Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)

So close you can feel their fire!

In the mid-sixties, Amicus Productions (whose 'Madhouse' I reviewed for 1974) made two thrilling and exceedingly full-colour films based on a sci-fi TV show called 'Doctor Who', which had been on our screens for less than two years at the time.  By the time I came to be aware of films, these two were being screened at least once annually on television, and though they weren't 'proper' Doctor Who, they were, until 2005, the most ubiquitous stories on British television.  They're the perfect Sunday afternoon films - bright, exciting family adventures, starring Peter Cushing, not as the Doctor, but as eccentric inventor Dr. Who.

The thrill, here, is Daleks IN COLOUR.  They are, if you're curious, silver, blue, red, black, gold, and then some more silver.  The Dalek city is a horrid combination of silver, salmon and pastel blue - not by any means my favourite colour-scheme.  Despite horrid choices of tincture, I love the design of the set, especially the big rotating control panel, and the sliding doors which swing open triagonally with a swoosh and a clash.  They stuck in my mind as a child, and I was glad to see and hear them again

Roberta Tovey and the Lava-lamps of the Daleks!

The Thals, too, are in colour.  These ineffectual aryan pacifists are rendered here as blond, eye-shadowed fellows with waistcoats designed to show off the bare and hairless chests.  I'm tempted to say it's an effeminate look, with elfin boots, tight trousers and well-tended eyelashes, but it's probably truer to say Thal culture dresses its men and women equally, with everybody's curvature given equal acknowledgement.

It seems reasonable enough to inspect the pictures rather than the story.  The plot, after all, had been on telly just two years previously.  The Daleks (who are a bit rubbish here, despite their big budget sheen) do the things they did (and don't yet shout 'exterminate'), and the heroes go through an array of adventurous set-pieces.  Peter Cushing's Dr Who is extremely enjoyable, despite being entirely unlike Hartnell and equally unlike Cushing's usual display.  Ian, in this version, is played by ROY CASTLE, a performer I admire extremely vocally, and gets all the comedy scenes - sitting on the wrong things, leaning on the wrong things, falling over and being affably flabbergasted in a way that continues to amuse me.

Arghhh!  It's a... a Magnedon?  They never really tell us.

It's a broader comedy than in television version, but doesn't undermine the drama, such as it is.  I love the scene where Ian tries (which much in the way of hilarious antics) to open a door which closes every time he approaches it, intercut with Barbara venturing into the city as, silently and unnoticed, panels slide down to cut off her retreat.  Sliding doors and CCTV cameras ("Every move you make, they can see!  Every sound you utter, they can hear!") are the bizarre innovations of the future, set against the ordinary travelling phone-booth of the present.

Here, as in the original, the most exciting scene is the one where everybody jumps over the Very Deep Chasm.  It's wonderfully exciting in both TV and film versions, without being quite believable in either.  In short, Ian, Barbara and two Thals have to jump over a ravine.  It's just about possible, and for safety, as one person jumps, they do so with a rope around their waist connected to one of their fellows, lest they should fall.  Ian, Barbara and Ganatus jump across safely, but the cowardly Antodus, who is terrified that he'll never make it, lands badly and topples into the ravine, his rope dragging Ian over the brink of disaster.  On television, Antodus finally grows brave, and cuts the rope, letting himself fall to his death that Ian might be saved.  He seems to do the same here, except that a short few seconds later we discover that he hasn't given up his life to save a stranger - rather he has fallen onto a ledge, and is perfectly fine.  This film version which can never let itself be horrific or unsettling, and where all is colourful and safe.  It's a pity, as the best Dalek stories are full of death, with victory coming at a miserably high cost.  At least it all ends with a big explosion!


P.S. Says Dr. Who: 'The Daleks have the entire city surrounded by electronic instruments'.  I envisaged the place haloed by keytars, a Bontempi organ and perhaps the odd Roland Electric Piano.

P.P.S. I'm sure I'll get to the far more exciting sequel in a few weeks.

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Now out on Blu-ray, and the second film, at least, is just amazing.

Madhouse (1974)

A Vincent Price horror movie about Vincent Price horror movies.  Whenever Vincent Price falls asleep, 'Dr Death', his character's most famous character comes to life and commits foul murders.  But is it really Vincent Price behind the mask and gloves?

As you may note, I find something satisfying about so much as typing the name Vincent Price.  He's a very enjoyable fellow, and in his element here - and the metafiction, using scenes from his older films as the back-catalogue of the actor he plays here, renders the whole thing more self-aware and more interesting than a plain murder mystery.

'Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrghhhhh!'

So, 'Dr Death' kills Vincent Price's fiancé; she quite literally screams her head off (see directly above) but this doesn't cause anyone from the party downstairs to pop in and check she's ok, or the film would be over in the first five minutes.  Everyone assumes Vincent Price did the deed.  Even Vincent assumes this, and the odd suggestion seems to be that there was no real police investigation or public outcry - but it sets his career back somewhat and he has to be persuaded out of retirement by Peter Cushing to resurrect his old movie character for a British commercial TV channel - with murderous consequences, as the killings begin.

This film is full of people looking in big mirrors

while failing to spot things right behind them

For some while it seems that this might not be a murder-mystery at all, but rather an open-and-shut case.  Vincent Price seems to be the only person with both opportunity and motive.  But it seems - or seemed to me, in any case, likelier and likelier that the great Vincent was indeed doing the murders during some series of blackouts and mental breakdowns.  There are quite a lot of other candidates, of course, all just antagonistic, or just eccentric enough for them to privately be crazed murderers, but none of them quite seem far-gone enough to be behind this spate of wild and outrageous killings (one girl has her head cut off with a pen-knife, apparently.  Another is hanged with her own hair, and so on.  All shocking and ridiculous, rather than gory and terrifying, but tense nonetheless).  Is our hero also the villain?

A cameo from Michael Parkinson as himself interrupts the action finale

As the film pressed on I swung back towards the idea, even the hope, that perhaps Vincent Price was behind it all.  It would seem clean, appropriate, that his character had gotten out of hand.  That he had created a monster even within himself.  We don't quite get the ending I wanted.  It becomes apparent that there are two Doctor Deaths: Vincent Price in costume for his new TV series, and the murderer, impersonating him.  What would have seemed more satisfying and fitting, to my mind, would be for our hero Vincent Price to remove the villain's mask to reveal that it was himself, another Vincent Price.  It wouldn't make a great deal of sense, but it's what I was holding out for - that he might have created another self in Dr Death, detached from himself to exercise those murderous instincts he so finely details to Michael Parkinson.  Sadly Dr Death doesn't murder this real-life interviewer - a missed trick, if ever there was one.

One of too few nice shots

It's not a very visually exciting film, and seems to belong more in the past than in its own time.  This is a seventies in Britain that looks, fashions aside, a lot like the sixties - two decades between which I've always placed an artificial division.  Perhaps it's a deliberate nostalgia for Vincent Price's past, or at least his character's, but it seems odd when the man's clearly in his prime.  Thankfully the strength of his performance, and the mainly-believable grotesquery that surrounds him, keeps the film lively and fun.  Characters walk with blissful stupidity into situations in which they'll obviously be murdered, and this is very pleasing.  The use of old footage in the character's screenings and memories allows us cameos from Basil Rathbone and  Boris Karloff, from beyond the grave, which seems appropriate.

I fear I've given away a fair bit of the film's mystery in these comments, but there's still plenty I haven't revealed, so if it sounds appealing, you may find some strange delight in it.  Incidentally, the title 'Madhouse' is quite irrelevant, and could apply equally well to every other film I've seen this year.  'Idiosyncratic Studio' would be far more accurate, and considerably less generic.

P.S. This was yet another of Opai's  grab-bag of unusual suggestions - the good senor also recommended me 'Way Out West' (1937), 'Daisies' (1966) and the frightful 'Na Srebrnym Globie' (1977).  When other people have made me multiple suggestions I've openly chastised them, but these have all been intriguing, unlike one another, and unlike any film I've chosen for myself.  My apologies to those of you who've made suggestions that I haven't yet reached - I hope to cover most in time.