Starring Caroline Munro, Martine Beswicke, Veronica Carlson, Christopher Neame, Georgina Dugdale
Directed by Joshua Kennedy
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A young woman travels with her mother and her best friend to the village of Carlsdadt to reunite with her fiancee, but the village is beset with mysterious killings by a pair of legendary monsters.
Joshua Kennedy's ultimate tribute to Hammer horror is one of his best films, and in my opinion his masterpiece, enhanced by the casting of a quartet of thespians who originally appeared in films for the legendary British studio: Caroline Munro, Martine Beswicke, Veronica Carlson, and Christopher Neame. Munro's daughter, Georgina Dugdale, also impresses as Isobel, the virginal young woman facing a horrific fate, who refuses to give up and leave despite multiple warnings.
The production, funded by an Indiegogo campaign, is Kennedy's most impressively mounted, with a Texas banquet facility lushly decorated to stand in for the environs of Carlsdadt, including a train station, a tavern, and the castle where most of the action takes place, enhanced by paintings of actors from the past productions of Hammer and other classic horror films. Exteriors of the village and the castle (using the same building that stood in for Dark Shadows' Collinwood) are superb and help support the imagery of the film's world.
I do not think it would be a major spoiler to reveal that Munro and Beswicke are the film's villains, playing the Gorgon sisters, whose characters are wonderfully reimagined from Greek mythology, as not simply creatures turning their victims to stone, but predatory monsters stalking their prey. It's never really explained what drives the sisters to seek out victims, but this is a fresh and unique take on the classic legends. Both actresses are excellent, with a meaty role Munro sinks her teeth into, and Beswicke's vamping recalls her roles in a number of past Hammer productions, which I know are among Kennedy's favorite films.
At this point, I should offer full disclosure as I was a backer of the Indiegogo campaign, and have a friendship with Kennedy and a number of other people involved in the production, and also contributed a background voice to the film. However, I truly believe in everything I'm professing about the movie, and how it stands out not just from Kennedy's past releases, but also compared to other films of the genre.
Veronica Carlson, playing Isobel's mother, a clearly long suffering grand dame leaning on an unfortunate drinking habit, has some wonderfully acted scenes etching out her character, and becomes the driving force in the film standing up to the fearsome villainesses, and she is wonderful, a nice reversal on her past performances as victims of Dracula and Frankenstein in the Hammer classics.
Christopher Neame, co-star of Hammer's Dracula A.D. 1972 as the vampire's acolyte Johnny Alucard, portrays Father Llewellyn, the priest driven by fear into hiding from the evil that threatens his parish, but who regains his courage and joins the battle against the evil sisters. He gives a layered and textured performance in the role, showing the audience his torment as well as the vestiges of the pride his character has largely sacrificed.
Georgina Dugdale is charming and a definite asset to the production as Isobel, who is no shrinking violet, but a strong young woman ready to help her fiancee overcome the evil influences he's under, and ready to right matters to preserve her future happiness.
Kennedy himself plays her fiancee, in another fine brooding performance of his own, but never stealing the limelight from his wonderful cast, who has a standout scene watching a funeral from a rooftop, clad in black cape and hat, as well as a memorably tense encounter with Isobel when overcome by the power of the dark sisters.
Supporting roles are filled in by many past Kennedy regulars, including his father Gus as a drunken tavern patron shaken by the loss of his daughter, Marco Munoz as the hunchbacked bartender, Jamie Trevino as Isobel's friend and traveling companion, Tom Pearson as a kindly Gorgon victim, and Dan Day Jr., Mark Holmes, and many others as villagers of Carlsdadt. There may not be many British accents among them, but they play their roles effectively and efficiently.
Mitch Gonzales provides some cinema magic in animating the snakes of the Gorgons, but before we get to see them, there are many well-staged attack sequences in which the victims are effectively bathed in a frightening green light, courtesy of the production's lighting designer, Rosa Cano. She efficiently adds in a number of other hues as well throughout the film that set a horrific tone, and mask absent scenery.
One of the production's strongest assets is the original score composed by Reber Clark, which recalls moments from James Bernard's scores for Hammer and adds tension and suspense at key times throughout the film. I believe this is the first fully-realized score for one of Kennedy's films, and it's a very strong piece of work that uplifts the picture whenever needed, and I positively love the main title. The photography by Martin Torres and Joshua Kennedy is also very well done, as is Derek Koch's sound mixing.
I haven't mentioned any of the Hammer references in the film, and there are a plenty from the swirling leaves familiar to those with Terence Fisher's Hammer work, Dugdale's wearing of a brown cloak with a fur-lined hood, echoing Barbara Shelley's raiment in a sequence in The Gorgon, and the inclusion of lines of dialogue and visual cues and shot selection recalling past Hammer pictures. There are undoubtedly many more.
Do I have any criticisms of the film? At times, I hoped for something that would bring us as an audience more into the village of Carlsdadt, perhaps a sequence with our main characters walking through the city streets and having people shut and bolt their windows. Such a scene would probably have been beyond Kennedy's financial means however. I would have also liked to see more exploration of what drove the Gorgons' predatory attacks.
Nevertheless, on a limited budget, Kennedy has worked wonders, even more amazingly when you consider the fact that he completed principal photography for the film within seven days. He's not only created a tribute and a testament to Hammer horror, he's provided a worthy showcase for some of the studio's talent that we're lucky to have still with us, and most of all, given us an entertaining film worth revisiting again and again.
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