Ten Days of Terror!: Hands of the Ripper

Film: Hands of the Ripper
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

I went into Hands of the Ripper completely blind. Based on the title, I expected this to be a giallo along the lines of The New York Ripper. It’s not, though. While the title is lurid enough, this is a Hammer film, and one of the last of Hammer’s Gothic horror movies, and close to the end of Hammer’s productions until they were brought back in the mid-2000s. Knowing that this is a film that takes place in that time period, and given that this is a British production, your first thought is almost certainly that this is referencing Jack the Ripper. Your first thought is going to be right.

To get things going, we’re going to see Jack the Ripper pursued by a mob (an uncredited Danny Lyons). He arrives home to a wife who realizes who he is and murders her in front of their young daughter. We jump a good 15 years into the future and that young girl is now Anna (Angharad Rees), living with Mrs. Golding (Dora Bryan), who does séances in her home. Anna, more or less, plays the spirits. At one such séance, we are introduced to Dr. Pritchard (Eric Porter) and his son Michael (Keith Bell). We also meet Dysart (Derek Godfrey), a member of Parliament.

Ten Days of Terror!: Subspecies

Film: Subspecies
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

The vampire movie has changed a lot since the originals. Many modern vampire movies play with the standard vampire myth in a lot of ways. Some can’t transform into bats or other creatures, or are vulnerable only to some things. There’s always been a sense of romance around the vampire, though. While there are exceptions (say, 30 Days of Night), typically vampires are as tragic as they are terrifying, at least in theory. Subspecies is a vampire film that dives back into the roots of the subgenre. We’re not hanging out in Alaska or Louisiana. No, we’re going to be spending our time in the OG vampire capital: Transylvania.

We need to start, as we often do, with setting up the bad guy. In Transylvania, around the town of Prejmer, the vampire king (Angus Scrimm) lives in peace and solitude. He possesses an artifact called the Bloodstone, which constantly drips the blood of the saints, meaning he doesn’t need to hunt and kill to survive. King Vladislav has two sons, Radu (Anders Hove) and Stefan (Michael Watson). Radu looks undead—long, skeletal fingers, fangs, unnaturally pale skin. Stefan looks human and poses as a researcher studying nocturnal animals. Desiring the Bloodstone, Radu murders his father, and in the process creates a quartet of little demon-like creatures to do his bidding.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Last Man on Earth

Film: The Last Man on Earth
Format: Streaming video from FreeVee on Fire!

Richard Matheson’s “I am Legend” has been adapted to film three times. The latest time was called I am Legend and was a massive blockbuster featuring Will Smith. Before that was The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. The first version was The Last Man on Earth from 1964, featuring Vincent Price. In my opinion, the adaptations have gotten steadily worse; The Last Man on Earth is not only the best of the three adaptations, it’s in many ways the one most loyal to the novel, in no small part because the screenplay was co-written by Matheson himself, even if he was disappointed enough in the result to asked to be listed under a different name.

In 1968, Robert Morgan (Vincent Price) lives by himself in the ruins of a city devastated by a terrible plague. We learn through a series of extended flashbacks that Morgan was a scientist working on finding a cure for a bacterial plague that has wiped out the planet’s population. However, he is not entirely alone, as it were. Those who have died of the plague have returned, and while physically and mentally weak, the bear all of the other classic hallmarks of vampires. They avoid their own reflection in mirrors, are repelled by garlic, and heal from wounds quickly, forcing Morgan to kill them by staking them. Because there are things that need to be discussed in detail, consider the rest of this under a spoiler warning—this movie is 60 years old, but that doesn’t change the fact that you may not want it spoiled.

Ten Days of Terror!: Billy the Kid vs. Dracula

Film: Billy the Kid vs. Dracula
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

When I started this blog at the end of 2009 (Jeez…2009!), I knew I would be going to some places that were going to move me out of my comfort zone. I would watch directors I’d never heard of, movies that took me places I hadn’t conceived of, and would see sights that would stick with me for good or ill. But of all of the places I have gone with this project, I could not have foreseen something as singularly bizarre as Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.

The title of this one doesn’t contain any secrets. We’re literally going to see William H. Bonney, aka Billy the Kid (Chuck Courtney) facing off against Count Dracula (John Carradine) in the Wild West. Dracula is going cross-country for some reason, and it’s not explained. Honestly, that’s probably for the best. It doesn’t matter how Dracula crossed the Atlantic or why he, a creature who depends on a population to feed on and protection from daylight, is crossing a huge wilderness thinly inhabited by settlers and otherwise populated by an almost certainly hostile native population. It also doesn’t really explain how he manages to travel by night when the average stagecoach traveled through the day. These are things better left unexplored, honestly.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Brainiac

Film: The Brainiac (El Baron del Terror)
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

One of the great horror movies of the 1960s is Mario Bava’s Black Sunday. In the opening sequence, a woman is accused of worshipping Satan, which she freely admits to doing. She suffers a terrible punishment (including having a spiked masked hammered onto her face), but before she dies, she swears she will return and revenge herself on the descendants of those who are sentencing her to death. I bring this up because this is pretty much the same plot as The Brainiac (or El Baron del Terror if you want the original Spanish).

In the opening sequence of The Brainiac, Baron Vitelius d’Estera (Abel Salazar) is accused of a host of crimes by the Mexican branch of the Inquisition. As he is about to be burned at the stake, he vows to return when the (extremely fake-looking) comet that is overhead returns, in 300 years. Since all of this takes place in 1661, you can guess that the Baron is coming back in 1961, essentially the film’s present day. And, because this is aping Black Sunday, the Baron has vowed to wipe out the lineages of all of his accusers.

Ten Days of Terror!: The Virgin Spring

Film: The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan)
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on Kid #1’s TV.

For those who are movie snobs, certain genres lie at the shallow end of the swimming pool. Comedies, especially rom-coms, are a good example of this. Another is horror. Horror movies don’t get a lot of respect from the clove cigarette crowd, with a few exceptions. Show them a classic American low-budget grindhouse film like The Last House on the Left and they are likely to turn up their nose. However, if you present essentially the same story in black-and-white and have it directed by Ingmar Bergman, and we’re talking about a Criterion Collection mainstay, The Virgin Spring (Jungfrukällan).

This is not a film that goes long on plot, but it doesn’t have to. It’s about the drama and terrible nature of the events that happen in its 90-minute running time. Young Karin (Birgitta Pettersson) is sent by her parents Märeta (Birgitta Valberg) and Töre (Max von Sydow) to take candles to the local church. Karin is pampered, in contrast to her half-sister Ingeri (Gunnel Lindblom).

Ten Days of Terror!: Mill of the Stone Women

Film: Mill of the Stone Women (Il mulino delle donne di pietra)
Format: Streaming video from Plex on Fire!

I tend not to love Italian horror, since a great deal of it is frequently incomprehensible to me, at least in terms of plot. That’s different for the older Italian horror, though, and a movie like Mill of the Stone Women (Il mulino delle donne di pietra) is a case of an Italian filmmaker doing something in the more Gothic style. Gothic horror is always a lot of fun. It’s overblown and weird and dramatic to a fault. It also has great costuming and sets and is gorgeous to look at. That’s certainly the case here.

I thought, for a very long time, that the name of this movie was Mill of the Stone Woman, meaning a singular gorgon-like creature. It’s not, though. The reference is to a collection of moving statues held in an old windmill. Hans van Arnhim (Pierre Brice), heads to a remote Dutch island to do research on a story about the mill in question. Once an actual grain mill, it has been turned into an art installation by a sculptor named Gregorious Wahl (Herbert A.E. Bohme). The machinery of the mill now acts as a carousel, displaying the sculptures.