1966 **1/2A man reads a note left for him in his cottage, and then angrily trudges out the door. He reaches a nearby mansion, enters, and climbs the staircase. Reaching a door in the shadowy hallway, he hesitates for the first time, when behind him a distinguished older man enters the scene. He yells "Stop! You musn't go in there!" and the younger man turns around -- and is then attacked and bitten by a form in the shadows. Released, he clutches his neck in agony, as his flesh turns black and his mouth foams, he tumbles down the staircase. He's dead before he reaches the bottom.
(Note to self: It might be worth paying attention to "movies in which shouts of warning only serve to distract the warnee and open them to danger.")
Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? As the words "A Seven Arts-Hammer Film Production" graced the screen, I realized I've only seen one other Hammer movie, barring those I saw as a kid and have forgotten. The other movie is To the Devil a Daugther from 1976. The films share a similar difficulty in plot, but The Reptile has an advantage being made ten years ealier and being a period piece: it's so very British.
The distinguished man's Indian servant is seen hauling the body to the graveyard, and we're treated to a title shot with a slightly incongrous typeface.
You can just make out the body lying behind the bottom of the P. Curiously, he's buried in that exact spot.
Enter Harry Spalding and his plucky wife Valerie. Harry is the brother of the recently-deceased Charlie Spalding, and decides it's time for he and his wife to move to the country cottage they've just inherited. This was one of those times I was completely puzzled by the supposed charm of the English countryside. I guess it's about fifty-fifty: in some movies the landscape is indeed breathtaking, but in others it's scrubby and unimpressive, and I just can't see what the big deal is.
Harry and Valerie don't have the warmest of welcomes, however, as the moment Harry walks into the local pub and starts talking about this brother the whole group files out. The strong hints that they ought to leave town are a staple of the movie, and the Spaldings meet these with a uniformly steadfast righteous defiance. So staunchly British.
While he doesn't hit the bar, Dr. Franklyn (the distinguished man from the opening scene) also leans on his new neighbors, besides generally acting like a weirdo. His Britishness is the best, because he can be a total jerk and then effortlessly fall back on his aristocratic charm to let you stop worrying about his behavior.
Harry and Valerie have the village nutter Mad Peter over for dinner, because in the countryside homeless people wear blazers and are amusing. But whatever killed Charlie isn't really slowing down, and later that night he's Foamy Black Peter, and then Dead Peter.
As usual the townfolk just want to shrug it off and mumble into their ales, so Harry goes to work on the apathy of barkeep Tom Bailey, getting a two-for-two record for emptying the bar. It's pretty hilarious the second time, all these raggedy old Limey duffers filing out of the tiny pub. I figured they all hid around the corner until Harry left, because there didn't seem to be anywhere else to go.
Valerie befriends the young, beautiful Anna Franklyn from next door, but then Dr. Franklyn shows up and gets all politely bitchtastic. "Anna, you will come home AT ONCE!... Please forgive me, Mrs. Spalding." But he's too late to isolate Anna, she's already invited the Spaldings to dinner and it's against the rules of British not to come through. So the world's most awkward dinner party ensues and then they retire to the parlor so Anna can show off some of the musical training she learned in the Far East.
Here the awkwardness reaches a wild crescendo as Anna plays faster and faster and fixes her father with an intense stare. He glares back at her as his blood boils until finally he lashes out and does a total John Belushi on her instrument. Smash! Bang, smash! Not even a "sorry."
"I think we shall be going, Dr. Franklyn."
The problem that The Reptile shares with To the Devil a Daughter is that even when the plot is arguably moving it still seems more like an ever-growing accretion of suspense and clues. It's not as bad as And Now the Screaming Starts!, because things do actually happen, but after a while the smaller details get blurry, and you start forgetting why it matters that whoever it was looked in the window and saw whatever it was they saw.
It's a subtle flaw, because the performances, setting and general idea are pretty solid. But there's a mistake in the math, and the plot arcs too long on the upward curve. The wrap-up seems a bit too quick (and why did he smash that sitar? They never say). And it's also a bit too goofy, as if the movie wore your patience just a shade too far to buoy its own ridiculousness.
Or maybe it's that the monster wore a tight green evening gown that should have made it very hard to walk. You never see it as clearly as you see this model, but it's pretty accurate. What, was that her skin?This doesn't end so badly I'd call it a fizzle, but I can't really recommend it. It's a worthy study in British horror, and in laying ground for suspense, but it doesn't get three stars. Nyah.
10 comments:
That "British countryside" point is interesting. Remember that there was a very good reason the term "New England" was invented, and why American landscape paintings (in the "German" mode) were such a big deal. America was like a "bigger, better Britain" (at least before you get to the mountains and deserts) in the public imagination. Like England on steroids.
For related reasons, it made perfect sense for Peter Jackson to use New Zealand to represent the "very English" Middle Earth, since the landcape has that same kind of amped-up characteristics (sort of like the "Fincherville" that Se7en takes place in as compared to a real city). (The technique doesn't always work: using Sydney as "everytown" in The Matrix was only effective because it's, you know, the Matrix.)
So much of all of this has to do with cinematography. For example, as much as I admire Christoper Payne, he's not a particularly visually skilled director (in terms of pure photography) which is the reason that Sideways manages to make Napa Valley look like the middle of New Jersey, throughout the movie. The landscape is there; Payne just doesn't know how to photograph it. (Send some random relative to Montana with a camera and you get the same results...a series of stupefyingly bland photos where the top half of the picture is just white sky and the exposure makes the landscape look like a muddy watercolor painting.) It's fine; that's not what Payne is good at. (Or, in Hollywood parlance, he's "not interested" in that part of the job.)
"His Britishness is the best, because he can be a total jerk and then effortlessly fall back on his aristocratic charm to let you stop worrying about his behavior." Ha, so true!
What is it about the British accent that makes everything sound dignified and therefore makes all behavior acceptable? I wonder how the American accent sounds to the British, undignified? I have previously expressed my dislike of early 70s films, however your review helps me to better isolate the timeframe and type of film I just don’t enjoy; late 60s early 70s Technicolor, British horror, specifically Hammer. Just as I have written off anything with the word Troma in it, I think I’m writing off British horror from this era. All of the films I have watched from this timeframe seem to share the undesirable characteristic of slowly building to a lack of payoff. To put it more bluntly, I find these films to be really boring. Great review and picture captions!
That's funny you say that about New England, Jordan, because my disatisfaction with certain landscapes comes directly from my own experience with New England. Don't get me wrong, I love the way it looks there, but for every sunny glade and beautiful vista there's a field of scrubby grass and a muddy, mosquito-filled path. It seems like Brits in flicks are always ignoring the latter. "Oh, it's lovely!" etc.
I opted not to say that in my review because I've never actually been there, and my Dad just back from Ireland and is distributing photographs of humbling beauty.
"I wonder how the American accent sounds to the British, undignified?"
I can't say for sure, but when I lived in NYC I knew a bunch of Irish folks (and one Brit) who would crack me up when they did American accents. They would sound like gung-ho soldiers in a USO newsreel or something. So "undignified" is probably spot on.
I'm starting to come around to your rejection of this genre of film... but I don't want to! The accents connote quality (or fake it), and it fools me every time.
There's an old SNL sketch with Jeremy Irons where a bunch of women come up to him in a bar and ask him to say a whole bunch of stuff (they hear him ordering). I can't remember what the punchline was. A similar joke is used in Love Actually.
Octo, you remember in Room With A View when Maggie Smith and Judi Densch are sitting in that glorious Tuscan field and Densch (who plays the "sensualist" writer) is gushing about the primal, vibrant landscape...and then Maggie Smith says, "It reminds me of the countryside around Shropshire" (and Densch kind of looks at her funny)? I always use that quote as an example of "people who you can't really do anything with." (Meaning, you can try to manipulate the situation to evince a reasonable human response but you'll never get it.)
I added some comments to the bottom of my Silence review. Thanks, all of you, for your kind words. It was particularly satisfying to write that one.
Love the review. Way to identify all of the strengths and weaknesses of 70's British horror in one review! And I burst out laughing when I saw the caption under the girl playing sitar.
Tales From the Crypt wasn't Hammer but it was all British, all 1972 and it was great JPX!
George Lucas was a fucking genius for putting Peter Cushing into Star Wars. (Did I mention I likr this movie Star Wars?) I always appreciated that he went and got Christopher Lee for the prequels.
It's too bad Peter Cushing and Alec Guiness didn't have any scenes together. I love it when the "high" and "low" forms of British acting collide on screen. Like Patrick Stewart and Ian McLellan in X-Men or McLellan and Lee doing scenes in Fellowship of the Ring. (Not that Patrick Stewart is "low" but you know what I mean.)
"It reminds me of the countryside around Shropshire"
Ha! Hahahahaha! Love that line.
Merchant Ivory pics do a good job at selling the real beauty of Britain. And Italy, but Italy doesn't need any help.
Hilarious captions. I kind of dig the technicolor flicks. Though they really could have picked a better font for the title. That makes it look like some "scary" carnival ride.
Funny review, too bad the review outshines the film ;)
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