Why I want to hate Mark Gatiss but can't.

For the last two years I've been hearing about Mark Gatiss from British horror fans who have been singing his praises as if he's the new "ace face" of horror. Having been very disappointed by "Crooked House" (2008), I was pretty much determined to hate the writer/actor responsible for that awfulness for all eternity.

I got the impression that Mark Gatiss was yet another of these so-called "horror experts" who the BBC likes to wheel onto every show that mentions the genre. In the '80s, we had the real big names of horror such as Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasence, and Clive Barker doing the chat show rounds, but something went horribly wrong in the '90s. When the BBC (and others) started forcing the John McCririck lookalike Kim Newman onto an unsuspecting public, it was time to either stop watching horror documentaries or kick the TV screen in to save yourself from dying by tweed suit overload and grinnygog-itis.

I don't really know where Kim Newman came from or how he ended up as the worst example of hairy-faced, British horror convention nerds. All I can say is that I bought his "Anno Dracula" novel and threw it away in disgust after only reading 4 pages. Horror fan or not, something about Kim Newman creeps me out and not in a good way. I couldn't concentrate on a single thing he said in interviews because I just wanted to punch the smug, self-satisfied smile right off his face. No, more than that, I wanted to see him get a damn good kicking live on TV.

Thus, I assumed that the BBC's "A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss" was going to more of the same superficial crap presented by another constantly grinning weirdie-beardie who I wouldn't like. I was wrong.

Although I can't say that Mark Gatiss has quite the same taste in movies as me, he comes across as a genuine fan and has the good sense to add the following disclaimer over a shot of his horror DVD collection:

"Because horror is such a personal passion of mine, this series will be unashamedly selective. I'm going to build my account around my favourite films and periods."

I can't argue with that at all. It's exactly what I do on my blog, and it's what you should be doing on yours. While there are universals which objectively qualify whether one movie is good and another is bad, horror is mostly a very subjective experience.

As a documentary, there are some parts of "A History of Horror" which are weaker than others, no new information for the hardcore horror fan, but enough personally British stuff to allow those of us of the same age as Mark Gatiss to reminisce alongside him. It may not be the final say in horror documentaries, but it's more than just a primer for the casual movie-goer.

I too watched the same Hammer, Amicus and Universal horror movies on TV as Mark Gatiss did, I bought the same books and magazines, and I've met nearly all the same people at various conventions whom he interviewed. I haven't met John Carpenter, but I don't really want to. The documentary is Mark Gatiss' personal journey through great horror and shouldn't be seen as something shared by every horror aficionado. We all have different tastes and levels of interest within the genre. There are some younger horror fans who would have no idea who any of the stars he spoke to even are.

And so I sat through the three episodes of "A History of Horror" not really learning anything but still enjoying Mark Gatiss' obvious love of the genre. Owing to his sexuality, there are a couple of older movies which mean more to Mark Gatiss than they do to me, but he doesn't make a big deal out of them for that reason. For instance, he doesn't shove the gay stuff from "The Bride of Frankenstein" down everyone's throats, and I'm not even going to add the obligatory cheap joke about "even if he wants to" because he doesn't seem like that kind of chap at all. He sometimes dwells too long on what interests him rather than on why it interests him, but hopefully we already share the unspoken appreciation.

Mark Gatiss does repeatedly emphasise that he's from the North of England which is slightly alienating for a Southerner. Mark Gatiss doesn't have a broad Manchester accent so, if he hadn't said anything, I doubt that I would even have noticed where he came from. It still conjures up an image of no-nonsense, flat cap-wearing and whippet-walking Northerners who must have made him feel like quite an outsider at times. Give or take the regional differences, surely every horror fan feels a little bit different to the "normal" people though, don't they?

Mark Gatiss doesn't push the question of what it means to be a horror fan. It might have been more interesting if he had done, but then it would have been a documentary all about him rather than the movies he enjoys. I have to give him credit for not making everything Mark Gatiss-centric or playing the attention whore except when it was absolutely necessary. "A History of Horror" is no "Look at me, I'm Mark Gatiss!" vehicle.

Can you imagine Kim Newman in his attention-grabbing three-piece suits doing the same thing? Exactly. It would have caused broken TV screens across the country and a torch-bearing lynch mob descending into his parent's basement.

Mark Gatiss succeeded where so many horror documentary makers failed. He made his journey personal without it being about him. He made "A History of Horror" something to share rather than reflect one individual's tastes.

After "A History of Horror", I also watched the follow-up, "Horror Europa", which is more of the same only less so. "Horror Europa" is a continuation rather than a separate documentary which fills in a few more details about European horror in the same golden ages as were mentioned before. Again, Mark Gatiss is merely the amiable strand who ties the interviews together, but he has the balance right.

I didn't expect to like Mark Gatiss. I thought that I'd either be jealous of his success or annoyed by the ramblings of another "no-talent-know-all". Apart from "Crooked House", I don't actually remember seeing him in anything else before these documentaries. I'm not a comedy fan or Sherlock Holmes buff (outside of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce) so no great surprise there. I'm a bit of a purist, so if it's not horror, I probably haven't seen it.

I have no idea what Mark Gatiss is like as a actor or a person, but as a presenter, he's found his niche. If there is anyone worthy to represent British horror at the present time, it's definitely Mark Gatiss.

Why do I have two copies of Asylum on VHS?

"A young psychiatrist interviews four inmates in a mental asylum to satisfy a requirement for employment. He hears stories about 1) the revenge of a murdered wife, 2) a tailor who makes a suit with some highly unusual qualities, 3) a woman who questions her sanity when it appears that her brother is conspiring against her, and 4) a man who builds tiny toy robots with lifelike human heads."

"Asylum" (1973) isn't exactly my favourite Amicus film or anything. In fact, I've fallen asleep three times trying to get through it because it's actually rather boring. Not even Peter Cushing can save this one.

I just have two copies because I bought one from the local pawn shop and somebody where I used to work gave me their copy. I'm not surprised that they didn't want it either. The rating on the IMDb is 6.4 but I would only give it half of that.

Amusingly, the second copy starts by announcing that it is a Criterion release. As somebody who has never bought into those overpriced Criterion DVDs, I now own a Criterion VHS tape. I have no idea if it's the same company or not though. It says "Interglobal Home Video" on the box and my research shows it to be from a Canadian company which was notorious in the '80s for badly transferred, low-budget films.

I have a suspicion that the Prism version may actually be some kind of collectible due to its artwork having virtually nothing to do with the movie itself. It can't be worth more than the $1 that I paid for it though as the cardboard is creased and torn. I still can't get my head round why American VHS tapes came in such ridiculous and easy to damage packaging rather than the proper plastic cases like we had in the UK.

And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973)

"England 1795: the young Catherine just married Charles Fengriffen and moves into his castle. She becomes victim of an old curse that lays on the family. On her wedding night she's raped by a ghost and gets pregnant."

The IMDb description of this Amicus horror really gives away everything that you need to know about the plot apart from how slowly the story unfolds.

Due to being filmed at Oakley Court, "And Now the Screaming Starts!" looks like a slightly cheaper version of a Hammer film. Starring quite a few Hammer regulars and being directed by Roy Ward Baker adds to this illusion which, of course, was the intention. On a purely personal level, I've never really liked the majority of Milton Subotsky's productions from the '70s although the Amicus anthologies do have occasional moments of brilliance. I can't quite put my finger on why, especially whenever Amicus tried to do a single story, their movies always came second best to Hammer but I'd hazard a guess that it was mainly due to trying to make them more contemporary that, ironically, dated them all really badly.

I think Amicus must have realised at the time that the period settings were what gave Hammer their edge and you can tell from "And Now the Screaming Starts!" that a lot of work went into trying to create a similar atmosphere. If only as much effort had been put into the script as the costume and set design then this would have been an instant classic. It's bloody gruesome in places, particularly the opening scene (which appears to be lifted from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Hound of the Baskervilles"), and has the potential to leave a bad taste in your mouth if you think about it too much.

If there's one thing that angers me, it's the British class system and all the feudalism that it's been built on. The curse that gets put upon the Fengriffen family really is more than justifiable in my own mind and, no pun intended due to the later subject matter, I really have to hand it to Herbert Lom for making me hate the aristocracy even more than I already do. It's probably not a good digression but every time I see this particular opening rape scene, all I can think about is how corporate America with the "fire at will" laws (and other nonsense) are doing exactly the same thing in the 21st century as medieval Britain once did. Make no mistake about it, too many companies think they own their employees even when they aren't working for them and try to take away every constitutional right that they think they have. It's not too much of a stretch to imagine the over-privileged "Lord of the Manor" coming round to rape your wife and cut off your hand even today and if you just substitute "Lord" for "Corporate America" and its potential to take away everything and destroy your life according to a whim then the possibly unintentional social commentary of "And Now the Screaming Starts!" still has some power to it.

Of course, even though Henry Fengriffen's acts were illegal back in the day, you can be sure that such things (and even worse) have happened in the history of every country when the aristocracy have abused their position. I doubt that David Case's gothic novel "Fengriffen: A Chilling Tale" (which "And Now the Screaming Starts!" is based on) made much more of any of this other than a plot device for the ensuing horror story and I haven't ever read it to say for certain. Obviously, the weakness in using such a horrible, unnecessary and polarising act to set the stage for the later action is that most people are on the side of the victim and want justice to be done. None of the later generation of Fengriffens really matter from that point on.

Therein lies the biggest problem with "And Now the Screaming Starts!". There is no way that a logically thinking audience cares one iota about what happens to Ian Ogilvy and Stephanie Beacham's characters other than wanting very bad things to happen to them. There are no innocents when it comes to aristos and there is never any point when you can sympathise with their predicament.

Stephanie Beacham was an incredibly beautiful babe when she was younger (and wasn't too bad when she was a big star in a lot of high-budget '80s soaps either) and, it's possible to argue that her character, Catherine Fengriffen, is an innocent victim. I disagree. Yes, Catherine Fengriffen does all the fainting and screaming when it suits her but her reaction to her own rape is so typically upper class and dismissive that it's impossible to feel any sympathy for her. Her husband, Charles Fengriffen, is such an equally arrogant piece of work that, as much as I liked Ian Ogilvy in "The Return of the Saint" TV series, I absolutely hated him in this.

Now you might think that a film that causes such negative emotions as this would doom it to failure but actually that makes it rather good in my book. If a drama doesn't cause an emotional response from the viewer then it can be written off but "And Now the Screaming Starts!" actually tries its hardest to anger its audience on every level. Unfortunately, as a horror movie it's supposed to be scary too but none of that really works.

The special effects vary from average to ridiculous especially the severed hand crawling around and the whole thing is quite unevenly paced. Some scenes drag while the more interesting ones get rushed and, on a purely horror entertainment level, none of it is particularly satisfying.

I suppose I should mention Peter Cushing as psychiatrist Dr. Pope but only because there is nothing out of the ordinary with his performance apart from it being quite anachronistic. Patrick Magee as Dr. Whittle is much more believable but the man gives me the creeps in every film that I've ever seen him in whether he's playing a good guy or otherwise. I think his best role was in the "Blind Alleys" segment of "Tales from the Crypt" (1972) though I'm sure he will always be most remembered for playing the crippled writer Mr. Alexander in Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (1971).

Anyway, there's not really much more to say about "And Now the Screaming Starts!" other than it having quite a predictable ghost story underneath it all. I think the intention was to make something completely original and different but it didn't quite happen. As a gothic horror story, it lacks tension and, as an exploitation movie, it lacks all the gratuitous (and not so gratuitous) nudity which really would have livened things up.

I'm moving "And Now the Screaming Starts!" from The Vault to the "Just Average" section but it's still a recommendation. "And Now the Screaming Starts!" is not Amicus' best work but it's different enough from everything else they did to stand out as an anomaly. If you like ghost stories, you'll probably like this but if you want real hardcore grisly horror then you'll be very disappointed.