Even if they don't hold up in all areas of filmaking, to fans they're still fun to watch.
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When it comes to Hammer Films, beauty is in the eye of the B-holder. This iconic producer of B-movies has been praised for their ability to squeeze the most visual style possible out of a bargain-basement budget. The sets usually looked authentic and the costumes lavishly colorful. In terms of production values, these were B-movies that aspired to be taken more seriously.
But the plots and dialogue were so hackneyed or full of holes that it was pretty hard for audiences to do that. These films were born just south of "campy," and no amount of costuming or art design can change the way that they feel. But as B-movies went, the Hammer films were quite popular. With its first foray into horror--"The Quatemass Experiment" (1955)--Hammer began racking up an impressive list of films that starred people like Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Oliver Reed (in his first starring role) and Herbert Lom ("The Pink Panther"). Some of them played like cheap knock-offs of the monster films Universal put out in the Thirties, the most popular of which were "Dracula," "Frankenstein," and "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," while their most mainstream/commercial venture, "One Million Years B.C.," starred Raquel Welch. Yet, Hammer carved out such a big market niche that the studio was actually presented with the Queen's Award to Industry.
Hammer films were known for their graphic gore and melodramatic narratives, and their stable of writers included Jimmy Sangster, who penned the stories for such films as "Dracula," "The Curse of Frankenstein," and three of the four films on this "Icons of Adventure" DVD.
When these films were made, theaters typically paired a B-movie with an A title. B-movies functioned as a warm-up act, and like most warm-up acts they didn't have the same talent or firepower. They were passably entertaining, plot-driven movies that, aside from actors like Lee and Cushing, featured a cast of no-names. That's the case with this batch, as well, and the difference between B and A movies was also clearly evident in the tabloid-style posters and lobby cards that the former put out.
"The Pirates of Blood River" (1962, 87 min., color)
You know you're in Hammer Land when there are only a handful of women in the cast, and before the first sequence is over, one of them is eaten by a school of piranhas in what the village elders proclaim "God's judgment." And just as typical, the reason for getting her in the water seemed as flimsy as the cave-girl skins Welch would wear years later. Jonathon Standing (Kerwin Mathews) is the son of the lead elder in a French Huguenot settlement in the New World, and we're supposed to feel that the elders are all too rigid and oppressive, making people live their lives in fear. Of course, if you're bonking the wife of one of the elders, I should think you'd deserve to live your life in fear. It's not the best example of patriarchal oppression, but (again, characteristic of the Hammer films) it's the only one we get. When discovered, she tries to run away and throws herself into the river, where she's devoured in short order. But (and inconsistencies are another hallmark of B-movies) when pirates go from their ship to this settlement, they cross the same water several times, and there's nary an incident.
Wait. It gets better. After he escapes from a nearby penal colony he was sentenced to (Hey, I thought these Huguenots were in an isolated area?) he ends up with a bunch of pirates led by Captain LaRoche (Christopher Lee). With an eye patch, fake French accent, and gimpy hand, Lee cuts a grand swathe, but not a terribly believable one. And his henchman, to give you some idea of the Hammer sense of humor, is a pirate named Hench (Peter Arne). Look for Oliver Reed as a lusty drunken pirate in this predictable tale that has young Standing leading the pirates to his settlement because he's told they want a friendly base to rest from time to time, when instead, well . . . pirates. And pirates do what pirates do: they rape (or try to), they pillage, they plunder, and when there's no booty to be had they wonder about their blunder. It's all pretty hokey, but somehow, still amusing-especially the blindfolded pirate's duel, or unintentionally funny moments, as when the settlers look on a hillside and one proclaims, "There must be 30 of them," when you can clearly see, even without pressing your "pause" button, that there's only half that number of pirates. But hey, B-movies were all about fun--even the unintentional sort. They're an acquired taste, a cult in search of a new following, a guilty pleasure if there ever was one.
"The Devil-Ship Pirates" (1964, 89 min., color)
In the past, people have responded more favorably to this pirate film that "Blood River," but I kind of liked the first one better. This one doesn't have nearly the action, and while there's an authentic looking ship, the darned thing looks as if it just sailed right into Gilligan's lagoon. Apparently, no one at Hammer thought the public would have any idea that three-masted ships would need a deep harbor. These guys just hop off their ship right onto land. It's Lee again who's the pirate leader, this time with a fake Spanish accent that isn't as good as his fake French accent. Captain Robeles was in charge of one of the ships from the Spanish Armada, but because his ship was damaged he had to put in for repairs on the British coast--which, again, looks more like the coast of "Gilligan's Island." Visually, it looks extremely good; logically, you keep wanting to rub your eyes for clarity.
In many ways, the story is more static. To keep costs down, there were no scenes filmed at sea, so you basically have pirates hopping off their ship and back onto it again, while there's a lot of talk. The Spanish try to convince the villagers that the English lost, and they must cooperate with their new "masters." For a while, it works, but then the villagers start to get wind of something afoul, and it's the Huguenot insurgency all over again.
"The Stranglers of Bombay" (1960, 80 min., b&w)
This is the only one of the bunch that Sangster didn't write. David Zelag Goodman handled the chores here, basing his taut and gory drama on the Thuggees in India, a secret cult that murdered and robbed travelers by strangulation, using ritual yellow scarves. Then they buried the bodies. It's where we get our use of the word "thug," and for an old B-movie this one actually gets a little tense, especially as you watch these creeps creep toward their victims on screen in black-and-white. The Thuggees are like pirates, really, with their own code. They're Kali worshippers, and their high priest (George Pastell) and his antics will remind viewers a little of the Indiana Jones episode. But you can count the number of real Indians in this film on both hands, and seeing so many Caucasians made to look Indian seems so hokey it's also a little funny. In "Stranglers" the counterpart to the piranha scene or the blindfolded pirate duel is a little fight between a snake and a mongoose, which writer Goodman says wasn't in his script. Hammer added it. There's plenty of violence and gore, and though you won't recognize a single face, Guy Rolfe does a decent job as the lead actor, Capt. Harry Lewis. But as always, logic gets the best of these guys, and the British officer assigned to put a stop to this nonsense isn't the field veteran who knows India and its people; it's the newbie who's just arrived, a cliché that's more commonly scene in cavalry Westerns. In many respects, this one comes closest to the horror films that Hammer is known for, and there are probably more genuinely frightening moments than in any of the other films. The film conveys a believable sense of life in India when the British were first ruling, and the scenes involving the Kali worshippers are somehow mesmerizing. Unfortunately, when these guys aren't on camera, you wish they were. Still, this and "Blood River" are the two best films on "Icons of Adventure."
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