By Renfield
Ever since Professor Quartermass battled a human cactus back in the mid-Fifties, Hammer Films has carved out a unique niche in horror film history. As a result, the studio, even decades after it closed its doors, enjoys a phenomenal fan following. Indeed, "The Studio That Dripped Blood" may very well be more popular today than it was in its heyday in the late Fifties and Sixties.
Hammer’s enduring popularity has produced some nice benefits for horror fans. Chief amongst these is the availability via videotape and laserdisc of even the more obscure Hammer horrors. However, despite the seeming cornucopia of Hammer titles available for home viewing, some Hammer horror films have not appeared in US video retail shelves. That’s a pity, because some of these now-unavailable Hammer titles are rather good fun, and few of them qualify as little gems.
Two of these gems are The Stranglers Of Bombay (also known as The Stranglers Of Bengal) and The Devil Rides Out. These two Hammer films have very little in common aside from being absent from US retail video shelves. Stranglers is a black-and-white early Hammer historical thriller with horror elements and a dollop of gore. Devil is a polished, colorful production of a far more mature Hammer studio, stylishly made, with all the famous Hammer quality elements fully in place. Yet, as differing in style and substance these two obscure Hammers are, they share one common trait: they’re both great entertainment. They’re also a bit off the beaten Hammer blood-track: Stranglers is a historically accurate dramatization of a real-life horror (no fangs or electrodes in sight) and Devil offers Christopher Lee, the master hammer villain, in a good-guy role--and a meaty role at that.
One
of the first Hammer films to be lensed in a form of widescreen
(referred to in advertisements as "Stranglescope"), Stranglers
(1959, released 1960) is otherwise a low-budget affair--no color,
no major (for Hammer) stars, no major push of the film after
release. Indeed, even Hammer fans tend to forget about this film.
Yet, despite its penurious underpinnings, Stranglers
is very entertaining, exciting, and interesting...entertaining
because of good performances and a literate script, exciting
because of the non-stop action, including the special delivery of
a servant’s severed hand to the heroine(!), and interesting
because of the subject matter.
Set in British East India, in the year 1824, Stranglers is a historical account (with the usual filmic liberties taken with literal historical fact) of the uprising of the murderous Thugee cult that plagued India in the Nineteenth Century. As a blurb from the film notes, literally hundreds of thousands of Indian men, women, and children were murdered via strangulation by the Thugees, all to pay homage and provide human sacrifices for the bloody Hindu goddess Kali (she of the many arms). ("Thugee, of course, is the term "thug" is derived from.)
In Stranglers, a dedicated English East India Company officer (back in the days when India and other colonies were run by a semi-private concern rather than the British Crown), portrayed by Guy Rolfe, is gravely concerned about the rash of disappearances of Indians in his area of responsibility. His superiors and the local big businessman, including an Indian prince, are far more concerned about the constant loss of well-stocked commercial caravans. The brass and the business interests believe an organized hijacking ring is at work; our hero suspects something more sinister but can’t prove it. His credibility suffers more when a by-the-book martinet is sent to take over his investigation; the "new broom" sweeps away our hero and concentrates on bribery and brutality to make the natives "talk." Of course, no one in their right mind is going to rat on the cult of Kali--the punishment is swift and silent strangulation (hence the title)—if the victim is lucky!
The protagonist finally uncovers this cult, is taken prisoner and tortured (one of the torturers is a raven-haired Indian beauty who likes to play with cobras) and escapes. One of the Thugees turns out to be the long-lost brother of the officer’s servant, who is killed (by the Thugees, naturally) earlier whilst searching for his sibling. This Thugee turns his coat and helps the officer who, after the martinet and a large caravan are wiped out by the Thugees, manages to expose the "brains" behind the cult (the Indian prince) and spur the British authorities to begin the clean-up of the cult of Kali.
This plot may seem perfunctory, but
in viewing, Stranglers is a
tightly-structured,
fast-paced, tense thriller. Despite the low
budget allocated to the production, Hammer’s craftsmen
manage to turn their limited studios sets into a fair
approximation of an Indiana village, the East India Company
headquarters, even a Indiana prince’s (modest) palace. Good
make-up, costuming, set design, and attention to period detail
makes the viewer believe he’s watching events unfold in hot,
dusty, dirt-poor India. The heroic officer and his supportive
wife are personable characters, and the Indian servant manages to
elicit sympathy as one who has spent years searching for his
brother. Not so the Kali cultists--they are grim, religious
zealots who kill anyone, including their own supporters, if it
advances the cause of their gore-splattered goddess.
Stranglers offers not only the usual good Hammer production values in the recreation of Nineteenth Century East India, but also the usual Hammer visceral shocks—not only the severed hand mentioned earlier, but also the spectacle of several Kali worshippers blinded and having their tongues removed for poor job performance. Finally, it also boasts a Hammer femme fatale, in the person of the aforementioned dark-eyed Kali groupie (portrayed by Marie Devereaux) who exists for the purpose of taunting the hero whilst he a prisoner of the cult.
In contrast to the grim, black-and-while, near-documentary The Stranglers Of Bombay, our other obscure Hammer film, The Devil Rides Out (also known as The Devil's Bride), is more typically Hammer—lush color, sumptuous sets, supernatural actions, and a recognizable star—in this case, Christopher Lee. Produced much later than Stranglers, in 1967, Devil shows the full maturation of Hammer studios as a producer of colorful, sexy and somewhat bloody grim fairy tales.
Not that Devil
is bloody…in fact, it’s one of the most bloodless
Hammer horror outings.
The
shock value in Devil is the well-mounted
presentation of a group of ordinary folks coming face-to-face
with the minions of the Devil and having to withstand a literal
onslaught from Hell to save a young woman’s soul—and
their own.
Set in a jazz-and-flapper 1920s, Devil concerns a young man who has been seduced into a devil cult headed by a smarmy high priest (Charles Gray, most memorable for playing Blofeld in the James Bond series). In answer to the implied question of "Who Ya Gonna Call?" comes the good-guy of the piece—Christopher Lee!
Yes, for one of the very few times in his career, particularly in his Hammer career, Lee gets to be the fellow in the white hat. In this case, he’s the French aristocrat the Duc de Richeleau, a man well-versed in battling the devious and deadly stratagems of Beelzebub. With a loyal comrade, Rex (Leon Greene), they manage to rescue not only their friend but also a young woman who is destined to become the blood sacrifice of the devil-cultists. Rex’s family gets involved, and in a series of chases and encounters (one involving the high priest nearly hypnotizing a female member of the Duc’s band into helping him), the Duc and Rex actually come face to face with a goat-horned incarnation of Old Scratch himself whilst busting up a secret satanic ceremony. Finally, in a climatic scene, the Duc and his allies must battle the horrifying attacks of the Satanic horde in the confines of a drawing room. The attack involves special-effects Hell creatures determined to destroy the Duc’s valiant little band. The Hell-spawn are finally driven back, and the Duc and his band arrive at a high-unholy ceremony in time to put paid to the high priest and rescue the young woman from the sacrificial dagger.
It’s this deliberate staging of the battle vs. Good and Evil as a life-or-death struggle between the brave Duc and his likable allies, all too human in their weakness and frailties (the Satanists score early victories because the good guys and gals stumble occasionally), that makes Devil such grand entertainment. Here, you can root for Christopher Lee (a novel experience), hiss at the villains, and enjoy watching the devil cult get what’s coming to them. There’s none of this moral ambivalence that mars so many recent horror films, thank you—like all good Hammer heroes, Lee as the Duc fights with single-minded determination to vanquish the devil’s minions and save his friends’ souls.
The film benefits from good performances all around, particularly from Gray, who portrays his devil-priest as a deceptively mild-mannered, gentlemanly sort who, nonetheless, fairly radiates equal doses of menace and depravity—he’s far better here than as Blofeld in the 007 films. Of course, the best performance was turned in by Lee himself, who invests his blue-blooded French nobleman with the requisite dignity and correctness, but also with great human warmth and steely determination. (Ironically, Lee here reminds one of Peter Cushing in his Van Helsing roles.)
Terence Fisher, who directed
Hammer’s classic early monster epics, is back in top form
here, blending convincing interpersonal
relationships, hard-charging chase scenes, truly scary close
encounters with the Unheavenly Host, and an absolutely
satisfying, breathless climax. Also of note is the film’s
superior special effects, in which the trapped Duc and his
comrades face, among other horrors, a giant spider and the Angel
of Death. The film is based on a classic novel by Dennis Wheatley
and it shows—the script, despite its supernatural elements,
is consistently intelligent and logical in its approach to the
subject of Satanism. Satan-worship is portrayed primarily as a
degrading practice that seduces the innocent and indelibly
corrupts its followers (rather like Hammer’s filmic
depiction of vampirism).
Thus, both The Stranglers Of Bombay and The Devil Rides Out are films that certainly demand attention from Hammer fans and are worth a look for any horror fan. Alas, as earlier pointed out, neither film is available on video from retail outlets. A few independent video sources do offer Devil on video, usually consisting of PAL video format transfers from European video sources. No one seems to have Stranglers at all. (N.B.: Stranglers is available from Creature Feature Video--thank heavens for the independent video sources!)
Our copies of both films are actually British retail video tapes, bought at the excellent sci-fi and fantasy outlet "Forbidden Planet" in London some time ago. Accordingly, we have to watch our tapes on "multi-system" VCRs and TVs. This alternative isn’t practicable for most horror fans, who can’t purchase (or afford) such expensive video equipment or can manage a quick trip to the UK and Europe to add these films to their video library.
Clearly, both The Stranglers of Bombay and The Devil Rides Out are two Hammer films that urgently need re-discovery and re-issuance on American home video. Hopefully, Anchor Bay Video, who has announced it will re-issue Hammer’s classic horrors on video, will add these two films to its production line. We can but hope and wait.
By the way, a great fan site for Hammer films is located at Hammer Horror. This article could not have been completed without the kind assistance of Greg Turnbull, Honcho of "Hammer Horror." Visit his site and tell him Renfield sent you!.
Contents (c) Joe "Renfield" Meadows. Stranglers Of Bombay and The Devil's Bride posters courtesy of Hammer Horror. Used with permission.
