Blood of Beasts (2005) – Review

This film was released under three different titles: Beauty and the Beast, Blood of Beasts, and Blood of Vikings. That’s either a bold marketing strategy or some kind of tax dodge. Whatever the intent, the end result feels less like a rebrand and more like a warning label that nobody read.

In a Viking kingdom that looks like it raided the costume bin behind a Renaissance fair, Princess Freya (Jane March) is being lined up to marry Sven (William Gregory Lee), a man whose personality ranges from “smug” to “extra smug.” King Thorsson (Greg Melvill-Smith), who appears to be dying of a vague medieval illness called Plot Necessity, decides his last great idea is to sail to the cursed island of Gungnir. Freya, thinking several steps ahead of everyone else in this script, tells Sven she’ll only marry him if her father comes back alive. Sven agrees, because clearly nothing has ever gone wrong on a cursed island before.

 

“I double dog dare you.”

On Gungnir, the king’s army immediately gets wrecked by a “beast,” which turns out to be a berserker in a bear pelt with anger issues. Sven, displaying the leadership qualities of a soggy boot, decides to abandon Thorsson and head home so he can grab the throne early. Back home, he declares himself king because apparently, Viking succession law is just whoever speaks loudest in the room. Freya is understandably unimpressed, which is the film’s one rational emotional response.

 

“Is it too late to declare myself a lesbian?”

Freya, along with Ingrid (Candice Hillebrand), heads to the island to rescue her father, because no one else is going to bother. She finds Thorsson imprisoned and challenges the Beast (David Dukas) to a duel, which is already more initiative than anyone else has shown. Mid-fight, the Beast hesitates after spotting a pendant linked to Agnar, Freya’s presumed-dead childhood love. Freya then decides to stay behind with the Beast so Ingrid and her father can escape, because nothing says “good plan” like voluntarily living with a violent stranger in a bear rug.

 

“Would you care for a waltz in my ballroom?”

Back home, Eric (Justin Whalin) tries to shame the Vikings into action, which works about as well as expected until Sven’s ego gets involved. Meanwhile, Freya and the Beast bond because captivity is always a great foundation for romance. Sven eventually returns with an army, ignores Freya’s pleas that the Beast isn’t a monster, and has him shot and burned anyway. The Beast survives, of course, crashes Freya’s wedding like a very hairy RSVP, reveals he’s Agnar, and challenges Sven to a duel. Freya sacrifices herself mid-fight, Sven dies, the curse lifts, and Agnar gets his humanity back just in time to cradle Freya as she dies.

 

Nothing says “happy ending” like a funeral pyre.

Stray Observations:

• Sven abandons his king on a cursed island and is still shocked when people question his leadership.
• Freya’s big strategy is repeatedly “walk directly into danger and hope for emotional clarity.”
• The Beast’s whole deal hinges on a pendant that nobody thought to mention earlier.
• Viking warriors apparently take orders from whoever finished speaking last.
• The island is “enchanted,” which in this case means “has fog and one guy in a bear skin rug.”
• Burning the Beast’s body without checking if he’s actually dead feels like a rookie mistake.
• Odin’s curse operates on rules that seem to be made up mid-scene, and exposited in the least convincing way possible.

 

“Even he who is pure of heart can be cursed by a dick Norse god.”

Screenwriter Paul Anthony at least tried something. Setting Beauty and the Beast in the Viking era is the kind of idea that makes you pause and think, “Okay, that could be interesting.” New mythology, harsher world, less ballroom dancing and more axes. Then the film actually starts, and that promise collapses faster than Sven’s loyalty. The Viking setting doesn’t deepen the story or reshape the themes. It just swaps out gowns for furs and calls it a day. You’re left with the same old beats, only now everyone looks vaguely uncomfortable and historically confused.

 

Was wearing a dead muskrat on your head a Viking tradition?

David Lister directs this like he’s allergic to anything resembling cinematic flair. There’s no sense of scale, no atmosphere, no tension. Scenes just… happen. Characters move from one location to another like they’re ticking boxes on a to-do list titled “Finish Movie.” The pacing lurches, the emotional beats land with a thud, and any potentially interesting moment is flattened into something that feels like a rehearsal take that nobody bothered to improve.

 

Frat Bros of the Viking Age.

The visual effects deserve their own special mention, mostly because they’re barely there. The “Beast” is less a creature and more a guy who lost a fight with a thrift store rug, which makes the marketing’s attempt to pass this off as something in the orbit of The Lord of the Rings feel less like ambition and more like either staggering hubris or outright delusion. There’s no transformation worth noting, no magical presence, no sense that anything supernatural is happening beyond the script insisting it is. For a story built around a curse, the film treats magic like an optional add-on it couldn’t afford. The result is a fantasy that feels aggressively mundane.

 

“Which way is it to Mordor?”

The cast looks like they were assembled from the waiting room of a Xena: Warrior Princess audition and told to just go with it. Jane March does what she can as Freya, which mostly involves looking serious while the movie falls apart around her. William Gregory Lee leans hard into Sven’s villainy, though “hard” here translates to “loud and obvious.” Justin Whalin, of The Adventures of Lois and Clark fame, is the least convincing Viking in cinema history. He’s less a fearsome Norse warrior and more a guy who wandered in from a community theatre rehearsal and refused to leave. Greg Melvill-Smith shows up, lends a bit of gravitas, and then exits before the film can drag him down too much. David Dukas’s Beast/Agnar has the unenviable task of selling both feral menace and tragic romance while wearing what appears to be a shed carpet.

 

Could you love this Beast?

Among the endless parade of Beauty and the Beast adaptations, this one sits comfortably near the bottom, waving up at anything with a budget, a vision, or basic competence. Even the more misguided versions usually commit to a tone or aesthetic. This one feels like it’s constantly second-guessing itself, unsure whether it’s a gritty Viking tale or a bargain-bin fairy tale. It ends up being neither, which is impressive in the worst possible way.

 

Set fire to this one and sail away as fast as possible.

In conclusion, Blood of Beasts is what happens when a mildly interesting idea gets filtered through a script that doesn’t know how to use it and a production that can’t support it. The Viking setting should have added texture and danger, but instead, it highlights how thin everything else is. Between the non-existent effects, the questionable performances, and a story that stumbles through its own mythology, the film plays like a low-effort D&D campaign where nobody read the rulebook. It’s not bold, it’s not imaginative, and it’s definitely not the epic its marketing tried to suggest. It’s just another Beauty and the Beast retelling, dressed in furs and bad wigs, hoping you won’t notice how little is actually going on.

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) – Review

A dark castle perched above a raging sea, thunder splitting the skies, and a torture chamber buried deep in its stone heart—these are the trappings of Roger Corman’s The Pit and the Pendulum, a moody masterwork of Gothic terror so fevered it could only have sprung from the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. With Vincent Price delivering one of his most tragic and magnetic performances and Barbara Steele gliding through the shadows like a dark enchantress, this is horror as high art—painted in lightning, hysteria, and the colour of despair.

In 1547 Spain—a place where everyone sounds oddly American—Francis Barnard (John Kerr) arrives at the gloomy seaside castle of his brother-in-law Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) to investigate the mysterious death of his sister, Elizabeth (Barbara Steele). Nicholas and his sister Catherine (Luana Anders) vaguely claim Elizabeth died of a blood disorder, which sounds suspiciously like “We don’t want to talk about it.” Francis, smelling a very melodramatic rat, vows to stick around until someone starts screaming or the castle collapses under its own Gothic angst.

“Don Medina, I’m simply loaded with angst.”

Over dinner, the family doctor, Dr. Leon (Anthony Carbone), provides a diagnosis for the ages: Elizabeth “Died of fright.” Nicholas explains that his wife became obsessed with the castle’s medieval torture chamber, where she spent far too much time brooding over the iron maiden. One night, after muttering the name “Sebastian,” she supposedly locked herself inside and expired. Francis, who has a functioning sense of reason, isn’t buying it and demands a tour of the scene. The result is a jaunt through the world’s creepiest man cave—complete with racks, chains, and all the comforts of the Spanish Inquisition.

“All families have their hobbies, ours was torture and murder.”

Catherine later reveals the grisly family backstory: dear old Dad, Sebastian Medina, was a sadistic inquisitor with a flair for theatrical punishment—especially when it involved adultery and hot pokers. Little Nicholas was forced to watch, which left him with enough trauma to fuel a century of Freudian textbooks. When he remembers that his mother might have been buried alive by Sebastian, Nicholas becomes convinced that Elizabeth met the same fate. Dr. Leon dismisses this as nerves, assuring everyone that if Elizabeth walks again, it’ll be as a ghost, not as a woman with serious claustrophobia issues.

“Should we call the Scooby gang?”

Sure enough, strange happenings begin to rattle the castle: a harpsichord plays itself, paintings are slashed, and Elizabeth’s wedding ring shows up where it definitely shouldn’t. Nicholas swears he’s being haunted, Francis swears Nicholas is delusional, and together they open Elizabeth’s tomb to find her body twisted in a pose that screams—literally—that she was buried alive. Nicholas faints with the kind of commitment only Vincent Price could deliver. But the shocker comes later when Elizabeth strolls in, alive, scheming, and thoroughly wicked. She and Dr. Leon have been gaslighting poor Nicholas into madness so they can inherit the castle.

Naturally, it backfires spectacularly.

Nicholas snaps, decides he’s his father reborn, and treats the villains to an encore of the family’s favourite pastime: torture. Cue the swinging pendulum, the pit, and a Vincent Price performance so grand you can practically hear the organ music swell. By the end, half of the cast has been murdered, terrified, or flung into a hole, and the survivors solemnly swear to seal up the dungeon forever. Francis staggers away, Catherine clings to what’s left of her family name, and the loyal servant Maximillian (Patrick Westwood) looks about ready to find new employment. The castle sighs in relief as the heavy doors close, but not so fast. Inside the iron maiden, Elizabeth—very much alive and very much screaming—realizes her cruel game has come full circle. Her muffled cries echo one last time as the door locks for good. The moral: in Gothic horror, never lock the basement without checking twice—and never underestimate Vincent Price’s sense of irony.

Villains will always pay the Price.

Stray Observations:

• If your coachman drops you off well before your destination, refusing to go any closer, maybe consider that a bad omen and turn around and go home.
• Dr. Leon: possibly the worst physician in horror history—diagnosing death by fright and prescribing hauntings.
• Don Medina claims, “The malignant atmosphere of this castle. It destroyed her.” But he knew of the miasma of barbarity that permeates these walls. Why did he bring her here? Couldn’t he have rented a nice villa up the coast?
• The element of premature burial was previously explored in the House of Usher, which is kind of a Poe thing, so why not?
• The film’s famous pendulum sequence lasts about ten minutes, which is exactly how long it takes for Vincent Price to chew every last piece of scenery.
• The iron maiden is less a torture device and more of a dramatic set piece, and it gets a nice closing with Barbara Steele.

The irony is in the spikes.

Roger Corman was a master of economical excess; he could make a $200,000 film look like a million-dollar nightmare. With The Pit and the Pendulum, he turns minimal sets and one big room full of props into a world dripping with gothic dread. The result is a film that feels expansive despite its budget, thanks to clever camera angles, coloured lighting, and a constant sense of motion. Corman directs like a man possessed by the spirit of Poe—or at least by the spirit of getting it done on schedule.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish with a small budget.

Floyd Crosby’s cinematography deserves special praise. His use of rich blues, reds, and flickering golds gives the castle a dreamlike, painterly beauty. The widescreen compositions trap the characters within arches, doorways, and shadows, visually imprisoning them long before the iron maiden does. Crosby, who once shot High Noon, brings a haunting elegance that elevates the production from pulp to poetry. Even when the plot wobbles, the visuals hold firm.

“Hold still, we’re working on cutting the budget even more.”

Vincent Price is the crown jewel of Corman’s Poe cycle, and here he gives one of his most nuanced performances—oscillating between tormented guilt, melancholic romance, and operatic madness. He’s both sympathetic and terrifying, a man haunted not by ghosts but by his own lineage and conscience. When he finally snaps and channels the sadistic spirit of his father, it’s pure theatre—grand, tragic, and more than a little fun.

His performance here is worth the Price of admission.

Barbara Steele, the queen of Italian Gothic horror, is a perfect counterpart. Her presence electrifies the film’s later scenes, her haunting features contrasting beautifully with Price’s expressive fragility. Steele doesn’t get much screen time, but when she does, she owns it—her voice dripping with venom as she reveals her betrayal. Together, they create the film’s most unforgettable moments: beauty and madness waltzing through the dungeon.

Don’t expect lasting love in a Poe story.

As a Poe adaptation, The Pit and the Pendulum takes wild liberties. Screenwriter Richard Matheson—who also penned House of Usher—expands Poe’s brief tale of psychological torture into a full-blown gothic melodrama stuffed with necrophilia, gaslighting, and generational trauma. The result bears little resemblance to the original story, functioning more like The Fall of the House of Medina, but Matheson’s additions give Vincent Price something deliciously tormented to play. The final act nods back to Poe’s imagery as the pendulum descends—albeit with more melodrama than the author likely imagined. Still, if you’re going to warp literature, this is the way to do it: with atmosphere, excess, and Vincent Price in an inquisition outfit.

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

In conclusion, The Pit and the Pendulum is a delirious triumph of Gothic style over narrative sense. It’s less an adaptation than a séance, a cinematic invocation of Poe’s spirit through colour, shadow, and Vincent Price’s trembling voice. Roger Corman’s thrifty brilliance, Floyd Crosby’s visual artistry, and Matheson’s baroque script all combine to create something both ridiculous and mesmerizing. Like the pendulum itself, it swings between horror and camp, terror and theatre, and never stops being fun to watch.

The Fall of the House of Usher (1960) – Review

Roger Corman’s The Fall of the House of Usher not only kicked off his legendary Poe cycle, but it’s also a Gothic fever dream that set the bar for all candlelit insanity to follow. Mixing high melodrama with low-budget ingenuity, Corman turns Edgar Allan Poe’s short story into a lush Technicolor nightmare about doom, decay, and a brother who really needs to stop gaslighting his sister. It’s a haunted house movie where the house itself seems more alive than most of the people in it. Which, to be fair, is part of the charm.

The film opens with the introduction of Philip Winthrop (Mark Damon), a dashing young man with the kind of arrogance only 19th-century literature majors can muster, arriving at the Usher estate to reunite with his fiancée, Madeline Usher (Myrna Fahey). The mansion, squatting in a swamp like a mouldy wedding cake, immediately screams, “Don’t go in there,” but Philip goes in anyway. Inside, he meets Roderick Usher (Vincent Price), Madeline’s morbidly eloquent brother, who explains that the family is cursed due to its consisting of a long line of criminals. Every Usher has gone insane, and their bad vibes have seeped into the walls, the trees, and possibly the soundtrack. Roderick insists that marriage would only spread the rot, but Philip’s too lovestruck (and genre-blind) to notice that everything around him is shouting leave!

I’d certainly turn back after one glance at this place.

Naturally, things spiral from bad to Poe-level worse. After yet another argument with her brother, Madeline falls into a cataleptic trance. This is a medical condition known in Gothic cinema as “plot convenience.” Roderick, fully aware she’s not dead, has her entombed in the family crypt faster than you can say “maybe get a second opinion.” Philip mourns briefly before the butler Bristol (Harry Ellerbe) lets it slip that Madeline had a history of catalepsy—oops. Suddenly realizing he’s in a horror story, Philip sprints back to the crypt to undo what 19th-century men do best: make terrible decisions involving women’s bodies.

Things go about as expected.

Yes, Roderick had entombed the poor girl alive, to “spare” her the Usher curse, but Madeline managed to claw her way out of her coffin in a scene that’s equal parts horrifying and metal. She’s gone mad from her ordeal, and who can blame her? Drenched in blood and vengeance, she storms through the burning halls like a bridal banshee, confronting Roderick and strangling him to death in a glorious act of Gothic retribution. As the fire spreads and the house collapses—because no cursed mansion ever has proper fire safety—the Usher bloodline and their ancestral eyeshadow are finally extinguished. Philip alone escapes, watching the flaming ruins sink into the swamp, as Poe’s immortal line whispers doom over the soggy remains.

A right and proper fiery end.

Stray Observations:

• Roderick Usher’s haircut looks like it was styled by a ghostly art student; perfectly symmetrical, faintly judgmental. The choice of extreme blonde, Vincent Price’s.
• Roderick Usher claims he can’t stand anything rougher than angel wings brushing his skin, yet the man’s strutting around in starched collars, brocade vests, and about twelve layers of “unbearable” Gothic couture. Maybe the real curse is his tailor.
• A falling chandelier almost kills Philip, and while this is a horror cliché, it’s also a solid clue that maybe staying here is a bad idea.
• The butler Bristol’s “Oh, she has catalepsy!” line ranks among cinema’s all-time great late-in-the-game confessions.
• This was the first time Vincent Price’s voice achieved full baritone melancholy saturation—a performance setting he’d use for years.
• Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” is all gray gloom and shadow. Corman splashes every Technicolor hue across the screen like he’s trying to outdo a Gothic paint commercial.

Vincent Price and the Art of Horror.

AIP’s House of Usher marks the dawn of Roger Corman’s remarkable collaboration with American International Pictures, a rare marriage of pulp literature and drive-in economics. Corman, who could shoot an entire movie before you finished lunch, approached Poe with an unexpected seriousness. Instead of the rubber monsters and dime-store effects of his earlier work, he leaned into atmosphere: fog, firelight, and psychological decay. Floyd Crosby’s lush, painterly cinematography gives the Technicolor palette a haunting opulence; every crimson curtain and golden candle flicker feels part of the story’s sickness. Together, they turned a limited budget into a visual symphony of dread, proving that Gothic horror could be both intelligent and commercially viable.

The house may be falling apart, but it’s still gorgeous. 

As Roderick Usher, Vincent Price delivers a performance that is at once theatrical and devastatingly precise. His Roderick isn’t a madman frothing at the mouth; he’s a delicate, doomed aesthete, haunted by the sound of everything, including his own conscience. Price embodies decadence with such conviction that you start believing the house is alive just to keep him company. Within Corman’s unofficial “stock company,” Price became the soul of these Poe films; his voice, his face, his sheer command of Gothic despair defined the series. No one else could make lines about familial evil sound like tragic poetry instead of melodramatic nonsense.

There’s no melodrama like Poe melodrama.

As a translation from Poe to the screen. Poe’s original short story is a mood piece, a slow descent into rot and madness, with no romance, no dramatic resurrection, and certainly no fistfights in crypts. Corman’s adaptation, scripted by Richard Matheson, turns that eerie atmosphere into a full-blooded melodrama. By giving the narrator a name, a love interest, and a reason to storm the castle, the film trades subtle horror for operatic intensity. Purists may balk, but the film’s spirit is faithful to Poe’s obsession with psychological doom and entrapment. Corman made it cinematic, turning Poe’s quiet despair into screaming Technicolor.

It’s all about despair and screaming.

In conclusion, The Fall of the House of Usher remains a cornerstone of American Gothic cinema, the film that elevated Roger Corman from schlock maestro to serious stylist. It’s grandly overwrought, occasionally silly, and utterly mesmerizing.  A haunted-house movie where you can practically smell the mildew. Corman’s visual bravado, Floyd Crosby’s painterly eye, and Vincent Price’s trembling nobility fuse into something timeless: a story of a house too cursed to stand and a man too proud to leave it.

Beauty and the Beast (1987) – Review

By the 1980s, Beauty and the Beast had already been adapted so many times that the story was basically on autopilot. Naturally, Cannon Films looked at that pile of versions and thought, “Yes, what this needs is a budget that barely covers catering and a dream.” The result is the 1987 entry in their Cannon Movie Tales series, a film that exists somewhere between earnest fairy tale and something you’d accidentally tape over with a hockey game.

We begin with a wealthy merchant living the good life with his sons Oliver (Joseph Bee) and Frederick (Jack Messinger), and his daughters Bettina (Carmela Marner), Isabella (Ruth Harlap), and the ever-patient Beauty (Rebecca De Mornay). Beauty is less a daughter and more a full-time domestic support system, keeping the entire family functioning while they lounge around like decorative furniture. She doesn’t resent it, which either makes her a saint or someone who hasn’t yet discovered the concept of boundaries.

 

“Someday I’ll be a fairy tale princess, and you can all suck it.”

Then fate, or possibly a screenwriter with a checklist, sends the merchant’s fortune into a tailspin after a series of financial calamities. The family relocates to the countryside, where Beauty continues doing literally everything while the others perfect the art of being useless. When word arrives that a ship might have survived, the merchant promises lavish gifts. Beauty, in a rare moment of modesty, asks for a single rose, which turns out to be the most expensive flower in cinema history.

 

“I’ll give you an offer you can’t refuse.”

On his way home empty-handed, the merchant stumbles into a castle that offers free room service with a side of ominous vibes. He helps himself to a rose because, apparently, he learned nothing about consequences, and is promptly confronted by the Beast (John Savage), who demands Beauty in exchange. The merchant agrees with shocking speed, and Beauty is shipped off like a polite hostage, where she discovers that magical conveniences abound and her new roommate mostly communicates through awkward dinner proposals and emotional neediness.

 

“Fair warning, I’m totally into Stockholm Syndrome.”

Life at the castle settles into a routine: dinner, rejection, dream sequences featuring a mystery prince, repeat. Beauty grows fond of the Beast because proximity and narrative necessity are powerful forces. After visiting her family, where she finds that her siblings have gone back to being selfish pricks, she returns late to find the Beast dramatically dying. Realizing she loves him just in time to save the runtime, she accepts his proposal, breaks the curse, and transforms him into the prince from her dreams. Cue fireworks, transformation, magical reunions, and the film sprinting to the finish line before anyone asks too many questions.

 

Is it me, or does the Prince look to be rethinking marriage?

Strays Observations:

• The merchant trades his daughter for a flower and somehow remains the “good parent” in the story. Standards were different, apparently.
• Beauty’s entire family forgets how to function without her, then magically learns independence the second she leaves. Convenient personal growth is the best kind.
• The Beast asks “Will you marry me?” every night like he’s stuck in a very specific loop of emotional torture.
• Beauty falls in love with a guy she barely interacts with outside of dinner and existential dread.
• Time moves differently in the castle, which is less a plot device and more a screenwriter shrugging.
• The magical castle provides anything Beauty wants, yet she still spends most of her time looking vaguely bored.
• The reveal that the Beast is the prince from her dreams lands with all the surprise of a neon sign flashing “PLOT TWIST.” Basically, for this to work, Beauty has to be pretty dim.
• The Beast owns a golden mechanical bird that looks suspiciously like Bubo from Clash of the Titans, if Bubo had been assembled from leftover parts and mild disappointment.

 

“I bet I could get good money for this on eBay.”

This film sits comfortably inside the Cannon Movie Tales experiment, a well-intentioned but financially shaky attempt by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to crank out fairy tales for a younger audience. They planned sixteen films, which is adorable optimism considering Cannon’s habit of spending money like it was a myth. The series stopped at nine when their adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin flopped, leaving the rest to quietly slip onto video shelves where they could do less damage.

 

“I walked with you…once upon a dream.”

Director Eugene Marner deserves some credit for trying to wring atmosphere out of what was clearly a limited production, though he’s fighting an uphill battle the entire time. There are moments where the film almost convinces you it has a mood, particularly in the castle scenes, but it never quite escapes the gravitational pull of its budget, and it certainly isn’t helped by a collection of songs so uninspired they feel like contractual obligations rather than storytelling. Cinematographer Avraham Karpick does what he can, which mostly results in visuals that resemble a mid-tier television special.

 

“Tonight, on a very special episode of Punky Brewster.”

The cast is a mixed bag, leaning heavily toward “trying their best under the circumstances.” Rebecca De Mornay brings a gentle sincerity to Beauty, though she also spends a surprising amount of the film looking quietly confused, as if she’s just as unsure about what’s happening as the audience. That sincerity still helps anchor things when everything around her looks like it was assembled over a weekend. John Savage, meanwhile, has the unenviable task of playing the Beast, buried under makeup and forced to oscillate between menace and wounded vulnerability. He gives it effort, but the material doesn’t exactly meet him halfway, leaving him stranded somewhere between tragic figure and confused dinner guest. The only real upside is that the makeup itself is quite impressive.

 

Kudos to makeup designers Deborah Eastwood and John Price.

In the grand lineup of Beauty and the Beast adaptations, this one sits in an odd middle ground, and its timing didn’t do it any favours either. It arrived alongside the television series starring Ron Perlman as the Beast and Linda Hamilton as Beauty, which rather brutally highlighted what a difference resources, writing, and actual atmosphere can make. Needless to say, one of these is still talked about with genuine affection, and the other is… this. Which ends up as a curious footnote, a product of Cannon’s particular brand of ambition-meets-budget-reality. It’s not the worst version, which might be the most backhanded compliment imaginable, but it’s rarely the one anyone remembers first.

 

“Beast, should I sing another insipid love song?”

In conclusion, 1987’s Beauty and the Beast is the kind of film that survives on sheer earnestness. It wants to be magical, and occasionally it almost convinces you, but it’s constantly undermined by its limitations. Still, there’s a strange charm in watching a studio like Cannon attempt something so classical with such modest means. It’s uneven, sometimes unintentionally funny, and often visually underwhelming, yet there’s enough sincerity to keep it from collapsing entirely. Not exactly a fairy tale triumph, but not a complete disaster either, which might be the most honest outcome Cannon could hope for.

The Plague of the Zombies (1966) – Review

Hammer Films wasn’t just about Peter Cushing creating monsters or Christopher Lee hissing over a candelabra. They also dabbled in voodoo, Cornish superstition, and the occasional zombie infestation. 1966’s The Plague of the Zombies is one such detour; a gothic, fog-drenched curiosity that manages to be creepy, silly, and weirdly influential all at once.

Sir James Forbes (André Morell), the sort of doctor who thinks “holiday” means “poke around in other people’s corpses,” is summoned by his old student, Dr. Peter Thompson (Brook Williams). Peter is drowning in patients, but not in cures; his Cornish village is racking up mysterious deaths like it’s running a “buy one, get one free” deal on coffins. Naturally, Sir James shows up with his daughter Sylvia (Diane Clare) in tow, because Hammer films always require a wholesome blonde to imperil.

 

“What does one wear to a plague, father?”

Things escalate quickly: Peter’s wife Alice (Jacqueline Pearce) is acting like she wandered in from a goth music video, wasting away under an unnamed illness and muttering ominous things. Soon enough, Alice dies, then doesn’t stay dead. Sir James digs her up and finds her body missing, which is never a good sign unless you’re in a farce. Even worse, the graveyard has more traffic than Piccadilly Circus at rush hour, with corpses sneaking out for late-night walks. I think this would be considered a tad odd in most places, but to be fair, in Cornwall, that might not even be a red flag.

 

“Does this mean we have to bury everyone twice?”

The culprit is revealed to be the suavely sinister Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson), who has graduated from the standard aristocratic villainy of fox hunting and tenant-cheating to full-on zombie farming. Using a bit of voodoo picked up on his Caribbean holidays (way more hands-on than bringing home a straw hat), Hamilton has turned the local peasants into undead labourers for his tin mine. Hammer really leaned into the “what’s scarier than a union-busting aristocrat?” angle here. Hamilton casually steals some of Sylvia’s blood after a wine glass “accident.” Sylvia is soon entranced and lured to the mine by a small zombie parade, and the Squire prepares her for zombification-lite.

 

I hope that mine is OSHA-compliant.

Naturally, Sir James isn’t about to let zombie capitalism go unchecked. After some grave robbing, secret passage exploring, and a lot of men in frock coats falling into pits, he unmasks Hamilton’s operation. Luckily, Sir James uncovers Hamilton’s voodoo dolls, accidentally sets the mansion on fire, and discovers that zombies really don’t handle flames well. While the mine becomes a writhing, burning chaos, Sir James and Peter rescue Sylvia, leaving Hamilton to scream his last amid the inferno. Cornwall is saved, though the property values are probably shot.

 

“Well, that was a shit show.”

Stray Observations:

• Apparently, Cornish police don’t bother with forensics: “Oh, you were drunk near the body? You must have done it.” Case closed.
• Men refuse to work in an unsafe mine, so the mine is closed. Solution: Rich asshat uses voodoo to turn miners into zombies to work the mine. Yeah, that checks out.
• Hamilton’s voodoo involves breaking wine glasses and collecting blood in the least subtle way possible. No one thinks this is weird?
• Burning tiny voodoo dolls causes zombies to freak out and combust in perfect sync. It’s convenient, but raises real questions about quality control.
• We have a spooky manor house, a villainous scheme to make money with zombies, and there’s a Great Dane. A few more elements and we’d have a Scooby-Doo movie.

“And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for that meddling doctor.”

Director John Gilling delivers The Plague of the Zombies with the gothic moodiness Hammer was known for, but adds a surprising dose of grit. The opening voodoo sequence, with its pounding drums and eerie ritual, immediately sets this apart from the studio’s usual vampire-goth template. Gilling keeps the action brisk and the suspense simmering, though his biggest triumph is how he balances moments of genuine creepiness (the zombies rising from their graves, Sylvia entranced in the moonlight) with the unintentionally goofy (tin mines and blood-stealing wine tricks).

 

I do wonder where Hamilton got his voodoo drummers? Did he place an ad?

Arthur Grant’s cinematography is a major reason the film still works today. His fog-drenched Cornish landscapes, shadowy graveyards, and claustrophobic mine shafts give the film an oppressive atmosphere that papered over some of the sillier story beats. The iconic scene of zombies clawing their way out of the earth is still haunting, thanks to Grant’s lighting and framing. It’s one of Hammer’s most enduring images, and you can see why George Romero might have taken notes.

 

“They’re coming to get you, Sir James.”

In terms of zombie history, The Plague of the Zombies is a fascinating bridge. It looks back to White Zombie (1932), with its voodoo origins and Bela Lugosi’s hypnotic control, while also prefiguring Romero’s flesh-eating hordes two years later in Night of the Living Dead (1968). Hammer’s zombies don’t eat brains—they’re more into unpaid labour—but the imagery of shambling corpses and their tragic victims paved the way for the modern zombie genre.

 

“More brains, please!”

As for performances, André Morell brings a welcome gravitas to Sir James, grounding the story even when he’s knee-deep in coffin lids. Diane Clare does her best with the fainting-damsel routine, though Sylvia is often more plot device than character. Jacqueline Pearce is wasted as Alice, but her gaunt features as a zombie are unforgettable. And John Carson? He steals the movie, oozing sinister charm as Hamilton, making the voodoo villain both menacing and oddly classy.

 

He plays “Rich Asshat” with extreme vigour. 

In conclusion, The Plague of the Zombies may not be Hammer’s most famous film, but it’s one of its most distinctive—a gothic horror with a voodoo twist that managed to look backward to Lugosi and forward to Romero. It’s silly, atmospheric, and occasionally profound in its imagery, proving Hammer could do more than just Dracula sequels. If nothing else, it gave us zombies before they were cool, and for that, it deserves a special spot in horror history.