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.

Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)

"Johnny Alucard raises Count Dracula (Christopher Lee) from the dead in 1972 London. The Count goes after the descendants of Van Helsing."

It's hardly a secret that I prefer Hammer horror movies over absolutely anything American or European from the same time period. I grew up watching Hammer movies on TV and probably saw them all at least a dozen times each before I left school.

As much as I've wanted to like the classic Universal monster movies from the '30s and '40s, black and white has never done it for me. I like my films in colour otherwise I wouldn't have a colour TV. If there's one thing you can be sure of with a Hammer production, that's lots of colour. There are always lots of boobs and blood too which is a bonus especially in something now rated PG.

I'm sure you are so familiar with "Dracula A.D. 1972" that I don't need to go through all the rigmarole of telling you who does what to who and why. It's yet another tale of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in their famous roles as Count Dracula and Professor Van Helsing respectively but with a new angle (for the time) of being set (after a 19th century prologue) in the 1970s.

This was Hammer's attempt at modernising Dracula which worked in spite of itself and the fact that Christopher Lee really didn't want to have anything to do with it. The vampire Count isn't actually in "Dracula A.D. 1972" very much at all and only delivers about ten lines. Forget Bram Stoker's novel as much as you can because this "Dracula" is far more Hammer's invention.

Most of the action involves a gang of "young people" getting up to all sorts of mischief such as crashing parties, smoking pot, and hanging out in a coffee bar all day. I hate to use the term "hipsters" for them because that would imply that they are cool. If any of them had a brain, they'd be typical students.

Their leader, Johnny Alucard (Christopher Neame) is, of course, a disciple of Dracula who comes across as half Alex from "A Clockwork Orange" and half Austin Powers (before Austin Powers ever existed). I haven't posted a picture of Johnny Alucard because, to be honest, his character is so overacted that the ludicrous expressions he pulls throughout would make you think that "Dracula A.D. 1972" is a comedy when it really isn't.

Here's a nice picture of Caroline Munro about to be baptised in blood instead:

Caroline Munro only has a small but important role in the movie. Unfortunately, she doesn't get nude or turn into a vampiress which is a bit of a shame. I would have loved to have seen her sprout fangs and bite a couple of the other hot girls in the movie. Alas, it was not meant to be.

The story moves along at such a brisk pace that there's plenty of other entertainment apart from the vampirism anyway. Just looking at the sets or the clothes (or watching the background to see some of London in 1972) is quite educational. The number of "day for night" shots which nobody ever seems to pick up are rather clumsy and cause a few inconsistencies, but whatever, it's still Hammer.

The various action scenes are quite energetic and are more than adequate to tell the story. "Dracula A.D. 1972" doesn't suffer from too much talk although several scenes are unnecessary. The one where Van Helsing reverses the name of "Alucard" on a piece of paper as if it's some hugely difficult anagram springs to mind.

Although there isn't anything which you could really call character development in "Dracula A.D. 1972", the closest to it is done by the lovely Stephanie Beacham who is also, for lack of a better word, quite "pneumatic". Her boobies are the stars of the show and a lot of her screen time is devoted to semi-gratuitously showing her cleavage off in close-up. The artifice of putting crucifixes round her neck and ripping them off again twice fools no-one.

Anyway, with only 6 days left until Hallowe'en, "Dracula A.D. 1972" is the last vampire movie in my "Hallowe'en Countdown". Last year, I recommended the original Hammer "Dracula" (1958), but I now think "Dracula A.D. 1972" with Johnny Alucard's occult ritual suits the season better.

Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)

"Abetted by the elderly Dr. Hertz (Thorley Waters) and handyman Hans (Robert Morris), Baron Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) determines that the soul does not immediately leave the body upon death, and can be transplanted from one body to another with a special apparatus he has developed."

Since "Frankenstein Created Woman" is yet another overpriced and OOP R1 DVD, I've embedded the full movie from YouTube above. It's also another old Hammer movie which you've probably seen anyway so I don't need to spend much time reviewing it.

Set in an unnamed European country (either Austria or Switzerland) during an equally difficult to pin down historical period, "Frankenstein Created Woman" is a "fantasy" movie which is more about the drama than terror.

As ever, Peter Cushing provides a lot of class as Baron Frankenstein in this huge departure from Mary Shelley's original piece of science fiction. Thorley Walters also gives an exceptionally good performance as the amusingly named Doctor Hertz. In many ways, he's channelling Nigel Bruce's bumbling Doctor Watson throughout.

The real attraction, however, is Susan Denberg as Christina who evokes sympathy right from the beginning as she hides her disfigured face with her hair. It's not enough to hide her true beauty from her lover Hans (Robert Morris) or anyone else other than three excellently played but spiteful bullies.

In fact, the cruelty which the bullies inflict on poor Christina is one of the most harrowing parts of "Frankenstein Created Woman" which deserves far more attention than I'm going to give it. Suffice it to say that "Frankenstein Created Woman" is a great piece of wish-fulfilment fantasy for those who have ever been bullied themselves. Revenge is apparently best served cold in a mended body with a transferred soul.

Even though "Frankenstein Created Woman" lapses into the usual scientific silliness about resurrecting the dead, it deals with themes of injustice and vengeance quite admirably. It also unwittingly throws up a few questions about transgender issues which I'm sure get discussed on sites with an axe to grind about such things.

"Frankenstein Created Woman" is a sparsely populated, slightly stagey, and obviously low-budget production which looks better than it should do thanks to the geniuses at Bray Studios. While it doesn't have the great atmosphere of earlier Hammer horror movies and some of the camerawork could be better, it's a kind of in the middle deal due to having a much better story.

As a big fan of Hammer horror movies, I rate "Frankenstein Created Woman" quite highly despite its rather tame exploitation scenes which in no way match up to the promotional stills. Although "Frankenstein Created Woman" is listed as "Unrated", I wouldn't class it as more than a PG-13. There isn't much gore or anything too scary about it even for children so, apart from a very minor sex scene, it's almost good wholesome family entertainment.

If you are looking for something cosy and not too extreme for Hallowe'en, you can't really go wrong with horror movies from this period. If, like me, you grew up seeing everything by Hammer and Amicus repeated ad nauseum by the BBC, you might not be quite so eager to revisit them. Trust me though, it's always worth giving them another airing if only for the pretty girls and the nostalgia.

The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)

"In Spain, Leon is born on Christmas day to a mute servant girl who was raped by a beggar. His mother dies giving birth and he is looked after by Don Alfredo..."

One of the things which I never realised about Hammer until I started blogging was that all they really did was remake the Universal monster movies in colour with better actors and more boobies. Okay, so that's a bit of an over simplification, but Hammer were essentially still quite a low-budget operation who, apart from being extremely lucky with their talent both in front of and behind the camera, tended to stick to more traditional horror characters rather than invent any new icons or more modern storylines. Ultimately, it was their downfall, but in their heyday, everyone apart from the critics loved Hammer.

There's just something cosy and familiar about Hammer movies especially if you're British which makes them great for Hallowe'en. There are even some scares along the way if you are willing to suspend your disbelief and focus on the acting rather than the effects. With "The Curse of the Werewolf", you really do have to try to ignore the effects as much as possible because they are more likely to make a modern audience laugh than appreciate the work which went into them at the time.

Based on the novel "The Werewolf of Paris" by Guy Endore, the screenplay was actually written by Anthony Hinds who later wrote Tyburn Film's "Legend of the Werewolf" (1975). It's fairly easy to get the two movies confused not only because of the changes to the book's setting but also because Hammer, Amicus and Tyburn productions tended to share the same casts and crews. If you remember that "The Curse of the Werewolf" is set in 16th century Spain and "Legend of the Werewolf" is set in 19th century France, it helps. Lets face it though, if you've seen one werewolf movie, you've seen them all, and the plots are still likely to get jumbled together. I actually prefer "Legend of the Werewolf" to "The Curse of the Werewolf" even though, technically and stylistically, "The Curse of the Werewolf" is the better film.

If you are a big Oliver Reed fan (or even if you're not), you'll love that a big chunk of "The Curse of the Werewolf" is comprised of him acting his heart out in period costume and, basically, giving one of the best performances of his entire career. His character goes through every emotion in the book and, while not always all that likeable, he's certainly a lot more convincing than Lon Chaney Jr. in "The Wolfman" (1941).

Strangely, "The Curse of the Werewolf" was Hammer's only werewolf film. I'm sure that the difficulties involved in making a werewolf transformation which wouldn't have the cinema audiences rolling in the aisles with laughter was the reason they never made another. The "Hammer House of Horror" TV series did return to the werewolf subgenre for its "Children of the Full Moon" episode, but that wasn't until 1980 and, of course, it was a vastly different story which very wisely saved its werewolf make-up for the very end where it could do the least amount of damage.

The small problem I have with "The Curse of the Werewolf" is that it over ambitiously goes through several time periods which aren't equally interesting. The first, featuring Yvonne Romain as a mute servant girl who gets raped by a beggar, is actually the most horrific and exploitative part of the story. Several scenes were deemed either too violent or disgusting and were cut prior to the theatrical release, but they were restored in 1994. One of the previously censored moments is still really quite sickening unless you are one of those freaks who likes to look for similar nastiness on YouTube. I'm not going to spoil it for you by telling you what it is, but you may not want to eat any pork rinds while you watch this film.

The later story is kind of uneven, doesn't really fit the setting or have as much atmosphere as Hammer's more German-looking period pieces do, but Oliver Reed's charisma makes up for a lot of the other failings. The attempt at an ill-fated romance has some horribly dated dialogue and doesn't work so well, but when things start getting hairy, "The Curse of the Werewolf" is fantastic. If there was ever a perfectly cast "wild man", it was Olly.

The werewolf action is quite sparse, pretty obvious and predictable, but that's exactly what it's supposed to be. It's nice to get a horror movie which delivers few surprises when you are in the mood for a certain subgenre. The seriousness of the acting and the cinematography lifts everything up several notches, but nobody watches a movie called "The Curse of the Werewolf" if they are expecting highbrow entertainment.

I could have recommended a couple of other equally famous werewolf movies instead of "The Curse of the Werewolf", but they would only be further clones of the same subject matter. "The Curse of the Werewolf" has several very original changes to the established mythology and all the tragedy which goes with them.

Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994)

Everything you ever wanted to know about the old Hammer horror movies.

Although this excellent documentary has been on different movie sites for ages, this is the first time that I've seen it in full on Youtube. I've posted it above to save you the trouble of looking for it yourself.

This is a great way to remember Hammer as it used to be. The new incarnation with its unnecessary remakes has tainted the Hammer name. No wonder they are now looking for lost footage from the '50s and '60s although I'm surprised that they don't just remake that too.

Dracula (1958)

(AKA Horror of Dracula)



"After Jonathan Harker attacks Dracula at his castle (apparently somewhere in Germany), the vampire travels to a nearby city, where he preys on the family of Harker's fiancée. The only one who may be able to protect them is Dr. van Helsing, Harker's friend and fellow-student of vampires, who is determined to destroy Dracula, whatever the cost."

The final entry in my "Hallowe'en Countdown" is Hammer's version of "Dracula" from 1958. It may not be all that horrific for a modern audience but you can't have Hallowe'en without Dracula and this is the version that I grew up with.

I was, am, and always will be a fan of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing no matter how bad the later films were that either of them got themselves into. Neither ever gave a bad performance and they took their roles completely seriously in spite of how ludicrous the subject matter was.

Hammer's "Dracula" is still the quintessential vampire film for all lovers of the genre. It may not be strictly accurate to the book (but then again, what Hammer film is?), but it's certainly the most enjoyable and watchable version ever made.

A great atmosphere, Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing fighting it out, beautiful actresses, rubber bats on wires, and all done on a budget which wouldn't even pay for Keanu Reeves' voice coach in a more modern production.

This is what horror movies were all about when I was young and you couldn't even call yourself a horror fan back then without having watched all the Hammer and Amicus films first.

I have absolutely nothing bad to say about "Dracula" except that, even though it was shown on the BBC nearly every year, it took far too long to become available to a British audience on VHS.

Now it's available just about everywhere on DVD, go on and spoil yourself.

Wake Wood (2011)

"The parents of a girl who was killed by a savage dog are granted the opportunity to spend three days with their deceased daughter."

There's no easy way of just launching into a review of "Wake Wood" without mentioning that the new version of Hammer Film Productions is behind it. Most of us have fond childhood memories of Hammer horror movies starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing accompanied by lots of beautiful girls dressed in period costumes with blood, boobs and fangs all over the place. There was a definite look and atmosphere to everything Hammer made even though they pretty much did little more than remake the Universal horror movies in colour. Of course there were some more original features along the way and they certainly spiced most things up with European erotica but, ultimately, more people remember Hammer's Dracula and Frankenstein remakes than anything else. In those days, nobody would even have thought to compare what Hammer were doing with how The Asylum work nowadays. But times have changed.

To say that "Wake Wood" is Hammer's version of Stephen King's "Pet Sematary" with a little bit of "The Wicker Man" thrown in would be not only be an understatement but might also mislead you to believe that they'd taken the best parts of both to make something new. All horror films are derivative of each other to some extent but when The Asylum do it everybody screams the words "rip off" from one side of the internet to the other. When Hammer do it, nobody seems to even notice. Well, I noticed.

Since Hammer's return they have already annoyed everybody with any discernment by unnecessarily remaking "Let the Right One In" as the horribly dumbed down "Let Me In", and reworking "Sliver" and "Psycho" into something completely boring with "The Resident". All those lovely Gothic dramas from Bray Studios which made Hammer great have been abandoned completely and there isn't even a glimmer of the "Hammer House of Horror" TV series' originality either. This new version of Hammer Film Productions seems to just be just using the name to compete with The Asylum and that doesn't bode well for the future.

But, anyway, what you all really want to know about is "Wake Wood" itself. Is it completely awful or worth a watch? Strangely, it's a bit of both. "Wake Wood" is pretty rough and badly put together but has some very talented people acting in it and it's set in Ireland. It's a very British Hammer film again and that should be enough to satisfy most people but only if Hammer films are all that they've ever watched.

If I tell you now that that the lead, played by Aidan Gillen, is a veterinary surgeon whose daughter gets killed at the beginning of the film, where do you think the story is going? If I then tell you that our hero and his beautiful blonde wife, Eva Birthistle, are so grief stricken that they are prepared to resort to some ancient folk magic to bring their child back to life, what classic late '80s film are you now reminded of? And if I just let you in on the fact that the daughter is going to come back "wrong"? Well, I think you get the idea. Should Stephen King consult his lawyers or has this much lack of originality now to be seen as an homage?

Some people could argue that because the whole village of Wake Wood are in on this weirdness that it has a "Wicker Man" quality to it. I disagree. Timothy Spall is no Christopher Lee. He will always be Barry from "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" to me no matter how much his acting has improved. I just can't take Timothy Spall seriously as a slightly Irish accented gentleman farmer and, as a pagan priest to boot, even less so. If he'd played a giant leprechaun and danced a few jigs maybe I would have enjoyed his role a bit more. Hell, if "Wake Wood' had been a comedy spoof of "Pet Sematary" then I would have enjoyed the whole sad effort a lot more and I absolutely detest comedies.

The biggest thing wrong with "Wake Wood" apart from its homaging of other films, is that it all feels so roughly edited. You can almost get into it but then horribly fast scene changes and more two-dimensional characters turn up so you can't. There's even a sex scene which is necessary to the plot and which could have been very good but actually made me question what the hell I was watching for a number of reasons which you'll have to discover for yourself. The more things I mention and want to rip apart for their inconsistencies and ability to cause even bigger plot holes, the less you'll want to watch "Wake Wood" and that isn't my intention at all.

"Wake Wood" is not a horror film that I recommend to the seasoned horror fan. It has a few decent effects considering the obviously low-budget, it looks great in places and it would have made a good TV episode for Hammer if it had been done back in the early '80s. It's almost spooky enough to be entertaining but, I'm sad to say, "Wake Wood" is no scarier than a Hammer film from the '50s or '60s. For that reason alone, it really does fit into the Hammer way of doing things but, since most of us have moved on somewhat, a horror film this tame is, in a word, disappointing.