Don't Look Now - 1973 film review

There are a lot of hopeless horror movies around, but there are also several masterpieces. My three all-time favourites are The Wicker Man, Rosemary's Baby and Don't Look Now (Midsommar, which has grown on me, is not too far behind, but I don't think it's quite in the same league, while The Shining didn't impress me quite as much as it did most people). I first watched Don't Look Now in the 70s and the shock ending made a great impact on me. It's an arty film, perhaps too self-consciously so, but a recent viewing confirmed that it hasn't lost its power.

The premise is simple and is based on a short story, rather than a novel, by Daphne du Maurier. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play a married couple, the Baxters, whose young daughter dies tragically in a drowning incident. The little girl was wearing a red coat at the time. The couple are deeply affected by their dreadful loss but some time later travel to Venice, where John Baxter is working on an ancient church. In Venice, they meet two elderly sisters, one of whom (superbly played by Hilary Mason) is blind and psychic and claims to be able to see the little girl. Meanwhile, a series of murders is being committed in the city... 

The first time I watched the film, I found it quite bewildering. At that time, I'd never visited Venice, which makes a fantastic setting for the story. Venice is gorgeous, but it also has its macabre side, with all those bewildering twists and turns of the alleyways and the ever-present canals. Water is a central theme of the screenplay and the camera work is dazzling.

I've always been a Julie Christie fan and although the casting of Donald Sutherland must have seemed like a gamble, he is terrific too. This is a film that could easily have slipped into pretentiousness, but the performances are so effective that the risk is averted. The result is a haunting gem.

Nothing But the Night - 1973 film review

Nothing But the Night is a curious film with a first-class pedigree and an outstanding cast. It's fair to say that the whole is less than the sum of its considerable parts, but I found it watchable and interesting, despite several significant flaws. It's a film that spans more than one genre: crime, sci-fi, and horror all play a part. Overall, though (and I'm trying to avoid spoilers here), it would be a stretch to describe it as a crime film.

The stars are Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing, two actors who were never less than watchable. In fact, this was the film that Lee made just before The Wicker Man, and there's one scene which has slight Wicker Man aspects to it, although this movie doesn't compare in quality to Anthony Shaffer's classic. Lee here plays a retired senior cop called Bingham, who is convinced that there is a connection between three recent deaths.

Those deaths get the film off to a dramatic start. They are all incidents which are designed to appear as accidents, but the viewer knows from the start that they are murders. It turns out that all three victims are trustees of an orphanage on a Scottish island. In fact, when I first saw a brief synopsis of this film, I did wonder if the story might bear a resemblance to Gallows Court. It's always irritating when you come up with an idea, and then find someone else had the same notion years earlier! But I needn't have worried. Suffice to say that it is a very, very different sort of story.

The script was written by Bryan Hayles, who was an accomplished exponent of sci-i, and based on a novel by John Blackburn, whose work did span several genres. The cast includes Keith Barron, Georgia Brown (better known perhaps as a singer), Diana Dors (a very over-the-top performance), Fulton McKay, and a young Michael Gambon. The soundtrack was written by Malcolm Williamson, later the Master of the Queen's Music. With all that talent involved, one would have hoped for a less uneven film than this, but it's not bad entertainment. 

Midsommar - 2019 film review

If you're looking for some comfortable viewing to escape darkness in the real world, then Midsommar isn't really for you. This new film, directed by Ari Aster, is often described as a "folk horror" film and it's provoked a lot of discussion. Some critics think that it's ridiculous, and I feel it's over-long, but I also think it repays careful viewing, more than once - if you like this sort of thing, which I do.

One of the finest horror films ever made was The Wicker Man (the original version, that is, with Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee) and in many respects Midsommar borrows from the earlier movie. Outsiders come in to a small, enclosed community which proves to be a pagan cult. Bad stuff happens, culminating in fireworks. So Midsommar is, as Aster has admitted, in some ways very predictable, but what he does with the premise is intriguing.

The story begins with the suicide of the sister of Dani (Florence Pugh), which also leads to the death of the girls' parents. Dani's grief isn't adequately understood by her crass boyfriend Christian (the name is significant, though the symbolism is heavy-handed), who is getting bored with their relationship. In fact, Aster has described this as a sort of horror version of a break-up movie. With some friends, the couple decide to accompany a Swedish college pal, Pelle, to his home commune in Sweden to celebrate a once-every-90-years festival. Bad move...

The filming of the Harga community is visually stunning, and I found this aspect of the movie quite memorable and impressive. The runic symbols, strange buildings, and distinctive landscape all play an important part, as do ancient Norse rituals. And the locals get to watch Austin Powers movies...Yes, the film goes on rather too long, but although it's not for everyone, it's very watchable and several scenes are genuinely horrific. But The Wicker Man is snappier and even better.

Wake Wood - movie review

It's a long time since I read much horror fiction, although in my teens I devoured a number of the short story collections published by Pan, Faber and Fontana. As for horror films, many of them seem obsessed with gore and violence, so I usually give them a miss. But fictional horror at its best can be terrific, as Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson and others have shown.

My favourite horror movie is The Wicker Man, and the very recent film Wake Wood does have some echoes of its brilliant predecessor. The only daughter of a vet and pharmacist is mauled to death by a dog, and in an attempt to cope with their overwhelming grief, the couple move to a small and remote village where they can try to rebuild their life together.

However, it soon becomes clear that there are dark goings-on in the nearby woods. Somehow, the villagers have discovered the secret of bringing a person who has died within the last 12 months back to life – but for three days only. And there are some rather spooky conditions to be met by anyone who wants to avail themselves of this chance to say goodbye for the last time.

Needless to say, the couple cannot resist temptation, and enter into a sort of Faustian pact, which has foreseeably terrible consequences. It's hokum, of course, but done surprisingly well, and the final scene is genuinely memorable and chilling. Much of the power of the film derives from the performances of Aidan Gillen and Eva Birthistle as the bereaved couple, and of Timothy Spall, who presides over the village's rituals with a mixture of geniality and menace that avoids the risk of over-acting the part into absurdity. Although there are some graphic scenes, I would recommend this film to horror fans. It isn't in the same league as The Wicker Man, but it's still a pretty good example of its kind.

Before and After

Peter Antony’s short, snappy story in The London Mystery Magazine, 'Before and After', which I mentioned recently, is (as far as I know) the only short mystery to appear under that name, featuring the notable amateur sleuth Mr Verity.

This is a rare case where the author is more interesting than the story (though the story is a lot of fun.) For the pseudonym of Peter Antony concealed the identities of two brothers, Peter and Anthony Shaffer. They were twins, born in Liverpool in 1926 and they wrote three detective novels together in the 1950s which are firmly in the Golden Age tradition. How Doth the Little Crocodile?, The Woman in the Wardrobe, and Withered Murder are all very enjoyable. They all feature the same brilliant sleuth (though in the third book, which they brought out under their real names, they changed his name to Mr Fathom – all rather odd.)

The short story in LMM, is an impossible crime tale, a neat little snippet, and I am glad to have discovered it after much searching. Anthony went on to write the screenplay for Hitchcock’s Frenzy, as well as Sleuth, the rather less successful Murderer, and that horror classic The Wicker Man. He died in 2001, shortly after publishing his memoirs. Peter wrote a number of outstanding stage plays, perhaps most famously Equus and Amadeus. He was eventually knighted and survives his twin. I wonder if he ever looks back fondly on his early excursions into detective fiction. I hope so.

The London Mystery Magazine

I’ve heard of The London Mystery Magazine, but had never read it until the other day. For a long time I’ve been hunting for an ‘impossible crime’ short story by Peter Antony, and finally Bob Adey, the greatest of all experts on locked room mysteries, supplied me with a copy – which appeared in the LMM.

LMM was a quarterly publication and this particular issue was number 16. This issue was the first to appear under the house flag of Norman Kark Publications, and it included a foreword by Norman’s son, Austen Kark. Now, the name of Austen Kark was later to become well-known for a number of reasons, one of them tragic. Born in 1926, he became a prominent figure in the BBC, notably at the World Service. In 1954 he married for the second time, his wife being that very successful writer Nina Bawden. (Bawden wrote a couple of detective stories in the Fifties, incidentally; I’ve read The Odd Flamingo, which is atmospheric though now rather dated.) And, at the age of 75, he was killed in the Potters Bar rail crash; his widow, seriously injured in the same disaster, wrote a memoir Dear Austen, in which she inveighed against the failures that contributed to the tragedy.

In his foreword, Austen Kark set out the manifesto of LMM: ‘’We hope to present to our readers the best of the several genres which congregate under the banner of Mystery.’

Issue 16 contained reviews (sometimes scathing in tone – even the great Carter Dickson, aka John Dickson Carr, gets a real hammering), articles and stories. Contributors included such major names as John Collier and Gerald Kersh. And there was a fact piece about an 18th century murder case from a young barrister and novelist called Anthony Shaffer. Shaffer went on to write the classic detective puzzle Sleuth, and that masterpiece of horror The Wicker Man. But he was also one half of Peter Antony – more about him another day.