Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon.
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Every Sunday, I like to climb on board a train, take a seat, whip out a pack of Tarot cards and tell a random group of passengers their fortunes. Each of those fortunes contains a horrific and gruesome climax.
And then, when I'm done, I tell them they're all dead and are now arriving in Hell as the train pulls into Doncaster.
You may have guessed from this that I'm a bit of a fan of Amicus movies.
Amicus was, of course, a studio set up in 1962 to ride on the coat tails of Hammer's success. Its founders were Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg and rumour has it the company was launched after Subotsky was turned down for a job by Hammer, even though he was the one who'd suggested it make an updated version of either Dracula or Frankenstein. Clearly, Subotsky took the view that if you can't join them, beat them and, thus, was a legend born.
Fair play to them, Amicus didn't just make films that aped those of Hammer. They did, after all, launch their filmography with the distinctly unthreatening musical vehicle It's Trad, Dad!
But they soon developed a niche of their own.
And that niche was portmanteau movies, usually involving a clutch of strangers being informed of their fate by a mysterious stranger. Fortunes which were always guest-star packed and always involved them suffering a fate worse than death, except when the fate was death.
Thus it was we gleefully received such treats as Dr Terror's House of Horrors, Torture Garden, The House That Dripped Blood, Tales from the Crypt, Asylum, The Vault of Horror and From Beyond the Grave. Who could forget Tom Baker killing people through the power of Voodoo paintings? Alan Fluff Freeman being menaced by a giant weed? Or Barbara Ewing being murdered by a piano? And only a lunatic would forget the sight of Joan Collins being massacred by Santa Claus.
But Amicus were not stuck in a rut. Just like Hammer, they ventured into other fields. In the 1960s, they gave us the two Peter Cushing Doctor Who movies and then, in the 1970s, they found their other great niche.
Doug McClure.
You may remember Doug McClure from such films as The Land That Time Forgot, The People That Time Forgot and At the Earth's Core. If so, it was because of Amicus, the powerhouse behind those classics. Astonishingly, despite starring Doug and a plethora of unconvincing monsters, Warlords of Atlantis wasn't an Amicus movie. That one was made by EMI, after Amicus' demise.
And there was even more. Having said it didn't just copy Hammer, it did give us such full-length horror as The Skull, Madhouse, And Now the Screaming Starts, The Beast Must Die and I Monster.
It also dipped its toes into the waters of science fiction, unleashing They Came from Beyond Space and the never-to-be-forgotten Terrornauts. The former being an unlikely adaptation of the Joseph Millard novel The Gods Hate Kansas, and the latter being, surely, the only sci-fi film ever to star Charles Hawtrey and Patricia Hayes.
Nature became the enemy in The Deadly Bees and weird composite people became the enemy in Scream and Scream Again.
Sadly - despite the thrills, spills and kills the company bestowed upon us - like Hammer, the brand didn't survive into the 1980s, finally shutting up shop in 1977.
However, it wasn't the end for Subotsky who, after the company's termination, went on to produce such fare as The Uncanny, The Martian Chronicles TV mini-series, The Monster Club and The Lawnmower Man.
As for Amicus, it appears it isn't only the house that dripped blood. It's also the house that will not die, because, in 2023, it was announced the company is to return to life with a film called In the Grip of Terror. One's mind can only curdle at the thought of what dread nightmares that creation might contain.
This is, of course, the moment in which I have to declare what my favourite Amicus movie is.
And I'm going to admit it's not a portmanteau movie, mostly because they all blur into one for me.
For my Amicus favourite, I must go for 1966's Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 AD, with the completely bonkers Scream and Scream Again as a close runner-up.
If you have any thoughts upon the subject, you are, of course, free to express them in the comments section below.
To help in that quest, a list of the films which bear the Amicus stamp may be found by clicking on this very link.
Posts
29 comments:
Thank heavens you finally posted Steve! I was getting worried that you were whiling away your time studying lineups for the game!
Steve, outing yourself as Dr. Terror may be your best SDC intro ever.
Do I have thoughts, you ask. I have SO MANY thoughts! Including ruminations on various and sundry Amicus-related items that you haven’t even mentioned, like the pre-Amicus Subotsky/Rosenberg
production CITY OF THE DEAD/ HORROR HOTEL starring Christopher Lee and what must have been a the world’s biggest fog machine — the late Hamner movies that Subotsky distributed in the U.S., classily re-titled COUNT DRACULA AND HIS VAMPIRE BRIDE and THE 7 BROTHERS MEET DRACULA — and the many Post-Amicus solo Subotsky productions that didn’t happen , like THONGOR AND THE VALLEY OF DEMONS and movies based on Warren’s CREEPY and EERIE comics.
But first I’ll start with some thoughts on those portmanteau movies — right after lunch…
b.t.
Jeez, that’s a lot of typos. Guess I really do need to eat something.
b.t.
DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORRORS used to play on TV pretty often when I was a kid. I remember seeing one of the other portmanteau movies on cable TV in the 80s, but missed the beginning. It was the one with Christopher Lee and the little girl — was that THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD? And I once saw a faded, scratched-up, badly edited print of ASYLUM on one of our local channels. That was about it.
In the late-1990s/early 2000s, a lot of Amicus movies became available on DVD, and I ended up acquiring all the portmanteaux , I think. I’ve watched them all at least once each, but barely remember the individual stories. You’re right, Steve, they do tend to all blur together. TORTURE GARDEN had Burgess Meredith as the ‘Horror Host’, a carnival barker who was actually Satan, I think? And FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE had David Warner in one of the segments, right? Beyond that , pffft.
I think TALES FROM THE CRYPT may be my favorite; I’ve watched it a few times over the years, and most of the individual segments are pretty effective (if not exactly frightening). VAULT OF HORROR isn’t as good — the individual stories are all pretty weak and the framing sequence doesn’t even have a proper host.
Of the feature-length Amicus movies, I think THE SKULL is reasonably entertaining. I would hesitate to call SCREAM AND SCREAM AGAIN a ‘good’ movie but it IS very odd, and strangely compelling. I remember thinking AND NOW THE SCREAMING STARTS was terrible, and I don’t think I’ve ever even seen THE BEAST MUST DIE.
I saw AT THE EARTH’S CORE at the theatre on opening weekend, and HATED it. I’d just started reading ERB a few months before and the Pellucidar books (and their sublime Frazetta covers) were some of my favorites. I thought the movie’s cramped soundstage sets and dodgy ‘Suitmation’ monsters looked cheap and awful. ‘Call that a Mahar? And where is the horizon that curves upward and disappears into the sky?’ But I’m much more tolerant of it now. I even kinda like the goofy-looking monsters. Peter Cushing is amusing as Professor Abner and Caroline Munro is of course VERY easy on the eyes. I’ve never much cared for Doug McClure though, and still don’t.
I don’t remember much about the other two ERB adaptations.
b.t.
Oh, one semi-interesting little Amicus factoid: 1971’s I, MONSTER starring Christopher Lee as Jekyll and Hyde in all but name (his dueling personas are inexplicably re-named Marlowe and Blake) was directed by Stephen Weeks, who later directed SWORD OF THE VALIANT starring Sean Connery and Miles “Ator” O’Keefe.
b.t.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
uh, sorry, just trying to get into the spirit of things, here. That was a scream.
I dunno if the gods hate Kansas, but they do send a lotta tornados and Republicans down there.
I'm not sure which is more destructive. And I seem to remember a movie where Joan Collins is eaten by giant ants.
Her career seems to have been on a bit of a holding pattern, back in the '70's.
...as far as cheezy horror movies go. I would like to give a shout out to Motel Hell, in which a deranged farmer catches passerby, knocks 'em out, then plants them in a field up to their necks. When he's ready to, ah, harvest them, he ties a rope around their necks and yanks them out like giant carrots with his tractor.
You kinda hafta get messed up to watch it. Choose the chemical of your choice. But it's worth it to see John Ratzenberger from Cheers get yanked out of the dirt.
M.P.
Anon, I'm so excited by the current England team that I almost forgot they were playing.
Bt, that's a very comprehensive look at the works of Subotsky & Rosenberg. Christopher Lee and his scary daughter were indeed in The House that Dripped Blood.
MP, that was a very impressive scream.
England look to be stumbling there way to the final Steve. I may need to immigrate lol
THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT!
My Dad worked for EMI Films in the 70s. Not a big managerial role or anything, but as a liaison between the processing labs and distribution. As a result I used to get current film posters for my bedroom wall. The Driver. The Poseidon Adventure. That sort of thing.
One of them was for The Land That Time Forgot. I really wish I either still had that poster, or else could get another one affordably, as it's etched into my brain.
I'd never seen a film at the cinema at the time - I was about 4 or 5 - but I had a dream that I went into a cafe where we lived, and at the back The Land That Time Forgo' was 'happening'. It was like all the things going on in the poster were going on at once in front of me. That's what I thought a film was.
Later I went into work with my Dad a couple of times [I think my mother was pregnant with my sister, so it was probably to take me off her hands whilst she was visiting hospital or something].
A couple of times he dropped me off in a preview cinema and the projectionist would run a print for me [Orca The Killer Whale, Daleks Invasion of Earth]. But once he dropped me in a lab, and they had an upright Moviola editing machine which they ran a print of The Land That Time Forgot on for me. They showed me how you could run the film backwards and forwards and faster and slower.
It was fascinating.
I'm a video editor now, by the way.
I was also fascinated by At The Earth's Core, and my grandparents knew one of the actors in it [Cy Grant] from the RAF and when he used to drop by the place they lived and worked in the late 60s and 70s. I did actually go see that one at the cinema, though the only thing I can recall of that was the 'comedy' bit at the end where the 'MOLE' is popping up through the ground in front of two bemused policemen.
I tried watching it on Freeview a couple of years ago. I liked the credit sequence, but grew quite tired of it after that.
I went to see [non-Amicus] Warlords Of Atlantis at the cinema too, but it was a few weeks after seeing Close Encounters so it was as though a switched had flipped and that kind of cheap and cheerful British entertainment seemed utterly dated and redundant.
Hey, nuffin' wrong with "It's Trad, Dad!" (also released as "Ring A Ding Rhythm"...if you wonder how Dick Lester perfected his style of directing for "A Hard Day's Night", then watch this one - it's like a practice run with a lot of similar visual bits (plus borrowing the best joke from the "Running Jumping Standing Still" film).
Things that appear in lots of Amicus Movies:
The Crawling Hand
Christopher Lee
Dudes named “Maitland”
b.t.
Bt, I remember once seeing a YouTube video that pointed out just how many Hammer films feature a character called Paul.
B, It's Trad, Dad is a fine film but needs a sinister figure showing up to tell everyone their fortunes.
Matthew, I too saw At the Earth's Core at the cinema. I derived far more pleasure from it than it probably deserved.
McScotty, if England progress past the next round, I shall be both shocked and stunned
Matthew, it’s awesome that your dad would bring home movie posters to decorate your room with. That LAND THAT TIME FORGOT poster is super-cool but I’m pretty sure It would have scared me silly when I was 4-5 years old!
Looking at it now, I’m reminded that back then, movie studios weren’t shy about ‘selling the sizzle, not the steak’. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen that movie , but I sure don’t remember a bathysphere, or a diver, or big Seaview-like picture windows in the bow of the sub, or an oversized manta ray that shot lasers out of a prehensile antenna on its head. Not that I’m complaining, I never minded that kind of exaggeration. I don’t think people back then REALLY expected movies to deliver exactly what the posters promised. Nowadays, they’d probably just use a big close-up photo of Doug McClure staring at the camera , slap the movie’s title on it and call it a day.
Just now realized — I’m pretty sure LAND THAT TIME FORGOT is the only Amicus movie that had its own Marvel Comic adaptation
b.t..
I hope you use a Thoth deck for your Tarot readings of doom on t' way to Doncaster, Steve \m/
Not so long ago I would have completely agreed with you, and said 'Daleks - Invasion Earth: 2150 AD' was my fave Amicus film. Seeing it in the cinema as a little scrote - the first time I ever saw Dr Who - was amazing. The ruined London of the future, the first Dalek you see rising out of the Thames... fantastic. Its probably why I became interested in science-fiction and whatnot.
But I made the mistake of watching it again on tv not so long ago. Now, obviously its unfair to judge a film made for kids in the 60s by the standards of a middle aged 21st century man (even one as ungrown up as me)... but it was still a huge disappointment.
Can't comment on 'Scream and Scream Again' as I've not seen it, but it looks pretty good from the trailer, and your judgement is usually reliable.
'The Terrornauts' is a mystery to me too. But I am intrigued, as not only is Charles Hawtrey in it - his other SF flick was of course the fab 'Zeta One'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1X61zeDCIg
- on top of that apparently the screenplay was by the brilliant John Brunner. So I shall definitely investigate further.
Thanks for bringing both to my attention (and I'll be back in a bit with thoughts about Amicus films I have actually seen).
-sean
Matt-
I dug those movies too, Matt!
I would have proudly hung that poster on my wall. Still would!
I read the Land that Time Forgot novel at some point when I was a kid, probably around 1980. Back then publishing companies were putting out a lot of sci-fi, horror and adventure stuff in slick little paperbacks with very cool covers. Like the Conan Ace series?
The golden age of fantasy paperbacks. I wish they were still around. Anyway, one look at the cover with rampaging dinosaurs on it and I pretty much had to read it. I don't remember if I liked it or not.
And of course, I hadda watch the movies when they were finally shown on T.V.
Remember when that pterodactyl just flies off with that guy in its beak?
I thought that was pretty hardcore, back then.
M.P.
Matthew - Very interesting. My brother & I being dinosaur obsessed (aged 4/5), I think my parents took us to see 'The Land That Time Forgot'. The date fits (although my memory's a bit hazy.) I once thought Warlords of Atlantis's bathysphere/diving bell was Captain Britain's Loch Ness bathysphere/diving bell's inspiration - but the date doesn't fit. Maybe the inspiration was the Six Million Dollar Man (which had diving bells in 3 episodes - diving bells clearly being big in the 70s!) Like you say, after Star Wars & Close Encounters, films like Warlords were dead in the water (even without a giant octopus!) I last recall seeing Doug McClure in anything, was him playing a villain/baddie in Airwolf, in the 80s. Your passion for film always comes across, and pursuing an interest like that sounds worthwhile, to say the least! Another great - and interesting - comment!
Phillip
Good title Steve. I chuckled at that.
The Amicus films were a big influence on The League of Gentlemen and Inside no. 9 team. The first LOG Christmas special is effectively one of their (Amicus) anthology movies, and brilliant for it.
Back in the day, I remember seeing lots of excerpts from The Land that time forgot on TV (possibly Screen Test or Magpie) and it seemed impossibly awesome to my young self. There was then an end of year (or possibly Christmas) school trip to see it at the movies, but I missed out as I was in the wrong year (school grade). Consequently this movie has an extremely high deprival value to me. I did, subsequently, see The People that time forgot and At the Earth’s core, at the movies, and both were good, but lacked the level of awesomeness I anticipated from The Land that time forgot. I never stumbled across it on TV over the years, and have deliberately avoided it in the YouTube age, because I know how disappointing it’ll likely turn out, after so many years.
Perhaps this week’s question should be to name the top 10 awesome movies that you never saw…
DW
Oh heavens!!! Charlie has just boarded the train in Budapest for Munich. The people sitting next to Charlie are from Yorkshire. And the lady, accompanying the man, has advised me she was born and raised in “the peoples Republic of Sheffield! “. She is quite proud of that!!! What a world we live in!!!
Charlie, the People's Republic extends its tentacles everywhere.
Thanks DW. :)
Matthew, I remember seeing a 1950s movie, when I was a kid, in which a couple of people are in a diving bell and a Creature From the Black Lagoon type monster tries to get into their bathysphere and they have to give it a good bashing to get rid of it. Whether that was an inspiration for the scene in Warlords of Atantis, I don't know.
Sean, I was previously unaware of Zeta One. From that trailer, it looks like it could give Star Maidens a run for its money.
I see, from Wikipedia, that Charles Hawtrey was also in a film called Timeslip. This means that, if we count Carry On Spying as sci-fi, there are four sci-fi movies which star Charles Hawtrey. Truly, he was the king of UK sci-fi.
Safe travels, Charlie!
I assume we can expect a full report when you reach Munich. Cheers, my friend.
It's interesting that Sheffield keeps popping up on this blog.
It's almost as if it's the nexus of all realities, like the swamp in the Man-Thing comics.
A focal point, perhaps?
A place where the barriers between alternate universes are thin...
If you walk down the wrong street are you gonna end up in a different universe? Where time is distorted? Cave-men, aliens, pirates, maybe, running all over the place...
...now that I think about it, that's actually happened to me, but not in Sheffield.
By the way, Charlie, what the hell are you doing in Europe anyway?
M.P.
Charlie - Hopefully, the Yorkshire accent (with its hard vowels) wasn't too unintelligible.
On a train, it could'be been like Roy & Renee (albeit they're from t'other side of the Pennines):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAQNweGsKqM
My brother was visiting (he left yesterday) and his Sri Lankan friend 'phoned, also discussing a Europe trip. He said Munich train station was smelly & intimidating. Also, the German trains were always late. In the UK, we have a stereotype about German efficiency - contrasted with our own crap (I mean problematic) public services - yet I've also heard that, in Germany, complaining about the train service is almost a national pastime.
As regards Sheffield - Recalling Sean hobnobbing with Michael Moorcock, my brother met Stephen Donaldson at a book signing/promo event at Waterstones on West Street, in Sheffield (in the 1990s?) I think my brother told Donaldson that he didn't like Master Eremis (a character in 'White Gold Wielder'), to which Donaldson replied: "A lot of people don't like Master Eremis!"
My version of DW's deprival value's probably not meeting authors whose writing you were once passionate about (before becoming middle-aged & jaded!)
M.P. - The Nexus of All Realities was probably the giant fish tank in Sheffield's 'hole in the road' !
Phillip
Now this is weird… the man (65 y.o. ?) with the sheffield woman had no knowledge of the “hole in the road!” The wife gave him the evil eye… he suddenly recalled but quickly said he is from Wales originally and Sheffield just has a lot going on and it’s hard to keep abreast.
Oddly, he said you really have to watch out for your pet dogs! Lots of dog thieving in Yorkshire he says! Rumor was that they were being fed to the fish in the hole in the road and fertilizing the plants?
Charlie - So the wife ask her husband to confirm whatever she just said? It sounds like it! The Fast Show's 'Roy & Renee' nailed it!
Phillip
asked
Phillip
DW, I liked 'Land That Time Forgot' well enough as a small kid, but in retrospect it definitely does not stand up at all. If you missed it in its day, I'm afraid that was it - you missed it.
Even though the screenplay was by Michael Moorcock...
So I reckon the best Amicus films were the portmanteau ones - obviously, as they were what the company was known for - and my fave would be 'Dr Terror's House of Horrors'. With 'Asylum' - Herbert Lom and his action figures! - the runner up.
Not all the segments in both of those were great, but the thing with the anthologies is that you don't have to wait long for something better to turn up. So Alan Freeman and the weed were fairly tedious, but you soon get Christopher Lee as an art critic instead.
Or that bit with the late Donald Sutherland, about the danger for American men in - quelle horreur! - marrying French women.
The highlight of 'Dr Terror' though is the voodoo jazz story, despite the depiction of Haitians as some sort of exotic, primitive 'other' and an ignorant take on the loa. And despite featuring Roy Castle.
What makes up for that is the basic idea - don't culturally appropriate Damballa's beats! - and the window into that mid-60s era when jazz still had some mainstream cultural currency, and hadn't been completely displaced by rock music.
Plus Kenny Lynch is winningly likeable in his bit part ("West Indies? Nah, I'm from the East End").
Trigger warning: more about jazz
Best of all, that sequence features Tubby Hayes - one of the earliest distinctive stylists in British jazz - and his quintet as Roy Castle's band.
There was a 'Voodoo Girl'/'Dr Terror's House of Horrors' promo single by Castle released at the time, which pretty quickly became very rare. Before long it started to go for quite a lot of money on the very few occasions it came up for sale, because of the pre-internet urban legend that the b-side was Hayes' 'voodoo jazz' track from the film.
But it was actually this terrible novelty tune -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1A8IzPEiSw
Imagine paying serious record collector money and finding you'd got that! And worse, the a-side. Fortunately the actual music was finally released as the 'Voodoo Session' single - credited to Hayes - in 2009 (limited to 666 numbered copies). So here it is, you lucky people -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HexpsaPpnGw
Hmm, nice. Smokin'...
With Shake Keane on trumpet (not Roy Castle)
Btw, if anyone's interested the same label recently put out a (single-sided) LP of the music from 'Children of the Stones' -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4wTTnT0_fY
-sean
Huh. I think I just had a comment go missing, Steve.
Unless it was me #@&*ing it up at this end. In which case all you unfortunately missed out on a bit of chat about Roy Castle and Damballa's voodoo jazz beat because I'm not writing all that out again.
Maybe I'll come up with a new one about 'Dr Terror's House of Horrors', this time about the story of the American man marrying a French woman...
-sean
Sean, I've found your missing comment and restored it. I think.
Yeah, its there now, Steve. That was quick, thanks.
No doubt everyone else is grateful they can read it now too (;
-sean
I am grateful for Sean’s comment.
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