EVIL

(1967, Russia)

Based on Viy (1835) by Nikolai Gogol.

Horror stories used to be rare in Russia. This tells of a hapless philosophy student who gets cornered by ancient witch. Trying to repel her advances, he kills her and abandons the body. In death, she appears young and beautiful... 

When he hears of the death of a rich Cossack's daughter in a faraway village, he sees the chance to earn a little for reading scriptures over her as she lies in state. Hitching a lift cross-country, he strikes a deal to to be locked in their old church for three nights with the recently deceased girl, while he recites blessings over her. But on the first night, he discovers that somehow the witch may yet have her revenge. She unleashes a vast array of powers to attack him before his task is over...

For the introduction to this story, Haining enthuses over Black Sunday (The Mask of Satan), Mario Bava's celebrated Italian horror. It's a must-see for horror fans, for Barbara Steele's haunted performance, the stunning monochrome photographic effects and an example of how much more violent European cinema was in comparison to the UK or US in 1960.

But. Black Sunday bears only a slight resemblance to Gogol's story, except for the idea that a witch/vampire is getting her revenge. A much closer adaption of the story is Alexander Ptushko's colourful and imaginative Viy: Spirit of Evil (1967). Russia's very first official horror film, it's a cross between a medieval fairy tale and The Exorcist! While the story's descriptions of the witch's night-time assaults are vague, the film attempts to depict them as three distinct set-pieces, using in-camera shock tactics as old those used in Nosferatu, others using free-roaming imagination... 

While the philosophy student resorts to excessive drinking before being forced back into the church has a humorous slant (his visions of demons are blamed on his drunkenness), his overnight vigils get increasingly nightmarish.

The film predates The Evil Dead with increasingly frantic, fast-cutting surrealist horrors inside a rundown wooden building. It even matches many South East Asian horrors with a twitchy, floaty, lank-haired, white-skinned, vengeful young witch.

INCIDENT AT OWL CREEK

(1962, France, La rivière du hibou)

Based on An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge (1890) by Ambrose Bierce.

This very old and very short story was perfect for The Twilight Zone and could easily have influenced several dozen plotlines of the classic TV series. It paints a simple tableau - a traitor in the American Civil War is about to be executed by being hung from a high bridge over a river. The meticulous preparation draws out the suspense and presumably describes the authentic military ceremony for an official hanging. The fate of the accused seems completely hopeless, but at the crucial moment he has a surprise...

This was faithfully adapted into a short French film in 1962, which expanded the story slightly. With very little dialogue, it's a dream-like experience, beautifully-shot and observed.

Unusually, it was then used as a fifth season episode of The Twilight Zone (airing in 1964) as An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge. It was slightly re-edited to be included as a special episode, ensuring that the film still remains accessible.

MONSTER OF TERROR

(1965, UK/USA, also called DIE, MONSTER, DIE!)

Based on The Color Out Of Space (1927) by H. P. Lovecraft.

Lovecraft's nameless shapeless horrors lurch into the realm of sci-fi here with a meteor crash-landing on an old estate in the fictional New England city of Arkham. For once there's a scientific reason for the horror, radiation from space causing extensive mutations in plant and animal alike... The escalating scale of the problem depicted in this early hybrid of sci-fi and horror is ripe for a more faithful adaption.

The movie mostly retreats from showing these horrors and falls back on rather dated gothic chills (a shadowy mansion, walking around at night with candlesticks). But the deteriorating characters and the glimpses of mutation lurking in the shadows make for fascinating monsters in this classic horror setting rather than the bright light of the irradiated deserts of American nuclear sci-fi (Tarantula, Them!).

Boris Karloff is joined by Nick Adams (Invasion of the Astro-Monsters) looking like a tough guy detective and Suzan Farmer (Dracula - Prince of Darkness) as the damsel in distress. How she keeps up with the latest fashions in the middle of nowhere isn't explained.

Director Daniel Haller was obviously a Lovecraft enthusiast, he'd been production designer on Corman's The Haunted Palace and soon directed The Dunwich Horror for the psychedelic era.

My full review of Die, Monster, Die is here.

THE SKULL

(1965, UK)

Based on The Skull Of The Marquis De Sade (1945) by Robert Bloch.

Bloch's short stories are as impressive as his novels. Here he realistically described an obsessive collector of occult curiosities. Like in 'The Man Who Collected Poe' (expertly adapted in Torture Garden) you can tell that the details about Poe and De Sade were all accurate. Bloch presents a pair of ghastly characters, the collector and his favourite 'dealer', as they bargain over the actual skull of the man who 'invented' sadism.

Their relationship remains in the film, but the characters are softened, particularly Peter Cushing as Maitland (a popular name for characters in Amicus horror films). Cushing makes him sympathetic by being academically engrossed in the occult, rather than morbid and unhealthily interested.

Patrick Wymark (Repulsion, Witchfinder General) makes the most of the slimy trader who brings black magic plunder to Maitland's door, but he's repulsive in the story. Christopher Lee has a couple of scenes but is far less interesting than Wymark. To expand the story to feature-length, Maitland now has a wife, a rare horror role for celebrated stage actress Jill Bennett (The Nanny). Also features Nigel Green in yet another of his detective roles (the same year as he made The Ipcress File), and Patrick Magee (Asylum, Tales From The Crypt, A Clockwork Orange).

A good cast and a good idea still presented a huge challenge to director Freddie Francis, who had to derive a movieload of chills from a small solitary skull. He largely succeeds, using innovative point-of-view 'skull-vision', and eerie nightmares. This will please fans of Cushing, Lee and psychological horrors, though the lack of blood and 'skull on a wire' special effects won't hold modern attentions.

After seeing so many scary black-and-white photos for The Skull, when I finally saw it I was surprised that it was not only in colour, but also 2.35 widescreen. The Skull recently debuted on DVD and has just been released on blu-ray as a double-bill with The Man Who Could Cheat Death, with which it has nothing in common except country of origin.

THE OBLONG BOX

(1969, UK)

Based on The Oblong Box (1844) by Edgar Allan Poe.

Poe's tale is a mystery set aboard an ocean liner, another of his pioneering sleuth stories. A passenger is trying to solve the sleeping arrangements of his neighbours onboard and why they have a huge box in one compartment. It takes a disaster to answer his questions...

But the film has nothing to do with the tight little story, apart from using the title and featuring a large box in a completely different way. Instead it starts in colonial Africa, following two brothers back to their estate in England. One is hideously disfigured, forcibly kept in a locked room and going stir-crazy. This rich foundation for horror dissipated by tedious discussions interrupted by short outbursts of unconvincing violence.

The confusing multitude of characters takes time to pay off, though many excellent actors are in the cast. It's disappointing that Christopher Lee and Vincent Price share so little time onscreen together. Fun that Price appears here again with Rupert Davies and Hilary Dwyer, both from Witchfinder General. Shocking to see Dwyer genially playing Price's wife.

But The Oblong Box is a poor example of 'classic horror' for The Ghouls to close with.

Collecting the inspirations for horror movies into volumes of stories was a great idea that sadly didn't catch on, or was too costly to pursue. Usually a single famous short story is enough to carry a collection of less interesting fiction, justifying eye-catching movie photos on the front cover.

While it's often impossible to condense and represent a novel when adapting it into a movie, short stories can just as easily provide the basis for a script. They make for interesting comparisons, but like I've said, finding specific old short fiction isn't easy.

Good stories, however brief, used to become instantly popular by appearing in high-circulation newspapers and magazines. Movie-makers would snap the rights up because the public were already interested in the story. Hitchcock had his people scouring for new stories for his movies and TV shows. But currently short fiction is a rarity in modern publishing, meaning scriptwriters have to find their inspiration elsewhere.

You can read the first review of this collection here - The Phantom of the Opera, The Devil and Daniel Webster, The Magician and more in The Ghouls: Book One.

The superior cover art for both paperbacks was painted by John Holmes. For volume 2 of the 1974 Orbit paperback (at top) he combined a skull, a fly and a female vampire into a single striking vision. More of his gruesome and surreal cover art can be viewed here on British pulp horror fiction site The Vault of Evil. (A big thank you to Johnny Mains, of Noose and Gibbet Publishing for the info.)