'I'd like you to know how moved and impressed I was by your play, A Night Out, this past Sunday. It has an intensity and inner truth both horrifying and purgative. There are few things, if any, I have seen on British TV that can compare with it. Congratulations.' (1) An extraordinary collaboration between writer Harold Pinter and film director Joseph Losey, one which would eventually stretch across three film projects, was initiated with the above letter sent by Losey to Pinter.

It was despatched after the transmission of the play in ABC's groundbreaking Armchair Theatre series on 24 April 1960, three days before the opening at the Arts Theatre of what was considered Pinter's breakthrough success in the theatre, The Caretaker. Up until that opening, Pinter's reputation for crafting his signature 'comedy of menace' had been formed in a handful of plays including The Room, The Birthday Party and The Dumb Waiter.

It would be two and half years later before Pinter and Losey worked together on The Servant, an adaptation of Robin Maugham's sixty-two page novella published in 1948. The rights to the book had been purchased by director Michael Anderson who then commissioned Pinter to write a screenplay in 1961. Losey had also expressed an interest to Maugham about a stage adaptation as early as 1955. Anderson failed to raise the necessary finance and, in the meantime, Dirk Bogarde had received and read the first Pinter screenplay. Writing in his biography Snakes and Ladders, Bogarde recalls his excitement about Pinter's script, declaring it had 'the precision of a master jeweller... his pauses are merely the time-phases which he gives you so that you may develop the thought behind the line he has written, and to alert your mind itself to the dangerous simplicities of the lines to come'. (2)

'This young man could spoil like peaches; he could be led to the abyss'

Losey had worked with Bogarde on The Sleeping Tiger in 1954, Losey's first film made in England after he had left the US due to his blacklisting by McCarthy's instigation of the House Committee on Un-American Activities when his film The Boy with the Green Hair (1948) was brought to their attention for its pacifist tendencies.

Even in England, he still felt the after effects of his accusers. He worked under the name of Victor Hanbury on The Sleeping Tiger because stars Alexander Knox and Alexis Smith felt they would be tarred with the same pro-Communist brush if they worked with him. He also had to back out of directing X The Unknown (1956) for Hammer because star Dean Jagger refused to work with a Communist sympathiser.

Bogarde's orbit aligned with Losey's when he was casting The Sleeping Tiger. He saw Bogarde in Hunted (1952) and claimed 'I'm going to do this picture with Dirk Bogarde and nobody else'. Initially Bogarde was unsure of Losey and got a sense of the director's problems when he had to bundle him out of a Shepperton hotel after an alleged, and potentially disastrous, encounter with the reactionary anti-Communist mother of Ginger Rogers. Bogarde found it an uneasy relationship but saw in Losey something of a kindred spirit. After Losey had brought Bogarde's attention to Maugham's novella in the mid-1950s, it was Bogarde who alerted Losey to the Pinter script while the director was on location in Rome filming Eve (1962). (3) 

However, like Michael Anderson, Losey found it near impossible to raise finance for the script of The Servant. It was eventually Leslie Grade, a talent agent with The Grade Organisation, who backed the film having made a tidy sum from two Cliff Richard films, and co-financed it with ABPC and the National Film Finance Corporation. Anderson was paid £12,000 for the rights but then other hurdles presented themselves.

Bogarde's partner and manager Tony Forward worried that the role of Hugo Barrett, the manservant to upper class Tony, would harm Bogarde's career as The Servant seemed to be just another 'completely homosexual picture' so soon after his breakthrough role as the closeted bi-sexual barrister Melville Farr in Basil Dearden's Victim (1961). (4) Bogarde, uneasy about the role, even suggested Ralph Richardson for Hugo Barrett but Losey informed him Richardson was too expensive and 'you'll have to do.' (5)

Pinter's script removed the single narrator of Maugham's melodramatic novella and 'its yellow book snobbery and the arguably anti-Semitic characterisation of Barrett - oiliness, heavy lids - replacing them with an economical language that implied rather than stated the slippage of power relations away from Tony towards Barrett'. (6) Both Losey and Bogarde later refuted the homosexual reading placed onto the film, one perhaps traced back to the strange incident between Maugham and his own servant that inspired the original novella, and preferred to see the relationship between Tony and Barrett as one defined by sadism and domination.

In terms of power relations, Pinter and Losey didn't exactly hit it off in an initial meeting when Losey presented the writer with notes to rewrite the script. After suggesting Losey should go and make another film, the director tore up the notes and they agreed to start again, from then on developing an intense collaborative working partnership where 'material from the script was rarely simply excised wholesale. Instead it was transposed, concentrated or dispersed'. (7) The original 1961 script was revised and the final version prepared by January 1963.

Ealing alumnus Norman Priggen, an assistant director on Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) among others, was hired as co-producer and his relationship with Losey matured into a production partnership lasting over seven films. Designer Richard Macdonald, who had worked with Losey on The Sleeping Tiger and Eve, created the meticulous interiors of Tony's Chelsea house at Shepperton.

While the studio housed the claustrophobic amalgam of rooms built around a central staircase, exteriors were shot in Royal Avenue, with Tony's house opposite Somerset Maugham's former home, King's Road for the opening titles and our first view of Barrett outside Thomas Crapper's premises, and Chiswick House to stage Tony and his girlfriend Susan's weekend at the Mountsets' home.

Bogarde recommended the twenty-three-year-old James Fox to Losey for the role of Tony after seeing him in an ITV Play of the Week, 'The Door' (transmitted 20 May 1962), acting under the name of Oliver Fox. He phoned Losey to try and catch the rest of the play after Bogarde, later recalled, saw something in Fox: 'Under the grace and breeding, the golden-boy innocence, I sensed, and I don't for the life of me know why, a muted quality of corruptibility. This young man could spoil like peaches; he could be led to the abyss.' (8)

As Fox recalls in the DVD interview in this edition, it was a serendipitous route to casting the film. He was going out with Sarah Miles, whom Bogarde had already approached to play Barrett's 'sister' Vera in the film, and their agent was his father Robin Fox, who also happened to be Losey's agent. Miles and Fox met Bogarde at the premier of The L Shaped Room and she also suggested Fox for the part.

It was mutually agreed both Miles and Fox would be excellent casting but their relationship, already deteriorating, eventually caused Losey some problems on set. During the infamous scene of Vera's seduction of Tony on a leather chair, she branded Fox a 'great stinking queer' for wearing a combination of karate dressing-gown and fur boots for the scene. Her agent Robin Fox had words with her, Losey gave her an ultimatum and Fox completed the scene sans fur boots. (9)

Fox recalls a crude, silent screen test with Losey, paid for by the director, shot in a flat in Queen's Gate and writer Paul Mayersberg claimed Fox's inexperience generated many retakes until Losey found what he wanted and he and editor Reginald Mills then shaped the performance in the cutting room. Wendy Craig's casting as Susan, Tony's girlfriend, was again via Dirk Bogarde's suggestion after working with her on Basil Dearden's The Mind Benders (1963) but she was often regarded by Losey as the weakest link in the ensemble.

Shooting began on 28 January 1963 with celebrated British cinematographer Douglas Slocombe as a replacement for Losey's original preference of Christopher Challis. Slocombe, an Ealing veteran of, among others, It Always Rains on Sunday (1948), Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Lavender Hill Mob (1951), Mandy (1952)and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953) devised a four phase lighting scheme for the film to highlight the deterioration within the house.

The shoot was interrupted a fortnight later when Losey was incapacitated by pneumonia and, in his ten-day absence, he asked Bogarde and Richard Macdonald to continue shooting to his script specifications. On his return, wrapped in blankets and hot-water bottles, he directed from a bed and, apart from three scenes, reshot everything that Bogarde and Macdonald had filmed.

Mills efficiently produced a rough cut immediately after the end of filming on 19 March 1963, editing the film as it was being shot. Pinter was affronted by Mills's trimming back of his repetitive dialogue and he also sent a very angry letter to Mills after some rather condescending and disingenuous comments the editor made about him in an interview and told him succinctly 'to go and fuck yourself'. With post-production complete and a clean bill of health from the British Board of Film Censors (despite some minor concerns over Tony's seduction of Vera in the leather chair after a screening with John Trevelyan), Losey then struggled to get distributors interested in The Servant, which he proudly claimed was 'a remarkable film'. (10)

Even though it was one of three British films represented at the Venice Film Festival, it was considered unreleasable until Warner Brothers' European booker Arthur Abeles, left with a gap in his release schedules, found a home for it in the Warner Leicester Square where it aptly received its British premier on 14 November 1963 some five months after the climax of the Profumo scandal.

'...my soufflés have always received a great deal of praise in the past, sir'

This searing film 'about the servility of our society, our age, the servility of the master, the servility of the servant and the servility of attitudes of all kinds of people in different classes' is dominated by Losey's precise control and staging. (11) A true collaboration with designer Richard Macdonald and cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, The Servant chronicles the slow disintegration of what to all intents and purposes is the sovereign state of Tony's house in Chelsea as it is invaded and transformed by outside forces. The slothful and indolent Tony (an impressive debut from James Fox), a symbol of upper class imperial decline, has acquired the house and interviews a potential manservant, Hugo Barrett (a stunningly brilliant Dirk Bogarde).

Barrett has an agenda, subtly revealed to begin with as he begins to tastefully decorate the house and minister to his master's needs. However, Tony's fiancée, Susan, detects an undercurrent in Barrett's relationship with Tony and a battle of wills ensues over who will have sovereign power - of Tony and of the house. Class and power are transmogrified, as Barrett's 'sister' Vera arrives to seduce Tony and allow Barrett's agenda to move into full gear.

A working class revolution takes place, the servant and the master swap places as power fragments and reforms and the bright white Chelsea house is filled with shadows, becomes a prison cell possessed by a demonic, corrupting force which prompts Tony's slide into a hell of Barrett's construction.

This devious plan is played out in the film as a series of distinct acts and where set decoration, lighting, the placing and use of objects, costume and music essentialise the transformation of a servant's deference into a domination over his master. Performance and dialogue also trace this release of, what Colin Gardner refers to as, Barrett's primal force that grows in power and influence during the film.

The film describes a web in which various couplings are caught, presenting an interchange of power and domination between Tony, Barrett, Susan and Vera. The house becomes a series of doorways into a labyrinth, one gradually diminishing and pushing the exterior world away. Losey continually places characters in doorways, emerging into or out of rooms to denote the shifting of power, providing a visual analog to the interior of the psyche, where all the characters peer into or out of rooms or are caught in reductive, distorting mirrors.

The film opens with the black figure of Barrett walking towards Royal Avenue, passing by the showroom of Thomas Crapper where Losey's camera lingers on the 'by appointment' coat of arms on the shop front before pulling back to reveal the name of said sanitary engineers and Barrett crossing the road outside. The sign of royal approval, of status, is contrasted with the figure of Barrett, who 'emerges from the primordial depths of the toilet, like some backed up excremental waste.' (12)

In a simple but witty sequence, he is already a representation of the filthy tide now about to wash up on the shores of Tony's indulgent respectability. Tony as an 'imperialist project' is also symbolised in the pipe dream of clearing the jungles of Brazil to build three cities where he'll be able to grant the peasants a new life. He refers to Barrett as a peasant towards the end of the film, long after his dream has failed and said peasant has revolted.

Barrett's first encounter with Tony, at the empty house, is equally a signifier of things to come. Losey holds on a shot of Barrett gazing up the central staircase. The staircase is a pivotal emblem of the battleground in the house, the shifting escalation of dominance and power and the rooms off it giving characters the power to reconfigure vertical and horizontal space. Barrett finds Tony asleep, a supine physical condition which Losey repeats throughout the film. Tony is rarely upright. He's either lying down or slouched in a chair. In the climax, he's crawling on his knees or slumped in a corner. 

The three o'clock interview which assesses Barrett's suitability to be a manservant ('Well, my… my soufflés have always received a great deal of praise in the past, sir') also reveals Barrett to be not quite what he seems when he slips up in his distinction, pointed out by Tony of course, between Viscount or Lord Barr.

As Bogarde noted of the character's deception: 'Barrett's a liar... if you know what a gentleman's gentleman is like, you'll know Barrett could never have been one. I don't think he'd ever made a soufflé in his life.' (13) Even the workmen decorating the house can detect the mutton dressed as lamb as Barrett attempts to better himself to the detriment of these other working class figures.

Decor and taste are also markers in the field of battle. As designer Richard Macdonald recalled of the transformation of the house: 'at the beginning it is an empty shell, it's cold and has no personality; then it's suddenly painted and beautified; then it gradually rots; and then at the end it takes on a completely new personality, it's partially repainted, it has black ceilings and a gaudy, meretricious look in everything.' (14)

Barrett initially oversees a white and blue scheme for the house, filled with tasteful neo-classical objects and paintings. There is a tug of war between Susan and Barrett over who is the arbiter of taste and style in the house, over the installation of a 'proper spice shelf for the kitchen', the placing of flowers, objects and the removal of 'chintz frills'. Objects move around the house: the contents of Barrett's room upstairs creep into the drawing room downstairs as the decor becomes darker, satanic. Neoclassical vases and figures briefly materialise into alcoves, a reminder of the frozen in aspic poses of Lord and Lady Mountset we see during Tony and Susan's weekends away where class is determined not by the possession  of a spice rack but by defining what a poncho is.

A muscled male bronze seems to signify a homoerotic, passive aggressive tension exuded by the two men and its position alters in the film from the top of a display cabinet to a sideboard. When Tony receives the gift of a karate style dressing-gown, Barrett glances back to look at it but might as well be gazing at the bronze positioned in between them judging by his adulation of 'it's very handsome, sir.'

A parallel to the bronze can also be seen in the muscle magazine pictures pinned to the wall of Vera's room and what look like sketches of male nudes in Tony's study. An early and witty indication of the manipulation of masculinity in the film can also be seen in Barrett's preparation of a bowl of hot water for Tony's feet. Not only does he infuse the water with the appropriately named 'Stag' salt but he also bows and scrapes, pulling off Tony's socks, as his master hurls a veiled insult at him, 'You're too skinny to be a nanny, Barrett.'

Underlining the various items of military paraphernalia - portraits, statues and cannons - which form the decor, there's also the double entendre in a later scene when Barrett, serving Tony some mulled claret, notes he was known in the army as 'Basher Barrett' because 'I was a very good driller.'

When Barrett has finally claimed Tony's soul at the end of the film, Tony fawns to him, 'I have a feeling we’ve always been buddies.Like the Army.' The ball games they play on the stairs, when deference has gone out of the window, also carry a sublimated homosexual charge, especially when Barrett complains of an injury received from the ball: 'I'm not staying here in a place where they just chuck balls in your face.'

Slowly, inexorably Barrett dominates, passing through the veneer of class and deference as easily as he slips through the doorway disguised as a bookcase that separates the drawing room, the space of privilege, from the kitchen, the engine of domesticity. His character continually shifts between these spaces.

Note his obsequious demeanour when Susan first comes to visit and mocks his pretensions as he serves wine while wearing white gloves ('Italian, miss. They're used in Italy' to which she replies, 'Who by?') and then, in direct contrast, observe his post-supper slump among the dirty dishes, picking his teeth, downing Guinness, blowing cigarette smoke and idly throwing the white gloves to one side as his gimlet eyes suggest a dark plan already being formulated.

The signature convex mirror, a reflection of the claustrophobia in the house, also first appears before the supper scene and is a symbol of Barrett's trap, where all the figures who enter the room are eventually crushed within its warped reflection. Other distortions and reflections occur: Barrett calling for Vera to be introduced to her master is shot through a huge brandy glass, military photographs surround Tony adjusting his tie in a mirror and Vera's seduction of Tony is caught in the shiny surfaces of kitchen appliances.

Cigarette smoke is another visual code in the film. Characters exhale great clouds of it as they contemplate their powerful deeds, many of them sexual, or their machinations in gaining superiority over one another. Vera seductively allows a glob of smoke to escape from her lips when Barrett gets familiar with her on the kitchen table, the first suggestion of the incest which will shock Tony and Susan later but which turns out to be another of Barrett's deceptions in the film.

It marks intimacy between Susan and Tony when we see them lying side by side in the drawing room, listening to the Cleo Laine title song. Their coupling is all too brief when Barrett oversteps the mark by disturbing them, confirming Susan's view of Barrett as a demonic entity, who appears at will like 'a Peeping Tom' or as Tony mocks, 'a vampire too on his Sundays off'. She resents his dominance and the rest of the film is a tug of war between them for the possession of Tony's soul. In the film's bleak conclusion, Barrett blows a huge cloud of cigarette smoke into Susan's face, to mark her defeat and humiliation in the scheme of things.

The central staircase records the progress of the war. Losey frames a shot of Barrett dusting the bookcase in the foreground and Susan peering down at him from the first floor as a prelude to the scene where she brings flowers into Tony's bedroom during a spell of illness. When Barrett tries to remove the flowers, and we see him in the mirror first as he enters the room, she simply barks 'put that down', reaffirming her exercise of power. However, in one of the film's great exchanges of dialogue, Barrett undercuts her as she leaves the house. 'I'm afraid it's not very encouraging, miss...' he pauses, '...the weather forecast'.

That very British sensibility of talking about the weather is married to a veiled insinuation about their ongoing stormy relationship it seems. As he closes the door, watch his self-satisfied smirk. It's Bogarde briefly and brilliantly revealing the man's satanic depths. She holds on to a lamppost outside, clearly troubled by the skirmish. Losey doubles this shot later, at the film's end, when in the final humiliation dealt by Barrett, she runs from the house and clings to a tree, sobbing.

'Vera, are you ready?'

The cycle of domination and submission continues to be played out on the staircase throughout the film - Vera's infiltration of the upper echelons of the house spelling out Tony's demotion to submissive, love struck fool; the revealing shadow of Barrett on the landing as Susan and Tony return home to find him and Vera in their bed; the same shadows playing over the staircase during the passive aggressive ball games; the final triumph of Barrett as he runs his fingers up the bannister past a slouched, debauched Tony caught behind the prison bars of the staircase.

Vera's manipulation by Barrett, after he invites her to London, is reflected in Barrett's treatment of women in general. As he phones Vera, his forward planning underlined by a terse, 'Vera, are you ready?', he's assailed by an impatient woman outside the phone box. He first observes her legs but after she taps on the window with a coin, his hand slaps onto the glass and covers up her face. 'Are you being a good girl?' he asks Vera, clearly regarding the woman outside the phone box as the opposite, cancelling her assertiveness as a consequence of her being a 'bitch.'

Later, Vera herself is introduced with a close up of her legs as she and Barrett totter down the steps of St. Pancras. Losey brilliantly intercuts her arrival in London with a sequence between Susan and Tony set in a restaurant. Vera, wide-eyed at the sights of the big city and yet overly intimate in the way she holds onto Barrett's thighs in the taxi from the station, further suggesting an incestuousness to the 'brother-sister' relationship proposed at this stage, is given a blousy, seductive jazz theme by composer Johnny Dankworth.

As the instrument of Tony's destruction arrives, the restaurant hosts a series of intriguing variants on dominance and submission: bickering lesbians, a domineering bishop advising a younger cleric, a metropolitan couple. The down to earth Susan, trapped beneath the icy formality of the Mountsets and reluctant to sink into the hell occupied by Barrett and Vera, is reprimanded for judging Tony's choice to hire Barrett. Their relationship seems wounded at this point and, later, Vera's seduction of her man severely undermines it too. 

Half way into the film, Barrett deploys his secret weapon to devastating effect, using Vera to reconfigure space wherein 'rooms that were once clearly demarcated as a haven or sanctuary are now the site of desecration and open trangression.' (15) The kitchen first presents working class sexual excess in an expression of short skirts, clouds of cigarette smoke and Barrett's sultry looks at Vera over a cup of tea. Vera then turns up in Tony's bathroom, undermining his casual misogyny of 'she is having a bath in my bathroom', and there follows a delicious scene where Barrett and Vera ape Tony's pretentiousness. 'I'm going to have a bath in his bathroom,' drawls Barrett as he briefly seizes control of Tony's inner sanctum, sits under a sun lamp and demands to be slathered in cologne.

Losey's control is at its finest in the moment when Vera finally gets her man Tony in the kitchen, under orders from an absent Barrett. They are accompanied to the pulse of a dripping tap and a ticking clock to signify Tony's dammed up, repressed sexual energy. 'In't it hot in here?' purrs Vera as she curls her legs up and sits on the kitchen table. The ticking clock is like a bomb about to go off and the spectre of Susan, a slowly receding representative of his pre-Barrett existence, is surely there in the unanswered telephone call as Tony advises Vera that her skirt is too short. Their lovemaking is reflected in the kitchen surfaces and the transgression is reinforced by Dankworth's sultry score.

'Did she manage to do anything for you, sir?' asks Barrett knowingly on his return and of the guilty looking Tony. Barrett reinforces guilt when Tony claims Vera was too under the weather to do the washing up and deliberately feigns mishearing, asking him 'Under the what, sir?' It's at this stage that Tony joins in the subterfuge, sending Barrett on a false errand for brown ale to not only give him time to get Vera out his room but to indulge in further sexual play. However, this time Losey specifically emphasises the trap and frames their embrace in the vortex-like convex mirror.

Following this is the seduction in the leather chair, a dominant and very masculine item of furniture which has already appeared several times in the film, and here bobs up and down to a ticking, chiming clock before Vera is enticed from her room by Tony to the strains of Laine's woozy, self-destructive and corrupting jazz number. At the same time, in a stunning reveal we see Barrett in her bed through the bars of the bannister as she descends the stairs.

Losey's shot of the stretched out, semi-naked couple in the chair is, of course, an analog to the iconic Christine Keeler photograph by Lewis Morley. The establishment-baiting image of her sitting naked with her legs enticingly spread around the back of the Arne Jacobsen chair to preserve her decency was taken at the height of the Profumo scandal, which had broken just as the film completed shooting.

Susan attempts once more to assert her status in the house, bossing Barrett around, rearranging furniture and flowers. It's like a tussle between a guardian angel and an impudent demon and one shot of Susan arranging the flowers, as Barrett reels from her insults, makes her look quite demonic as she demands, 'What do you want from this house?' He smirks at her and simply replies, 'I'm the servant, miss.' We know full well he's not just a servant, he's a revolutionary gradually knocking the foundations from under Tony's indolent sense of privilege.

Those foundations collapse completely when Tony and Susan find Barrett and Vera in their bed. Losey tangles together defiant shadows, the ever present staircase and the collapsing dimensions of the convex mirror wherein both couples are doubly reflected, doubly destroyed. The whiff of incest is dissipated, Tony's seduction by, and Barrett's relationship with, Vera is revealed. 'We shall have to tell our secret to Mr. Tony,' he concludes. This humiliation is compounded for Susan after Tony asks her to 'come to bed', to make love in the same bed still warm from Barrett and Vera's activities.

After dismissing the pair, Tony's world disintegrates and the house grows ever darker, unkempt and unloved. Tony sobs in Vera's bed beneath the wall plastered with muscle men pictures and we wonder just who it is he's missing - Vera or Barrett? Shortly after, a contrite Barrett spins his own sob story across the class divide in a pub, Losey's visuals demarcating Barrett's tale of mutual humiliation about Vera through partitions, bunches of flowers and beer pumps.

'She's living with a bookie in Wandsworth... Wandsworth!' he decries, the location clearly of more distress to him than her alleged infidelity. Losey is extremely clever here as the scene opens with the pub interior reflected in a mirror, is followed by a pan to Barrett in the foreground chatting to Tony and concludes with a reverse shot of the pub wherein the two men have swapped sides, a literal reversal of the relationship, a reversal of their status.

Barrett, with the upper hand, then employs his games to reduce Tony further. They bicker like a gay couple and Barrett reaffirms his dark origins in the criticism of all the 'muck and slime' surrounding him as he attempts to keep the now gloomy house in order and to make ends meet. Tony again lies supine on the couch, his dreams of creating cities in Brazil all but gone, as Barrett complains that 'butter's gone up tuppence a pound.' The decor changes (pointedly the spice rack is ripped off the wall), a more satanic atmosphere is generated, class warfare is in full flight ('I'm nobody's servant') and Barrett controls Tony through drink and drugs. Dankworth's music becomes more and more atonal and strained, echoing this nightmare.

The house is transformed into a baroque brothel, where orgies occur in an endless configuration of dark spaces reflected and refracted by mirrors, and Tony, when not deferring to Barrett or hiding from him in sheer terror, simply ends up crawling about his prison cell under the influence of 'something special from a little man in Jermyn Street' or viewing his world through a distorting crystal ball. The master-servant relationship is now based on a 'primordial, libidinally driven annihilation of sexual and class difference.' (16)

Vera returns, looking for money so she can go into hospital (suggesting a pregnancy perhaps), but this is yet another subterfuge. As Barrett seemingly kicks her out into the rain, Losey shows him smirking at Vera and shouting in mock indignation for Tony's benefit, 'get back to yer ponce'. He then shields her on the doorstep, hiding their conversation or furtively kissing her behind the front door. Vera reappears in the climax of the film, in the centre of the web, as Susan makes one final attempt to shock Tony back into reality, her trauma accompanied by the now nightmarish strings and discordant sax backing Cleo Laine's forlorn song.

Slocombe's lighting is high contrast, full of shadows and renders the end of the film intense, desolate and surreal and, while it may seem to be a triumph for Barrett as he climbs the stairs to the top of the house and runs his fingers along the bannister, you are left questioning what kind of revolution this is - if indeed it is about sweeping away the remains of privilege and class snobbery. The house becomes an hermetically sealed world where 'we are left with a sense of inertia rather than a promise of progress' and one symbolised by the stopped clock that Slocombe's camera closes in on just as the screen fades to black.  (17)

(1) David Caute, Joseph Losey - A Revenge on Life
(2) John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde - The Authorised Biography
(3) Ibid
(4) Ibid
(5) David Caute, Joseph Losey - A Revenge on Life
(6) Nick James,  Joseph Losey & Harold Pinter: In search of poshlust times, Sight and Sound, June 2009
(7) Amy Sargeant, The Servant, BFI Film Classics
(8) John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde - The Authorised Biography
(9) David Caute, Joseph Losey - A Revenge on Life
(10) Ibid
(11) Colin Gardner, British Film Directors - Joseph Losey
(12) Ibid
(13) Ibid
(14) Amy Sargeant, The Servant, BFI Film Classics
(15) Colin Gardner, British Film Directors - Joseph Losey
(16) Ibid
(17) Amy Sargeant, The Servant, BFI Film Classics

About the transfer
This is a very clean, sharp 1.66:1 restoration and is wonderfully detailed. Clothes, faces and objects look crisp and clear. Appropriate film grain is present and the contrast levels are layered in crisp whites, steel greys and deep black. The location sequences in the snow shine brilliantly in juxtaposition to the gradual darkening of the house interiors. Douglas Slocombe's exquisite, award-winning black and white photography is very well served by this truly handsome looking high definition picture. The mono soundtrack reproduces dialogue clearly and Johnny Dankworth's jazz score is well represented and there are no pops, crackles or warbles. This is altogether gorgeous.

Special features
James Fox interviewed by Richard Ayoade (45:26)
Director and actor Ayoade discusses the making of The Servant with actor James Fox, who played Tony. Various elements serendipitously came together as the film was cast. Bogarde apparently saw Fox on television and advised Joseph Losey of his potential for the role of Tony, and agent Robin Fox represented both Sarah Miles and James. Ayoade sometimes loses his thread in his questioning but he does pick up on some of the precision that Losey brought to shooting on the set and many of the themes about power and control in the film. Fox is a delight and his stories about his screen test are amusing and offer an insight into Losey's process and character.
Interview with Wendy Craig (5:26)
Craig chats about the British films of the 1960s and her reaction to the script. She believes the character of Susan is rather underestimated, contemplates the power struggle she has with Bogarde's character Barrett and her concerns about Fox's inexperience. Losey 'took his work very seriously' and she was apparently told off for handing out sweets to the cast and crew.
Interview with Sarah Miles (10:18)
She apparently demanded of her agent Robin Fox that she wouldn't play Vera without her then boyfriend (and Robin's son) James Fox in the cast. She was close to Losey and she explains that he allowed actors freedom because he wanted to concentrate on the atmosphere of the film and yet Miles and the rest of the team were very aware they were working on something quite special. She is particularly funny about inverted snobbery in the acting profession and her hotel calamity on the New York promotional tour for the film.
Interview with Stephen Wooley (10:34)
The director and producer recalls the BBC television showing of The Servant when he was a teenager and saw it as part of his introduction to world cinema. Believing it to be a 'truly odd film', he comments on the casting of Bogarde, his first encounter with Pinter, the black and white cinematography, the impact of the Vera and Tony seduction scene and the film's implications for class distinction. As an interview it's a tad dry.
Harry Burton on Harold Pinter (13:02)
Burton is the director of Channel 4's excellent documentary 'Working with Pinter' and here provides biographical detail about Pinter and his journey from actor to screenwriter, eventually dropping out of RADA to study the microcosm of people's lives in his writing. Burton explains that Pinter was very interested in the politics of class and privilege and had a political consciousness from his earliest days that fed into the highly charged The Servant and its challenge to the status quo. An absorbing if brief bit of context about the intense collaboration between Pinter and the leftist Losey that had its roots in the television screening of Pinter's 'A Night Out', about his screenplay and his appearance in the film.
Bogarde biographer John Coldstream on Dirk Bogarde(18:37)
'The most enigmatic and complicated person I've ever come across', offers Coldstream of Bogarde. He describes Bogarde as a difficult but charming man with whom he spent four years assembling a biography and book of letters. He was always a reliable friend if you were in trouble and was always on the look out for stimulating projects and he found a perfect collaborator in Losey who went on to change his career. Coldstream's analysis of Bogarde's key films is fascinating and he sees The Servant as the step into 'art cinema' that Bogarde wanted to achieve and Losey and Borgarde as 'European' rather than natives of their own countries. In a very rewarding interview, he also covers the origin of the Pinter script, its journey to Bogarde and Losey, the uneasy first meeting between all three and Bogarde's standing in for an ill Losey for the first week of shooting and, finally, Bogarde's account of 'creating' Barratt from his biography 'Snakes and Ladders'.
Audio Interview with Douglas Slocombe (19:18)
A splendid Matthew Sweet interview with legendary cinematographer Slocombe at home in October 2012. This discusses the 'chamber drama' of The Servant and Losey's fascination for the class system in Britain, Slocombe matching between the exterior shoot at a house in Chelsea and the interiors completed at Shepperton. The sets also allowed him some flexibility for manipulated light and shadow during the shoot, particularly for the now iconic scene of Tony and Susan watching Barratt's silhouette on the staircase and Sweet also picks out the distorting effect of the mirror as another visual key to the film. Slocombe discusses working with Bogarde, Fox, Miles and Craig and how the performances worked in tandem with Losey's intentions for the film's mise-en-scene with Slocombe lighting dripping taps and using surgical lamps. Sweet and Slocombe also chat about sexuality, class and power in The Servant and about how the film challenged the limits of permissiveness.
Joseph Losey and Adolfas Mekas at the New York Film Festival 1963 (27:58)
A very welcome piece of archive dredged up from a US television series called Camera Three featuring the festival organisers, Losey and fellow director Mekas, who had brought Hallelujah the Hills to the festival, in conversation. They begin with a discussion about the importance of film festivals and then after clips from The Servant, Losey is interviewed about the film. He's asked about the 'existence of evil' and the sado-masochistic and homosexual overtones in the film as well as its tragedy of class and privilege. The discussion switches to the visual power of the film and Pinter's minimalist script. A fascinating record of the film's initial reception and Losey's view of cinema. 
Tempo (30:20)
An archive edition of the ABC arts show Tempo entitled 'Harold Pinter Playwright', transmitted on ITV 3 October 1965 and narrated by John Kershaw. Produced by director Mike Hodges, this examines the nature of Pinter's work as it focuses on sudden intrusions and threats to security, the foibles and faults of people and his ideas about which Pinter claims it's merely a 'job of work' to put the material together for plays that dictate their own destiny. It's an 'activity that he can't explain' and he 'just writes'. He's also obsessed by the order and rhythm of writing and how exciting and funny it is working with words. This interview is interspersed with clips, documentary footage and photographs and Kershaw delves into Pinter's background, education, encounters with anti-Semitism in Hackney, his status as a conscientious objector and his early acting career. A wonderful summation of his early work and there are great clips from the 1965 Peter Hall production of The Homecoming featuring Paul Rogers, Ian Holm, John Normington, Terence Rigby, Vivien Merchant and Michael Bryant.
Joseph Losey talks about The Servant (5:41)
Brief archive interview with Losey about the subject matter of The Servant, the casting and censorship of the film.
Stills gallery
Great set of behind the scene stills of Losey at work with the actors and a number of atmospheric portraits. 
Trailer (2:38)
Stylish trailer from 1963 that uses Barrett's dialogue to Tony in the pub and Dankworth's theme song over a series of black and white stills and clips.

The Servant
Springbok Productions - Associated British Picture Corporation 1963
StudioCanal Blu Ray / Released 8 April 2013 / OPTBD0763 / Cert 15 / 115 minutes / Black and white
BD Specs: Region B / Feature Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 / Feature Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 / Video Codec: MPEG-4 AVC / BD50 / 1080P / English Language / English, French and German subs

Cold War
BBC One HD
13 April 2013, 6.00pm

The review contains spoilers.

'Ultravox! I bloody love 'em!' exclaims David Warner's bobble-hatted Professor Grisenko as he bursts in on an extremely tense submarine nuclear attack scenario being run by grizzled Captain Zhukov and his hot-headed Lieutenant Stepashin. It's a wonderful comic anti-climax in the middle of a pre-titles sequence which establishes the nuclear fears and anxieties dominating the 1980s setting of Mark Gatiss' Cold War. 'This means nothing to me,' he croons, badly, as Zhukov and Stepashin hover over the button which could plunge the world into a winter significantly more devastating than the one raging above them at the North Pole.

Grisenko's reaction, as the sub's laconic zoologist, sums up his attitude to all of the testosterone flying about in confined spaces. Although, you do wonder why a Soviet nuclear submarine on a nuclear war footing would be carrying a resident zoologist among the ICBMs. However, we instantly get the measure of the antagonism between Zhukov and Stepashin too. Stepashin can't wait to loose off those missiles while Zhukov is more conciliatory about the NATO exercises the Soviets are getting jumpy about. These positions are continually in the foreground and feed into the negotiations that eventually have to be conducted with the intruder, frozen in a block of ice, waiting in their hold.

'the big green man from Mars' 

If it's nostalgia you want, then Cold War is for you. It is not only old school Doctor Who but it also evokes a period in the early 1980s when the geopolitical map was quite different and two diametrically opposed ideologies dogmatically believed Mutually Assured Destruction was a sufficient enough deterrent to any direct full-scale conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union. It's hardly a huge stretch to see the connections being forged between Communism and the fear of a 'red' planet when the frozen Skaldak, native of the equally red planet Mars, wakes up after a 5000 year nap.

The recovering of aliens frozen in ice is, of course, a lovely nod to Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks's The Thing from Another World (1951) and its veiled warning about the infiltrating 'red menace' of Communism, personified as a giant blood sucking James Arness, at the dawn of a nuclear age which saw Herman Rickover's nuclear powered submarine Nautilus make the first undersea voyage across the North Pole and the first nuclear reactors provide power to millions of domestic homes.

The Thing is, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Invaders from Mars (1953), one of the few 1950s science fiction films granted a remake within three decades of the Cold War. Their anti-Communist metaphors were easily re-engineered into a specifically 1980s paranoia of ideological possession, infiltration and domination and on a simpler level, in other films such as The Empire Strikes Back (1980), as a conflict with a metaphorical 'evil empire'.

When Skaldak leaves his armour behind and creeps about the submarine 'au naturel' his long, glistening claws are redolent of the long-armed Martians in George Pal's The War of the Worlds (1953), the face hugger in Alien (1979) and any of the 57 varieties in Carpenter's version of The Thing (1982). Gatiss, a big fan of Quatermass also manages to get a reference in to Bernard's clash with Colonel Breen from Quatermass and the Pit (BBC, 1958) when the impulsive Stepashin scoffs at Zhukov for believing the Doctor's story about the Ice Warriors and insists that Skaldak and 'the little green man from Mars' story is just a Western weapon and, by implication, a clever use of nuclear propaganda. There's a neat reversal of this Cold War logic where the 'the big green man from Mars' demonisation of Skaldak by the Soviets is offered as a reflection of the way Western culture similarly used monsters and aliens as Communist metaphors for the 'evil empire' in the 1950s and the 1980s.

For those not even born in the 1980s, the Doctor does provide a quick, nostalgic primer of the era when there were 'itchy fingers on the button' and 'hair, shoulder pads and nukes' signified 'everything was bigger in the Eighties'. Although there is a nostalgia for 1980s culture here, with the cheeky pop quotations from Ultravox and Duran Duran - music from a period where we felt we were in the last chance disco as the relationship between Reagan, Brezhnev and his successors deteriorated and television frothed with such nuclear apocalypses as Threads (BBC, 1984) and The Day After (ABC, 1983) - many younger viewers will probably have gleaned their impressions of this era from Cold War thrillers like The Hunt for the Red October (1990) and Crimson Tide (1995).

The frozen alien sleeper was also a good enough trope for our first encounter with that once proud race from Mars in 1967's The Ice Warriors and it is surely no coincidence you can detect a distinctly Troughton vibe to the story. It's so Troughton-esque we even get HADS (Hostile Action Displacement System) back, a bit of Troughton continuity from The Krotons, used to expedite the TARDIS's removal from the story. So this is a classic 'base under siege' scenario transposed to the claustrophobic confines of a nuclear submarine.

The formula demands the Doctor must convince bloody minded human commanders to help him counter an alien threat. Today, it's not easy to strike a peace deal when someone takes a cattle prod to an Ice Warrior. Back in the 1960s, it was simply a conflict between 'them' and 'us' and the Doctor would vanquish the aliens and not be overly concerned about the moral implications beyond his duty to fight evil in every corner of the universe. Negotiation or detente is not really an option in the The Ice Warriors and they and their ship are destroyed by Brittanicus Base's ioniser. In Cold War, the Doctor needs to win the trust of the paranoid Russians but he also has to convince Skaldak that honour and compassion should cancel out his desperate need for revenge.

As well as visual annotations to those aforementioned submarine-based films, Cold War's nuclear stand-off theme may even remind dedicated Who watchers of 1984's disappointing Warriors of the Deep. Fortunately, you'll find nothing as alarmingly awful as the Myrka here. However, its theme of two power blocs uneasily vying for supremacy is echoed here. Putting nostalgia for the heady days of the Cold War aside, as Gatiss pointed out in this month's Doctor Who Magazine the geopolitical map of the world has become more complicated and dangerous now than it was in 1983. Yet as the Doctor says, 'it would only take one tiny spark' for the spectre of escalating nuclear conflagration to re-emerge and, with all the sabre rattling that's going on between North and South Korea at the moment, this theme in the episode feels more contemporary than it should. 

Clearly Piotr's training as an elite Russian sailor on a nuclear submarine is bypassed for rank stupidity when he decides to take an oxygen acetylene torch to the block of ice in the hold and thaw out Skaldak. How a solid block of ice surrenders so quickly to the flame is moot but it's a means to an end and gets us briskly to one of the most exciting pre-titles climaxes we've seen in some time as Skaldak's arm breaks through the ice to strangle Piotr. Gatiss obviously didn't want to stand on ceremony, needing to get Skaldak out of the ice straight away, quickly dispelling the Professor's notion he's brought aboard a frozen mammoth. Mentioning a mammoth is yet another gentle nod to those newspaper reports of a baby mammoth being found in 1900 in the Siberian ice which apparently inspired the original creator of the Ice Warriors, Brian Hayles.

'harm one of us and you harm us all'

It also means we plunge straight into the Doctor's first meeting with Skaldak, rather beautifully shot by director of photography Mike Southon, and importantly discover more about about Skaldak's origins. Gatiss gleefully uses the scene to provide new details about their ancient castes (Tharsisian, apparently), creeds and codes (a Phobos heresy was vanquished), Skaldak's status as a war hero and a father and the reasons for their bio-mechanoid make-up. He's identified as a Grand Marshall and thankfully resembles the standard Ice Warrior leader, like Varga, compared to the Grand Marshall we last saw in The Seeds of Death back in 1969, who looked more like an Ice Lord trapped in a disco.

Wreathed in lots of steam and gleaming with water, this sleeker, stronger Ice Warrior design benefits from the sympathetic lighting, predominantly primary yellows, greens, reds and blues, and the cramped, claustrophobic spaces. Director Douglas Mackinnon embraces the 'less is more' school of thought when it comes to showing monsters and he retains Skaldak's mystique until the climax of the episode, both in and out of his suit.

Unlike the design disasters of the new Dalek paradigm or the humanised Silurians we've seen in this era, Neill Gorton's update is less radical and is very recognisably the classic Ice Warrior of previous stories. The iconic hissing voice, something I think original Ice Warrior actor Bernard Bresslaw developed, is less sibilant and is now given a booming Nick Briggs overhaul but is augmented by some rather delicious alien, organic gurgling noises that underline the nature of the beast. I think I even detected a bit of Bresslaw in Briggs' vocal intonations.

There is certainly a much stronger sense of their provenance as bio-mechanoid creatures when Gatiss decides to let the cat out of the bag, as it were. The huge clamps they sported in the 1960s have been replaced by armoured fingers with nifty extendable fingertips for managing the tricky task of launching nuclear missiles. Let's face it, the clamps could easily have caused a nuclear mishap. More intriguing than this is the notion of a lithe and powerful predator unleashed from its protective armour able to freely roam the ship and tear burly Soviet sailors limb from limb. The ferocity of the Martian's attacks, with Mackinnon indulging in an homage to Brian Glover's disappearance through a ceiling in Fincher's Alien³ (1992), is a welcome return to depicting more suspense and visceral horror in the series.

There is also a sense of replicating some of the scenario we saw in Robert Shearman's Dalek - where a single belligerent alien held prisoner goes on the rampage and rejects all attempts at reason - and certainly, the way Clara is used to placate Skaldak is somewhat reminiscent of Rose's first encounter with a Dalek. Rose humanised the Dalek to the point where it no longer understood its own purpose and was at odds with its own ideology but here the Martian sticks rigidly to his guns as 'the greatest hero the proud Martian race has ever produced' responding to an unprovoked attack with his 'harm one of us and you harm us all' ancient code.

In the end the Doctor must try and generate a 'glasnost' between Ice Warrior and humans. Skaldak also feels he has been abandoned by his race and that all those he knew, including a daughter, are 'only dust', mere footnotes to the 'songs of the old time, the songs of the red snow' and he has nothing left to lose even after the Doctor reassures him the Ice Warriors remain as a still proud race. Gatiss is careful not to overburden the narrative with trivia about the Ice Warriors, preferring to drip feed in new details to what we know about this race, one very much bound by codes of conduct and previously a curious dichotomy between the militaristic but honourable warriors and erudite diplomats of the Peladon stories.

In this way, Skaldak comes to embody the Cold War as a metaphor for the political and moral positions in the story and the values of both Zhukov - an older, wiser Soviet commander who would rather there be a thaw in East-West relations - and Stepashin - an impulsive apparatchik who is loyal to the party and is irritated by the uneasy nuclear stalemate. This tension is also apparent in the way Clara starts the negotiations with Skaldak simply because Zhukov doesn't trust the Doctor or himself to conduct them, after the Doctor notes that Skaldak will perceive them as 'soldiers' with whom he will refuse the right of parley. Zhukov's recognition of the Doctor as such a soldier is subtly played too.

The escalation of hostilities between Skaldak and the occupants of the submarine reflects the use of Cold War strategies, both the personal and the political. Skaldak comes to understand the nuclear brinksmanship between the major powers from his interrogation of Stepashin whose offer of 'we are both warriors who together can form an alliance' fuels the rhetoric and perception theory of Cold War strategy where in 1983, paradoxically, within the terms of Mutually Assured Destruction each side believed an escalation in armaments was the best deterrent. It's a desperate strategy for Skaldak because to leave his suit, a rare occurrence for Ice Warriors it seems, is to inflict upon himself a terrible dishonour.

The back down from nuclear brinksmanship in the episode reflects the gradual thaw in the antagonistic relationship between the Soviets and the Americans, one which accelerated when Gorbachev came to power in the late 1980s and through Reagan's own gamble in announcing the Strategic Defence Initiative to augur a change in perception, one which shifted the nuclear fear debate, changing it from a discussion about eliminating nuclear weapons to one about defending against them. It provoked the Soviets into a reorientation of their strategic aims and signalled the end of the Cold War. Cold War is essentially a story where honourable military leaders on both sides of the strategic argument struggle to find a mutual way to solve their differences without losing face. For Zhukov, Skaldak and the Doctor it becomes a battle to negotiate from strength rather than weakness and results in the Doctor calling Skaldak's bluff and threatening to instigate his own form of Mutually Assured Destruction.

The Doctor fails in his attempts to appeal to Skaldak as a warrior who could teach the human race the honour in mercy. Clara, who it must be pointed out is not a soldier like Skaldak, Zhukov or the Doctor to some extent, approaches the issue by evoking Skaldak's sense of compassion, highlighting his hesitation to kill Grisenko, asking him to remember his daughter as he condemns millions to death and the honorary code, those 'songs of the red snows', of the Ice Warriors.

These are qualities his desperate strategy, with its cold determination to forensically learn about the strengths and weaknesses of his opponents, has ignored and overriden. Clara's humanism, rather like Rose's in Dalek, is contrasted with the Doctor's own unflinching and desperate threat to blow the sub up and sacrifice them all, echoing Zhukov's earlier assessment 'we are expendable, comrades... our world is not'. The Doctor's quite dangerous here because you're not quite sure if this was all bluff, more than just an initiative to assuage fear. Fortunately, Skaldak's Ice Warrior brothers arrive and redress the balance.   

This scene works rather well and along with earlier moments in the story is a way of concentrating on Clara as the companion rather than layering in yet another piece of the mystery about who she is. It's refreshing just to have her explore the function of the companion and interesting to note her vulnerability and how she feels she must pass muster and seek approval from the Doctor. This includes a reality check as she tries to accommodate the very real horrors of Skaldak's rampage and after seeing several crew members torn apart and enduring the threat of nuclear extinction, she suddenly sees the reverse of the coin in these adventures with the Doctor.

Jenna-Louise Coleman and David Warner play those intense scenes together well and the Professor, demanding to know about the future, allows Warner to beautifully defuse the tense situation with a bathetic and plaintive cry of 'I need to know! Please! Do Ultravox split up?' Gatiss sets up, in classic horror narrative style, a moment of comedy which effectively turns to the horror of Skaldak seizing her and then the Professor. Warner's character is more or less a cameo and we don't learn a great deal about Grisenko but having Warner in the episode to, forgive the pun, disarm the situation is good enough for me.

Its back to basics plot and the reintroduction of a classic monster make Cold War an enjoyable episode. While the iconic Ice Warrior design is retained more or less intact (but he must have a hell of job getting those big hands inside the armour), their mystique is somewhat undermined by the final reveal of what's beneath the helmet. From an emotional and narrative point of view the reveal hits the right note but the CGI creature facing us and the Doctor is a little bit of a disappointment. I think I'd prefer the Ice Warriors to stay behind their reptilian armour in future.

The submarine sets are excellent and generate the necessary claustrophobia. Director Douglas Mackinnon dresses the episode very stylishly, employing some slow motion, dissolves and quick cutting amid the steam and water, and injects the story with the requisite tension. He also gets some committed and convincing performances from Liam Cunningham as Zhukov and Tobias Menzies as Stepashin.

Matt Smith is fortunately more controlled in his performance this week - the 'no pretending to be an Earth ambassador' line will raise a chuckle from dedicated classic Who watchers and his reaction to a companion actually obeying his instruction to stay put is lovely - and Coleman still proves her worth with an emotionally powerful reading of Clara's fears and a comic touch - the speaking in Russian scene is highly amusing for example. All in all, a great introduction to the Ice Warriors for younger viewers and a treat for those of us who witnessed Varga's resuscitation at Brittanicus Base in 1967.

*I'm also over at The Slate chatting to Mac Rogers about Cold War this week.

'You call this a screenplay? I don't know who these people are, I don't know what their background is, I don't know what they're doing, I don't know who's doing what and why, I don't know what they want, I have absolutely no idea what is going on, how can you call this a screenplay?' said perplexed producer Sam Spiegel to Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey when he called them into his office to discuss the script for 1967's Accident.

The director and the writer assured Spiegel they knew what the screenplay was about and yet, he blustered in reply, 'You two might know what's going on but what about all the millions of peasants in China?' (1) Spiegel had bought the rights to Nicholas Mosley's 1965 titular novel on the advice of Losey and his fellow Horizon Pictures producer Jud Kinberg. Losey turned to Pinter to undertake the screen adaptation shortly after the writer had completed work on Michael Anderson's The Quiller Memorandum (1966) in the summer of 1965.

While he completed the drafts of the script with Losey's input, a first draft arriving July 1965 followed by a second draft in September, a number of intense meetings between Spiegel, Pinter and Losey took place in Amsterdam and Sicily during Losey's shoot on Modesty Blaise (1966). When Spiegel attempted to isolate Pinter from Losey by inviting him to write on his yacht it became clear to them both that Spiegel wanted to not only interfere with the screenplay but also have his say on other aspects of the film, including casting. (2)

Their early suggestion for Dirk Bogarde as the lead baffled Spiegel: 'What do you want Bogarde for? Who's ever heard of him?' BAFTA begged to differ in the Spring of 1966 when Bogarde picked up a Best Actor gong for his work in John Schlesinger's Darling (1965). Spiegel insisted he could get Richard Burton but that the production would have to wait a year for him. Meanwhile, Bogarde received the script in January 1966 as a courtesy but was so concerned at the suggestion of such an actor for the lead part, he begged them to at least try and get Paul Schofield to play the lead role. (3)

"we don't like it, we don't understand it, but go ahead and make it"

Pinter had in the meantime taken Mosley's novel, written in a free association style, about a complex network of relationships unfolding during a summer in Oxford, and transformed it with several drastic alterations. He dispensed with Oxford don Stephen Jervis as the first person narrator and made him the protagonist. Stephen, married with children, is in crisis and attempting to orchestrate an affair with a young Austrian aristocrat, Anna von Granz und Loeben, who is also one of his philosophy pupils.

He is, however, in competition for her attentions with William, another of his pupils and son of Lord Codrington, and a fellow don, Charley Hall. He envies his pupil for his youthful vitality and his colleague for his media success and sexual prowess. Jealously, pride, moral bankruptcy and a conflict between intellect and emotion literally result in a car crash in which William is killed and Anna is culpable as a drunk driver. The car crash initiates the narrative and the entire story, of how these three people were set on a collision course, unfolds in flashback.

In his stream of consciousness narrative, Mosley understood the car crash as 'the catalyst in the sense that people can carry on with the difficult tormented relationships, keep them spinning until something disastrous... makes them think about their responsibilities.' (4) Pinter and Losey kept this premise but altered Stephen's motives and the relationship between him and Charley. In the book, Stephen never physically connects with Anna and instead turns for help to Charley as a friend, the trauma of the car crash having ceased their rivalry. In the film, Stephen forces himself sexually onto the stunned Anna just hours after the car crash and then keeps her culpability in the crash a secret, in the form of sexual blackmail, from the police and from Charley.

Pinter was concerned his changes would upset Mosley and he sent him the script in April 1966 with a covering letter explaining the changes: 'As you see, there's one major deviation, change - the fact that Stephen sleeps with Anna and that Charley knows nothing about anything at the end.' (5) Mosley praised Pinter's spare, controlled script and, although he did object to the trajectory Pinter had set Stephen on, he understood in pragmatic terms, 'one knew that if one was going to have a Pinter script one was going to have one's characters brutalized.' (6)

Pinter and Losey preferred not to wait for Burton and eventually persuaded Spiegel to part with the rights to the film, buying them back for $30,000 and a percentage. With Bogarde on board in the lead as Stephen, the Oxford philosophy don struggling with a mid-life crisis, they went off in search of finance. Losey recalled: 'I cannot tell how many people turned down Accident and the people who finally made it said, "we don't like it, we don't understand it, but go ahead and make it".' Those who came to that conclusion were John Terry at the National Film Finance Corporation and Sydney Box at London Independent Productions who both invested £150,000. (7)

In May 1966, Losey and Bogarde were promoting Modesty Blaise at the Cannes Film Festival and Losey indicated he was keen to meet young British actor Michael York with a view to considering him for the role of one of Stephen's students, William. York had previously appeared with Bogarde in Basil Dearden's under rated The Mind Benders (1962) and was then filming Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (1967) in Rome with Burton and Taylor.

Securing the role after flying to Rome for something of an impromptu audition in Cannes, York recalled that 'Dirk told me afterwards that he managed with some difficulty to persuade Joe that a British aristocrat can have a broken nose.' (8) He observed that the Losey-Bogarde relationship seemed to function as 'an attraction of two opposites' and even though he came to respect Losey, it was fellow actor Bogarde who took him under his wing and tutored him in screen acting.

Further casting brought on board Jacqueline Sassard, to play Anna, Stanley Baker as Charley and Delphine Seyrig as Francesca, Stephen's old flame. Working with Losey on some of his first British films such as Blind Date (1959), The Criminal (1960) and Eve (1962) Baker had successfully extended his career profile. Bogarde was not particularly keen on Baker's casting in Accident but mellowed after his initial impression that he was 'too thuggish, too much the working class lad. He arrived in a toupee and lots of make-up and was always doing his eyelashes for the first two days. After that he was terrific, wonderful - I was very fond of him.' (9)

Seyrig, her international reputation made with roles in Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and Muriel ou Le temps d'un retour (1963) was apparently persuaded to take time out of her busy schedule with the prospect of two days of filming in England. She found the experience a positive one and wrote to Losey, praising the production and 'especially that English Bogey - ah, what a wonderful actor - and partner he is.' (10) Losey rather terrified Sassard and brought in tutors to improve her English and at one point considered dubbing her role.

Mosley, spending a day or two on set to film a cameo appearance with Bogarde, Baker and Alexander Knox, also worried about Bogarde's ability to act out Stephen's longing for Sassard's character Anna and Seyrig's Francesca: 'I thought Dirk can act this, he can act that, but I didn't really see how he could smoulder with lust for this young girl or indeed for the older woman played by Delphine Seyrig, in the middle of the film.' (11) Bogarde was also very uneasy about how the character of Stephen forced himself on the injured Anna and resisted the scene as long as he could but 'Joe wanted it desperately badly... It was bestial and I think Joe wanted that crudity.' (12)

Although it was an Oxford set story, in February 1966 Losey first attempted to secure locations at a number of Cambridge colleges before he began a correspondence with the heads of Oxford's Christ Church, Magdalen, New College and St. John's. Before filming finally took place in Canterbury Quad at St. John's College and the river adjacent to Magdalen, Losey did the rounds. Magdalen President T.S.R. Boase watered and fed Losey and then turned down the request on the basis that the female undergraduate Anna slept with not one, but two dons.

New College also rejected the proposal for filming because Mosley's book was connected to a car accident involving a New College undergraduate at Raymond Carr's country house of which a dim view had been taken, losing Carr his fellowship at the college. Carr, a Warden of St. Anthony's was neither a fan of Losey's nor of Pinter's and he criticised the finished film as 'a farcical caricature of a small social set - and even not that accurate in detail.' (13)

Location filming commenced 4 July 1966 at the Oxford college locations, then continued at Norwood Farm Hall in Cobham, for Stephen's country house, and at Syon House, London to represent Lord Codrington's ancestral home. Interiors for various college rooms and the country house were all constructed and filmed at Twickenham.

The location shooting in Surrey was beset with very changeable weather, as Losey explained: 'all those summer scenes were shot in icy-cold weather and a lot of it was rain... we would often prepare a shot for some hours and then get forty-five seconds to shoot it; and if it wasn't right on the first take, there wasn't time to do another... so it took us days and days to get the stuff.' (14)

Joining Losey's team, with returning producer Norman Priggen and composer Johnny Dankworth, were cinematographer Gerry Fisher and assistant director Richard Dalton. Like Bogarde and Baker, both would enjoy a long collaborative working relationship with Losey. Fisher had been a camera operator on Modesty Blaise and was already admired by Losey when he hired him after his first choice, Douglas Slocombe, was unavailable.

He had something of a baptism of fire shooting the Oxford based scenes when Losey declared his unhappiness with the rushes. He also struggled with the summer weather and outdoor scenes were 'made up of tiny stitches and pieces like a tapestry.' However, Fisher would work again with Losey on Secret Ceremony (1968), the third film with Pinter The Go-Between (1970), A Doll's House (1973), The Romantic Englishwoman (1975), Mr Klein (1976) and Don Giovanni (1979). (15)

Dalton, a former assistant director working on The Avengers (ABC, 1961-9) before he was asked to attend a meeting with the director in Knightsbridge, remembered Losey as a man lacking in humour, getting very annoyed when, on set, the crew used radios to try and follow the progress of the World Cup, regarding football as 'this homosexual game where they all hug each other.' He graduated from assistant on Secret Ceremony and The Go-Between to producer on A Doll's House, The Romantic Englishwoman and Losey's last film, Steaming (1985).

'I wanted to make a film about an accident in which there was no physical violence, only the inner violence of what people feel,' claimed Losey. (16) Accident fulfills that dictum and is a complex exploration of the relationships between three men and one woman conducted beneath a deceptively calm vision of domestic and working lives. Losey was intrigued by English reserve and captured something of the restraint and tension inherent in the battling passions of Stephen, Charley and William during one summer in the English countryside.

'Don't, you're standing on his face!' 

The film opens with a formal shot of the exterior of Stephen's country house. The camera begins to track in towards the house. What strikes you immediately is the use of sound - an aircraft overhead, screeching owls, dogs barking and the tapping of typewriter keys - to augment the thick, primordial atmosphere, where sound becomes another character in the film and signals, with the deafening sound of the car crash, the emotional wreckage from which the rest of the film spills out.

Losey's use of sound booms and telescopic rifle mikes adds sonic highlights to a film in which he plays with sensual memory, including the ticking engine of the crashed car, footsteps, farmyard noises, water trickling, children playing, kettles, busy offices, frying omelettes et al in the structuring of Stephen's memory. A fascinating aspect of Stephen's recall is how Losey manipulates the flashback to obscure certain moments, his embarrassment at falling into the river or his reluctance to play the mock-rugby game at Codrington Hall, for example. What's missing is just as important as what is evident.

Sound as a 'sonic flashback' is vital when the film narratively comes full circle and Losey returns to his formal shot of the house, tracks back and repeats the sound of the car crash just before the end titles. In a sense we are entering the present moment of the crash, then travelling back with Stephen into the past to understand what happened to the victims, how it occurred, having them return to its squalid aftermath and reemerge into the light of day by the time the film ends. As Colin Gardner notes: 'The film's structural, narrative, and most importantly, temporal role will be to piece them back together again through Stephen's present and mnemonic focalization.' (17)

Stephen's rush to the scene of the crash is supernaturally chilly. It's mise-en-scene is a mass of hand held camera shots following Stephen's circumnavigation of the wreck and his attempts to rescue Anna and William, including tracking shots across moonlit fields and brief intercuts to a black sky punctured by the moon and a horse woken by the disturbance. Death seems to the result of some animalistic force and as Colin Gardner observes Stephen is associated with harnessing 'the impulsive traits of becoming-animal' to break free of his neuroses about sexual inadequacy and impending old age.

Stephen's odyssey through the film, a descent into male anxiety superbly realised in the agonies etched on Dirk Bogarde's face and in his antagonism towards Stanley Baker as the sexual athlete Charley, is in the main concerned with the surface tension between each of the characters and how it is suddenly and irrevocably broken. It is a film where 'discontinuous time and memory are now depicted as mutually complicit with violently compulsive behaviour' and several sequences underline the melding of animal competition and sexual play between three men as these forces thrash away beneath the formal, civilised and privileged family life unfolding during the idyllic summer. (18)

For Stephen, his student William represents the glowing, golden flame of youth he wished he still possesed and his friend Charley is his rival in intellect, reputation, success and sexual power, the other qualities he desperately seeks as he sees his middle age rotting away at the core of his life. When he yells at the traumatised Anna, 'Don't, you're standing on his face!' he is at once acknowledging immolation of his own youth and her own role as femme fatale, as someone capable of injuring all the males who covet her in the story.

Narrative is also a pertinent subject for the film. The events leading up to the crash are effectively a narrative of memory, a feature length flashback to when Stephen first met Anna through his tutoring of William, but it also initially takes other forms: the typing at the beginning of the film suggests a construction being undertaken, the police interrogation after the crash as a false narrative because Stephen lies to cover up Anna's guilt as the drunk driver responsible for the crash.

When Stephen watches Anna's legs twitching, as she seems to recall the trauma of the crash in her own nightmare, Losey jump cuts to a what consists of an after and before shot of Michael York as William - in the present covered in blood behind a shattered windscreen and in the past preserved as bright eyed, glowing young man, as Stephen would want to remember him.

This jump back returns us to a discussion between Stephen and William, in the privileged vaults of Oxford, about Anna, an enigmatic Austrian 'princess', a woman in whom they both interested and one they are already engaging in mock competition over. With great irony, Stephen advises William, 'as her tutor her moral welfare must be my first consideration' which begs the question about his demeaning treatment of her in the film's climax, a release of his sexual frustration that's echoed through the rest of the film. His statement, 'I refuse to encourage or countenance male lust as directed against any of my women students,' is the shield behind which he hides his own increasing desire as his own biological clock begins to falter.

At the same time Losey's frame encompasses the open window of the room, looking down on the quad to Anna's arrival into the film, petting and stroking a goat incongruously sitting on the lawn. The goat may symbolise, as Tim Robey notes on the DVD, male lust being tamed by Anna but it could also suggest a loss of innocence and the scape goat representing the sins of the individual, or the projection, displacement of blame onto Anna for all the unwarranted male aggression, lust and frustration exuding from Stephen, William and Charley. Pointedly, William asks Stephen, 'You're not past it are you, already?' strongly suggesting the rest of the film will be Stephen's attempt to prove he isn't.

Anna is categorised simply as an Austrian 'princess' when Stephen reveals to his wife Rosalind (played by Pinter's own wife Vivien Merchant) the existence of his new pupil. It's the reductive naming of a woman who walks through the film like a ghost, empty of any kind of interior life, and whom the wise, ever watching, Rosalind gets the measure of straight away. 'Then she's a fake,' she claims when said 'princess' does not apparently have long golden hair. 'Has she made advances to you?' asks Rosalind, almost aware of her husband's impending crisis it seems. Again, the scene focuses on Stephen's age and Rosalind's comment 'you're not too old for me' highlights Stephen's interior struggle.

'All aristocrats were made to be... killed'

The dusty halls of academe, the hierarchies of English university education, are placed in direct contrast to Stephen's domestic life but both fizz with the undercurrent of unfocused desire. A shot of Rosalind, in close up, looking at Stephen with love, is cut to a shot of Anna, gazing absentmindedly off screen and away from Stephen.

That undercurrent is picked up in the tension between the dons sitting in the reading room and Charley's provocative recital from the paper about the analysis of libidinous students and the occupancy of a student's bed by a bus driver. At this juncture we may presume that Charley is suggesting he is involved with student Anna. The passage of time is again flagged up - the hermetically sealed world of donnish contemplation is tracked by the loud ticking of a clock. 

One of the film's key scenes, which shifts the burgeoning desires between these parties, is where Stephen and Anna are being punted down the river by William. It's a beautifully photographed sequence, full of images of male sexual prowess and female availability as William thrusts the punt along and Stephen surreptitiously drinks in Anna's body, his gaze fixed on her legs, navel and arms.

Johnny Dankworth's score is feverish, all febrile harps and sax, as Losey frames Stephen and Anna between William's legs and then focuses on his arms pushing the the pole into the water to suggest the young man is sexually dominant over both of his passengers. The swan, another animal image, evokes the fairy tale princess that Anna has been already been categorised as but it also may suggest energy burning away beneath the surface, of Stephen's mid-life swan-song, the swan as a symbol of seduction. The scene ends with Stephen's humiliating soaking in the river, his thoughts of seduction truly dampened.

Back in his study, the homosocial subtext in the film, which often threatens to become a homosexual one, is reiterated by William's admiration of Stephen's body and the suggestion of an exercise regime to keep him in trim. The sense of the temporal is indicated by Losey's skipping pan across the gargoyles on the outside of the building in time with a striking bell, dividing several scenes between the two men relaxing and drinking and adding one immediately after that features Anna.

In the first section Stephen invites William down for the weekend and he strikes a note of foreboding with his claim, 'All aristocrats were made to be... killed', when discussing William's blue blood. Stephen's own preservation of William in this flashback is acknowledged in William's response of, 'Of course, we're immortal.' This exchange about William's denial of his death is repeated later in the Eton wall-game played at William's ancestral home. The next section with Anna confirms what we suspect, she is already seeing Charley, when Stephen recommends one of his books to her. The rivalry between the two academics is apparent even here when Stephen rejects Charley's work as 'I don't think much of it, but you might.'

So we see Stephen already arranging several lives and setting them on a future course, almost as if two time zones are steadily being brought together, culminating in the crash. Interestingly, Losey matches two scenes where Stephen approaches Rosalind, sleeping in bed, with a similar approach to the traumatised Anna, seen at the beginning of the film and also anticipating the brutal conclusion to it later. Similarly, we see the crash site in bright sunshine as Stephen helps his son out of a tree, our recognition of it emphasised by Losey holding on the shot long after they have walked out of frame.

The sunny weekend in the country is a wonderful summation, in visual and performance terms, of the strategies and games that obsess Pinter, his fascination with the exchange of power. The tennis match is one such expression of this, of course, but Charley's disruption of the domestic scene is symbolised by the football he throws through the window as William fills a saucepan at the kitchen sink. The testosterone is literally flying.

The power play is also marvellously mapped out in the conversation in the garden when Losey frames the three male characters in one shot, William and Charley dominating the foreground and Stephen in the background, his back to them as he gardens. Here is another example of meta-narrative in the film as they all discuss a prospective novel which is uncannily a reflection of what is already playing out in the garden between the three men and as they assume their positions in relation to Anna, now playing with the children, and the pregnant Rosalind dozing in a sun lounger.

Here, Bogarde's own physical inadequacies, in contrast to the alpha male energy of Stanley Baker, is used to inform the power struggle, the 'sexual baiting' between Stephen and Charley. Losey noted Dirk as, 'a completely non-physical man. He can't ride a horse, he can't swim, he can barely walk. The only thing he can do is garden.' (19) Nicholas Mosley, on set when the tennis match was being filmed, also noted how none of the actors had any idea how to play tennis. The animalistic is figured again not only in Charley's overt manliness but also in the serendipitous moment when a tennis ball is chased by a black cat playing under the net.

What comes across in the match and other games is Charley's male dominance and cavalier breaking of the rules and its an echo of how he will casually use Stephen's house as a place to meet and sleep with Anna. William's own casual, sexual ease with Anna is also revived at the cricket match, then his and Stephen's masculinity and the disparities in their class are also tested in the brutal and violent rugby style Eton wall-game into which William drags Stephen. This marking out of territory, with the tennis match coldy observed by the wise Rosalind, suggests that Stephen's desires are 'deferred and disguised through a series of unconscious competitive games - a favourite Pinter strategy, as we saw in The Servant - so that Stephen appropriates Charley's and William's actual relationships with Anna to feed his own vicarious sexual appetite.' (20) This appetite remains stunted, even after a one night stand with his old flame Francesca, and is only fully sated in the aftermath of the crash.

That stunting of his libido is beautifully captured in the walk Stephen takes with Anna. As Colin Gardner rightly observes it is this moment where he fails to seize her which will haunt his recollections throughout the film. It's a gloriously shot exploration of the English countryside, suggesting nature at its most fecund. Anna's disregard for the power of nature is caught in her sweeping away of the spider's web, a visual metaphor surely for how she is a catalyst for the shattering of this web of relationships.

She leaves the web in her wake, its destruction signifying 'her dominance of the social milieu that the members of the group inhabit.' (21) Losey frames Anna and Stephen on either side of a gate with a beautiful field sweeping away before them. Stephen's hand almost reaches out for her but then the moment is gone, they leave the frame and Losey suggests this 'resonant space-as-place' provides a nostalgia for a time and place where Stephen still 'painfully rues his failure to make his sexual move.' (22) 

The evening dinner is also an expression of frustrated ambition and hilariously turns into a drunken challenge from Stephen to Charley over their prospective television careers. Stephen reveals that he has an appointment with Charley's producer after he pompously brags that the television execs wouldn't let Stephen 'within ten miles' of the medium.

Later, we see that meeting, a sly attack on the production mentality of the day, where Pinter himself plays a distracted producer, Bell, unable to talk to Stephen because the man he was supposed to be meeting, Bill Smith, has been hospitalised. The scene also has two functions - to remind Stephen of Francesca, 'the Provost's daughter, the daughter of the Provost' and to insert a temporal fugue between the dinner scene and the forthcoming kitchen scene when Stephen returns and finds he has been too inhibited in his approaches to Anna and discovers Charley has already claimed her.

The rekindling of his relationship with Francesca is a searing expression of the unhappiness at the heart of two supposedly happy lives. That both of them are entombed, empty vessels and are merely reenacting a moment out of the past is emphasised by the way the dialogue between the two characters is presented as an out of sync narration over a montage of Stephen meeting Francesca at her flat, taking her out to dinner and going to bed with her. As Losey noted of the encounter, it was 'a real lost night, which instead of relieving frustration, makes it worse' and the sequence is again another example of the selective possibilities of memory, of an edited inner monologue as a register of temporality in the film. (23)

Stephen returns to find Anna and Charley continuing their affair at his house. It again exposes the competition between Stephen and Charley over Anna and is expressed domestically too as Stephen, a vessel of barely contained rage and with his back to them, cooks an omelette. It is a charged performance from Bogarde, an intense expression of his own barely contained frustration with Baker and one which, according to his biographer John Coldstream, totally exhausted him. Yet, it is highly appropriate in articulating Stephen's own hostility to the relationship between Anna and Charley.

Charley's casual infidelity is also underlined by Baker reading out a confidential letter from his wife Laura, originally destined for Stephen, paralleling scenes where Stephen visits Laura and goes to see his own pregnant wife Rosalind who, out of all the characters, can see from a distance that Charley is a 'poor stupid old man'. However, she might also be saying the same about her own husband. All people are stupid, according to Rosalind.

After the cricket match and the brutal Eton wall-game, both expressive of jaded aristocracy and with the former match indicating that Anna has dumped Charley for the youthful but doomed William, the film returns to the aftermath of the crash, cutting from a tender kiss between Anna and Charley to the fractured images of the accident and Anna's nightmare in the bedroom. Stephen's distasteful rape of Anna devolves into a simple operation of erasure, with Stephen, appalled at himself, one presumes, for using his guilt and remorse over William's death as an opportunity to indulge his sexual frustrations, desperate to remove her from the situation, from everyone's lives. At the same time, his conscience arrives in the form of a constantly ringing telephone bearing a message that his wife has given birth.

He takes Anna back into Oxford, helping her over a quad wall so that no one will see her, and she packs and leaves. This dangerous game is over and silence cloaks Anna's involvement in the car crash, her complicity with Stephen's cover up of her drunk driving. This world of deceptions and lies, the brokering of power, manipulate Anna as 'a victim and a participant at the same time, the kind of moral (or amoral) multivalency that infuriates those who wish for clear-cut solutions to the vicissitudes of existence.' (24) The disordered narrative cycles around again, the film closing with the shot of Stephen's house in bright sunshine, the camera tracking back from the scene of the crime as the sound of a car crash can be heard on the soundtrack, an indication that lies, aimlessness, pain and disappointment are never ending in this privileged little world.

(1) John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde - The Authorised Biography
(2) David Caute, Joseph Losey - A Revenge on Life
(3) John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde - The Authorised Biography
(4) David Caute, Joseph Losey - A Revenge on Life
(5) Ibid
(6) Colin Gardner, British Film Directors - Joseph Losey
(7) David Caute, Joseph Losey - A Revenge on Life
(8) John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde - The Authorised Biography
(9) David Caute, Joseph Losey - A Revenge on Life
(10) John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde - The Authorised Biography
(11) Ibid
(12) David Caute, Joseph Losey - A Revenge on Life
(13) Ibid
(14) Wheeler Winston Dixon in The Films of Harold Pinter
(15) David Caute, Joseph Losey - A Revenge on Life
(16) Colin Gardner, British Film Directors - Joseph Losey
(17) Ibid
(18) Ibid
(19) John Coldstream, Dirk Bogarde - The Authorised Biography
(20) Colin Gardner, British Film Directors - Joseph Losey
(21) Wheeler Winston Dixon in The Films of Harold Pinter
(22) Colin Gardner, British Film Directors - Joseph Losey
(23) Wheeler Winston Dixon in The Films of Harold Pinter
(24) Ibid

About the transfer
Gerry Fisher's desaturated Eastman colour photography is the highlight of this restored high definition transfer. His colour-as-monochrome scheme is very prominent and the detail is crisp and clean, picking up splendid flesh tones, lines and creases on faces, texture in clothing and objects. Contrast is deep and layered and the transfer copes well with many dark and shadowy scenes, particularly those shot in bright sun such as the punting scene. There is good sense of depth, the appropriate film grain texture is preserved and the image is damage free. A pleasure to behold. The soundtrack is crisp, dialogue is faithfully produced as is Dankworth's sinuous music score. No issues to report.

Special features
Talking About Accident (33:18)
A French documentary from 2005 including an interview with Pinter, critic Michel Ciment, cinematographer Gerry Fisher and using archive audio clips of Losey and covering their intense collaboration and the process of shooting the film. While Pinter explains his love for Hartley's The Go Between and Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu he felt that although he didn't love the original books of The Servant and Accident he saw them both as an attractive challenge to adapt for cinema. Ciment sees Accident as a film 'built on empty moments' and as complimentary to many of the landmarks films of European cinema in their interior exploration of the psyche. Cinematographer Gerry Fisher recalls his promotion from operator to director of photographer in agreeing to work with Losey and then being sent the script of Accident, Losey and Ciment comment on the casting of Bogarde and Baker where their physical differences were represented in the two characters in the film and Seyrig's presence as a sub-homage to Resnais. Losey and Fisher also talk about the 'shooting in one' aspect of the film, of the desire to shoot in monochrome rather than colour, of Bogarde's discomfort at Baker's presence transformed into performance. A fascinating insight into the tensions and contrasts at the heart of the film.
Joseph Losey and Harold Pinter Discuss Accident (25:36)
A very welcome archive piece called 'Screenwriting' from the CBS television series Camera Three, transmitted 28 May 1967, where Losey and Pinter are interviewed about their collaboration on The Servant and Accident just prior to the release of the latter in America. Scenes from the two films are shown and they each discuss the style, discipline and themes of their work.
John Coldstream on Dirk Bogarde (6:19)
Bogarde's biographer briefly provides a background to Bogarde's involvement in Accident, the selection of the Mosley novel as a fitting project for Losey, Pinter and Bogarde to collaborate on, his playing of Stephen with 'enormous intelligence and understanding' against the immense physicality of Baker.
Harry Burton on Harold Pinter (10:42)
Burton, the director of Channel 4's excellent documentary 'Working with Pinter', presents another fascinating insight into Pinter's psyche and his development as a writer. This takes us from his early plays and successes to his work in cinema, television and radio. He mentions how Pinter's own affair at the time may well have informed the tense trysts depicted in Accident, discusses the submerged world that Pinter was so keen on revealing in films like Accident and his work as an actor on the film. Burton really should have been asked to do a commentary as he displays an intimate understanding of Pinter's themes and obsessions.
Interview with Melanie Williams (9:36)
Lecturer in Film Studies at East Anglia University, Dr Melanie Williams approaches Losey's work from a rarely discussed and equally intriguing angle: the role of women in his films. She contrasts the femme fatales of The Sleeping Tiger and Eve with the object of desire, Anna, in Accident. An 'enigmatic, empty character', Williams sees her as a 'beautiful cypher' who doesn't really live up to Losey's idea of her as an active catalyst. She also examines the characters of Rosalind and Francesca. Rosalind is very much the exclusive domesticated woman who offers something of a Greek chorus on the action. Francesca, the old flame, suggests the role of career woman in the world of Accident, 'untouched by feminism', is one that is alienated and empty too. A fascinating dissection from Williams, especially her reading of Stephen's assault on Anna and the marginality of women in the film.
Interview with Tim Robey (8:40)
Robey, critic at the Daily Telegraph, looks at Losey's objective examination of class. Both he and Pinter are seen as outsider figures able to comment on privilege, class hierarchy and sexuality. He also touches on the character of Anna, as an enigmatic catalyst for all the events in the film, as an object passed between the male characters, and Losey's exploitation of the tension between Bogarde and Baker. He also underlines the male competitiveness at the heart of the film and Losey's experimental approach to the film's construction.
Trailer (3:13)
The UK trailer, narrated by Bogarde. Love the tense pause in between 'And Charley, my closest friend... I suppose' as Stanley Baker appears on the screen.

Accident
Royal Avenue Chelsea - London Independent Producers 1967
StudioCanal Blu Ray / Released 8 April 2013 / OPTBD2479 / Cert PG / 110 minutes / Colour
BD Specs: Region B / Feature Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1 / Feature Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 / Video Codec: MPEG-4 AVC / BD50 / 1080P / English Language / English subs
 

Not final artwork

Coming from publisher I.B. Tauris in September is another publication in the 'Who Watching' project, Doctor Who - The Eleventh Hour: A Critical Celebration of the Matt Smith and Steven Moffat Era

Edited and with an introduction from Andrew O'Day, the book is published to celebrate the Doctor's 50th anniversary and provides a valuable record of the current Matt Smith Doctor, who arrived in 2010 and is still travelling in time and space. This first book devoted solely to the Steven Moffat/Matt Smith era is written by experts on the Doctor and includes contributions from Richard Hewett, Frank Collins (that's me), Matthew Kilburn, Dee Amy-Chinn, David Budgen, Simone Knox, Jonathan Bignell, Piers D. Britton, Vasco Hexel, Matt Hills, Brigid Cherry, Neil Perryman, and Ross P. Garner.

Doctor Who - The Eleventh Hour: A Critical Celebration of the Matt Smith and Steven Moffat Era is wide-ranging and varied in viewpoint and explores such issues as the performance of the Doctor, the gothic and fairy tale genres, the portrayal of history on screen, gender and sexuality, the phenomenon of Christmas television, the transatlantic dimensions of the programme, its look and sound, promotional culture and audience response. Also discussed are Doctor Who interactive games and the spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures. Written in accessible style, the book will be a valuable contribution to the expanding literature on Doctor Who, for fans, watchers of sci fi TV and students alike.

Andrew O'Day is co-author, with Jonathan Bignell, of Terry Nation (2004). He received his PhD in Television Studies from Royal Holloway, University of London and has contributed chapters on 'classic' and 'new Who' to a range of edited collections.

ISBN-10: 1780760191 
ISBN-13: 978-1780760193

Publication Date: 30 September 2013
Number of Pages: 288

You can now order Doctor Who - The Eleventh Hour from I.B. Tauris and Amazon


About 'Who Watching' at I.B. Tauris
"Why so many books on the Doctor at I.B.Tauris? Why the ongoing 'Who Watching' project? Well, the Doctor is central to contemporary media, and remarkably almost spans the history of television itself. Written for a receptive audience of fans and students, they have been warmly welcomed and have helped form a community, engaged in an argumentative dialogue about the history and future of the Doctor. Intelligent and loyal, with deep, deep knowledge of their field, provocative in their views, discriminating and critical too – Doctor Who fans keep us on our toes to publish the best writing on and thinking about this extraordinary phenomenon."

Check out the 'Who Watching' website for reviews of the current series and articles from authors in their published range on many aspects of classic and current Doctor Who.  

Hide
BBC One HD
20 April 2013, 6.45pm

The review contains spoilers.

The first of Neil Cross's two scripts for the series, but the second to be transmitted, Hide finds the writer in several familiar territories at once. In an SFX interview, Cross discussed the influence of Nigel Kneale's work on the episode, particularly the Quatermass stories and a Christmas ghost story, the legendary television play The Stone Tape (BBC, 25/12/1972). In fact, Hide was supposed to feature an on-screen meeting between Professor Bernard Quatermass and the Doctor, bringing to fruition a slow osmosis between these two post-war British science fiction worlds which began, for Doctor Who, in the Quatermass-influenced Season Seven, featuring the Third Doctor's exile to Earth and his fight against all manner of Home Counties invaders. Later, the link continued to be acknowledged and Bernard and his British Rocket Group also got on screen mentions in Remembrance of the Daleks (1988) and 2005's The Christmas Invasion.

Rights issues seem to have scuppered Cross's ambitions to properly bring these two cornerstones of British television science fiction together. Though Kneale would hardly thank you for labelling Quatermass as science fiction and also held a rather dim view of Doctor Who itself, accusing it of frightening children with its intention to 'bomb the tinies with insinuations of doom and terror', in Hide, if you'll forgive the pun, the spirit of Knealelives on.

'all those hidden feelings, all that guilt, pain and sorrow' 

Hide is an engaging variant on his own themes, particularly in The Stone Tape and Quatermass and the Pit (BBC, 1958-9), a heady mix of ancient, primeval forces colliding with a scientific rationalist approach to index and understand them. The Stone Tape, about a group of research scientists who discover that the stones of a haunted mansion are a recording medium for past events, was inspired by Kneale's visit to the BBC's R&D department as Kingswood Warren and his 1952 radio play You Must Listen in which a telephone engineer, installing a new telephone in a solicitor's office, finds the line has preserved the last conversation of a woman who committed suicide.

Cross has also previously dabbled in the ghost story genre, adapting M.R. James' 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad' for BBC4's revival of the classic television Ghost Stories for Christmas in 2010. He certainly annoyed many James purists by transforming the original tale from one about rationalist and scientific hubris upsetting or disturbing an ancient order to a story about an astronomer's attempt to deal with his wife's descent into senile dementia and her attempts to communicate with him beyond the limits of her physical body. His redefinition of the story as an expression of a love and fidelity between two people that endures outside of the merely material, as a spiritual force, is worth bearing in mind when we look at the ideas in Hide.

The paranormal in cinema and television today is certainly very different from its realisation in 1972, although Kneale's The Stone Tape was ahead of its time in its depiction of a scientific analysis of residual hauntings, what actually became known as 'the stone tape theory' in the field of paranormal research. The play was certainly an influence on other paranormal television series such as The Omega Factor (BBC, 1979) and was a contemporary expression of many of the anxieties and strains jostling for our concern in the 1970s, what critic Robin Wood regarded as 'surplus repression.'

In these days of reality TV shows like Most Haunted (Living 2002-13) and the Paranormal Activity (2007-13) film franchise, the ghostly and the Gothic have become mainstream to the point that found footage, mock documentary and shooting in infrared or full spectrum has now become the predominant visual aesthetic to contextualise evidence of the extraordinary occurring within the ordinary. Yet, they too can tell us a fair amount about the secularisation of our society as parascience is trotted out as entertainment and the metaphysical realm is treated as actuality, making the supernatural seem natural. Fortunately, Hide is as far away from Yvette Fielding as you can get and Cross's use of the 1974 setting, highlighted in the ghost hunting equipment of reel to reel tape decks and racks of oscilloscopes and the various items of interior bric-a-brac decorating the set, determinedly places the story within the traditional ghost story and haunted house tropes of a bygone era.

These are familiar to us from such classic fare as The Haunting (1963) in which a parapsychologist enlists the help of a psychic and a clairvoyant to prove the existence of ghosts, The Legend of Hell House (1973) where a physicist and two mediums set out to investigate the electromagnetic nature of life after death or The Entity (1983) and its parapsychologists studying the violent poltergeist attacks on a single mother. The Doctor's rescue of the castaway time traveller from an adjoining pocket universe via rope and pulley also reminded me of the similar journey undertaken to rescue Carol Ann in Poltergeist (1982). Hide is therefore perhaps a deliberate return to an era where we had yet to see the complete commodification of the supernatural by the likes of Derek Acorah, with his best-selling tips for ghost hunting, and it focuses very firmly on the 'surplus repression' of its main characters.

Hide introduces us then to Professor Alec Palmer (Dougray Scott) and his empathic psychic partner Emma Grayling (Jessica Raine - soon to be seen as Verity Lambert in Mark Gatiss's An Adventure in Space and Time) who have taken up residence in Caliburn House in order to investigate the ancient haunting of the Caliburn Ghast, a 'lonely' female phantom.

Palmer's 'ferrite suppressors and RF chokes' used to obliterate stray signals during their electronic surveillance of the phenomenon are clearly analogous to the unresolved sexual tension between the Professor and Emma, a relationship which both would like to take beyond the merely professional. Scott and Raine make an immediate impact, are excellent throughout the episode and bring a great deal of emotional intelligence to the script.

Emma's role, as empathic female protagonist, who has a very physical connection to the Ghast when it manifests itself in the pre-titles sequence and throughout the episode, reflects Vanessa Dickerson's view of the ghost story as a 'fitting medium for eruptions of libidinal female energy, of thwarted ambitions, of cramped ego.'

Cross manages to weave this into the Doctor's wry opening observation about her role as 'companion' to Palmer which she corrects to 'assistant'. In one fell swoop we have the potted historical context of how the Doctor's friends have evolved from 'assistant' to 'companion' in the last half century and how the 'non objective equipment', the psychic woman as adjunct to investigative science, has become the 'Woman Twice Dead' who chatters on about snog-boxes.

As the episode progresses, she increasingly becomes the catalyst for the attraction of opposites - the abandoned blood relative lost in time seeking connection with her through a pocket universe and the alien creature seeking its mate. As the Doctor explains to Clara, Emma's empathic psychic status renders her compassionate but lonely because she has exposed herself to 'all those hidden feelings, all that guilt, pain and sorrow.'

She seems an appropriately powerful and powerless individual, as in-between as her ghostly counterpart trapped between universes and the unseen creatures separated from each other. Each duo in turn mirrors the other - the Doctor and Clara are the analog of Alec Palmer and Emma as much as the withdrawn, repressed ghost hunters are mirrored by the estranged crooked alien creatures.

Her connection to lost time traveller Hila Tacorian (Kemi-Bo Jacobs) is not just via an instinctual urge to protect and recover a member of her own bloodline, the drive that sees a parent protect a child, but it is also a reflection of how both women are examples of the 'female Gothic' - Emma as the repressed psychic trapped in the decaying remains of a haunted house and Hila, her great-great-great-great-great granddaughter, stranded in a misty, fairy tale forest. Both are struggling to be free of their constraints, to seek a return to the sphere of the normal world and regain their subjectivity. Both environments have turned hostile and resound with all the traditional Gothic trappings - thunder and lightning, candlelight, mist, shadows and unearthly noises.

'you are the only mystery worth solving'

Alec Palmer is, it seems, a former Major, a military intelligence officer with a reputation. The Doctor is something of a fan of this 'member of the Baker Street Irregulars, the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare' and now a psychologist turned ghost hunter. As we later discover, Palmer is also repressing most of his true feelings behind this rationalist facade, indulging himself, as every paranormal investigator does in the paraphernalia required for the task.

He not only surrounds himself with flickering scientific devices but he also delves into the poetry of the Saxons, parish folk tales and anecdotes about tins of ham to track down the Witch of the Well, much like the mythology of Hob was uncovered in Kneale's Quatermass and the Pit. It's also interesting to note how the descriptive, folkloric Witch of the Well is reconfigured as the space-time wormhole containing the lost time traveller Hila. Myth seemingly becomes science.

That Alec lies to Emma about his past and his true feelings makes us think of the Doctor and the accompanying warning from River Song, 'the Doctor lies'. Emma believes Palmer spent the war as a POW but the Doctor assures her 'that's a lie told by a very brave man involved in very secret operations.' Could this be something the Doctor is unconsciously applying to himself? Later, as the Doctor and Clara explore the heart of the house, Alec also aligns himself with the Doctor when Emma questions the Time Lord's ministry connections.

He describes the Doctor as 'capricious, brilliant' but is interrupted, very pointedly by Emma's 'deceitful', before continuing with 'he's a liar but you know that's often the way that it is when someone's seen a thing or two. Experience makes liars of us all. We lie about who we are, about what we've done,' and is then again interrupted by her response of 'and how we feel?' Not only is Alec talking about his own deception, more of which we learn of in the later scene in the darkroom with the Doctor, but he's also being accused of his subterfuge and his suppressed feelings by the woman who loves him. Even the Doctor accuses Clara of 'pants on fire' when she pretends she's not scared.

It's a good scene which marks out the theme about deception in the episode, of things not quite being as they should, of the shifts in narrative, and it is matched later by a set of two-handers as Clara chats with Emma over whisky ('the eleventh most disgusting thing ever invented') and the Doctor delves into Alec's past in the darkroom. These scenes develop the idea that this is no longer a ghost story but a love story about Emma and Alec, their unconscious response to Hila's plight and the crooked man trying to find his crooked partner, as a narrative frame surrounding the Doctor's real intention to question Emma about the mysterious Clara.

In the darkroom, the Doctor and Alec are again presented as two, lonely, single men who have 'seen a thing or two'. The Second World War and the Time War are surely traumatic events in time when both did their duty and they both sent people to their deaths. 'I caused to have killed', as Alec poignantly puts it, reflecting the Doctor's own responsibility for the death of the Time Lords and their ensuing survivors' guilt as another kind of ghost that 'does tend to haunt you'. Clara tries to convince Emma that it is obvious Alec is in love with her but Emma has a stark warning about the Doctor's relationship with Clara, as a coda to him having 'seen a thing or two', and she offers, 'Don't trust him. There's a sliver of ice in his heart.' 

We also have another instance of Clara's relationship with the TARDIS. Clara is once more convinced the ship doesn't like her and this continues to suggest she is some sort of anomalous temporal presence, dangerous enough for the ship to be wary of her and act like a 'grumpy old cow'. Pointedly, Clara still does not have her own key which in the past has always been a signifier and acceptance of true companion status. Why is Clara constantly being locked out of the TARDIS? This leads us into a sequence where Clara begins to understand the Doctor's relationship to time, a theme dovetailing cleverly with the central narrative about the ghostly, dead and alive, indecipherable aspects of Alec, Emma and Hila.

She witnesses by proxy the birth of the Earth, on a hot Tuesday six billion years in the past, and its demise within a short span of minutes and is troubled by the Doctor's ease with her own sense of mortality. 'So I am a ghost? To you I am a ghost. We're all ghosts to you,' she concludes, hitting on that thorny issue of the curse of immortality and the Doctor witnessing the births and deaths of his many friends. After considering what she and the rest humanity are worth to him, he remarks, 'you are the only mystery worth solving.' Judging by the Doctor's affection for Earth, this could be the great story of humanity's triumph and survival as much as a personal observation of the strange woman in front of him, one who has already died in the past and the future.

Their return to Caliburn House in 1974 ushers in the concluding half of the episode, where on the surface the mystery of the Witch of the Well is transformed into a story about pioneering time traveller Hila Tacorian stranded in a rapidly diminishing pocket universe. However, after a despondent Clara considers she has seen how 'everything ends' Emma reassures her that not everything ends, her belief 'not love... not always' being a metaphor for the paranormal afterlife she and Alec are keen to prove, their own unrequited love and the unbroken connection with a future descendant. It's an edict the Doctor repeats at the end of the episode when Hila is reunited 'blood to blood' with Emma and Alec.

Hila is also given flesh, her tormented ghostly form in 1974 gaining solid form in a series of photographs the Doctor has taken every three million years. The illusory materiality of the spectre becomes a cultural memory, a representation of the return of the not-yet-dead and the Doctor's photography of Hila suggests both her presence and absence, loss and return and a figure both in and out of history, dead and alive. A bit like Clara, perhaps? These glimpses of 'lost soul' Hila also visually parallel the brief moments where we have seen another presence in the House, the quick, corner of the eye acknowledgement of the crooked creature. In this case, Hide is as much about seeing and knowing.

Merely a call for help from another dimension, the Doctor explains Hila's plight in the pocket universe through a useful demonstration with balloons and the plan to rescue her by using Emma's psychic abilities to guide her, as a lantern in the dark, back into the land of the living. It's also appropriate, at such a moment of revelation, that Emma and Alec also tentatively get the measure of their love for one another.

'every lonely monster needs a companion' 

Gone are the days when a BBC minion would check these things it seems, but try and accept the mispronunciation of Metebelis (that's Meh-ta-beee-lis) Three and simply revel in the reappearance of the fabled blue crystals from the blue planet in the Acteon Galaxy. With one strapped to her head, Emma provides a psychic conduit to the pocket universe along with an almost ectoplasmic link to a sub-set of the Eye of Harmony (which revives all those questions about what the Eye is and why an aspect of it is inside the TARDIS) to enable the Doctor to rescue Hila.

Both are shaped like an eye which may symbolise the 'third eye' of Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, the gate that leads into inner realms and spaces of higher consciousness, often associated with the seer's use of visions, clairvoyance, precognition, and out-of-body experiences. The aperture Emma and the Doctor open is also the Well, a space of renewal, rebirth and literally of baptism as Hila travels from near death to life.

The Doctor's journey is from the conscious world into a primordial, subconscious nightmare where there are glimpses of something unearthly in pursuit. It's a realm where even the Doctor is afraid of 'the bogey man under the bed seeking whom you may devour' (a perennial Moffat theme) and the sequence of him alone in the forest as the TARDIS cloister bell strikes ominously is very expressive. The removal of his bow tie, as a token of his disconcerting fear and crisis, is a rather good touch. 

Director Jamie Payne really excels in keeping the monstrous creature just out of sight, an ambiguous figure in mist or in shadow, seen only in rapid cuts and camera moves. The sound effects are also responsible for suggesting this horror, the crooked creature's strange creaky, scrabbling noises joining a cacophony of banging, screams, wind and thunder permeating the episode. The interiors used in the episode are stunning and were provided by a National Trust property, Tyntesfield House, and again cinematographer Mike Southon effectively concocts a densely shadowed environment illuminated by flickering candlelight, bathing rooms in cold blues and warm browns. His lighting in the forest is evocative too and overall the imagery, editing and sound provide a text book use of optical and aural point of view which connects viewers to the experiences of the characters.

This was the first episode filmed by Jenna-Louise Coleman, back in May 2012, but you wouldn't know it from her assured performance here. Clara's run in with a rather taciturn TARDIS is rather amusing and only when the Doctor himself is in jeopardy is the ship persuaded to let her in and attempt to rescue him from the horrors of the primeval forest and its odd inhabitant. These girls are going to take some time to hit it off, it seems. How will this relationship play out in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS and will it reveal more about Clara's mysterious existence? The Doctor remains puzzled and unconvinced by Emma's analysis of Clara as 'a perfectly ordinary girl' who is 'more scared than she lets on.'

Hide works because it keeps its premise interesting on many levels, only uses a handful of characters and has a sense of completion whereas Cross's The Rings of Akhaten was beset with problems and didn't hold together as confidently as this. By no means the greatest episode of Doctor Who, Hide is nevertheless very enjoyable. It affords some much needed space for character development and certainly Alec and Emma are the most rounded among a fairly underdeveloped bunch we've seen recently. Dougray Scott and Jessica Raine are excellent too, bringing nuance and reality to the couple fighting to find a way to express their feelings for one another, to bring each other 'back from the dead.'

Horror, threat and jeopardy become renewal and reconciliation, which often happens in the current era of Doctor Who, and the bizarre, crooked creature is revealed to be simply another 'lost soul' as eager to escape the collapsing echo universe as Hila and the Doctor. Mind you, I'm not entirely convinced why a creature, which only wants help to get back to its partner, would skulk in a forest cackling with maniacal laughter, trying to put the wind up people. Funny way of asking for a lift but then 'every lonely monster needs a companion' says the Doctor. Or is he referring to himself there?

Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS
BBC One HD
27 April 2013, 6.30pm

The review contains spoilers. 

The Red Queen of Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass probably best sums up the flavour of Steven Thompson's script with her view, 'It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.' And my, the Doctor and Clara do a lot of physical and temporal running around in Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS. Thompson's second script for the series after the rather disappointing and one-note The Curse of the Black Spot back in 2011, like Neil Cross's sophomore outing Hide, is something of a revelation. Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS evolves from a basic premise - the TARDIS is hauled aboard a huge space-faring salvage vessel and the Doctor connives three brothers, Gregor, Bram and Tricky Van Baalen (Ashley Walters, Mark Oliver and Jahvel Hall) into rescuing Clara from the damaged time machine.

From this Thompson has crafted a narrative which works on several levels: as a fan-pleasing glimpse into the unseen and previously mentioned areas of the TARDIS, as a predestination paradox which defines a number of characters, particularly Clara, through their relationship with time and memory and, finally, as an exploration of machine personality and the authentically human. It's an intriguing mix of science fiction sophistry about time and relativity and a voyage of self discovery couched, for Clara, as both Alice's journey into Wonderland and Dante's descent into the Inferno when she is lost inside the TARDIS.

'We're not talking cheese grater here'

After the establishing shot of the Van Baalen's salvage ship, the introduction of the brothers not only visually suggests the opening of Alien (1979) but also intimates that what happens to the three brothers may constitute a dream or a nightmare as they wake up to claim their prize. A particular shot of a photograph over the sleeping form of Gregor has resonance, it only shows two of the brothers with an older man, their father, and by the conclusion of the episode the photograph has been restored to include their younger brother Tricky when time has been reset by the Doctor.

Thompson uses the cyclic sub-plot about Tricky, allegedly a downtrodden android, to say something about the restoration of equilibrium between estranged family members. While the Baalen brothers aren't particularly well crafted characters, the storyline about Tricky's treatment is an effective counterpoint to the other themes about identity and memory in the episode.

Tricky, 'a lucky boy' augmented by technology after an accident, occupies the hinterland where our tendency to project mechanisation onto human beings and anthropomorphise objects merge. As the Doctor imprints a personality onto the TARDIS, a living machine, so the brothers reverse the process with Tricky and remove all those traits from him as a human being.

In effect he becomes a slave forbidden to sleep, get bored or show fear because his brothers find it amusing to undifferentiate between human and machine. Perhaps this picks up on the gradual erosion between the binaries established between the body and technology, between objects and the self. Ironically, it's Gregor and Bram who become estranged from their sense of self and conscience and Tricky is the one who finds a way of returning briefly to the state of human, corporeal experience.

In contrast to this, we see the Doctor and Clara looping (a rather appropriate visual allusion to the story) around the console and Clara categorising the TARDIS as simply an 'appliance that does the job'. 'We're not talking cheese grater here,' rages the Doctor as he agrees to offer her a lesson in flying the TARDIS in 'basic mode'. This naturally raises the spectre of gender equality in this unhappy relationship between Clara and the TARDIS, an ongoing dispute we've seen in previous episodes and where the ship is now behaving like a disapproving potential mother-in-law.

It's not helped when, after Clara takes control, the vulnerable TARDIS is grabbed by the salvage ship and transformed into the quintessential expression of 'the bad place', the archetypical haunted house realm of psychological and physical disintegration - everything falling apart for the characters and the TARDIS. It's interesting to note Tricky, as the so-called android, is the only one to understand there are survivors from the TARDIS crash and care if they are rescued from a ship which he senses is 'alive' and 'suffering.'

By the way, watch that magno-grab remote picked up by Clara in the TARDIS. It's the clue to the looping narrative and is very cleverly introduced, by implication in the cutting of the scenes, on the pretext of Gregor operating it and then, we assume, having sent it from the salvage ship. What you see is not entirely the truth and after forty-six minutes the episode lays bare Thompson's 'closed causal loop' mechanics when the magno-grab remote provides the Doctor with a message from himself.

Reflecting the themes of the interfaces between humanity and machine intelligence, it is also symbolically a machine imprinting a message into the flesh of Clara's hand and one sent back from the future. Essentially, it's a story about restoring a time paradox, a narrative form you can trace back to 1941 and its earliest occurrence in Heinlein's 'By His Bootstraps', but which is probably now more familiar to audiences through films such as The Terminator (1984), Back to the Future (1985) or 12 Monkeys (1995).

On the journey to close the pre-destination loop there is much to enjoy. The spectacular opening of the ship's capture leads us to a descent into the TARDIS, with the Van Baalen brothers hoodwinked into believing they only have half an hour before the ship explodes. It's a nice twist when the Doctor realises his bluff to rescue Clara is no longer a matter of pretence as the TARDIS engines threaten to go critical.

As the race against the clock gains momentum, Thompson grants us a tour through a badly damaged, 'infinite' TARDIS where it might take days to find Clara. 'Don't get into a spaceship with a madman, didn't anyone ever teach you that?' exclaims the Doctor. Clearly a lesson also lost on the dozens of companions in the last 50 years. It's also quite ironic he advises the brothers, 'it's your own time you're wasting', underlining the eventual collapse of their present time under the shadow of the future they will experience later.

Oh, and for the TARDIS aficiando we get mentions on Gregor's scanner, via Time Flight, The Horns of Nimon and The Curse of Peladon among others, of 'dynamorphic generators', the 'conceptual geometer', a 'beam synthesiser' and the 'orthoganal engine filters'. But then amusingly and crucially, it later turns out, the scanner detects Clara as 'Lancashire' and 'sass'. Clara's explorations also provide some welcome call backs to recent episodes and, nostagically, to previous eras. The Doctor's cradle, last seen in A Good Man Goes to War, and the home-made TARDIS toy left over from Amy's occupancy, flipped in the air by Clara just as Mels did back in Amy's Leadworth bedroom in Let's Kill Hitler, are pleasing distractions. 

However, a red-eyed, growling, charred-looking something is lurking, blurred and indistinct, in the shadows and Clara is chased through, it has to be said, some rather nondescript TARDIS corridors, only pausing to glance into the previously mentioned, and seen, swimming pool and an observatory which seems to contain Queen Victoria's telescope from Tooth and Claw.

For all of Steven Moffat's bold claims about his disappointment with the interior of the TARDIS in The Invasion of Time, these dull corridors and green screened glimpses are nothing much to crow about. Director Mat Taylor keeps his creeping monsters obscured, filtering them through hazy point of view shots, cutting away before we get too good a look at them, building up the threat and tension, prolonging their mysterious origin.

The scene set in the TARDIS library is excellent and is a perfect expression of Clara being 'down the rabbit hole' in this Lewis Carroll-inspired labyrinth, connecting to his Victorian fantasy as Rosemary Jackson sees Alice entering a 'confused, topsy-turvy world' where 'her ontological insecurity... of not meaning [is] a fear of losing control, of becoming a body which has no stable identity.' The accrued signs and memories of the TARDIS also spill out in three connected scenes: as Bram strips down the console room, as Clara hides in the library and Gregor attempts to steal from the Avatar-esque glowing tree-like architectural reconfiguration system. 

As Bram figuratively takes the cork out of the bottle by removing panels of the console, nostalgically we hear voices of the past. Susan explaining the ship's acronym, the Ninth Doctor's claim, in Rose, 'The assembled hordes of Genghis Khan couldn't get through that door, and believe me, they've tried!', Pertwee and Baker explaining the ship's Time Lord technology is 'dimensionally transcendental' and Ian Chesterton's disbelief on seeing the TARDIS for the first time, 'Let me get this straight. A thing that looks like a police box, standing in a junkyard, it can move anywhere in time and space?' were the ones I managed to catch and I look forward to finding out about the rest because Murray Gold unhelpfully and rather typically decided to smother most of the scene with his score. 

Again, we're told, via Tricky, the ship is a living thing when Gregor attempts to steal some of the genetic material from the system and the TARDIS defends itself by creating an ever evolving labyrinth of corridors to confuse the unwary salvage men, diverting them from their intentions. As the Doctor notes, 'Smart bunch, Time Lords. No dress sense, dreadful hats but smart.' 

Simultaneously, Clara finds the 'History of the Time War' in the library and intriguingly murmurs, 'so that's who...' as she leafs through the pages. We later learn she's read the Doctor's true name, a moment setting us up for this year's appropriately titled finale, The Name of the Doctor. And there are shelves of bottles in the library labelled as an 'Encyclopedia Gallifrey', which she inadvertently disturbs to allow bubbles of recorded history to pour into the air and into our ears. 

'one tiny scrap of decency' 

Like Alice's need to drink the liquids to gain full access to Wonderland, these are signs of orientation in a usually closed off section of the Doctor's past. Although these corridors and rooms seem to be labyrinths with no centre, full of signs which lead nowhere, the TARDIS's instinct for the dimensionally transcendental comes in handy in a very evocative scene when the Doctor gets to grips with the surrounding echoes of time in the console room and manages to rescue Clara from the clutches of a time zombie by dragging her through the adjoining dimensions.

This spillage of time allows them not only to eavesdrop on the history and events which the TARDIS has witnessed but it also poses a threat to their identity. It allows them a glimpse of past and future and to see their own dying and death in the form of the time zombies. Individuals and groups are mirrored by these creatures and while Clara first meets her own zombie in the TARDIS, the brothers face two conjoined zombies in the Eye of Harmony at the heart of the ship.

Time in the story not only threatens identity - in the form of the zombies attempting to assert the future deaths of Clara and the Van Baalen brothers - but it also, paradoxically, establishes it. The zombies are doppelgangers, a very familiar theme in Moffat's Doctor Who, and are omens from the future who threaten to annihilate their present identities in the TARDIS. They also highlight Gregor's lack of concern for his siblings. When Bram is killed, he still insists on securing the salvage, his cold logic mirroring the zombies' own unstoppable drive to possess their human counterparts.

His logic unravels after Tricky is injured by the breaking fuel rods and he confesses to the horrible joke played on his younger brother, a flesh and blood human augmented with bionic eyes and synthetic voice, to change his identity 'just to provide some in-flight entertainment.' The cruelty of human beings is exposed through their own greed as it becomes clear that Gregor and Bram were merely preventing their smarter, younger brother from becoming the captain of the ship.

The Doctor, however, identifies that 'one tiny scrap of decency' in Gregor, rescuing his brother when he could have left him to die, and significantly demands he never forget it. Memory, remembering and forgetting are, naturally, key components in Moffat's era, especially when it comes to creating identity.

The crack in time through which the Doctor drops the message to himself is, of course, not only prefigured in the cracks which appear on the TARDIS scanner as the magna-grab seizes the ship but also offer a little nod to the whole 'crack in the universe' arc dominating the 2010 series. The Eye of Harmony, in its permanent state of decay is also another reflection of the story's theme about time and causality, burning but never consumed. Another key theme is the Doctor's attempts to keep Clara safe from herself, from another future where she dies. Clara, who died again but lived, confronts the future remnants of herself, understands the zombie is her, observing 'that's me, I burn in here' when the Doctor explains the time spillages are from the future as well as the past.

There are very significant parallels between Clara, Gregor and Tricky's experiences in the TARDIS. The nature of time impinges on their identities and, through the Doctor's actions, all that has happened to them in the corridors of the TARDIS is seemingly reset, previous events are shrunk back to the moment prior to the salvage ship's discovery of the TARDIS. The knowledge they have gained about themselves is either eradicated or slightly altered.

The suggested outcome for Clara is that the Doctor's revelation he has encountered her before, where she has died on each occasion, and her discovery of his real name in the 'History of the Time War' never took place. They have momentarily become, as Richard A Gilmore notes in his essay on time travel as redemption, 'subjectively more futural... more attuned to the urgency of being in the present' and more 'authentic' and 'self-begetting through the mechanism of time travel.' However, 'the big friendly button' traps this in temporal recurrence, where redemption is closed down.

Or is it? We also have the coda where Gregor reacts to Bram's treatment of Tricky, whose true humanity the Doctor has told Gregor never to forget, which reasserts memory of the experience in the TARDIS and repairs Tricky's exclusion from the memories of their father. Are we entirely sure the 'big friendly button' has not left some stray recollections lurking in the back of Clara's mind? Are the versions of Clara in the past and future actually an effect of the 'big friendly button', temporal echoes of Clara which may have been created by that schism in time?

Well directed by Mat Taylor and strikingly photographed by Jake Polonsky, Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS might not quite live up to the promise of its title but it does feature great performances from Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman, both exposing the heart of the Doctor and Clara relationship, with the Doctor tantalisingly revealing to Clara his interest in the mystery surrounding her.

Added to this are genuinely gripping and visually impressive moments, despite an over-abundance of chases down bland looking corridors. The weakest areas of the episode lie with the Van Baalen brothers and a lot more characterisation would have been welcome. Bram gets so little to do and say that he fast becomes a brother surplus to requirements because Ashley Walters and Jahvel Hall get to play out the major beats of their story.

The zombies are creepy, frightening and are cleverly embedded into the themes of the story with the encounter at the Eye of Harmony a climactic mixture of horror, confession and spectacle that ends on a mountain side where the Doctor asks of Clara, 'why do I keep running into you?' Coleman gets the best line in the episode as she faces a ranting madman at the heart of his spaceship, 'I think I'm more scared of you right now than anything else in that TARDIS.' She puts in a brilliant performance in an intriguing episode.

Cathode Ray Tube has one set of three Doctor Who books looking for a Time Lord-loving owner. Our latest competition will give away to one lucky winner a copy each of the latest novels from BBC Books and Ebury Publishing: Nick Briggs's The Dalek Generation, Justin Richards' Plague of the Cybermen and Shroud of Sorrow by Tommy Donbavand.

All feature Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor and Shroud of Sorrow also features Clara 'Oswin' Oswald, as played by Jenna-Louise Coleman. 

More details about the books and the competition are below.
The Dalek Generation
Nick Briggs
Published by BBC Books, 11 April 2013

Sunlight 349 is one of countless Dalek Foundation worlds, planets created to house billions of humanoids suffering from economic hardship. The Doctor arrives at Sunlight 349, suspicious of any world where the Daleks are apparently a force for good – and determined to find out the truth.

He soon finds himself in court, facing the ‘Dalek Litigator’. But do his arch enemies really have nothing more to threaten than legal action? The Doctor knows they have a far more sinister plan – but how can he convince those who have lived under the benevolence of the Daleks for a generation?

But convince them he must, and soon. For on another Foundation planet, archaeologists have unearthed the most dangerous technology in the universe.
Plague of the Cybermen
Justin Richards
Published by BBC Books, 11 April 2013

When the Doctor arrives in the 19th-century village of Klimtenburg, he discovers the residents suffering from some kind of plague – a ‘wasting disease’. The victims face a horrible death – but what’s worse, the dead seem to be leaving their graves.

The Plague Warriors have returned... The Doctor is confident he knows what’s really happening; he understands where the dead go, and he’s sure the Plague Warriors are just a myth.

But as some of the Doctor’s oldest and most terrible enemies start to awaken he realises that maybe – just maybe – he’s misjudged the situation.
Shroud of Sorrow
Tommy Donbavand
Published by BBC Books, 11 April 2013

It is the day after John F. Kennedy’s assassination and the faces of the dead are everywhere. PC Reg Cranfield sees his deceased father in the mists along Totter’s Lane. Reporter Mae Callon sees her late grandmother in a coffee stain on her desk. FBI Special Agent Warren Skeet finds his long-dead partner staring back at him from raindrops on a window pane.

Then the faces begin to talk, and scream... and push through into our world.

As the alien Shroud begins to feast on the grief of a world in mourning, can the Doctor dig deep enough into his own sorrow to save mankind?
Cathode Ray Tube has one copy each of The Dalek Generation, Plague of the Cybermen and Shroud of Sorrow to give away to one winner courtesy of BBC Books and Ebury Publishing. Simply answer the question below and submit your entry via email.

• - This competition is open to residents of the UK only but not to employees of BBC Books and Ebury Publishing or their agents.
• - Entries must be received by midnight GMT on Friday 10th May 2013
• - This offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer and no cash alternative is available.
• - No responsibility will be accepted for delayed, mislaid, lost or damaged entries whether due to system error or otherwise.
• - Only one entry per visitor per day. No multiple entries allowed.
• - The winner will be the first entry with the correct answer drawn at random.
• - The winner will be contacted by email. The books will be posted one week after the competition closes (unless delayed by postal strikes).
• - The judges' decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.
• - Entrants are deemed to accept and be bound by these rules and entries that are not in accordance with the rules will be disqualified.
• - By entering the free prize draw, entrants agree to be bound by any other requirements set out on this website.

Entry is via email to frank_c_collins@hotmail.com. No responsibility can be accepted for entries not received, only partially received or delayed for whatever reason. Paper entries are not valid.

Question: Nick Briggs was the voice of which recently featured classic series monster?

Email your answer to the question above, with your name and address, and we'll enter you into the prize draw. Good luck!

The Crimson Horror
BBC One HD
4 May 2013, 6.30pm

This review contains spoilers

As Mark Gatiss acutely acknowledges in this month's Doctor Who Magazine, the Paternoster Gang of Silurian detective Madame Vastra, her 'companion' Jenny Flint and their Sontaran butler Strax are the new era's equivalent of Jago and Litefoot from classic series favourite The Talons of Weng-Chiang. Even though there was some discussion back in 1977 about giving the two Victorian characters their own spin-off drama we had to wait until 2009 and Big Finish's The Mahogany Murderers before we saw them as lead characters in their own milieu. If The Mahogany Murderers was the pilot for what has now become an enduring Jago and Litefoot audio series, then surely Gatiss's The Crimson Horror will intensify the clamour for a Paternoster Gang spin-off proper? It's certainly the feeling you get when the Doctor only makes his entrance about 15 minutes into the episode and after the first quarter of an hour is completely and satisfyingly owned by Vastra, Jenny and Strax. 

Gatiss returns to his The League of Gentlemen roots - diabolical goings-on up North - and weaves in the archness of his 'Lucifer Box' novels, the gaslight ghastliness of The Unquiet Dead and more than a passing acquaintance with classic horror cinema. It's Yorkshire, 1893 and there's a 'dark and queer business' going on at Sweetville, the factory and lodgings overseen by the domineering and pious matriarch Winifred Gillyflower (Dame Diana Rigg) and, when Mr Thursday (Brendan Patricks) arrives to investigate his brother Edmund's death, the tone of the episode - one positively drowning in 'the deplorable excesses of the penny dreadful' - is immediately established.

'Frying tonight!'  

Penny dreadful is the appropriate appellation for the Paternoster Gang's investigation of the Crimson Horror, wherein Sexton Blake meets Sweeney Todd as bright red corpses yield their secrets through optograms of the last image retained in a dead man's eye. After he takes his concerns to the veiled Vastra in her Victorian hothouse Mr Thursday, clearly no slouch as a detective himself, is shown in a rapid montage acquiring the evidence from the corpse in the morgue, one that prefigures the use of early photography and cinema in a central sequence later in the episode.

The sequence borrows from the same assertion made in, I suspect, one of Gatiss's guilty pleasures, Eugenio Martin's Horror Express (1972), wherein those gentlemen of horror Cushing and Lee examine an ancient creature's eye and find an image of its last victim in the retinal fluid. The idea, via Jules Verne, Lovecraft and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, conjures up all kinds of associations with the folkloric 'evil eye' and the optogram is but one in an arsenal of Victorian technologies which the story associates with vision.

Like the Gothic literature they accompanied, these tools of the sciences reveal and categorise the subject's internal anxieties and proximate an analogy between camera and eye. When it is revealed Edmund clapped eyes on the Time Lord before his ruddy demise, it's also a clever way of introducing the Doctor without him being physically present, offering a genuine reason to bring the Gang into the mystery.

The mystery at the heart of Mrs Gillyflower's factory is informed by a sort of 'Apocalypse Then' triumphant call to arms for purity and beauty during Winifred's sermons to the masses, her recruitment drive for the pleasures of Sweetville. Her vitriol for the dazzling lights of Bradford and the immoral juggernaut of scientific and technical progress is typical of some Victorian attitudes of the period, an evangelism as 'a check upon the hubris of an age obsessed with progress, ensuring whatever the ambitions or pretensions of mankind, the quest for knowledge would always operate securely within divinely appointed limits and constraints.' (1)

There's a brief homage to The Elephant Man (1980) as Mrs Gillyflower reveals the effects of such immoral progress on her daughter Ada, screened out of sight but then displayed, apparently 'blinded in a drunken rage' by her late husband, as a lesson for all to see. Ada's blindness, 'her beautiful eyes as pale and white as mistletoe berries' continues the motifs of vision and sight concealing and revealing truth in the story. We learn later she is, in fact, a victim of the horrible process inflicted upon her by her own mother and silent partner 'Mr Sweet'. Also note the red orbs of the portholes in the factory as a visual equivalent to this danger.

Her blindness is not only physical but spiritual and moral too. She literally turns a blind eye until the final act, a sympathetic creature of impurity who sees a life with her monster in Jerusalem denied to her and has no compunction in snuffing out the parasite who caused her this disability.

If anything The Crimson Horror connects, in its own arch self-indulgence of the Gothic horror pastiche, the Victorian double vision of science and religion to Gothic's 'fascination with darkness and irrationality, the focus on unorthodox states of consciousness and perception, the projection of apocalypse and chaos.' (2)

Mrs Gillyflower entreats her audience to join them in Sweetville, its factory and cottages depicted as 'the shining city on the 'ill', and appropriately encourages a chorus of 'Jerusalem', capturing something of the impetus behind the period's reforms in industrial and social conditions which came from evangelical Christians, who felt they had a moral duty to do so as private or individual philanthropists rather than rely on government action.

However, she has a bonkers notion of surviving the so called apocalypse lurking beneath the bright lights of Bradford and Jenny sets out to infiltrate Sweetville to uncover the Doctor's fate. To do this she must, according to Vastra, 'ignore all keep out signs, go through every locked door and run towards any form of danger that presents itself.' Business as usual for the Paternoster Gang and lessons learned from the Doctor himself.

Ada already has an affinity for the Doctor as, like her, he's been physically affected by Mrs Gillyflower's factory process. Her love for her 'dear monster' echoes the notion in Hide that 'every lonely monster needs a companion' as well as offering an analogy to the various monsters Frankenstein forever locked away in their cells. These are signs of impurity hidden away in Mrs Gillyflower's drive to recruit only the best for Sweetville where even your teeth can let you down in a factory that's not really a factory. Saul Metzstein's imagery of a vast, empty factory floor filled with the sound of industry from a row of phonograph-horned speakers is uncanny and ghostly.

The whole is also sweetened by lovely little performances from the supporting cast. The morgue attendant is a wonderful grotesque with a greasy turn of phrase. 'I've pickled things in 'ere that would fair turn yer hair snowy as top of Buckden Pike,' he offers to Vastra when she comes calling about the various victims of the Crimson Horror. Dame Diana and her daughter Rachael are obviously lapping up the opportunity to work together on such phantasmagoria, evident in the scene where they have a meal together and the absence of 'Mr Sweet' is noted between slurping of soup and upsetting of salt cellars. That said, this is merely an understated moment in a set of performances which get riper by the minute and, by the devastating conclusion, becomes a hyperbolic Grand Guignol of Victorian family and public life depicted as circus.

When the Doctor does eventually show up, rescued just when he thinks his 'favourite Victorian lock picking chamber maid will never turn up', his own crimson horror owes a nod to the incarcerated Frankenstein monster and there's a touch of Karloff in Matt Smith's performance as he lurches toward Jenny framed in the doorway of his cell and she escorts him off the premises. It's also darkly funny as the mute, creaking, solidified Doctor, clad only in a pair of long johns, lurches down the corridors as Ada arrives to check on her prize and finds her monster has fled.

Funnier still is the genre mash-up as, in passing, Jenny and he discover the demented purpose of the factory. Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and its remake House of Wax (1953), wherein Lionel Atwill and Vincent Price - take your pick - plunge their victims into vats of wax collides with the shenanigans of Kenneth Williams' Dr Watt in Carry on Screaming (1966) as we see the chosen ones taking a dip. 'Frying tonight!' would be an entirely appropriate thing to say during that scene.

'kindly do not claw and slobber at my crinoline'

Half way into the episode, a rather bravura sequence appears in which the Doctor recounts how he and Clara came to be prisoners of Sweetville. Once again, we have an analogy to the technical advances of the time and the whole back story plays as a sepia tinted early film, with crackling soundtrack, jumping frames and dust and scratches seemingly part of the Doctor's recall. It bowls along and seems to allow the viewer a voyeuristic role within the Doctor's recent memory, mixing our gaze with the iris of the camera and his narration, using still images truncated by shutters, point of view from a corpse in a morgue and Edmund Thursday as a expositional figure brought back from the dead.

It's a highly self referencing moment - alluding to early cinema and photography - and an ambiguous use of nostalgia that replays memory within the ongoing narrative, as the Doctor and Clara pose as Mr and Mrs Smith to get the measure of Sweetville. Yet, it even has time to reference Tegan's grump about not ever getting back to Heathrow coupled with a 'Brave heart, Clara' to complete the postmodern Gothic effect. To cap it all, there's even a barrel organ on the soundtrack.

In a truly surreal moment they discover the denizens of Sweetville are kept stuffed under glass. We move from taxidermy as the Victorian plateau of perfection, where a society is preserved in aspic against the coming apocalypse, to Ada's love for the rejected Other as the Doctor becomes her 'secret' monster and the monstrous is a reflection of the true monstrosity of 'Mr Sweet' and his acolyte Mrs Gillyflower. The Paternoster Gang quite rightly raise the question of why Clara is alive when they last saw her deceased at the end of The Snowmen. It underlines the living-dead status of Clara as much as her capture under glass is part of the Victorian fanatical impulse to collect and preserve

It may be a frankly illogical plot on behalf of Mrs Gillyflower, but it is deliciously mad and crammed with lovely character moments for Jenny, Vastra and Strax, many quotable lines and a pretty terrible joke featuring a young urchin who gives directions to Strax and is christened Thomas Thomas. When Ada breaks down and admits she has had a 'sentimental attachment' to the Doctor, her terrible mother simply barks 'kindly do not claw and slobber at my crinoline' and banishes her back into the darkness where, in Gillyflower's philosophy, all imperfect creatures belong. And that Jenny provides an homage to a certain leather-clad Avengers girl is surely no coincidence in a story whose guest star once threw burly stuntmen around the studios of ABC television in the 1960s.

Hang on. Did I say it was deliciously mad? How about insanely, steam punkily mad when it is revealed that Mrs Gillyflower has a Red Leech attached to her breast and it is prompting her to construct a rocket which will rain down its poisonous venom onto Yorkshire when she launches it from her disguised church organ.

If the reveal of the 'Mr Sweet' creature stuffed down Diana Rigg's cleavage doesn't have your choking on your tea and seed cake then this collision between proto-fascist religious matriarchs, alien possession, a Victorian V1 missile hidden in a Yorkshire mill and a vengeful blind daughter might well test your endurance and ability to suspend your disbelief. As the Doctor says, 'Didn't see that one coming.'

The stand off, when it comes, is clearly enjoyed to the max by Rigg and her daughter Rachael. When the Doctor points out that in the wrong hands the leech's toxin will wipe out humanity, Rigg has an impish twinkle in her eye when she says with glee, holding out her hands, 'D'you know what these are? The wrong hands!' Like any megalomaniac, Mrs Gillyflower is, of course, hoist by her own petard.

In this case, it's her tortured daughter Ada who, upon hearing the truth, takes her walking cane to her own mother. You might want to agree with Ada when Mrs G pulls a gun on her estranged offspring and the girl pleads, 'Please, mama, no more, no more' but more is what you get as (over) wrought iron rockets blaze into the sky, Mrs G takes a tumble after Strax turns sniper and Ada viciously puts an end to 'Mr Sweet' as he crawls away from her mother's dead body.

Saul Metzstein once again shows his directorial mettle and aesthetic empathy with Victoriana, making The Crimson Horror one of the handsomest episodes in the current run. The Doctor and Clara take something of a back seat to the proceedings, with particularly the latter getting the least to do in the episode. Instead, the scenery-chewing mother and daughter combination of Diana Rigg and Rachael Stirling dominates, often eclipsing the welcome return of the Paternoster Gang. If you're familiar with Gatiss's work beyond Doctor Who and enjoy a horror pastiche with its tongue firmly in both cheeks at once then your appetite will truly be sated. A vibrant, lively episode for sure.

And the return to contemporary London, where Clara's charges Artie and Angie Maitland have somehow been able to track photographs of Clara's trips through history, is a bit of a head-scratcher. I for one want to know who was snapping away merrily in 1983, 1974 and in Victorian London and why John and Gillian have suddenly popped up to join the TARDIS crew again.

(1) Kevin Mills, Approaching Apocalypse: unveiling Revelation in Victorian writing
(2) Jack Sullivan, Elegant nightmares: the English ghost story from Le Fanu to Blackwood

‘You’re being a very stupid woman’
‘That isn’t a very original observation’

Enter Eric Saward, if you'll pardon the expression.

Christopher Bidmead, the then current script editor of Doctor Who, was on the look out for new writers and a senior drama script editor at BBC Radio recommended former schoolteacher Saward, having worked with him on a number of radio plays on Radio 4's Saturday Night Theatre.

His writing career stretched back to the 1960s, with his first radio play The Shelter, submitted to BBC Radio in 1965, followed by a series of thrillers including 1972's The Fall and Fall of David Moore, Circumstantial Evidence in 1974 and Small Monet in 1976. Saward had previously never written for television but he was invited by Bidmead to submit an outline for a story in the Spring of 1980.

His inspiration for what was then titled The Invasion of the Plague Men derived from the academic studies of a former girlfriend. She had been looking at the architecture of the rebuilt London in the post-Great Fire of London period and noted how, within months of the Fire, there was an almost total extinction of the infected flea-carrying black rats which had caused an outbreak of bubonic plague in 1665, killing about 15% of London's population.

Combining this background with a desire to explore his own interest in medieval England, he also saw it as an opportunity to use his character of Richard Mace, transposing the actor-manager of his 1880s set radio plays to the 17th century. 'Victorian actor, detective, drunk and master of disguise' Mace assisted the London police in five plays: Assassin (broadcast in Radio 4's Afternoon Theatre strand in 1974), Pegasus (1975), the unproduced plays The Arch Villain and The Professor, and The Nemesis Machine, transmitted in 1976. (1)

Nathan-Turner was neither fond of the Richard Mace character nor enamoured of Saward's outline, feeling it was too similar to the pseudo-historical whimsy of 1977's The Talons of Weng Chiang. With the pressures of getting Season Eighteen on the air mounting, Bidmead and Nathan-Turner put the outline to one side and only when Bidmead was coming to the end of his tenure as script editor did he return to Saward's storyline and commission a full breakdown on 17 September 1980.

'new sense of danger and vulnerability'

Plague Rats, as it was then retitled, had to encompass some wide-ranging changes to the series, including the casting of Peter Davison as the Doctor and the arrival of three companions, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric played by Sarah Sutton, Janet Fielding and Matthew Waterhouse respectively. Furthermore, Nathan-Turner and Bidmead were keen to 'strip away the increasing infallibility of Tom Baker's domineering Doctor' and 'the reliance on technobabble and superhuman Time Lord gifts was cut back severely' while investing in the character's 'new sense of danger and vulnerability.' (2)

Indeed, after Bidmead had commissioned Saward for four scripts, now titled The Visitation, and he had delivered them to Bidmead's temporary replacement Antony Root in January 1981, Nathan-Turner asked Saward to write out the sonic screwdriver and emphasised the Doctor should use his wits rather than a handy device to get himself out of various scrapes he found himself in.

Saward also included the final episode's Pudding Lane setting for the Great Fire of London and Root worked with him to tighten the scripts up, giving more prominence to Tegan for example. Impressed with the way Saward had handled the changes, Root recommended him to Nathan-Turner as his replacement in the script editor chair when he vacated it in April 1981 for Juliet Bravo (BBC, 1980-85). Saward accepted the job when Nathan-Turner unexpectedly offered him a three month contract.

After problems developing John Flanagan and Andrew McCulloch's ambitious Project Zeta Sigma, the story which was intended to introduce the Fifth Doctor,had forced it to be dropped from the schedule The Visitationbecame the second story to go into production after the studio bound Four to Doomsday. Project Zeta Sigma would be replaced by Castrovalva but Nathan-Turner kept The Visitation in its original transmission slot and, in order to give Davison time to develop in the role, decided to record his debut Castrovalva later in the schedule.

Designer Ken Starkey, costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux and make-up designer Carolyn Perry were assigned to the story. Starkey handled the sets in the studio, including the barn, the bakehouse and the exterior London street, all of which incorporated cost-saving glass shots to extend the sets, and the interior of the Terileptil's pod and their hidden base. On location in Black Park he again cut costs by using glass shots for the crashed pod and at Tithe Barn Manor he also removed any inauthentic reminders of the present day, hiding a burglar alarm with plastic ivy and temporarily removing an electric lamp from the front of the house.

Perry undertook some research into working people of the 17th Century at the Museum of English Rural Life in Reading to complete the make-up requirements for the period. Special effects technician Peter Wragg and Dicks-Mireaux worked with Richard Gregory, of effects company Imagineering, on the creation of the Terileptils, the fugitive reptile creatures at the heart of Saward's story. Gregory built heads and bodies from Dicks-Mireaux's tropical fish-inspired designs and Wragg designed and operated the lead Terileptil's radio-controlled animatronic head, with movable gills and lips, worn by actor Michael Melia.

Filming began at Ealing Studios on 1 May 1981, with the regular cast joined by guest stars Michael Robbins as Richard Mace and Michael Melia as the Terileptil leader. Robbins was recommended for the part by director Peter Moffatt despite Nathan-Turner's original reservations. The Pudding Lane sequences, including the arrival of the Terileptil leader, the fight and resulting fire, were all completed before Moffatt took his actors on location to Black Park, behind Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, and Tithe Barn Manor, near Maidenhead, between 5 and 8 May. The owners of the Manor were at the time having a nuclear shelter built in the garden and the grounds were excessively muddy. The Black Park filming was also delayed by its unfortunate position on the Heathrow flight path but an air traffic controllers strike on 7 May allowed the unit to make up lost time on the schedule.

Rehearsals for studio recording took place at the 'Acton Hilton' on 11 May and the production moved into TC3 at Television Centre for two recording blocks - 20 and 21 May and 3 to 5 June. During recording of the stable scenes, complete with horse and cart, in the first block Michael Robbins aggravated his Housemaid's Knee when he was forced to the floor rather too enthusiastically during the beheading sequence. The first block also covered the interiors of the crashed Terileptil pod, the bakery, the TARDIS scenes which featured the destruction of the android, and Mace's barn.

After rehearsals for the second block on 23 May, Saward rewrote the opening TARDIS scenes at Nathan-Turner's request. On 3 June the opening prologue at the manor house was recorded in TC3, in which Squire John and his family are attacked, as were many more of the hall, cellar and corridor interiors. All the scenes in the Terileptil's laboratory and the remainder of those in the manor house were completed over the next two days as were inserts showing the boiling of the Terileptil's head in the burning bakery (a combination of Swarfega, a latex dummy and inflating balloons) and the rewritten opening TARDIS scene.

In February 1982, the serial would eventually go out in Doctor Who's new Monday and Tuesday weekday slot, a move which not only came about as a result of Season Eighteen's poor showing against ITV's Saturday night screening of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (NBC, 1979-81) but also as an experiment by the BBC where Doctor Who, along with Angels (BBC, 1975-83), was used to test out weekday slots for drama. This decision to move the programme from its traditional Saturday evening slot was not altogether welcomed and the Daily Mail directly blamed the then Director General Alasdair Milne. 

The Visitation opens directly with a 17th Century set prologue in which Squire John (a criminally underused John Savident) and his family relax after their evening meal and prepare for bed. It's a very atmospheric sequence, full of period detail. The mood is emphasised by a sympathetic use of lighting and music and director Peter Moffatt gradually builds tension as an unseen assailant lays siege to the manor house after John's daughter Elizabeth claims a portentous sighting of falling stars. Moffatt uses some great point of view shots of the intruder to underline the conflict and concludes the encounter with an unsettling montage of the now quiet and deserted manor house.

However, when we get to the following TARDIS scenes we bump right into one of the problems of the era wherein the Doctor often comes across as an harassed parent trying to deal with a a gang of unruly argumentative teenagers. Having three companions in the TARDIS was always going to put a strain on their character development, where actors struggle to make an impact through shared out lines and lack of action.

Here, Tegan and Nyssa are served best and overall Fielding and Sutton flesh out aspects of their characters, particularly when Saward folds in continuity from Kinda, including the aftermath of Tegan's possession by the Mara. Unfortunately, Matthew Waterhouse is left with little to do and his performance is lacking. For me, the struggle to generate an emotional core with the three companions ushers in the blandness which affected many of the Fifth Doctor's stories.

Davison’s performance is pretty much on the mark here as he’s managed to synthesise the ‘old man in a young man’s body’ aspect of this portrayal after his rather shaky start in the recording of Four to Doomsday. He’s also engagingly unsympathetic towards his companions, echoing Hartnell’s tetchiness and when he's finally partnered on screen with guest actors Michaels Robbins and Melia, he definitely shines. 

Once you get the Doctor and his companions out of the TARDIS the situation rapidly improves. The plot gets going with the Doctor finding the empty manor house and as they all slowly become embroiled in the machinations of the criminal Terileptils. The location work is superb, imbuing the story with a sense of English period, expanding the quality of the series beyond the confines of a studio based story like Four to Doomsday or Kinda. Paddy Kingsland's music, emulating wind and string instruments of the time, is an extremely effective addition to the creation of this mood.

The Richard Mace character is very charismatic, helped by Michael Robbins' fruity performance, and his partnership with the Doctor is witty yet archly cynical. The relationship between Mace and the Doctor is also refreshing in comparison to the rather unsympathetic trio of Tegan, Adric and Nyssa who are all clamouring for their own moments in the script. This often leads to underpowered performances and it is left to Davison, Robbins and Melia, as the Terileptil leader, to offer the audience consistent engagement with the story.

'realigning itself as an unashamedly action oriented sci-fi adventure show' 

The Visitation is also significant as the story in which the decision to get rid of that ‘get out of jail free’ card – the sonic screwdriver - was made. Was it a good decision? At the time it was assumed it would force the writers to come up with better solutions to the various dilemmas in each story and was probably a wise move. However, compare it to the super-fetishisation of the sonic screwdriver in the current series, as a sort of Harry Potter magic wand, and you can see that actually the writers only used the device sparingly in the classic series.

It’s certainly something the new series should consider but I suspect BBC Worldwide's marketing department wouldn’t be happy if the current producer decided the sonic screwdriver was surplus to requirement. Its demise in 1982 can either be seen as yet another element of Nathan-Turner’s radicalisation of the format or a cynical action to grab press and fan attention. A brave decision that eventually kept the prop out of the series until 1996, this change was a small but pivotal development of the Fifth's Doctor’s vulnerability under Davison’s tenure.

I’ve always liked the Terileptils too. A noble, warrior race quite subtly brought to life in the script with nifty bits of world-building (refugees of the tinclavic mines of Raga, indeed) and Michael Melia’s performance giving them a world weary sense of desperation upon finding themselves on 17th Century Earth and struggling to survive.

Again Melia and Davison play off each other very well and the debate about the rationale for war and existence, power and genocide doesn’t descend into a slanging match. It’s a measured and spirited discussion where each party manoeuveres into their moral positions with just the right amount of righteous indignation. Very simply articulated, the Terileptil 'world view' gives this ‘monster of the week’ eloquence and intelligence as well as overweening pride in their superiority.

Back in 1982, the animatronic effects for the Terileptil's gills and lips were cutting edge for Doctor Who and it remains an effective monster design even if it's obviously a man in suit. The animatronics certainly add more dimension to what would normally have been latex half-masks or full masks more heavily reliant on how good the actor was at projecting character from inside them. Melia's performance manages to get out from behind this particular mask and the Terileptil leader is a convincing character.

However, there are often moments of sloppiness in the script. The ending particularly doesn’t work because as we all know the Terileptil’s ship and base is still sitting there even after Nyssa’s comment about giving future archaeologists a bit of a headache during the Pudding Lane in flames scenes. More than just a headache I would presume, Mr. Saward. Perhaps we can ret-con it and assume that an early version of Torchwood (BBC, 2006-11) sequestered the technology.

Peter Moffatt’s direction is workmanlike despite the effective opening prologue. Considering the excellent job he did on State of Decay, this feels a little staid despite his affinity for period drama. Some of the blocking and fight sequences require more dynamism and Moffatt has a tendency to lock off the camera and just let the actors get on with it. The fight sequences at the end of the story, especially where Tegan is attempting to brain one of the Terileptils, suffers from this laid back approach to fight choreography. There are less of his previous visual flourishes but the ample location filming adds texture to the story and the staging of the Pudding Lane sequences, especially the TARDIS arrival sequence and the glass painting extending the set, offer a sense of scale to the story and are well lit and realised.

Eric Saward’s first script for the series is a fairly traditional affair compared to what he has in store for us later when, under his influence, there is a definite shift away in Doctor Who from the 'more openly philosophical signatures of the Bidmead stories' and with it 'realigning itself as an unashamedly action oriented sci-fi adventure show'. (3) Here, The Visitation's traditional tropes encompass a return to the 'pseudo historical' genre where science fiction and historical/period adventure merge.

Although, this harked back to the formula of The Time Warrior and its further re-emergence as non-specific period pastiche in stories such as The Masque of Mandragora, The Talons of Weng Chiang and The Horror of Fang Rock, Saward's story plays with history in a straightforward manner and places the Doctor's battle with the Terileptils, as a science fiction adventure, within the established web of history, where the story must bring about events such as the Great Fire, as an historical certainty which every viewer knows from their school lessons.

(1) Andrew Pixley, Doctor Who Magazine Archive, The Visitation, Issue 275, March 1999
(2) Philip MacDonald, Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition, The Complete Fifth Doctor, 'Too Much Too Young?', 2001
(3) Philip MacDonald, Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition, The Complete Fifth Doctor, 'Too Much Too Young?', 2001

Other sources:
Andrew Pixley, Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition, The Complete Fifth Doctor, 'Prince Charming, 2001
Shannon Sullivan, The Visitation, A Brief History of Time (Travel) website

Special Features:

Disc 1
Commentary
Chat track with director Peter Moffatt and cast members Davison, Sutton, Fielding and Waterhouse. Peter Davison and Janet Fielding have no compunction about taking the piss out of themselves, their performances and the show and if you're not a production trivia hound then it's an entertaining get together. Matthew Waterhouse chips in occasionally but would rather obsess about his on screen self having his hands in his pockets all the time and then very annoyingly reads out the cast and crew names at the end of the episodes.
Film Trims(5:33)
A collection of additional dialogue, scenes and retakes filmed on location but cut from the finished episodes. In the main, it's Michael Robbins stuck up a tree and some mute film sequences for use on scanner screens.
Directing Who - Peter Moffatt(26:15) Moffatt recalls how he was initially approached to work on Doctor Who by producer Graham Williams and then took up an offer to direct after John Nathan-Turner took over the show as they already knew each other from Nathan-Turner's stint on All Creatures Great and Small. This engaging little interview takes us from his excellent work on State of Decay, were it was very trying in the studio because Tom Baker and Lalla Ward weren't speaking to each other, to The Visitation and working again with Davison on Mawdryn Undead and with many Doctors on The Five Doctors. His final work was The Twin Dilemma, where he advised Colin Baker on how to play the role and dealt with inexperienced twin actors, and then filming in Seville for The Two Doctors. Moffatt is definitely old school as a director but comes across as gentle and affable, willing to calmly negotiate his way through problems. 
Writing A Final Visitation(12:52)
A brief recollection from Eric Saward about the script, its development and what influenced him to write it. He worked with Antony Root, who took over briefly from Christopher Bidmead, to develop the script before Davison replaced Tom Baker and the need to include three new companions. The interview reflects on his interest in history, the 'pseudo-historical' nature of The Visitation and his re-use of the Richard Mace character from his radio plays.
Scoring The Visitation(16:20)
Mark Ayres interviews composer Paddy Kingsland and he briefly offers some analysis into this particular score and its Elizabethan influences.
Music-only option
Paddy Kingsland's atmospheric score as an isolated track.
Photo Gallery
Brief gallery of colour stills from the production.  
Production Subtitles
Always fun to watch in combination with the audio commentary and, as usual, full of trivia about the script development, the actors and the production, this text is wittily presented and written by the ever reliable Nicholas Pegg.

Disc 2
Grim Tales - Revisiting The Visitation (45:10)
Dan Hall and Russell Minton's nostalgic return to the early 1980s production of Saward's first Doctor Who story brings together the original TARDIS crew of Davison, Fielding and Sutton with stowaway Mark Strickson to explore, or get lost in, the story's Black Park locations. Saward also discusses the story's origins and Tegan's bad temper, designer Ken Starkey chats about his work on the episodes including the filming of the pod scenes on location. We are then whisked off to Tithe Barn Manor where much reminiscing is done, while everyone sits down for cake, about the location shoot, Michael Robbins, John Savident and Michael Melia's guest roles, the design and creation of the Terileptil with costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux and the android played by Peter Van Dissel. A suitably celebratory documentary.
The Television Centre of the Universe - Part One (32:13)
Rather serendipitously, as Television Centre closes, here Davision, Fielding and Strickson are taken on a tour of the Centre by Yvette Fielding and regale us with BBC parking and dressing room etiquette and Janet's boob tube incident. We meet Floor Manager Sue Hedden, who remembers Tom Baker living in his dressing room for a short period and rash-inducing Silurian costumes, costume designer Odile Dicks-Mireaux, Production Assistant Jane Ashford and make up designers Carolyn Perry and Joan Stribling. Their recollections are interspersed with brief model sequences which display the layout of the Centre, both offering a real sense of the building's day to day activities. Can't wait for Part Two.
Doctor Forever - The Apocalypse Element (27:31)
The audio history of Doctor Who, from sound effects records, Genesis of the Daleks and Doctor Who and the Pescatons LPs to the hugely successful Big Finish Doctor Who adventures and the audio recordings of novelisations. Michael Stevens, Nick Briggs, Steven Cole, Jason Haigh-Ellery and Gary Russell tell us the story of how the BBC licensed new audio adventures and how writers Joe Lidster, Rob Shearman, Mark Gatiss and Russell T Davies became involved in the world of audio Who, casting couches and death threats.
PDF Materials
Radio Times listings and the BBC Enterprises sales sheet for the story. And the Doctor Who - The Making of a Television Series book is still conspicuous by its absence.
Subtitles
Coming Soon
'The sound of the planet screaming out its rage!' can only mean the Inferno - Special Edition is on its way. 

Doctor Who: TheVisitation (Special Edition)
BBC Worldwide / Released 6 May 2013 / BBCDVD3690 / Cert: U
4 episodes / Broadcast: 15 February to 23 February 1982 / Colour / Running time: 96:31 

Nightmare in Silver
BBC One HD
11 May 2013, 7.00pm

The review contains spoilers.

It has to be said, the expectations for another Neil Gaiman-penned episode of Doctor Who have been exceptionally high. I think the pressure to perform, certainly after the award winning success of the very popular The Doctor's Wife nearly two years ago, can be detected in the interview with Gaiman in this week's Radio Times. He confesses "It has a few little scary bits" and, judging it on marks out of ten, "It’s running at about a five or a six. I’d love to do a nine. I’d love to do something that sends adults behind the sofa, too." Well, about five or six is an apt summation of Nightmare in Silver's remit to make the Cybermen, last seen skulking beneath a department store threatening James Corden's baby, properly scary again.

Being a Neil Gaiman script there is, however, more toNightmare in Silver than vicarious scares and not only does the story tap into the ever-evolving history of the Cybermen and the accompanying anxieties about a posthuman future where potentially our biology is transformed by artificial intelligence and wearable or implanted technologies, but it also explores the Romantic legacy of the stories of E.T.A Hoffman and Shelley's Frankenstein, musing on the responsibilities that come with the use of power, self-sacrifice and chess strategies.

Nightmare in Silver finds the Doctor, Clara and her charges Artie (Kassius Carey Johnson) and Angie (Eve de Leon Allen) arriving on Hedgewick's World, an abandoned and dilapidated amusement park. Like Charlie desperate to use his golden ticket to gain access to the Chocolate Factory, the Doctor forlornly hopes his own golden ticket will at least get Artie and Angie a turn on the Spacey Zoomer. Never mind, that ticket does come in handy later.

'Anyone here play chess?'

Hedgewick's World is definitely Gaiman territory, a strange dream space where the moon isn't the moon, they accept sandwiches as currency and the Dickensian, down at heel impressario figure of Webley (a rather underused but brilliant Jason Watkins) offers to frighten the children with his collection of nightmarish creatures and forgotten emperors. All the while, it's a question of what's real, what's counterfeit and who is manipulating darker impulses beneath the veneer of entertainment.

It's a nostalgic call back which operates on several levels: a world of play, of innocent fun in the shadow of a centuries-old war and a yearning for a much older culture, of the Victorian fairground or the freak show which captured the imagination of the newly industrialised world, where you often pondered if the mermaid or the bearded woman was real or fake. In this dusty old playground, the misfits thrive. A platoon of army rejects go through the motions in a dusty museum on a planet closed by Imperial order. The Emperor has gone missing and the Great Exhibition is long over. No free ice cream today.

Webley's World of Wonders is deceptive, for beneath the 'miracles, marvels and wonders' waits a long dormant but patient evil. 'Anyone here play chess?' asks the effusive Webley. A look of disappointment plays across the Doctor's face when Artie is invited to a demonstration of 'the wonder of the age and the miracle of modernity' as the tatty showman whisks off a dusty covering and reveals a clapped out Cyberman.

Gaiman turns the Cybermen into a myth again, eschewing the alternative universe origin of the Cybus-men for a post-Cyber War history which saw their plan for conquest defeated by an alliance a thousand years ago, tapping into the series' history via 1975's Revenge of the Cybermen - 'You've no home planet, no influence, nothing! You're just a pathetic bunch of tin soldiers skulking around the galaxy in an ancient spaceship!' - and transforming their sad remains into the 699th Wonder of the Universe, as seen 'destroying you at chess' in the Imperial court.

The chess-playing Cyberman, operated from within by remote control and the diminutive Porridge (a very effective Warwick Davis) is of course a reference to The Turk, that other elaborate chess-playing mechanical hoax of the 18th Century which concealed a human chess master inside to operate it. The deadly Cyberman sat at his chess board is symbolic of layers of concealment and trickery within the episode, a visual foreshadowing of the Doctor's fate.

Porridge's identity as the reluctant Emperor, hiding away in plain sight from his duties at court, is analogous to the dormant Cyber army concealed on the planet, their intent tucked away behind the rusty old exhibits. Even the little Emperor has been mythologised, with the unassuming Porridge made taller and more regal in the form of a highly inaccurate waxwork and where an unflattering view of the royal family means 'you could end up on the run for the rest of your life'. Gaiman subtly has Angie put the clues together after she's given an Imperial penny and compares it to the waxwork. 

The freak show Cyberman conceals the cold logic of its survival beneath the public spectacle, symbolised in the metallic woodworm slithering their way through the exhibits and detected only by a much concerned Doctor. That concern translates into a sleepover for Artie and Angie in the shadowy interior of Webley's World of Wonders.

Gaiman provides an example of child viewer identification taken to its extreme as their representatives try not to have nightmares in a dream space filled with inanimate and animate monsters. The Doctor becomes the parent by proxy telling the scary bedtime story, issuing warnings not to wander off and suggesting impossible rescues from subconscious fears and real dangers. Naturally, the brattish Angie ignores all to the contrary.

Webley is infected by an infestation of those metallic insects and becomes the proud recipient of an upgrade courtesy of the chess-playing Cyberman in a suitably unsettling sequence which underlines the episode's focus on the struggle between flesh and machine, the logical and the emotional. The upgrade ushers in a new look for the Cybermen, the latest in a long line of cosmetic changes, and one which returns to them something of their original appeal.

The rather clunky, flare-wearing Cybus-men are transformed into creatures akin to the 1960s Cybermen last seen in The Moonbase and The Tomb of the Cybermen. Gaiman apparently wanted the faces to capture the uncanniness of those he first saw back in his childhood and was also given a remit to make them scarier, an edict from Moffat who is often reluctant to reuse classic monsters unless they can be improved upon and given new qualities.

It's entirely possible there are now viewers who don't recognise the Cybus era Cybermen never mind their 1960s cousins and for whom all of this is entirely new. The relative age of the viewer establishes a tension whenever a classic monster is reintroduced into the series. Not only does Moffat's wariness come partly from a view of classic monsters lacking the ability to withstand the more sophisticated, contemporary tastes of a younger audience but also a concern about disappointing long-term fans with unflattering design decisions.

That tension can result in a Dalek paradigm too far removed from the original iconic design and using gimmickry for its own sake. How far are the Cybermen moving away from their origins as posthuman horror show and an example of the dehumanisation inherent in replacing their bodies and brains with cybernetics? Here, Cybermen can remove their heads, spin them round or send their disembodied hands scuttling off after a victim. Will we see those abilities again in future episodes?

Stealth is still not their strong point as they still sound like a kitchen full of exploding pots and pans when they stroll up behind you but, hey, that's modern monsters for you. Apart from their new outfits, the best thing Gaiman achieves is to make them super fast, scarily efficient at upgrading themselves and rapidly transforming their human victims. The Cybermites are also a very clever way of modernising the Cybermats and they become a form of invasive nanotechnology, literally the bugs in the system.

The other positives here are the nods to the past - the return of the Cyber Planner (his previous machinations were last foiled on The Wheel in Space), the use of gold (the ticket had its uses) to temporarily thwart his conversion of the Doctor, an indirect mention for Marc Platt's excellent audio story Spare Parts and a very nostalgic visual allusion on the part of production designer Michael Pickwoad in the use of the ladder motifs from the sets of The Tomb of the Cybermen when the Cybermen are revived beneath the surface of Hedgewick's World.

'taking advantage of the local resources'

As an indomitable force they are second to none it seems when Porridge explains to Clara the moral dilemma behind their defeat in the Cyber Wars. To prevent a universe from succumbing to the Cyberiad you must sacrifice a billion, trillion innocent lives and to end a Cyber War you must be prepared to plunge the entire Tiberian spiral galaxy into darkness. It's a contemporary dilemma - do you become as ruthless and cold as your enemy in order to defeat them?

As Porridge confesses 'I feel like a monster sometimes,' there is a subtle suggestion he was the 'poor blighter who had to press the button to blow it all up' and this is perhaps the reason why the Emperor is hiding away from the burden of his responsibilities. His philosophy also dovetails with the reason for the presence of the punishment platoon, a group of ineffectual soldier misfits led by a Captain (an underused Tamzin Outhwaite) who, it seems, refused to follow similar orders in the past.

Beneath the super-slick upgrade of the Cybermen there are many core themes connected to Gaiman's vision. Gaiman invests plenty of mythological and fairy tale tropes into his work and in Nightmare in Silver he's exploring several ideas about the eighteenth and nineteenth century fascination for automata presented in side shows, museums and fairs, linked into the Hedgewick's World concept and the Dickensian character of Mr Webley, informing the discussion about the burdens of power and our fundamental fear of technology getting out of control. The final battle also takes place in a pretend fairy tale castle, Natty Longshoe's Comical castle ('real...but comical'), melding a Gothic sensibility with present day traumas about becoming posthuman.

Porridge is symbolic of the renaissance ruler in disguise, a much used trope in myth and fairy tale, from Haroun al Raschid, the wandering Caliph of The Arabian Knights, to Henry V disguising himself to eavesdrop on his troops, and who attempts to understand the commoners. In the king's desire to be 'one of us', fairy tales explore the social function of the aristocrat and the nature of a flawed human being forced to make decisions which affect huge populations. The reluctant Porridge seeks enlightenment away from the court and would rather conceal himself among other misfits as he also conceals himself beneath a puppet Cyberman, literally the power behind the throne rather than in front of it. 

The Turk, that chess-playing automaton hoax presented by Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen in the eighteenth century taps into our desire to be deceived by machines, our anxieties about the uncanny valley and fearing something so approximate to the human form which could turn against and eventually replace us. Gaiman's biggest influence, not just on this episode, but probably on his other material, is the work of E.T.A. Hoffman, particularly his tales 'Automata' and 'The Sandman'.

The nightmarish Sandman figure in Hoffman's tale was also central to Freud's theory of the uncanny -  the unheimlich -  which has been a huge influence on the interpretation of the extraordinary lurking beneath the ordinary in horror, science fiction, myth and fairy tale. In Hoffman's 'The Sandman' a young man, Nathaniel, is engaged to a young woman, Clara (quite a coincidence), but is haunted by childhood memories of the sandman, a noctural creature who steals away children's eyes to feed to his own offspring. This trauma affects his relationship to such a degree he falls in love with an uncannily human automaton, Olympia.

When Angie and Artie are carried off by Cybermen, because their child brains are perfect for the creation of the new Cyber Planner, Gaiman's story reflects Hoffman's creature removing body parts in the night and also acknowledges the Daleks using a child to run their battle computers in Remembrance of the Daleks. Webley reveals the Cyberiad needed the 'infinite potential' of children but with the closure of the park they had stopped coming. Now, they are 'local resources' ripe for exploitation and brought to Hedgewick's World by the Doctor, inadvertently designated the 'saviour of the Cybermen.' 

The understanding of childhood fears and the duality between man and monster, human and machine are written into Doctor Who's DNA and Gaiman forges connections with the earliest examples of Romantic and Gothic literature to explore the nature of humanity as it comes into contact with super-intelligent machines. The chess match analogy, symbolised by The Turk and its status as a trick, is continued further in the conversion of the Doctor by Cybermites.

The Doctor/Cyber Planner tussle evokes humanity's troubled destiny as a posthuman cyber being, as flesh seamlessly merged with intelligent machine. It's chess master Kasparov being defeated by IBM's Deep Blue computer, itself the valediction of Turing's test for artificial intelligence, and the battle inside the Doctor's neurons is depicted as the Cyber Planner's narcissistic fantasy of perfection, a rifling through his innermost thoughts about Clara and a roll call of past Doctors.

The portrayal of this dualism hinges entirely on Matt Smith convincing us he is both with his performance as he flips between Doctor and Cyber Planner, between The Turk automaton and his flesh and blood operator. The Doctor essentially fights his own doppelganger but where the Cyber alter-ego would presumably be cold, logical and personality-free Smith turns him into an emotive, angry creature only just shy of a pantomime villain.

Fascinating as the themes are about a game of chess, as an empirical performance of intelligence, of machine reason against all human comers, wherein the Doctor cheats the game in three moves by 'taking advantage of the local resources' much as the Cybermen use their upgrades to rapidly overthrow human kind, Smith's performance doesn't feel right and prolonged scenes of him switching personality rather outstay their welcome.

Even his fleeting impressions of Eccleston and Tennant (a quote from Moffat's own Turk-inspired The Girl in the Fireplace no less) don't do him or the episode any favours. However, there's an interesting moment where the Cyber Planner, discovering the Doctor's attempt to erase himself from history, claims the Doctor could be reconstructed by the hole he has left, by his own absence. Is Clara this absence? Is she a disaster recovery mechanism in waiting?

The Cyberiad-era bomb is similarly 'taking advantage of the local resources' and becomes the ultimate chess move where you lose all the pieces but the board is still intact. The machine human interface theme gains an ironic twist in that the bomb is a machine which requires a human voice to activate it, to complete a devastatingly rational act of destruction. The idea you need to become the very evil you're fighting in order to destroy it is a powerful one but the underdeveloped characters, particularly Angie, Artie, the Captain, Porridge and the platoon members, don't earn our empathy and the moral dilemma, to use such a strategy to blow a planet up with all lives lost, lacks weight.

Angie is a rather unsympathetic character and Artie has very little to do but I liked the interesting clash between Clara and Angie. There is an emotional evolution for the humans in the story, a parallel to the Cybermen upgrading themselves, and we see Clara transformed into a leader just as Angie seems to have learned a bit of respect for her by the end of the story. The presence of Artie and Angie may well be trying to say something about taking responsibility for those who are likely to be in constant peril, akin to the child-like innocence of Jamie and Victoria as opposed to the resourceful companions of the new series, but it feels rather intangible.

The curious thing about Clara is her oscillation between fearlessness - almost the military machine as she gathers the troops and devises a strategy to see off three million Cybermen attempting to knock the castle doors down - and her obvious fear as seen in Cold War and Hide. Is this an inconsistency in the writing which comes out of Moffat's sidelining of a cohesive character arc to hold Series 7 together? His replacement of an overall arc with standalone 'movie event' style episodes, the losing of momentum by splitting the season and setting Clara up as a mystery may all be affecting our reception of these episodes. Once the mystery is solved, will there be enough of Clara, as a character, to retain our interest?

Nightmare in Silver is frustrating and disappointing as there are a lot of very interesting ideas Gaiman gets to grapple with and yet there is nothing substantially cohesive binding them together. The Cybermen certainly look refreshed though his attempt to make them scarier spirals off into gimmickry. Three million Cybermen are defeated but it doesn't feel like a particularly climactic moment because it's a deserted planet which is destroyed and not an entire galaxy filled with millions and millions of inhabitants. And three million Cybermen would have overwhelmed the castle in minutes.

Porridge intimates it may have been his decision to destroy the Tiberian spiral galaxy but the burdens and loneliness of absolute power aren't made emotionally clear until the end of the episode. The big moral question is only partially addressed because the episode spends rather too much time watching Matt Smith attempt a performance so ambitious it defeats him. It promises much but unlike The Doctor's Wife, a story brimming with emotion and confidence, the irony is Nightmare in Silver feels almost as emotionally disconnected as the Cybermen it upgrades.

Joining the re-publication of Peter Cushing - The Complete Memoirs on book shelves to celebrate the centenary of the much-loved actor's birth this month is the extraordinary collection The Peter Cushing Scrapbook. A beautiful A4 landscape soft bound book in full colour, this 328 page treasure trove is only available direct from Peveril Publishing and is an overwhelmingly lovely and exhaustive pictorial history of Peter Cushing's life and career.

Wayne Kinsey, a highly respected Hammer Films researcher, historian and author of many detailed books about the studio (Hammer Films – the Bray Studios Years, TheElstree Studios Years, A Life in Pictures, the Unsung Heroes and On Location), and fantasy films historian and author Tom Johnson  (Hammer Films – an Exhaustive Filmography, Peter Cushing – the Gentle Man of Horror and his 91 Films and The Films of Oliver Reed) collaborated with Joyce Broughton (Cushing’s faithful secretary and aide for over 35 years) to compile this definitive, essential book.

Not only does it chronicle in depth the actor's work on stage, television and in the cinema but it also explores his superb talents as a watercolor artist and cartoonist, his hobbies as a model theatre builder and his work as a silk scarf and jewellery designer. It brings together unseen materials from Joyce's own collection as well as rare pieces from director Roy Ward Baker's estate and a wide range of items from familiar names including writers, historians, documentarians and collectors Marcus Hearn, Denis Meikle, Don Fearney, Stephen Jones, Uwe Sommerlad, Simon Greetham, Christopher Gullo and Richard Golen among many others.

With a foreward from George Lucas, who fondly remembers Cushing's request to wear slippers rather than the tight boots made for him as he delivered the terrifying Grand Moff Tarkin's orders in Star Wars (1977), the book then presents the collected material in chronological sections, from his childhood and early ambitions to be an actor, his Hollywood experiences, an award winning television career, to his confirmation as a horror star at Hammer and Amicus and beyond; concluding with 'the blue period' in the aftermath of his wife Helen's death, being honoured with an OBE and settling into retirement.

'the madman of Purley' 

All of the material is assembled with great sensitivity and clarity and each section is annotated by the authors, sourcing quotes from various books and interviews. The design by Steve Kirkham must have been a massive undertaking and he packs in an unbelievable amount of memorabilia, personal items, photographs and artwork and cleverly uses Cushing's own scrapbook annotations to label the items.

His early years are beautifully captured and we have evidence of his mother Nellie's desire for him to have been born a girl in black and white photographs of the young Peter sporting long blonde curls and a fetching dress and ankle socks. On pages displaying his own copies of Holiday annual, there are pictures of him at age nine in 1922, about to present one of his famous puppet shows, and of him, his brother David and his friends playing cowboys and indians. He was a big fan of cowboy star Tom Mix.

Arriving at his teenage years the personalised copies of plays are evidence of how acting became a reality for him, his reams of notes covering the inside of a copy of The Rivals an indication of the detail he would apply to the hundreds of roles he would perform. Pictures of 'the madman of Purley' at 18 and 21 lead on to stage plans of rep performances and his early pen and pencil sketches.

The Hollywood period of his film and theatre career are captured in an amalgam of visas, passports, posters, publicity and an overview of the films he made there, from The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), A Chump at Oxford (1940) with Laurel and Hardy, as second lead in Vigil in the Night (1940) to playing Clive of India in Your Hidden Master (1940). A real treat is the access to his Hollywood diaries provided by Elstree historian Paul Welsh which shows how Cushing was embraced by his fellow actors and directors.

He returned to England during the war and met his future wife Helen, a Russian émigré actress, as they were preparing to get aboard a coach outside the Theatre Royal Drury Lane to take them to Colchester in a touring production of Private Lives. Cushing's habit of sending her cartoons and notes, often inspired by his love of Disney, underlined the deep affection he had for her from their marriage in 1943 until her untimely death. These pages also present the original programme from the very ambitious staging of War and Peace in which he secured two roles.

In 1946, we get a double page of his highly detailed scarf and jewellery designs. The hand painted scarves were a lucrative way of earning money during a period when film and theatre work was scarce and they were so successful Cushing ended up getting paid for ten months as silk screen printer for a Macclesfield textile mill owner and producing designs for the Festival of Britain and the Coronation. Pictures of him and Helen, either wearing the scarves or jewellery, mingle with the designs, his cartoons and personalised books. The section is complete with other examples of how he filled his free time, either in painting or constructing model theatres and collecting toy soldiers.

'The Olivier Years' chronicle his role as Osric in Larry's screen version of Hamlet (1948), complete with a glorious colour picture of him looking quite the dandy, various black and white stills from the production and a gallery of publicity images showing him at home in Airlie Gardens, working on his models, scarves or painting. This moves on to the Australian and New Zealand tour of the Old Vic Company filled with programmes signed by Olivier and images of him in School for Scandal and The Proposal. His breakdown during the 1950 London production of Damascus Blade is marked by a kind letter from co-star John Mills and the text notes Olivier's kindness in paying him a retainer during his recovery.

A great sense of humour and his love of games comes through in some of the private moments - he peers through binoculars at a toy horse racing game, clearly willing on a particular horse to win, and dons a pirate demeanor while playing a similarly themed board game. We also get some lovely shots of him and his toy soldier collection at their Airlie Gardens home. By the early 1950s, and despite his father's declaration he was 'nearly forty and a failure', Cushing had forged a career in television, instigated by Helen's letter writing campaign to BBC television producers.

His notable television roles in Pride and Prejudice (tx:02/02/-08/03/52), Tovarich (tx:24/01/54), Nineteen Eighty-Four (tx:12/12/54) and The Creature(tx:30/01/55) are covered here with publicity shots, his personalised copies of the books with each of the roles marked, and they share space with a growing film career and roles in 1952's Moulin Rouge (Christopher Lee also appeared in a small part), The Black Knight (1954), The End of the Affair (1955), Magic Fire (1955) and Alexander the Great (1956).

These are illustrated with stills, posters, notes, family photographs, cigarette ads ('mine's a Minor'), articles by 'Mrs Peter Cushing' about marriage in Woman and the cover of the 1954 TV Mirror featuring the serialised autobiography The Peter Cushing Story.

After lunch with the Queen courtesy of his artist mentor Edward Seago, the book covers the theatre production of The Silver Whistle, a TV Mirror article about his toy soldier collection with a lovely picture of him and Helen, the Joseph Losey film Time Without Pity (1957) and the film which would change his career, The Curse of Frankenstein (1957).

Fully annotated and with a review from Tom Johnson who adds considerable information about all of his roles, the film is represented by his original 26 October 1956 contract, reproduced here with colour stills, posters, his bank payment book and newspaper clippings about his News Chronicle Best Actor award. Oh, and Phil Leakey demonstrates the creature's blinded eye. There's also some great coverage of the premiere, including a photograph of some horseplay from James Carreras as he tries to strangle Cushing.

TV productions for the BBC in the 1950s, Gaslight (tx:13/01/57) and The Winslow Boy(tx:13/03/58), are detailed and, among the Nescafe coffee ads ('it's the finest instant coffee' says Peter Cushing) and more TV Mirror coverage, we hurtle on to 1958's Dracula and his contract, his own annotated copy of Stoker's book autographed by cast and crew and the original scripted climax to the film which he would have a huge influence on.

The chapter on the 1950s ends with masses of material from The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), including signed notes from Francis Matthews and Oscar Quitak, Dracula's UK and US premieres, a press launch for Hammer's The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) at the Sherlock Holmes pub, the originally scripted confrontation between Lee and Cushing in The Mummy (1959), and the Cushings purchase of 3 Seaway Cottage in Whitstable that began a long, warm association with the seaside town. There's also a page mentioning an exhibition of his watercolours and an appearance on Desert Island Discs.

'Sir Boss' and 'Lady Boss' 

After moving to Hillsleigh Road, the Cushings settled into the new home and welcomed the arrival of Joyce Broughton in 1959 who became secretary to 'Sir Boss' and 'Lady Boss' and helped them manage Peter's career, the house and entertaining guests with toys and games. Non-horror roles became few and far between and he entered 1960 working on The Brides of Dracula. The original scripted climax is reproduced and again he had an influence on changing that to the one we are more familiar with. Prop bats and a note from production designer Bernard Robinson's wife, Margaret, are included. Among many others, this chapter also covers Cone of Silence (1960), Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960) and Cash on Demand (1962) with a wealth of posters, lobby cards and stills.

One of the warmest and loveliest stories here is the section on the late visual effects designer Ian Scoones. Scoones, then at art college in the late 1950s, wanted to get into the film business and, realising Cushing had a cottage down the road from him in Whitstable, called in to show him his work. Cushing eventually invited him to meet Hammer's designer Bernard Robinson who then introduced him to Ian's mentor, special effects legend Les Bowie. Correspondence between Scoones and Cushing, via Joyce, is reproduced here.

Swashbucklers were the order of the day in 1961 and fresh from John Gilling's Fury at Smuggler's Bay (a wonderful Christopher Lee joke about Cushing's death scene is mentioned) Cushing began work on Captain Clegg (1962), Hammer's back door adaptation of Russell Thorndyke's Dr Syn books. Cushing's meticulous attention to detail is noted by co-star Oliver Reed and on display are his costume drawings and, a real treasure, the first few pages of Cushing's own adaptations of the Syn novels, such was his enthusiasm for the project. He would return to Captain Clegg in 1972, writing his own sequel adventure.

He was back to television in 1963, with The Spread of the Eagle and a Comedy Playhouse, 'The Plan' and Paul Eddington's letter praising Cushing's performance as Julius Caesar in the former and Cushing's notes for the role are reproduced. Horror was never far away and The Evil of Frankenstein (1964) and The Gorgon (1964) for Hammer were followed up by work on Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965), The Skull (1965) and Dr Who and the Daleks (1965) for their rivals Amicus. You'll also find plenty of material for Hammer's production of She (1965), including some rare contact sheets and photographs of an equally rare visit to the set from Helen. The notes on Daleks Invasion Earth 2150AD (1966) offer an intriguing coda about Malcolm Hulke's pilot script for a proposed radio series featuring Cushing as the Doctor.

Back at Seaway Cottage, Cushing grabbed the chance to purchase land at the back of the house and develop a garden based on a layout devised by Helen. Judging by the images here, it looked idyllic. His delight in making highly detailed model scenes and sunny days swimming at Whitstable are in direct contrast to the fiends he played on screen. More outings for Frankenstein followed as did the notorious Corruption (1968) and a return to television in the celebrated Sherlock Holmes series in 1968. The section on Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969) features his contract, an extract from Terence Fisher's script and script pages, contact sheets, telegrams and letters discussing the film's disturbing rape scene demanded by James Carreras.

Pipe Smoker of the Year award was given to Cushing in 1968, even though he hated pipe tobacco, Hammer received their Queen's Award to Industry and he ended the 1960s cameoing in Jerry Lewis's One More Time (1969) and Scream and Scream Again (1970) with his horror sparring partner Christopher Lee. The 1970s ushered in many changes to the Hammer horror formula, none more so than in The Vampire Lovers (1970). Pages from Roy Ward Baker's script can be seen, again showing how the climax of the film was altered. Stills and posters cover The House That Dripped Blood (1971) and I, Monster (1971).

Over this period Helen's health gradually became more and more fragile and the decade between 1971 and 1981 became Cushing's 'blue period' after Helen died during the production of Blood From the Mummy's Tomb in January 1971. It's terribly sad to see him sitting under her framed picture, the message from Peter on her gravestone and to read about the poignant final letter from her. Joyce Broughton's recollections of his attempts at suicide are heartbreaking. The cartoon notes and messages become much missed indications of their bond.

After a period where he completely shut down, he threw himself back into making films and at the end of 1971 gave us two of his best roles, as the confused Gustav Weil in Twins of Evil and as the harassed widower Arthur Grimsdyke in Tales from the Crypt. His Méliès awards, including best actor for the latter, are also featured. The 1970s were filled with a punishing schedule of film production, including Hammer's continuation of the Dracula franchise and European horror such as Horror Express (1972). He adored making the latter with Christopher Lee in Spain and among the stills and posters is his annotated script with costume details. There's a lovely comment from director Freddie Francis about The Creeping Flesh (1973) and how Cushing could turn 'absolute rubbish' into something utterly convincing and, again, pages of the script are here complete with Cushing's notes to himself and a warning: 'don't overact'.

... captures the professional and personal worlds of a remarkable actor 

Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1973) featured his last appearance as the Baron for Hammer and in director Terence Fisher's last film. A trove of superb material is included: sketches and annotated scripts showing how Cushing researched the anatomy, including eyeball transplants, the changes to the infamous artery clamping scene, props lists and deleted scenes. Another 'holy grail' is the material from the unmade Savage Jackboot, a Don Houghton script for Hammer about the Nazi invasion of Lidice. There are sections of script, Tom Chantrell's iconic poster, Cushing's costume designs and research into deportee signs.

Costume sketches from Madhouse (1974), From Beyond the Grave (1974) and Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974) display his fine talents as an artist and attention to detail as an actor. Even Don Houghton's 1973 memo, detailing how to reinstate Dracula into the latter when it was simply a vampire kung-fu picture, and pages of Roy Ward Baker's annotated script, his notes and memos and Cushing's model for a proposed 'Vampire Temple' display in an unrealised Hammer museum project are all here. Pages from Houghton's outline for Kali- Devil Bride of Dracula, which never emerged from development, are included as is coverage of Tyburn's The Ghoul (1975) and Legend of the Werewolf (1975).

He returned for a final theatre production in 1975, The Heiress at The Horseshow Theatre, Basingstoke and his typically analytical approach to the part is evidenced in the notes on his copy of the play. It was then back to films, with At the Earth's Core (1976), The Uncanny (1977) and, where we came in, Star Wars. More and more, he took parts in some less memorable and lower quality films such as Hitler's Son (1978) and Touch of the Sun (1979) and there are pages of annotated scripts representing them in this chapter. In 1978 he was back with Christopher Lee making Arabian Adventure (1979) for John Dark and Kevin Connor and television beckoned with an episode, 'The Silent Scream', in the anthology series Hammer House of Horror (1980). Again, a wealth of stills and posters and behind the scenes material is featured.

In 1982, he was diagnosed with cancer and given one year to eighteen months to live. He defied the prognosis and lived for another twelve years and continued to work in film and television, with a return to Holmes for Tyburn's The Masks of Death (1984) and his last film in 1985, Biggles - Adventures in Time. The remainder of the final chapters in the book cover his retirement, the writing of his two volumes of autobiography and growing friendships with people like photographer Colin Bourner. Letters from Buckingham Palace heralded his OBE honour in 1988 and the news coincided with a fall off his bicycle. Joyce Broughton had by now moved a few doors next door to Cushing in Whitstable and was able to keep a closer eye on him.

His last years between 1990-94 included appearances on This is Your Life, the naming of Cushing's View - the seating area on the seafront at Whitstable - and the recording of Flesh and Blood, Ted Newsome's retrospective documentary about Hammer, with this chapter also featuring some of his correspondence with Ian Scoones and Christopher Lee. Sadly before the BBC transmission of Flesh and Blood in August 1994, Cushing was admitted to a hospice in Canterbury where Joyce and Bernard Broughton looked after him until his death on 11 August.

Fittingly, the final chapter 'The Cushing Gallery' presents a comprehensive and beautiful selection of work, including his co-star Veronica Carlson's exquisite pastel drawings of him, a huge range of film posters, pencil drawings from his sketchbook, his watercolours, intricately detailed costume designs and miniatures, a heart-warming collection of the cartoon messages sent to his wife Helen, wildlife paintings and a set of doodles he completed on his trips to the Tudor tea rooms in Whitstable. The book closes with images of his model theatres, his toy soldiers, a selection of film props, his trademark humour shining through a series of candid shots and an afterword from his Dracula co-star Janina Faye.

This stunning book, capturing the professional and personal worlds of a remarkable actor,  is jaw-droppingly packed with so much rare and special material and details about his life from Joyce, his colleagues, friends and dedicated fans and collectors. It's wonderful to see Peter Cushing being remembered in such a rich and rewarding way through the tremendous work of Wayne Kinsey, Tom Johnson and Joyce Broughton in their compiling of this book. An essential purchase.

The Peter Cushing Scrapbook
A Centenary Celebration
Wayne Kinsey, Tom Johnson and Joyce Broughton
Peveril Publishing
April/May 2013
Soft back, 328 pages, A4 Landscape, Full Colour throughout
Foreword by George Lucas. Afterword by Janina Faye

Baron Blood (1972) marked the true beginning of Mario Bava's fruitful partnership with producer Alfred Leone. Leone, who was a successful self-made business man through his real estate deals and investments, moved into television production in the mid-1950s and steadily invested in and produced television series and films in Italy and internationally.

As B&L productions, he snapped up the rights to Italian films and then sold them to other distributors, including American International Pictures, but would also keep his hand in real estate development, later investing in properties in North Beach, Florida with prominent financier turned film producer David. B Putnam. AIP would have a greater influence over Bava and Leone's work in the early 1960s and through into the mid-1970s but it was during Putnam's ill-feted production of 1968's Four Times That Night (AKA Quante Volte... quella notte) that Leone was first impressed by Bava.

The production of the film was in difficulty and Putnam asked Leone to step in and resolve the issues with the Italian film company Delfino Films. Leone was persuaded to take over production on the Rashomon-inspired sex farce and hired Bava, of whose reputation he had limited knowledge at the time. He particularly admired the way the director managed to boost the production values of a film made on a very small budget. 'Bava and I became good friends by the end of the production of Four Times. Earning his respect did not come easily, however; having proved myself on the set and off was the result. Bava was not excited about Baron Blood or other projects at the time, and it took a great deal of time and patience to convince him to do Baron Blood.' (1)

Baron Blood's fusion of the Gothic with the contemporary sits between two of Bava's most radical films, A Bay of Blood (1971) and Lisa and the Devil (1973). As James Oliver points out in his essay included in this set, its return to the brooding castles and family curses of earlier work seemed somewhat anachronistic in the middle of the 'Giallo' boom prompted by Dario Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1969). It was also made after the financial failure of A Bay of Blood which had more or less pushed the 'Giallo' to the extreme and would be an influence on the slasher genre that dominated the next decade.

The script for Baron Blood was by Vincent Fotre, a Hollywood based tennis professional (and author of Why You Lose at Tennis) who had a track record as a screenwriter since the 1950s, contributing scripts and stories to various television shows such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Lassie, Harbor Command and Target. His screenplays included Missile to the Moon (1958), Operation Cross Eagles (1968) and he was writer-producer of horror film Night of the Witches (1971).

Shown the script for Baron Blood by Irwin Allen's associate producer Jerry Briskin, Leone thought it would be ideal for Bava. However, Bava rejected it because the German co-producers demanded the film be shot on location in Vienna and, as Tim Lucas notes, he was already feeling that directing was 'a young man's game.' His son Lamberto persuaded him to accept the offer. (2)

On their two week location scout in Vienna, Bava and Leone settled on the neo-medieval Burg Kreuzenstein, north-east of Vienna, which occupied the site of a previously destroyed fort. It was constructed in the 19th century out of sections of medieval structures purchased by the family Wilczek from all over Europe to form an authentic-looking castle and house a collection of late-Gothic art objects and armour. It was chosen in preference to the Austrian ‘Schloss Adler', Burg Hohenwerfen location used for Where Eagles Dare (1969).

Before it was shot, in six weeks between September and November 1971, Leone had hoped to secure Vincent Price in the central role of the resurrected Baron Otto von Kleist and his wheelchair-bound alter-ego Alfred Becker. Price had previously worked with Bava on the comedy Dr Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs in 1966 and, recalling what a terrible experience it had been, he turned the film down.

After considering Ray Milland for the role, who turned out to be otherwise engaged, the part was offered to Joseph Cotton, the much respected co-star of Citizen Kane (1941), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and The Third Man (1949) who had, by the late 1960s, started to broaden his TV and film career work with a number of horror films, including Lady Frankenstein (1971) and The Abominable Dr Phibes (1971).

'von Kleist horror house'

Joining Cotten was Elke Sommer, fresh from her work on Zeppelin (1971) and Leslie Steven's television pilot Probe. Discovered by director Vittorio De Sica when she was on holiday in Italy, she made a number of films there in the mid-1950s before moving to Hollywood in the 1960s. As a leading lady she had previously graced A Shot in the Dark (1964), The Art of Love (1965), The Oscar (1966), Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966), Deadlier Than the Male (1966), and The Wrecking Crew (1969).

For the film's US debut, composer Les Baxter re-scored the film for distributor American International Pictures and about 8 minutes were cut from the film, losing some of the romantic interludes between the lead characters Eva Arnold (Sommer) and Peter Kleist (Antonio Cantafora) and the rituals preceding Christina Hoffmann's (Rada Rassimov) psychic contact with Elisabeth Holle.

The film opens with the ultimate symbol of 1970s modernism and affluence, the Pan-Am 747 flying the aforementioned Peter Kleist to Vienna to meet his uncle, Dr. Karl Hummel (Massimo Girotti). A successful and handsome young man, he is the first key in this narrative which concerns itself with ancestral roots, the power of blood ties and the schism between science and superstition, Coca-Cola and the occult.

At the airport he claims he wants to get 'back to the earth, back to my roots' and is fascinated by the ghoulish and bloodthirsty Baron Otto von Kleist whose castle is now being restored and transformed into a jet-age hotel ('a hotel for foreigners, not for the locals' offers Karl). The trappings of modernity surround the two characters as they take a Mercedes out to the castle, Bava's point of view camera showing the car hurtling through streets and then out into the countryside where the contemporary world gives way to nature and medieval ancestry. We also have the incongruous lounge music of Stelvio Cipriani serenading the images, a contemporary sheen over the hidden depths of what Peter jokily refers to as the 'von Kleist horror house'.

Bava's camera is restless, swooping and circling around the castle as we meet Eva Arnold, an architectural student trying to preserve the past as the castle is filled with Coca-Cola vendors, washing machines and televisions. She's also presented, via the extraordinary wardrobe provided to Elke Sommer, as a modern woman battling against the stridently commercial minded Dortmundt (Dieter Tressler) who treats her, in a misogynistic manner, as an exasperating busy body.

The castle is splendidly realised as an uncanny space with Bava's use of high-angle shots, wide-angle lenses and high contrast lighting as Eva goes to check on the armoury and the first of the supernatural visitations in the film occurs. Bava combines this with his painterly knowledge, a visual joke played on her by Fritz the caretaker, referencing Rembrandt, which gets Eva screaming her lungs out. Painting will of course, in typical Bava fashion, be a major ingredient in the revival of the Baron when Peter and Eva discover his likeness, with its face destroyed, in the bowels of the castle.

Peter is keen to find out more about this terrible Baron but before we can get to his inevitable return, the film again positions the secular world, a family meal with Karl's wife and daughter, in relation to the potential for magic and the occult. The daughter Gretchen Hummel (Nicoletta Elmi) is another child symbol commonly found in Bava's films, a bridge between the innocence of childhood and the corruption of evil. She feels the ancient power of the Baron emanating from the castle and has a connection with the stories about Elisabeth Holle, a witch burned to death by the Baron centuries ago. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, as they say.

When the family meal gives way to the legend of a curse placed on the Baron by Elisabeth Holle we're pretty much back in Black Sunday (1960) territory again and it's an indication of how many of his past works Bava will blatantly reference during the course of the film. It tends to turn Baron Blood into a final hurrah to the Gothic trappings of his earlier films while at the same time dragging the modern world into its idiom.

In a way Baron Blood fits into the 1970s revival of interest in the occult, a symptom of the end point of the 1960s as faith in major institutions crumbled and some in society sought out other belief systems. This is reflected with a publishing surge through counter-culture, parapsychology, science fiction and horror reaching a peak and the same interest emerging into mainstream cinema and television.

As an example of this, Hammer were also dabbling and mixing New Age occultism with the revival of Dracula in Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972) just as Bava was allowing Peter and Eva to resurect the horribly burned Baron of the past. There's also a suggestion in the Baron's attire, particularly the puritan looking hat and cloak, he was cursed not just for his extreme sadism but also for his narrow religious views. Alan Jones, in his introduction, also links the horrors in the castle to the crimes of the Nazis.

Peter and Eva are skeptics and there is a sense their messing about with ancient incantations is just a bit of fun, a prelude to romance even, but Peter demands they should go back to the castle and perform the ritual properly and in the right setting. They reassure themselves that if they do revive 'the old boy' they have the protection of the incantation and 'if we don't dig him, we'll ditch him'. Bava invests these scenes with very atmospheric lighting, using bright blue and yellow gels to accent the castle interiors. Cipriani's music has also shifted from camp frolics to something more sinister.

'if we don't dig him, we'll ditch him'

Bava's virtuosity with the camera not only underlines the castle's strange position on the borderland between occultism and rationalism but also revels in the smaller details. When Peter and Eva discover the painting of the Baron, Bava has the Baron's eyes staring out at them and then reverses the shot, intimating it is the Baron actually looking at Peter and Eva framed through the wood behind which the painting is contained. After they argue both about the veracity of Elisabeth's curse and incantation and Peter's desire to meet his ancestor face to face, they perform the ritual a second time and succeed in reviving the Baron.

Within the span of a ten minute period Bava seems keen to riff on his own work and other classic horror films. When Eva sees blood coming in from under the door of the belltower it's also a nod, as Tim Lucas notes, to Jacques Tourneur's The Leopard Man (1943). Bava returns to Black Sunday again, the Baron crawling out of his grave a specific visual allusion back to the resurrection of Javutich in that film.

Not content with this he references the heaving doorways of Hill House in The Haunting (1961) and the parchment with its enchantment of reversal escaping into the fire a la M.R. James' Casting of the Runes. A number of allusions to Black Sabbath and Blood and Black Lace (1964) also crop up when the disfigured Baron stumbles over to Dr Werner Hessler's premises and murders the hapless medic.

Similarly, Dortmundt's fate at the hands of the Baron underlines many of the film's themes and Bava's indulgence in his own catalogue. Just as Bava takes a nostalgic trip back to his key works, the Baron emerges from the past and strangles Dortmundt as he drops coins into a Coca-Cola machine. The Baron has no truck with modernity and seems quite determined to continue his exploits, returning the castle to its original purpose of torture chamber and symbol of his Vlad the Impaler-styled reign. Deny the violence and cruelty of the past at your peril, he demands. Again, Bava uses the location extremely well with a mix of wide angled lenses, colour gels and vertiginous overhead shots.

This resurrection of past glories reaches its zenith with the Baron's murder of Fritz, that practical joking caretaker, who zealously raids the body of the hanging Dortmundt for its gold ring and then finds himself dumped in a coffin with a lid lined with spikes. He meets the same fate as Princess Asa in Black Sunday and Bava repeats some of the shots - point of view of the spikes as the lid closes and a rather nasty side view of them squashing into Fritz's face.

It's a good three quarters of an hour before we even clap eyes on Joseph Cotten. He glides into view during an auction at the castle in a rather lovely introduction where Bava keeps his wheelchair-bound status as a final reveal. Not only are the proposed hotel's tellys and washing machines going for a song but so is the castle and Cotten's Alfred Becker snaps it up as a bargain. It's patently obvious Becker is the Baron's alter-ego and he's hell-bent on disposing of the cheap, crass commercialism infecting his torture chambers.

'between the living and the dead' 

Much of that modernism is symbolised by Elke Sommer's rather outré wardrobe of min-skirts, bright red shawls and bobble hats, and a multi-coloured patterned jacket. There's a great sequence where Eva talks to Becker above the chapel in the castle, a great deal of it regurgitated exposition, where the power of the ancient supernatural forces overwhelm her and Bava almost induces vertigo with his shots high above the chapel.

Tim Lucas also sees the disfigured Baron, in hat and cloak, and the wheelchair-confined Becker as Bava's homage to the Professor Henry Jarrod character in the 1953 André de Toth film House of Wax. As Lucas intimates, with Price having played Jarrod in the film it's clear why Leone approached him for Baron Blood.

Bava's love for the film is very apparent in the night time chase sequence, beautifully directed and photographed, as the Baron attempts to hunt Eva down through the foggy streets after cornering her in her room at the halls of residence. He gets maximum visual impact as she seemingly goes round in circles in the blue and yellow drenched mists, her face a sweating mask, before finding sanctuary at Karl's house.

Karl's academic career points to something of a solution. He's embroiled in studies of ESP (a very New Age subject in the 1970s) and one of his subjects is Christina Hoffman (Rada Rassimov) who turns out to be a very powerful medium 'between the living and the dead' and may be the only one who can send the Baron back to his grave. In probably the best sequence in the film, Rassimov makes a striking entrance into the film, framed in the centre of a pentagram, and plays Christina as the complete opposite to Eva.

Where Eva is ultra-feminine and vulnerable, Christina is strong, powerful and full of the pent up energy symbolised in her Mother Earth figure and is an essay in female power and its connection to the cycles of nature, life and death. Cipriani's scoring of the scene between them is very subtle, barely heard horns and drums just bubbling away in the background and suggests a sense of great power in Rassimov's performance.

The notion of the supernatural connection to the natural world is conveyed in Christina's clairvoyant ritual which Bava stages in the woods through dappled sunlit trees and water. Bava beautifully frames Christina between the trees and an ancient stone circle before she descends into a trance by a roaring bonfire to contact Elisabeth Holle and charge an amulet with power. As the evening light gradually darkens, the paganistic drums on the soundtrack herald Holle's appearance and Christina indulges in the ritual, knowing full well it will signal her death, and her nobility in the face of the Baron's arrival is perfectly captured.

Female power and nature are evoked again in the sequence where Karl's daughter Gretchen, an innocent who also has some sort of clairvoyant power, rides by the castle and comes under the influence of the Baron. She's almost a fairy tale Red Riding Hood figure as the Baron hunts her down through the trees.

Like other children in Bava's films, she's carrying a ball, or in this case an apple from which she has taken a bite, and drops it when the force of evil overwhelms her. The symbolism evokes a similar sequence in Fritz Lang's M (1931) and another Bava film, Kill, Baby, Kill (1966). And it's also Gretchen who points out the obvious to the unimaginative adults, that Becker is the Baron and Holle's amulet is the key to destroying him.

The climax sees Becker rising triumphantly from his wheelchair (just as Jarrod did in the House of Wax) and overwhelm Eva, Karl and Peter after he shows off his torture chamber complete with soundtrack of screaming victims and the castle battlements decorated with staked corpses. Karl attempts to shoot him while Eva attempts to ward him off with the amulet.

Bava doesn't go into detail about their defeat but merely dissolves back to the castle's restored dungeon and a prone and injured Eva, Karl tied up to a rack and Peter crucified. Cotten seizes an opportunity to play Becker to the hilt, despite a sense of his reticence in the role, and he's pretty effective when he attempts to brand the unfortunate Peter, now not so curious about his bloodline.

The amulet saves the day by resurrecting the Baron's victims to kill him after Eva drops it onto Fritz's corpse. Becker does a lot of thrashing about before transforming back into the Baron and the three heroes scuttle off out of the castle as the dead string the baron up on the crucifix and destroy him. As Eva, Karl and Peter speed off in their Mercedes and back into the present day over the Baron's screams, his figure is seen briefly silhouetted on the castle rooftop before it disappears as the voice of Elisabeth Holle demands the monster's heart. The past, its victims and revenge are all bound together.

Baron Blood may well be Bava working on auto-pilot and with the thinnest of material but, as ever, he imbues it with an enormous amount of visual style. His camera is restless and driving and, even though there is an often uncontrolled and over abundance of zooming in and out of shots, his sense of drama is unequalled and this, combined with a lush use of lighting and colour, makes amends for a somewhat lacklustre story. There are some interesting themes about legacy, history and revenge and what James Oliver sees as a reverse to the 'nice, sanitised ye olde times theme-park vision of history' and a warning not to 'invoke the past... unless you're prepared to accept it as it really was.'


(1) Email interview with Alfedo Leone by Troy Howarth, AV Maniacs.com http://www.dvdmaniacs.net/features/interview_alfredo_leone.html
(2) Tim Lucas commentary, Baron Blood

About the transfer
In the main a blemish free transfer with most of the dirt and debris now absent. It's quite a soft, grainy image with a lot of film-like texture but some scenes do display sharpness and depth. The contrast levels are variable and some scenes lack the layering and the requisite deep blacks needed for the darker, shadowy images. However, it often looks detailed (clothes and faces fare well) and colourful with some, particularly reds, greens and blues, looking impressive. Bava's flamboyant lighting schemes are served well and this is a very pleasant viewing experience. The mono LCPM soundtrack can betray a bit of hiss here and there but for the most part dialogue and music sounds perfectly acceptable.

Special Features
All three versions of Baron Blood playable in 1080p via the menu on Blu-ray and available in standard definition split over two DVD discs.

Audio Commentary with Bava biographer and expert Tim Lucas
As ever the knowledgeable Tim Lucas provides a well researched guide to the making of this Bava classic, the second collaboration between Alfredo Leone and Bava, and he initially touches on the redubbing, rescoring and editing of the film by AIP before delving further into Leone's career and qualities as a producer, a man who demanded audiences see the money up on screen. He discusses how Bava had to be persuaded to leave Italy by his son to film Baron Blood and he eventually settled on the Vienna locations used in the film. Lucas focuses on the themes of ancient families and the split between fantasy and reality that permeate the film. There are notes on all the cast members, providing some background to Elke Sommer's career, the casting of Joseph Cotten, and a focus particularly on those who had worked with Bava before or had forged their reputation in other classics of Italian cinema. Lucas also explains how Bava used Baron Blood to quote many of his own films from the 1960s and others, such as The Leopard Man and House of Wax.
Introduction to Baron Blood (3:21)
Author and critic Alan Jones.
Delirium Italian-style - Ruggero Deodato on Mario Bava (11:17)
Director Deodato (best known for Cannibal Holocaust and The House on the Edge of the Park) explores the golden age of Italian genre films and recalls his first meeting with Bava, Bava's much admired technical and visual skills and the industry's dismissal of horror genre films. 
Mario Bava at work
A photo gallery of Bava behind the scenes on his films - from Hercules, Black Sunday, via Black Sabbath, Danger:Diabolik and to The Whip and the Body and Lisa and the Devil.
English trailer (2:17)
Italian trailer (3:06)
Radio Spots.
Reversible sleeve
Featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys.
Collector's booklet
Featuring an essay 'Gothic Revival: A Reappraisal of Baron Blood' by critic James Oliver, illustrated with original archive stills and posters.

Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga / Baron Blood
1972
Dieter Geissler Filmproduktion / Euro America Produzioni Cinematografiche

Arrow Video Dual Format Blu-ray and DVD Edition / FCD777 / Released 29 April 2013 / Cert: 15 / 1.78:1 / Colour / High Definition Blu-ray (AVC 1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of three versions of the film: Gli orrori del castello di Norimberga (98mins): Bava’s original version with Italian audio, Baron Blood (98mins): The European Export Version with English audio, and, on home video for the first time, Baron Blood (91mins): the re-edited and re-dubbed AIP Version with alternate score by Les Baxter. Three audio versions: Optional Italian, European English and AIP English re-dub and re-score LPCM 2.0 / English SDH subtitles for both English versions and a new English subtitle translation of the Italian audio / Region B/2

The Name of the Doctor
BBC One HD
18 May 2013, 7.00pm

The review contains spoilers

The problem with The Name of the Doctor is that, nostalgia and fan service aside, it feels familiar and comes across as an exercise in confirming some already astute guesses about Clara's mystery. The revelation about her is rather anticlimactic when it comes. Let's also get one thing out of the way. Anyone remotely believing the episode would reveal the Doctor's name was on a hiding to nothing. The Doctor's greatest secret isn't his name and I'm sure Moffat understands that, after all the attempts he's made to reinstate mystery into the Doctor's character and origins, an episode where the Doctor tells us his real name would be utterly counterproductive. He will always be Doctor Who?

So what is his greatest secret if it isn't his name? That he's already dead, at least in the physical sense, and what we're watching are the traces of a life already lived? Yes and no. It does seem rather apt given the funereal atmosphere in which The Name of the Doctor unfolds but the big secret is he's been hiding an illegitimate incarnation all these years. There's a mad man in the family attic and John Hurt's playing him.

This isn't a barnstorming, freewheeling, carnivalesque episode in the manner of The Pandorica Opens or The Wedding of River Song and is the polar opposite to the double episode, end of season jamborees of the previous showrunner. It's quite a sombre reflection in the show's 50th anniversary year despite the casual dropping in of other previous incarnations.

Yes, there's a giddy excitement attached to the opening sequence, a typical Moffat usage of in medias res where the narrative's linearity is rearranged to open an episode with action rather than exposition, and where we see Clara stalking the First Doctor, conveniently in Victorian attire rather than what's passing for regulation Gallifrey gear, as he bundles Susan (we assume) into a TARDIS and absconds from Gallifrey. 'Sorry, you're about to make a very big mistake,' Clara warns the old man. It's the best bit in a series of encounters, designed to be a crowd pleasing montage of Clara trying to 'save the Doctor' in the first seven of his incarnations, but which are ultimately hampered by some terrible green screen effects designed to integrate Clara into some of the footage. A lovely idea not quite as well executed as it should have been.

All this is achieved via reconfigured clips (The Invasion of Time, Dragonfire, The Five Doctors, Arc of Infinity) and new footage - the Sixth Doctor out of focus behind Clara in the TARDIS corridors and the Second scuttling off (courtesy of some of The Five Doctors) through a beach front lined with palm trees. So Clara, rather like Scaroth in City of Death, is scattered through time, along the Doctor's own time stream, always 'born to save the Doctor'. Moffat will return to this sequence again later in the episode with some interesting modifications, particularly in the scene with the First Doctor.

First of all is a return to the London of 1893 and Vastra's encounter with a Ripper-style multiple murderer who has somehow been bequeathed with the space-time coordinates of Trenzalore, a planet with the doom laden reputation for 'the fall of the Eleventh' according to Dorium in The Wedding Of River Song. Why a Victorian sociopath, who burbles in rhyming couplets, has been given the privilege of that information is never really explained. 'There are whispers, if you know how to listen,' suggests Clarence (Michael Jenn) picking up the goss through what must be the Victorian equivalent of social media. The self-explanatory DVD extra Clarence and the Whispermen may offer some expansion on his relationship to the Great Intelligence's verse spouting, top hatted undertakers. For now, you just have to accept the criminal is at the centre of the trap.

'to travel where the Doctor ends'

Vastra, alerted to the Doctor's secret which 'he will take to his grave and it is discovered', arranges a conference call, a Victorian form of Skype induced through drugs and a séance that can call up River Song from her afterlife in the library's hard drive. There's a flavour of Mark Gatiss's ripe exploration of the age in The Crimson Horror in this sequence, tapping into the vogue for Spiritualism and the Victorian obsession with ghosts and their ability to transcend time and space and the boundaries between life and death.

If The Name of the Doctor is about anything then death, or the suspension of it, is central and as a ghost story writ large the episode plays with echoes, memories, identities, Otherness, physical and spiritual reconfiguration. The Whispermen, the ghostly avatars of the Great Intelligence, are the marginal and uncanny monsters so typical of Moffat, ectoplasmically haunting both the 'real' world and the drug-induced subconscious realm of the conference.

As Vastra commands, it is a gathering of the women, despite Strax's inclusion as a Sontaran who isn't able to tell girls from boys or vice versa, and their deliberations in a faux TARDIS console room (it has a desktop theme after all) certainly underline how Spiritualism or mediumship was directly connected to female sexuality, identity and authority. The conference call may well be a riff on the table tapping repressions of the 19th century but it also indicates Moffat's desire to both complete River Song's story, to exorcise her phantom presence and offer a coda to her demise in the library, and authenticate Clara's role 'to travel where the Doctor ends'. Basically, they've all been invited to the funeral.

Moffat again calls back to Asylum of the Daleks and Clara as 'soufflé girl' as she tries to perfect the recipe. There is foreshadowing, of course, of Clara's eventual destiny and identity in her declaration of 'This time I will be 'soufflé girl' while she prepares pudding for Artie and Angie. The space and time bending séance can even stretch to posting letters from 1893 and inducing her, via this soporific communication, to drop in on the women's meeting in the altered states of the unconscious, the time travel of dreams.

Like a Méliès illusion, River appears in a puff of smoke, the dangerous femme fatale or witch who can, even in her undead state, manipulate the environment and change tea into champagne. She's become less of an archaeologist and more of a magical figure than ever before in this realm and even Vastra's not averse to sprinkling magic dust in the air to create visions of Clarence and the space-time coordinates for the internment of the Doctor on Trenzalore. For Moffat's fantastical sleight of hand, Clarke's Three Laws are doing overtime because its seems the ghostly River can physically exist enough to slap Vastra and chuck champagne over Strax.

And River's right, 'he doesn't like endings' and the Doctor certainly doesn't want to see the damage. Crossing your own time line and arriving at your own grave on Trenzalore is not something a time traveller does every day. Much of The Name of the Doctor echoes The Five Doctors and its own journey to the Death Zone and the phantom haunted tomb of Rassilon as well as the funereal tone of Logopolis and its suggestion of endings and beginnings. Even as the image of Richard E Grant's Dr. Simeon hovers in the air and intones 'his friends are lost for ever more, unless he goes to Trenzalore', we're not that far away from the old Gallifreyan nursery rhyme 'Who unto Rassilon's Tower will go, must choose above, between, below.'

Rather like The Crimson Horror, it's a full ten minutes into the episode before the Eleventh Doctor makes an appearance proper. The Doctor as myth or legend is central to Moffat's concept of the series, his affect on the universe and its inhabitants crucial to the character's heroic function. Even his physical absence now drives the narrative and this compliments the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecies developed around him and Clara in the episode. The cold hand of death seems to engulf the Doctor when he discusses his dead wife River with Clara. He knows going to Trenzalore is going to be traumatic because it means at some point in the future he will be dead and this appointment means he's literally going to his grave. Early retirement, watercolours and beekeeping never stood a chance.

Perhaps the reason why the TARDIS resents Clara is because she takes the Doctor where he shouldn't go. The ship is certainly reluctant to travel to Trenzalore and Clara has to be telepathically linked to her to programme in the coordinates. Even worse, the TARDIS herself is about to visit the monument to her own death. Like the Doctor, she doesn't ever want to go there and start leaking her dimensions everywhere. But as the Doctor observes, he has to go and save his friends because 'they cared for me during the dark times and never questioned me, judged me, they were just... kind', recalling his withdrawal from life after the departure of the Ponds in The Snowmen. Briefly, we see the humanity beneath the 'lonely god' who dominates the universe.

Dorium was, of course, spouting metaphors. 'The fall of the Eleventh' is surely as much the result of turning off the anti-gravs on a TARDIS and plunging to the surface of Trenzalore as it is the Great Intelligence's vengeful scheme to reverse all of the Doctor's triumphs and victories through a casual bit of grave robbing. Such is the power of the forced landing, one of the TARDIS windows shatters. It's a neat visual note not only to the future TARDIS lying in ruins but also prefigures the Doctor's lives broken into pieces, the Great Intelligence becoming bits of confetti in the process and Clara's rescue attempt that scatters her across all of time and space. 

The Doctor reminds Clara, 'my grave is potentially the most dangerous place in the universe' and the evidence is hard to deny. The TARDIS's own demise has created a vast edifice on the planet surface, where 'the bigger on the inside starts leaking' and has created a monument to the Doctor's final battle and a marker for his grave. The TARDIS has become a variation of the Dark Tower where the passageways are filled with haunting memories, recollections dragged back to the surface by the spilling out of time and dimensions. Moffat can never resist those sleight of hand touches and somehow River Song's grave is marked, an impossibility which just happens to be the secret entrance to his own tomb. Did the Doctor put it there before his own death? How does River really know it is a false grave?

A powerful scene where Vastra implores Strax to help her bring Jenny back from the dead (another example of how Moffat shifts his characters from living to dead and back again - see River, Rory, Strax, Simeon and many others as examples) ushers in the spectres at the feast proper as Dr Simeon and his doppelgangers join the other characters in the shell of the TARDIS sepulchre, beautifully captured by the brief pan up, following Vastra's gaze, to the huge 'police box' sign. However, at this point, the finale starts to emulate the The Big Bang, a series of conversations between foes in a single location as shorthand for 'epic', and Dr Simeon's return as villain is nothing more than an opportunity to reflect the Doctor's importance.

'The girl who died he tries to save, she'll die again inside his grave.' 

Beyond the Time War, Simeon claims the future Doctor is a 'cruel tyrant', a 'vessel of the final darkness', a 'blood soaked' warrior familiar to the Sycorax, Solomon (an acknowledgement of the much discussed Doctor's cold blooded attitudes in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship), the Daleks and the Cybermen. As the Great Intelligence seeks revenge through Dr Simeon, the story takes the morality of the Doctor's actions, his 'darker hues', and extends this into what may be the Doctor's future as 'the Beast', as 'storm' and, most intriguingly, the Valeyard, that evil distillation of the Doctor between his twelfth and final incarnations seen in The Trial of a Time Lord.

Sadly, Simeon only appears in the flesh, as it were, twenty minutes into the episode and then only confronts the Doctor five minutes beyond that. Villains are rather incidental to Moffat's concept and merely underline how central the Doctor is rather than existing as characters in their own right. It's ironic that Simeon and his Whispermen are depicted just as insubstantially as they are written on the page.

Despite this, when Simeon rips his face apart the episode offers us one of its few unsettling moments. A shame really as it is a waste of Grant's talents and the Whispermen, while well executed, are a recognisable riff on the Trickster from The Sarah Jane Adventures or The Gentlemen from Buffy-The Vampire Slayer and probably won't warrant a return. Monsters are not Moffat's real concern.

There's also a striking, genuinely frightening moment when the ghost of River Song is suddenly ripped asunder by one of the Whispermen party chasing the Doctor and Clara through the catacombs of his grave. Clara's statement of 'I hate catacombs' also recalls the Doctor's reaction to similar in Time of Angels. Their journey returns us to The Five Doctors and the hallucinatory forces within the Dark Tower as Clara begins to remember her previous climb through a wrecked TARDIS and the Doctor's revelation to her about the other dead versions of her he's met. Memories, always the prime mover in Moffat's narratives, are unsurprisingly present and correct and the self-fulfilling prophecy of her deaths is underlined by the Whispermen: 'The girl who died he tries to save, she'll die again inside his grave.'

Late to his own funeral, the Doctor refuses to utter his name to open the tomb. Under a heart-stopping threat to the others, it is the ghostly River who relents and telepathically opens the door. The name is uttered but we never hear it and the tease of the title is, of course, subverted by Moffat. However, I did wonder if the telepathic field of the TARDIS is still operating why don't the others hear her send his name too?

And thus we get to the crux of the matter. The Great Intelligence's desire to rewrite all of the Doctor's journeys, to poison the tree in the garden at the centre of the ruined TARDIS, a place echoing with the voices of the past. The Doctor's life is an open wound, a path from 'from Gallifrey to Trenzalore', including the days he hasn't lived yet. And of course, Clara must become 'soufflé girl' and correct the Great Intelligence's action.

We're taken back to the opening, pre-titles sequence. Instead of Clara, we see Dr Simeon shadowing the Doctors and the death of the Eleventh Doctor at the Dalek asylum and in London battling the snowmen. Just as in The Pandorica Opens, the removal of the Doctor from the universe sees the stars going out, again. Any one got a shilling for the meter? On a personal level, it's far more interesting to see how this affects and disintegrates friendships - Jenny vanishes and Strax turns against Vastra.

And of course, Clara must become the self-fulfilling 'soufflé girl' and correct the Great Intelligence's action by saving the Doctor throughout his timeline, a million copies of her created from the sacrifice of the original. The recipe rather than the end product. How exactly she saves him, how he's never seen her in the last 50 years popping up by all his previous incarnations, how he never remembered her before until now and why she exists to do this are the big questions. They don't really get answered.

Will the Restoration Team now kindly go back through the classic series and please insert footage of Clara into every story because, quite honestly, this is a rather contrived way of explaining her mystery and introduces something of a rogue element into the Doctor's history which, for me, doesn't ring true. The mystery is her character and without this what will Clara become? No doubt, the ubiquity of time travel, now as normal as catching the number 17 bus in the series, will sort it all out and Clara's eavesdropping will not matter a jot. 

She stands in front of the First Doctor and tells him which TARDIS to steal, which sort of undoes the gorgeous poetry of Idris's authority in The Doctor's Wife declaring she 'wanted to see the Universe so I stole a Time Lord and I ran away', and Clara's born, lives and dies a thousand times (Rory, you're well off out of it, love). As Clara's story arc folds back on itself, we also get the more satisfying closure of the River song arc. I wonder if Moffat will bring her back again as a ghostly form?

It began all that time ago in the library with 'Hello, sweetie' and now it ends, appropriately with 'Goodbye, sweetie'. It's a great scene between Alex Kingston and Matt Smith which appropriately suggests the Doctor has learned to appreciate the endings River seeks and as a result he's determined to ensure Clara's resurrection. Mind you, we know that she does get rescued. We've seen her in the prequel She Said, He Said that takes place after Trezalore so all this expectation in the narrative is the least surprising thing about it. The big friendly reset button has already been pressed, again.

Finally, the much mooted ending - the so called 'game changer' - which had the BBC with its knickers in a twist when it seemed the episode had leaked early on Blu-ray. I don't know why they were so worried. If you've been following the news stories about the 50th Anniversary filming you'll know full well who it is standing with his back to the camera in that end sequence as Clara tumbles to her safety. 'Introducing John Hurt as the Doctor' is probably going to freak out many viewers I suspect and it's certainly great to see an actor of his calibre in the series and posing another question - just which Doctor is this? - to replace the ones not quite answered in full in The Name of the Doctor.

I could have done without the extras in various Doctor costumes swishing by the camera as Clara recovered from her splintering into a million pieces but clearly anniversary fever demanded it. Just how did the original Clara survive a self-fulfilling time paradox and travelling down the Doctors' time streams without being torn to shreds then? In a not entirely original move, it is purported her faith in the Doctor allows her to survive and the symbolic leaf, the first page of Clara's story and the emblem of rebirth from a million deaths conjured up by the Doctor as he searches for her, provides her with the impetus.

The Name of the Doctor serves the cast well. The return of the Paternoster gang is welcome and fortunately their trials leave them intact for future appearances. Matt Smith and Jenna-Louise Coleman are good and transform all the standard Moffat tropes into something which does have its gripping moments. Director Saul Metzstein shows how capable he is with his visuals and considering he had only a handful of sets to shoot on he makes the production values go a long way in a what is quite a low key episode.

For me the weakness is Moffat's script. I feel like I've seen variations of it many times before and it trots out the same old time paradoxes and self-fulfilling prophecies we've had since 2010 to such an extent that the series is in danger of falling into a rut if they continue to be employed. Although it's been a patchy season the best episodes this year have definitely come from other writers. The Name of the Doctor is neither new nor surprising in the Moffat canon.

Mario Bava's first horror film in colour, I tre volti della paura (The Three Faces of Fear aka Black Sabbath, 1963), followed the making of La ragazza che sappeva troppo (aka The Girl Who Knew Too Much) in 1962 and was shot at Cinecitta and Titanus Studios. An anthology consisting of three tales, Bava's film joined an impressive tradition of earlier films utilising a sequence of stories, written either by a single or multiple authors, which were often individually handled by name directors.

In 1932, Edmund Goulding's Grand Hotel and Paramount's anthology If I Had a Million, a portmanteau film helmed by seven directors, provided early Hollywood examples of this format and it continued into the late 1940s with Tales of Manhattan (1942) and Flesh and Fantasy (1943). European directors popularised it in the 1950s. Roberto Rossellini directed segments in several anthology films, including L'Amore (1948), Les Sept péchés capitaux (1952), Siamo donne (1953), and Amori di mezzo secolo (1954). I tre volti della paura or Black Sabbath emerged just after Boccaccio '70 (1962) the Italian anthology film directed by Mario Monicelli, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti and Vittorio De Sica.

British studios, such as Gainsborough and Ealing, had followed suit. W. Somerset Maugham's short stories provided material for a trilogy of anthologies, Quartet (1948) and the two sequels Trio (1950) and Encore (1951). Ealing's Dead of Night (1945) is also regarded as one of the first significant examples of the horror portmanteau film, although this tradition had a long track record, starting with Richard Oswald's silent Unheimliche Geschichten (1919). It was British company Amicus who really put the horror anthology on the map with a string of successful films in the 1960s and 1970s, including Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1964), Torture Garden (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1970), Tales from the Crypt (1972), Asylum (1972), Vault of Horror (1973) and From Beyond the Grave (1974).

... a brilliant display of Bava's talents as director and editor

After the huge success of Black Sunday in 1960, Bava's relationship with American International Pictures continued to develop. The company had distributed Black Sunday in the US and were keen to support Bava's next projects, even to the extent of trying to emulate the success of that film by re-titling I tre volti della paura to Black Sabbath for the lucrative US market.

Bava's spoof Hitchcockian thriller La ragazza che sappeva troppo (aka The Girl Who Knew Too Much) may well have paved the way for the full development of the Giallo genre but it also signalled an increasing demand from AIP producers James Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff to alter Bava's material and make it more suitable for their profitable juvenile, drive-in audiences. Retitled Evil Eye, the US version of the film removed the original's references to marijuana and included additional material shot by Bava to lighten the film for English territories. It was a portent of things to come.

Bava's spectacular use of Technicolor was evident in Ercole al centro della terra (aka Hercules at the Center of the Earth / Hercules in the Haunted World, 1961) and The Girl Who Knew Too Much would be his last film in black and white before he applied his skills with colour to Black Sabbath, a project AIP were keen for him to do after their success with the Roger Corman Poe film cycle which had started with The Fall of the House of Usher in 1960.

Veteran horror star Boris Karloff, enjoying something of a career revival through Corman's films Tales of Terror (1962) and The Raven (1963), was under contract with AIP and, in their deal with Bava, he not only took on a role in the full blown Gothic horror of 'The Wurdulak', one of the three tales in Black Sabbath, but also acted as host for the film. This was something television audiences would have been familiar with after seeing him introduce two weekly anthology series, Thriller (NBC, 1960-62) and Out of This World (ABC, 1962).

The film's screenplay by Bava, Alberto Bevilacqua and Marcello Fondato incorporates three stories, 'The Telephone', allegedly a very loose homage to an 1887 short story by Guy du Maupassant called The Horla, 'The Wurdulak' based mostly on the novella The Family of the Vourdalak by Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy but also inspired by another du Maupassant story called Fear, and 'The Drop of Water' attributed to an Ivan, rather than Anton, Chekhov but, as Tim Lucas reveals, is actually based on a storyBetween Three and Three Thirty by P. Kettridge, the nom de plume of Franco Lucentini. Black Sabbath was shot between February and March 1963, with 'The Wurdulak' the last sequence to be completed at Titanus Studios and joining Karloff in its cast was Mark Damon, the star of AIP's The Fall of the House of Usher and uncredited director of The Pit and the Pendulum.

For audiences of the time, 'The Telephone' is quite bold in placing the lesbian relationship between Rosy (Michele Mercier) and Mary (Lydia Alfonsi) centre stage. There is a tension between the two which underlines the subterfuge Mary uses in order to gain access to Rosy's bed. Rosy's profession is not entirely clear in the film, although her suggested role as call-girl is highly appropriate in how the central symbol of the film, the red and black telephone, pulls together the various competing figures for Rosy's attentions. While Mary is pretending to be Rosy's pimp Frank by disguising her voice over the phone, Frank (Milo Quesada) has already started to stalk Rosy since his release from prison.

The tale is a chamber piece, accentuated by a detailed and modishly ornate setting, heightening the claustrophobic atmosphere, exploring Rosy's self doubt and fear and the deceptions unleashed by Mary. The phone, a recurring Bava symbol, is also part of the sequence's aural power, opening the story with its incessant ringing as Bava's camera prowls around the apartment and eventually comes to rest on Rosy's bed. The bed is where Rosy will eventually be seduced by Mary, who accomplishes this after drugging her, and where Frank will attempt to murder her. Sexual desire and its consequences, its terrors, is at the heart of the film.

Also note how characters affect the atmosphere in the film, shifting in and out of lightness and darkness. Rosy arrives and turns all the lights on in the apartment. She receives the threatening phone calls, seemingly from Frank, and immediately rushes round the apartment and turns all the lights off. Mary arrives and completes this process as she re-establishes her relationship with Rosy in an apartment they used to share. Female power is also divided between the two and is often represented in symmetrical shots.

The salacious phone calls and a brief shot of eyes peering through blinds at the window suggest a voyeurism which is exaggerated by Bava's high angles, sensuously circling camera and shifting points of view. The aural nagging of the phone is joined by ticking clocks and departing footsteps outside the apartment. Sound in I tre volti della paura becomes a vital component in the film as an adjunct to unseen terrors.

The cleverest element of the film is the puzzle about who is calling Rosy. Which of the calls are Frank and which are from his impostor Mary? Frank is clearly observing her (the eyes at the window must be him) because he calls her and berates her for hiding her jewels and money under the sofa. Mary's calls are simply a form of extreme blackmail to get herself invited over to spend the night with Rosy. Revenge takes two forms: Frank seeking his after Rosy handed him over to the police and Mary wanting hers because Rosy has rejected her sexual advances. Neither succeeds. The AIP version removes the lesbian subplot and changes Frank's escape from prison into a supernatural haunting, robbing the original of its quiet subversion.

Trademark elements of the Giallo abound. Frank's voyeurism, captured in those eyes peering through the blinds, and Mary's gloved hand holding a knife in close up would become abiding symbols of Dario Argento's thrillers and the Giallo's combination of violence and eroticism is imbued in the male-female power exchanges worked through both the lesbian subtext of Mary as strong dominatrix and Rosy as her submissive, weak counterpart and where Frank later mistakes Mary for Rosy before he strangles her with a stocking. These are also Hitchcockian elements too and the segments reflects the director's work in Rope (1948), Rear Window (1954), Psycho (1960) and anticipates the full-blooded Giallo films to come from Bava and his successor Argento.

At the centre of this tightly paced claustrophobia, luridly highlighted by golds, reds and purples, is a twitchy, trembling and effective central performance from Michele Mercier as Rosy, whose fear escalates throughout the twenty five minute duration. It culminates in her tearful shock as, from her point of view, the camera trails across the dead bodies of her two 'romantic' attachments, with the red and black phone in the foreground off the hook, disconnected, and only the ticking of the clock to accompany her. Wedded to this is an appropriately sultry, jazzy score from Roberto Nicolosi.

... a searing examination of patriarchal power and deep rooted familial bonds

In direct contrast 'The Wurdulak' transports us back to the non-specific Eastern European setting of Black Sunday but this time restages its vampire tale in lush Technicolour. A wandering nobleman Count Vladimir d’Urfe (the handsome Mark Damon) stumbles across a headless corpse on his journey and he takes it and the ornate knife sticking in its back to a nearby house. There he discovers the knife's origins, belonging to the missing father of a family cowering in dread and fear in the misty forests.

Giorgio (Glauco Onorato) recognises his father Gorca’s knife and relates to Vladimir the terrible curse they fear has befallen him since he left home to seek revenge on a local clansman turned vampire Alibeq. Before leaving he warned them if he had not returned by the stroke of midnight after a period of five days then he would be a vampire, or wurdulak, too. As Vladimir acquaints himself with Gorca's sons Giorgio and Pietro (Massimo Righi), beautiful daughter Sdenka (Susy Andersen), Giorgio's wife Maria (Rika Dialina) and his baby son Ivan, Gorca (Boris Karloff) returns home.

'The Wurdulak' is a searing examination of patriarchal power and deep rooted familial bonds, bonds extending beyond life and into death as Gorca patiently claims the members of his family anew through a very different set of blood ties, the blood line of the undead. Resisting this subjugation is Vladimir who desperately attempts to rescue Sdenka from the clutches of the wurdulak and its plague but because of his own promise of undying love to Sdenka is recruited to their ranks.

Bava's mise-en-sceneis fullsome and rich, a brooding Gothic tale viewed though skeletal trees, banks of mist and crumbling ruins, immediately recalling the ancestral resting place of Asa in Black Sunday. Painted in vibrant shades of pale green and lavender, perhaps indicating the sickness and corruption threatening to swamp Gorca's family, Bava's control of the imagery is superlative. It underscores some specifically unsavoury elements nestling in the bosom of a superstitious, fearful clan too.

When Gorca returns home after the stroke of midnight and brandishes the head of the dead villain Alibeq, his sons and daughter encounter a supernatural incarnation of their father, the ultimate patriarch who will completely deny them free will. Maternal longing and female desire will be manipulated by Gorca, to conquer and subjugate any attempt by Maria and Sdenka to defy male dominance.

At the centre is the chilling undercurrent of incest and paedophilia as Gorca overtly covets his little grandson Ivan, then kidnaps him and transforms him into a keening undead spirit able to drive his mother to despair and murder, injuring her husband as he prevents her from opening the door. The scenes of the boy begging to be allowed into the house after rising from his grave are disturbing, his wailing another use of sound to render the uncanny on a soundtrack already smothered in howling wind.

Karloff is quite exceptional here, a looming, gimlet eyed monster pinching the cheek of his innocent grandson one minute and then draining his son Pietro of life the next. This is Bava's signature theme of the dysfunctional family locked into its ancestral urges writ large, quite unsentimentally so, and comes complete with familiar visual decoration. The face at the window, a key Bava motif, is repeated when first Gorca glares through frosted up glass at his anxious family and then, at the conclusion of the film, as the vampire clan close in on Sdenka and Vladimir.

In the end sentimentality and desire are eradicated in favour of ancient family repressions and 'The Wurdulak' is striking as one of the first cinematic vampire tales in which the Van Helsing savant does not appear in the midst of these superstitions to rid the land of vampires and rather shows, in a bleak ending, their infestation as a triumph over reason and logic. Memorable images abound: the bobbing decapitated head of Alibeq hanging from the trees; Ivan begging to be allowed in; Sdenka cornered by her own vampirised family in the ruins, floating towards the camera and bathed in a greenish hue.

Bava saves the best until last. 'The Drop of Water' returns us to a similar psychological frontier described in 'The Telephone' and examines another lone female protagonist driven mad by supernatural revenge. It's also one of Bava's most baroque cinematic exercises, with the down at heel setting of the crumbling house of a dead medium populated by mewling cats and dolls, its chipped rococo and mirrored hallways dripping in purple and green light. Bava fans will find its gaudy surrealism a prefiguring of the house in Kill Baby, Kill (1966).

Into this haunted palace comes Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux), an irritated nurse called out late at night to administer to the deceased body of a medium. Temptation gets the better of her and she steals a ring from the corpse's finger. The corpse is, however, rather unwilling to part with it and rises from the dead to claim her belongings. Bava luxuriates in the details, giving objects an unnatural charge with his sickly lighting schemes and not shying away from the bulging eyed, grimacing visage of he corpse who, by the end of the film, has transfered her state to Helen.

'The Drop of Water' conjures up a terrifying, naggingly claustrophobic atmosphere and uses sound to turn up the tension and symbolise the presence of supernatural revenge in the buzzing of flies and the constant, echoing drip of water. Helen's greed and class snobbery underscore her unhealthy nonchalance for the dead until she transgresses and is haunted by the medium, her tatty rooms seemingly rotting on the inside as she descends into paranoia. Pierreux is superb, with Helen at first bored and distracted and by the end terrified out of her wits and condemned to strangle herself.

When the repossession occurs, the corpse glides out of the dark, caught between pink and green highlights, its doll-like state mechanically reaching out for Helen, condemning her for her questionable morals and meting out an apt punishment. 'The Drop of Water' gets under your skin and briefly allows you entrance into a twilight world of decay and retribution, lashed by storms, populated by a corpse that won't lie down and where one woman's conscience is the soundtrack of a dripping tap. Roberto Nicolosi's score is also perfect, a high pitched organ and rumbling drum complimenting the phantasmagoria. 

Bava's black sense of humour also pervades the film and with great charm he closes the three tales with a coda featuring Karloff again, in his Gorca costume and make-up, pulling the camera back to reveal the tricks of the trade, the magician showing up his sleight of hand as we see Karloff astride a dummy horse and technicians running around with branches to simulate the forest through which he was riding. AIP hated this ending, didn't use it in their re-cut of Black Sabbath and toned down the ending of 'The Drop of Water' and the gorier elements of 'The Wurdulak.' Bava might pull the rug from under your feet with his tongue in cheek coda, a clever admission of cinema's ability to create illusions, but it never diminishes the power of the three tales in I tre volti della paura, a film which offers a brilliant display of his talents as director and editor.

About the transfers
The Italian version I tre volti della paura is a very strong presentation and cinematographer Ubaldo Terzano's lush colour palette is well produced from the original 35mm internegative. 'The Drop of Water', in which he floods the image with bold red, pink and green lighting, is particularly opulent, and the 'The Wurdulak' features some gorgeous looking exteriors staged in typically ornate style by Bava in the studio, with ruins plunged into deep blues and greens contrasted with the warm yellows, reds and browns of the cottage interiors. The domestic details of 'The Telephone' are also a visual delight with purples, greens (Mary's outfit is a highlight) and reds standing out. Overall, Bava's and Terzano's mastery of Technicolour really shines. Detail is often very good, particularly in faces, clothes and objects and good contrast, which can often be variable throughout the film, also manages to add depth to the image. The transfer does not appear to have been meddled with as far as grain is concerned, is very clean and the viewing experience is fluid and film-like.

AIP's re-cut and re-scored Black Sabbath, here reproduced from a 35mm interpositive, is inconsistent in the reproduction of such lurid colour and contrast levels are boosted, with the black levels looking deeper. Certainly in 'The Telephone' Rosy's apartment doesn't feel as as warm and the colour density of Mary's green outfit isn't as eye popping. The interiors of 'The Wurdalak' have better shadow definition and again move to a colder colour palette. It's a darker, grainier image overall but detail reproduction is still good. Occasionally, there is softening, blurring, picture instability and some evident damage in the form of scratches and blobs.

Although the packaging declares this to be 1.66:1 it seems more fitting to describe it as a 1.86:1 image and on Black Sabbath it looks as if this has either been slightly stretched horizontally or slightly zoomed in. The LCPM mono audio on both transfers is pretty solid but there is some very occasional hiss and distortion on I tre volti della paura.

Special features:
Audio Commentary with Bava biographer and expert Tim Lucas
Another very welcome chat track from Lucas who provides masses of information about the film, its production, its cast and Bava's own consideration of its themes. He also discusses the changes made by AIP, Karloff's role in the film and his relationship with Bava and the literary inspirations for each of the stories.
Introduction to Black Sabbath (2:53)
Author and critic Alan Jones briefly sets the scene for these three tales of terror. Bava's favourite film apparently and Karloff's last great performance in 'one of the screen's best realised Gothic epics'. It was allegedly so disturbing that AIP cut the film and reordered the tales for its US distribution.
A Life In Film - An Interview with star Mark Damon (21:01)
A lovely retrospective interview, made by Anchor Bay in 2007, wherein Damon takes us from his early days running amusement parks and being approached by Groucho Marx, who thought he had potential to be an actor, to his hugely successful international production career. Groomed by Fox he spent a number of years starring as a juvenile in teenage pictures but after the arrival of James Dean and Marlon Brando that changed. He approached Roger Corman about adapting the Poe books and not only starred in The Fall of the House of Usher but also directed The Pit and the Pendulum. He sought the freedom of working in Italy after being invited to Rome by Visconti and made westerns, sword and sandal and spy films. He allegedly introduced Clint Eastwood to Sergio Leone and, of course, worked with Bava on Black Sabbath.
Twice the Fear (32:13)
A great featurette looking at the differences between the Italian and American International Pictures versions, including the use of alternate takes, different and additional audio tracks, scoring and sound effects and changes in dialogue and editing. This is comprehensively illustrated via split screen and by placing both versions side by side. The Les Baxter music on the first story 'The Telephone' is more prominent, additional shots are featured and an entirely new character is added to the AIP version as is a supernatural element. Mary, the lesbian lover of the Italian version, is retained but all references to her affair with Rosy are excised from the AIP version. In 'The Wurdulak' there are extended scenes, alternate takes, changed lines and boosted audio in the AIP version but the Karloff coda is only present in the Italian version. It's also here that you clearly notice the stretching/zooming on the AIP print too.
International Trailer (3:26)
US Trailer (2:23)
Italian Trailer (3:18)
TV Spot (0:54) and Radio Spot (1:06)
Reversible sleeve
Featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys.
Collector's booklet
Featuring new writing on the film by critic David Cairns, a comparison of the versions of the film by Tim Lucas, and a substantial and fascinating interview with AIP Producer Samuel Z. Arkoff on his experiences of working with Bava, illustrated with original stills and posters.

I tre volti della paura / Black Sabbath
1963
Emmepi Cinematografica / Galatea Film / Alta Vista Film Production / Societé Cinématographique Lyre / Alta Vista Film Production / American International Pictures

Arrow Video Dual Format Blu-ray and DVD Edition / FCD778 / Released 13 May 2013 / Cert: 15 / 1.86:1 / Colour / High Definition Blu-ray (AVC 1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of two versions of the film: I tre volti della paura (92mins): the European version with score by Roberto Nicolosi and Black Sabbath (96mins): the re-edited and re-dubbed AIP version with Les Baxter score, on home video for the first time / Audio: Optional Italian, European English and AIP English re-dub and re-score LPCM 2.0 / English SDH subtitles for both English versions and a new English subtitle translation of the Italian audio / Region B/2

To celebrate two anniversaries this year StudioCanal are this month releasing the two 1960s Dalek films - Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. in honour of the centenary of their star Peter Cushing's birth and the 50th anniversary of the Doctor Who BBC series which spawned the two films. Both films have been extensively restored for their Blu-ray high definition debut.

The two films, produced by Aaru Productions, emerged out of the 'Dalekmania' created by the BBC transmission of Terry Nation's seven-part Doctor Who story The Mutants (aka The Daleks) in December 1963 and its sequel The Dalek Invasion of Earth almost a year later in November 1964. The Daleks were an overnight success in 1963 and ´Dalekmania´, as it was known, was one of the first commercial merchandise booms generated by a TV series. At its peak in 1964, it incorporated everything from sweet cigarettes, games, play suits, clockwork and battery operated toys to the Dalek and Dalek World books co-written by Terry Nation and David Whitaker, soap, slippers, wallpaper and the Go-Go's Christmas 1964 novelty record single, the prophetic 'I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With A Dalek'.

Aaru Productions was formed by Joe Vegoda's Regal International Films to produce films in association with Milton Subotsky and Max J. Rosenberg's company Amicus. New Yorkers Subotsky and Rosenberg had originally established their own partnership with the production of Junior Science educational films made for American television and they had been involved with Eliot Hyman in the first negotiations with Hammer to remake Frankenstein from Subotsky's own script. While Subotsky was a hands on producer, writer and editor, Rosenberg, a financier and lawyer, was very much the silent partner in the company which would eventually become Amicus.

After producing low budget rock 'n' roll films, Rock, Rock, Rock (1956) and Disc Jockey Jamboree (1957) and the exploitation social problem melodramas The Last Mile (1958) and Girl of the Night (1960), they turned their attention to horror after Hammer's The Curse of Frankenstein had revitalised interest in the genre in 1957. Subotsky decided to move to the UK and then produced contemporary witchcraft drama City of the Dead (1960) in association with Vulcan Productions. In 1961, he formed Amicus with Rosenberg and music publishers Franklin Boyd and Cyril Baker, leading to the production of Richard Lester's musical comedy It's Trad, Dad! (1962) featuring a variety of jazz and rock and roll acts and 1963's Just for Fun, a comedy featuring current musical acts, directed by Gordon Flemyng.

Inspired by Ealing's ghost story anthology Dead of Night (1945), Subotsky sold the idea of a portmanteau horror film, in colour, to Paramount after Columbia rejected it as too costly. In May 1964, after two weeks shooting, lack of finance was causing problems and he and Rosenberg enlisted Regal Films International and its managing director Joe Vegoda to co-finance and distribute what would, at the time, be their biggest success, Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1964). Subotsky also claimed a major coup by luring Hammer's dynamic double act Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee to lead the film, which also featured a number of musicians and comedians he'd previously worked with, including Roy Castle, DJ Alan Freeman, Kenny Lynch and jazz legend Tubby Hayes.

Vegoda, aware of television's increasing dominance and how lucrative adapting small screen successes for the cinema had become since Hammer's well-received adaptations of The Quatermass Experiment (1955) and Quatermass II (1957), approached the BBC during the shooting of Dr. Terror's House of Horrors to secure the screen rights to Doctor Who. He was not alone in his thinking as Walt Disney had already approached the BBC in an attempt to secure the rights to the John Lucarotti serial Marco Polo. Attracted by the publicity for the series and the imminent return of writer Terry Nation's creations, he struck a deal with producer Verity Lambert and Nation, securing the rights to the characters and concepts of the seven-part serial The Mutants for one film and an option for a potential sequel for the princely sum of £500.

'It seems a shame William Hartnell didn't do the film because he is so good in the part'

Bringing on board Subotsky and Rosenberg, Vegoda then suggested using his Aaru Productions to finance, make and distribute the film rather than associate it with Amicus's reputation for low budget adult horror. In November 1964, Kinematograph Weekly announced the production of Dr. Who and the Daleks as a 'science fiction comedy' starring Peter Cushing and Roy Castle.

Cushing was an international box office draw, better known to audiences than Doctor Who's television incumbent William Hartnell. It was also highly unlikely that Hartnell would be available to make the film because of the series' own punishing production schedule. Cushing wistfully noted in his memoirs: 'It seems a shame William Hartnell didn't do the film because he is so good in the part. I remember how I felt when they were casting for the film 1984. I was so keen to repeat my TV role but they gave it to Edmund O'Brien instead.'

By the end of 1964, the production was already in its early stages and director Freddie Francis, who had just completed Dr. Terror's House of Horrors and was already directing another horror film for Amicus, The Skull, was being lined up to helm Dr. Who and the Daleks.With a projected budget of £180,000 and Cushing due to take on the titular role three weeks after the completion of The Skull, the film was finally scheduled to begin shooting at Shepperton Studios on 9 March 1965.

Freddie Francis had been announced as director by Daily Cinema in January 1965 and he may have participated in some of the initial casting for the film. Ann Bell, who had appeared with Roy Castle and Cushing in Dr. Terror's House of Horrors was originally announced as playing Barbara alongside Castle as Ian. However, just prior to shooting, Francis had been replaced by Gordon Flemyng, another Amicus alumnus who had directed Just for Fun for them in 1963, and Bell had handed over to Flemyng's choice of Jennie Linden who had, ironically, made her first screen appearance in Francis' Nightmare (1964) for Hammer.

Flemyng then cast the other roles and 11-year-old Robert Tovey was offered the part of Susan after she was screen tested reading Spike Milligan poems. This suited the style of family adventure Subotsky was aiming for in the script he had prepared, with some input from the television series' story editor David Whitaker, after Terry Nation indicated his unavailability to adapt his own serial for the big screen. The script also made changes to the original series' format: Dr. Who was now a homely, eccentric human scientist who invented TARDIS (not the TARDIS), Susan and Barbara were both now his granddaughters and Ian became Barbara's hapless boyfriend. Castle would also provide much of the slapstick comedy injected into the script by Subotsky.

Shooting finally got under way at Shepperton on 12 March 1965 on elaborate sets created by Bill Constable. Some of the first scenes to be shot were on his very effective sets built to represent the petrified forest of Skaro which took up 29,750 feet of space on Stage H, then one of Europe's biggest stages. Flemyng and his director of photography John Wilcox used a combination of bold coloured lighting and anamorphic lenses to suggest the unearthliness of the forest. Stage H also housed the swamp sets and the caves leading into the Dalek city.

These sets also incorporated the Thal's forest camp and along with actors Barrie Ingham, Geoffrey Toone, Michael Coles and Yvonne Antrobus as the blonde, pacifist Thals their ranks were swelled by 30 extras, including stuntmen, male models and Covent Garden porters chosen for their muscular physique. Many of them demanded extra money when they were told to shave their chests and arms in order to facilitate their transformation, via body paint, ornate make-up and blonde wigs, into the beautiful people of Skaro.

The Dalek city interiors took up 18,000 square feet of Stage A and were constructed from a mixture of hardboard and corrugated plastic sheeting sprayed gold and silver. As Subtoksy informed Kinematograph Weekly: 'We intend to make full use of the colour, spectacle and action that make the difference between large and small screen entertainment. One of the things we have to make it different and better is splendour.'

That splendour also came at a cost and the Dalek control room, incorporating a large back projection screen, a rotating series of panels featuring hired-in electronic equipment, smaller screens which showed stock footage of bubbles and flowers, and conspicuous set decoration using lava lamps added an additional £2,500 to the production bill for the Dalek city. The Dalek props were also a major expense. The television series' production team provided Subotsky with technical drawings of the Daleks, designed by Ray Cusick and built for the show by Shawcraft, the props and visual effects company based in Uxbridge.

Aaru approached Shawcraft to build eight new, fully operational 'hero' Dalek props at a cost of £350 each and, following Gordon Flemyng's desire for more colour and spectacle, they were provided with large fenders, large orange lights on their domes, some were given pincers rather than plungers and they sported a range of colourful paint schemes. The Dalek leader was given a black, gold and silver livery, a red Dalek was trimmmed in black and gold and the others given a blue and gold look. For several crowd scenes and the spectacular destruction of the Dalek control room, the Shepperton plaster shop built an additional ten 'dummy' Daleks out of fibreglass, not requiring an operator inside but with fully-poseable limbs and flashing lights.

The original intention was for the 'hero' props to utilise flame throwers but this idea was nipped in the bud for a number of reasons. Subotsky claimed that the BBFC's John Trevelyan advised against using flames if Aaru anted to secure their U certificate for the film while director Gordon Flemyng opted for the solution of using fire extinguishers for the Dalek guns simply because it would have been too expensive optically to incorporate rays or similar effects.

Depicting the innards of a Dalek also raised issues with the BBFC. A Dalek mutant was constructed by the effects department and technician Allan Bryce recalled: 'We made a green, writhing, ukky thing for the inside of the Dalek. Somebody was underneath the creature with their hands inside it, making it writhe. I think it was the editor's decision to cut that... that was an example of the sort of thing you couldn't show in a U certificate film.' Flemyng also corroborated this in his early discussions with the censor about how much of the mutant the film would be allowed to show.

Robert Jewell, Gerald Taylor and Kevin Manser, experienced Dalek operators who had worked on the BBC series were hired, much to Aaru's chagrin at having to spend more money than was necessary for their skills, to operate the 'hero' props and Jewell was paid an extra fee to train new operators.

When Subotsky started to edit the film he was suddenly aware that Flemyng hadn't realised the Daleks' dome lights were intended to flash in synchronisation with their speech, provided by the voices of Peter Hawkins and David Graham via ring modulator. Subotsky was left with a complex editing job where he had to rewrite dialogue during the overdubbing to try and match the sequences of dome lights, leading to some very stilted Dalek exposition in the film.

From filming on the forest sets and Dalek city sets, where the actors and extras had to negotiate the slippery fibreglass slopes leading up to the Dalek city, Ingham amused cast and crew by supplementing Alydon's rousing speech with a rendition from Henry V and Roberta Tovey earned herself a shilling from Flemyng for each first take she completed without error and the moniker 'One-Take Tovey', the schedule then moved on to completing the swamp scenes where the visual effects crew attempted to shoot the tentacle of a mutant which drowned the Thal Elydon. This was abandoned and reshot without showing the mutant.

The climax in the Dalek control room, where their entire command post explodes, was handled by Ted Samuels and his team, including Allan Bryce. They recreated eight of the wall panels and triggered explosions using fireworks and charges with a series of rubber bands hurling wooden balls at the panels to shatter them as the charges went off. Once these scenes were completed, Flemyng then moved on to shoot all of the Earth-based opening of the film, including Bill Constable's radical revisioning of the TARDIS interior which bore no resemblance to the television version. However, Roberta Tovey and Jennie Linden recall shooting the opening of the film first in the schedule so there may be some ambiguity about the order in which the film was shot.

Seven days over schedule, the film completed shooting on 23 April 1965. Subtoksky was already talking to Cushing and Tovey about a sequel when filming came to an end and a number of publicity drives were already in place. Twelve of the Dalek props popped over to Cannes to promote the film and two props were loaned to the BBC as the end of the film's schedule neatly overlapped with the recording of the latest television adventure featuring the Daleks, The Chase. Dr. Who and the Daleks secured its U certificate on 16 June 1965 and the press screening took place on 22 June. Many of the sets were reconfigured for a 'Dalek City' tour which promoted the film in Manchester and Birmingham in July and displays were also mounted in Selfridges, London and in the Liverpool branch of Lewis'during August.

'... so close you can feel their fire' 

Mixed reviews greeted its general release on 25 June with The People enthusing, 'The kids will love it... their parents will find this gigantic schoolboy lark Dalektable' whereas Daily Cinema declared the script was 'juvenile and the direction uninspired' and The Daily Worker attacked the film for its 'Blimpish militarism'. It was a box office hit, perfect summer holiday film viewing, with British Lion reporting the best takings for any film they had previously distributed. A huge merchandising and promotional push ensured that by the end of 1965 it was one of the top 20 box office earners for the year and successful enough to generate a sequel.

Most fans of my generation were probably too young to see Dr. Who and the Daleks on the big screen (I was only two at the time) but for many this really was the first opportunity to see the Daleks in colour on the big screen. For those of us who missed it in 1965, television screenings in 1972 and 1974 introduced us to this very different form of Doctor Who. They offer an indication of how the original television text could be transformed by other media, Subotsky and Flemyng fulfilling their promise by making Dr. Who and the Daleks bold and colourful, where the Techniscope and Technicolor format utterly transforms the black and white terrors of the small screen into a pure slice of 1960s exploitation.

The film also reminds us just how pervasive 'Dalekmania' was in the 1960s, a golden period which sealed the success ofDoctor Who through an overwhelming merchandising profile and one which wouldn't be repeated, arguably, until the return of the series to the small screen in 2005. After a suitably 1960s title sequence, all shimmering and shifting primary colours, it begins in a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek manner with Flemyng's close up of Susan and Barbara reading heavy science books which then pans to Dr. Who indulging in the comic strip adventures of Eagle. There's a sense here of Cushing's own childlike glee and Subotsky's transformation of the grim elements of Nation's script into a more family-friendly adventure.

The emphasis is on fun and Flemyng gets a very twinkly performance from Cushing, often quite an understated one, and very different from the curmudgeonly, abrasive television Doctor played by William Hartnell. The spectacle is also leavened with some trade mark buffoonery from Roy Castle, again a version of Ian in direct contrast to the heroic school teacher of the original, with plenty of falling over and bumping into doors injected into the film as ad-libs from Castle.

The major attractions here are colour and spectacle and Flemyng's use of the widescreen frame. When TARDIS lands on Skaro, he captialises on the vast forest set and gets an enormous sense of scale and colour. He uses well designed long shots, overhead shots and some striking low angle shots of the Daleks and the outskirts of the Dalek city and shoots through objects, trees and parts of Daleks. He even gets some cracking hand held shots in here and there - Susan's journey back to the TARDIS from the Dalek city - and some unusual point of view shots - a big close up of Ian bathing his face in the swap taken from under the water.

On that score, the film remains visually pleasing and attractive, as a magical side-step in the Doctor Who canon that still provides unsophisticated, big screen family adventure par excellence. It may lack the grittiness of the original serial, downplaying its emphasis on the Daleks' obsession with racial purity and dedication to a policy of genocide in favour of the quest narrative, a basic treatise on good and evil and the nature of heroism, but it more than makes up for that with Subotsky's notion of 'splendour'. The era's anxieties about the nuclear age may be submerged but the Daleks have never really looked better, bursting onto the screen as true 1960s icons, and only recently has the television series captured a fraction of their scale and colour as seen in these cinema incarnations.

Sources:
'The company of friends' profile of Amicus, Denis Meikle, Doctor Who Magazine Spring Special, 1995
'Dr. Who and the Daleks' profile, Marcus Hearn, Doctor Who Magazine Spring Special, 1995
'Dr. Who and the Daleks' Archive Extra, Andrew Pixley, Doctor Who Magazine 353, 2005

About the transfer
Techniscope was often regarded as a cheaper widescreen format and it can look quite grainy and soft when it comes to DVD presentation. This looks pretty good and retains the appropriate grain while also providing good levels of contrast and detail. Colour is particularly well rendered and costumes such as Barbara's salmon coloured ski pants, Cushing's brown jacket and Susan's light blue anorak benefit greatly from the grade. The sets also look great and the petrified forest, lit in vibrant greens and blues, and the Dalek city's schemes of gold, copper and silver are very well represented. Best of all, the Daleks look tremendous, full of detail and colour. A very pleasant viewing experience which emphasises Gordon Flemyng's visual sensibilities for composing in widescreen. The LPCM 2.0 mono soundtrack handles dialogue, sound effects and Malcolm Lockyer's swing inflected music with great clarity and there is very little evidence of drop outs or crackles and pops.

Special Features
Commentary
Jennie Linden and Roberta Tovey reminisce about working on the film with author Jonathan Sothcott in this track from 2002 and featured on the original DVD release. Plenty of lovely anecdotes and warm memories about working with Peter Cushing and Roy Castle with the two actresses recalling Castle's restless creativity and Cushing's generosity and charm. Linden cites her close friendship with Cushing and his wife Helen and her regular visits to them in Whitstable. They both recount Cushing's fondness for toys and models and his talents as an artist. From discussion the search for the reality in the make believe of the film, the two actresses then continue at length about various scenes in the film, recalling the budget limitations, differences to the television programme, the sets and costumes and lots of running! Well worth a listen.
Dalekmania(57:30)
Fantastic documentary made for direct-to-video release by Lumiere in 1995 by Kevin Davies (The Making of Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and More Than Thirty Years in the TARDIS). This intersperses clips from the films and interviews with the cast into a retro framing story of two children going to the cinema to watch the two Dalek films under the gaze of a cinema commissionaire played by one Michael Wisher. You'll hear from Dr. Who's granddaughters and niece Roberta Tovey, Jennie Linden and Jill Curzon, Thal actors Barrie Ingham and Yvonne Antrobus who all provide smashing personal anecdotes about making the films. Adding further background to the making of the films are Hammer historian Marcus Hearn and he is joined by, the then editor of Doctor Who Magazine, Gary Gillatt to recall the impact the Daleks had on the series and how, through the films, they became a huge phenomenon. This also features archive interviews with Dalek creator Terry Nation, plenty of fond recollection from the cast about working with Peter Cushing and Roy Castle to both of whom the documentary is dedicated. At the time this was released, the films were about to get their first VHS release in widescreen so this does now come across as something of an archive piece. A pity it couldn't be updated.
Restoring Dr. Who and the Daleks (8:26)
A look at how the film was digitally restored for this set. Film and television historian Marcus Hearn returns to provide some background to the shooting of the film in Techniscope and Technicolor and Subotksy's adaptation of the original Nation story. Jo Botting, BFI curator, explains the development and drawbacks of Techniscope as a widescreen format. We then pop over to Deluxe and get an insight into how the restoration was achieved from a 35mm anamorphic interpositive dating back to 1969. Steve Bearman, Tom Barrett and Ian Pickford of Deluxe also discuss the grading of the film, the clean up and stabilising of the image and the restoration of the optical soundtrack. 
Interview with Gareth Owen (7:41)
Owen, author of The Shepperton Story, tells us much about the making of the film but it's a shame he has to trot out the 'wobby scenery, wobbly acting' redundant fallacy about the television series. Apart from that, some interesting stories about Vegoda, Amicus, the formation of Aaru, the impact of 'Dalekmania' and how the Daleks were built for the film (which he attributes entirely to effects man Bert Luxford when Shawcraft built the eight 'hero' Daleks and Luxford likely oversaw the making of the 'dummy' versions at Shepperton).
Stills Gallery
A decent but limited selection of material including black and white publicity shots, a set of lobby cards and the campaign book.
Trailer (3:04)
Enter the world of the Daleks because now they're 'closer then ever before' and 'so close you can feel their fire'.

Dr. Who and the Daleks
Aaru Productions / Regal Films International / British Lion 1965
StudioCanal Blu-ray / Released: 27 May 2013 / Cert: U / Region B / Total Running Time: 82:57 / Colour / Feature Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 / Feature Audio: LPCM Mono 2.0 / English Language / English SDH / Catalogue No: OPTBD2529 

Following the review of Dr. Who and the Daleksour celebration of the centenary of Peter Cushing's birth and the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who continues with the second of the 1960s Dalek films being re-released and restored in high definition by StudioCanal, Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

Roberta Tovey, who played Susan, remembers having conversations with producer Milton Subotsky about Aaru greenlighting a second Doctor Who film as they were completing the filming of Dr. Who and the Daleks in April 1965. Peter Cushing had also indicated he was willing to return to play Dr. Who but, with his usual charm, suggested this would only be possible if Tovey was invited too.

After the box office success of the first film, producer Joe Vegoda was keen to capitalise on 'Dalekmania' and, despite Subotsky briefly contemplating a cinema version of Terry Nation's The Keys of Marinus serial as a sequel, Aaru swiftly announced their second to feature the Daleks, The Daleks Invade Earth, in December of the same year.

Based on the Terry Nation six-part serial The Dalek Invasion of Earth, Subotsky again worked with the series' story-editor David Whitaker to shape the material into a feature length script. Whitaker, who this time would receive an on-screen credit, provided notes and suggestions to a script Subtosky had planned using a series of wall charts.

... the English Ladies Clay Pigeon Shooting Champion of 1961

As this process continued, Vegoda's Regal Films International company was swallowed up by British Lion and Columbia within a joint company called BLC and during a very troubled period for the British film industry when, as Marcus Hearn pointed out, 'the Vietnam war effectively enforced the recall of nearly all American movie investment in this country'.

The British film industry was on the verge of collapse and Vegoda needed to go elsewhere to finance The Daleks Invade Earth. Ever the entrepreneur, Vegoda negotiated one of the first product placement deals for a British film and persuaded Quaker Oats to invest in the production in exchange for some prominent advertising within the film for their cereal Sugar Puffs and a number of tie-in promotions to the tune of £50,000. This boosted the budget to £286,000. 

An attempt to re-engage the cast members of Dr. Who and the Daleks was thwarted after Roy Castle, who had undertaken a cabaret tour, and Jennie Linden both became unavailable. Subotsky substituted the characters of Ian and Barbara with two new roles, a policeman Tom Campbell (borrowing only a name from Nation's character David Campbell in the original which was then repurposed for the film as Ray Brooks' David) and Louise, as a niece and another member of Dr. Who's extended family.

Louise was played by Jill Curzon, the English Ladies Clay Pigeon Shooting Champion of 1961, who was recognisable from her regular role as Norma in the sit-com Hugh and I (BBC, 1962-7) and had also been seen in Disney's Dr Syn, Alias The Scarecrow (1962), 80,000 Suspects (1963) and The Intelligence Men (1965). Providing much of the film's comedy relief, Tom was played by comedy actor Bernard Cribbins, a familiar face to cinema audiences at the time with his roles in Two Way Stretch (1960), The Wrong Arm of the Law (1962), The Mouse on the Moon (1963) Crooks in Cloisters (1964) and Carry On Spying (1964).

He'd also recently worked with Peter Cushing on Hammer's She (1965) and on a one-off comedy special Cribbins for BBC 2 in February 1965. He returned to Doctor Who in 2007 as Donna Noble's grandfather Wilfred Mott. To facilitate Tom's introduction into the film, the opening pre-credit bank raid sequence was concocted by David Whitaker. Joining Cushing, Tovey, Curzon and Cribbins at Shepperton, where the film started shooting on 31 January 1966, were stalwart British actors Andrew Keir as Wyler, Philip Madoc as Brockley, 'the boy with The Knack' Ray Brooks, fresh from his appearance in said Richard Lester film, Roger Avon, Eileen Way and Sheila Steafel.

Now entitled Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D., the first scenes completed were the interiors of TARDIS, now much simplified by art director George Provis and set decorator Maurice Pelling, and the opening bank raid which was staged on streets within the Shepperton backlot. As these were filmed, Provis completed construction of the Dalek saucer sections and interiors on Stage H, including a 150 foot landing base and accompanying ramp.

The rebel attack on the Daleks, their Robomen and the saucer was staged and shot using two of the remaining Dalek props from the first film but also incorporating newly built Daleks courtesy of Shawcraft. There were eight 'hero' machines and these and several 'dummy' versions were upgraded to incorporate changes made to Dalek design in the television series, featuring the iconic slats and mesh collars of their small screen counterparts. All were given black bases and the solid fibreglass fenders used in Dr. Who and the Daleks were replaced with rubber skirting to aid ease of travel on uneven surfaces.

Colour schemes included silver and blue drones with blue headlamps, and leaders in red and silver with red headlamps, black, gold and silver with red headlamps and a gold and black variant with yellow lights. To ease direction, Flemyng often referred to Daleks as 'Bill' or 'Bob' and to cut costs Dalek operators were only offered the same rate as extras on the film, a situation the skilled operators did not agree with, and further dissension occurred when Robert Jewell, an operator who had worked well with director Flemyng on Dr. Who and the Daleks was then hired to train extras to operate the props.

Filming was disrupted by accidents, including an operator hastily rescued from a Dalek prop catching fire after being pushed down a ramp and stunt man Eddie Powell's broken ankle from a fall, after which he was whisked off to hospital, had his foot put in plaster and then returned to the set to complete his scene and continued to supervise the remaining stunt work on the film. Andrew Keir also hurt his wrist during the scene where Wyler and Susan escape in a van and he was shown to punch out the windscreen.

Cushing's ill health also forced Flemyng to reschedule and complete scenes which either did not require his presence, such as Susan and Wyler's betrayal by the two women in the cottage and Tom's comedy encounter with a food machine on the Dalek saucer, or could be patched with inserts once the actor had returned to the set. However, production was halted for two days and Subotsky made an insurance claim for £30,000 as a result.

During Cushing's absence Keir and Tovey completed the filming of Wyler and Susan's flight from London on the Shepperton street backlot which involved their van ramming a patrol of Daleks. Several lightweight 'dummy' props were created for the sequence and, though originally the van was only supposed to hit the 'dummy' versions, during the take two of the 'hero' props were also badly damaged.

Cushing returned, filmed the attempt by the Daleks to 'robotise' Dr. Who, Tom and Craddock (Kenneth Watson), and then joined the rest of the cast on Stage H's forced perspective set of the Thames riverside, complete with Post Office tower and St. Paul's Cathedral on the horizon, to film the arrival of TARDIS and the crew's subsequent capture by Robomen. This also included a stunt sequence depicting Tom hanging overhead from an open door where Cribbins was doubled by Jackie Cooper hanging off the door from a concealed strap around his wrist.

The mine and the Daleks' bomb room were covered next and, after the magnetic forces of the Earth are unleashed in the film's climax, several 'dummy' Daleks were used to show them being dragged into the bomb shaft, supplemented later with model shots using repainted Louis Marx Dalek toys. The film, now running behind schedule for the projected 11 March completion date, rushed to finish at Shepperton, with Flemyng working on Dortmun's (Godfrey Quigley) suicide run against the Daleks on the backlot, more mine sequences with Cribbins and the encounter with Brockley in the nearby woodlands with Cushing, Brooks and Madoc.

'like leftovers from an old film about the London Blitz'

Brockley's death in the hut at the mine complex, exterminated by the eight 'hero' Daleks, was not without its problems. The hut, packed with a large amount of explosives, resulted in a blast which damaged three of the prop Daleks. After the destruction of the mine was shot, cast and crew briefly went on location to a Thames-side jetty by Battersea Church Road where Dr. Who and Tom are confronted by the Dalek rising out of the river.

Flemyng recalled: 'We laid tracks down into the water when the tide was out and positioned a weighted Dalek on them, attached to a line. We then waited for the tide to come in and pulled the Dalek out of the water using the line.' Further location work, for the warehouse scenes where Tom and Dr. Who find a dead Roboman, was undertaken at the Bendy Toys factory in Ashford, Middlesex. This brought principal photography to an end on 22 March 1966. 

Post-production continued with visual effects, dubbing and scoring. Ted Samuels and his effects crew built an impressive motorised model of the Dalek saucer, three feet in diameter and with two contra-rotating rings of windows and lights, which was flown on wires across model sets of the London skyline and the mine workings and mounted on a crane for some scenes flying against natural sky. Scoring duties were passed to Bill McGuffie after Subotsky had made it clear he was not that enthusiastic about Malcolm Lockyer's music for Dr. Who and the Daleks. The film was passed with a U certificate by the BBFC on 10 June.

Even during the film's production, publicity and promotion was in full swing. Comedy actor Dora Bryan had opened a Dalek display in Lewis's Liverpool in February and various papers and periodicals interviewed Jill Curzon about her proficiencies with a shotgun and featured her in some cheesecake glamour shots with full-sized Dalek props and Louis Marx toys. Cushing was interviewd by London Evening News on 3 March and put the record straight for certain naysayers about his career: 'A lot of people have accused me of lowering my standards but I've never felt I'm wasting myself... I've kept working. And surely that's the most important thing.'

Behind the scenes reports appeared on Westward Television's The Film Makers in April, in a May edition of Boy's Own Paper and a Dalek photocall took place in New York, outside the Empire State Building, in a bid to generate interest in the film Stateside. A press show was held on 5 July and a Quaker Oats special promotional screening to the grocery trade took place on 11 and 18 July. To tie-in with this three and half million packets of Sugar Puffs displayed pictures from the film and featured a competition to win 500 battery operated Louis Marx toys and three of the full-size Dalek film props, all boosted by a television commercial and a nationwide tour of two dozen 'dummy' Dalek props to cinemas and supermarkets.

Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. opened at Studio One in London on 22 July and then went on general release from 5 August. It did not fare particularly well with the critics and, while Daily Cinema enthused the film had 'a lot more style and polish than its predecessor... just the job for the holiday season!', David Robinson of the Financial Times described it as 'a film of unusually low standards' and The Sun accused it of 'being a bit tatty, and hastily and clumsily thought out.'

Nina Hibbin of The Morning Star agreed and, after slamming the film's depiction of the year 2150 as looking 'like leftovers from an old film about the London Blitz', she turned on the distributors and concluded: 'I know British Lion has got its problems at the moment, but this tatty sort of film-making won't help them.' Takings, which initially matched the box office of the first film, soon tailed off and it seemed that public fatigue had finally put paid to 'Dalekmania'.

Accusing the film of resembling London in the Blitz is actually very accurate and this tone is one carried over from Terry Nation's far grimmer The Dalek Invasion of Earth, itself permeated by the Blitz and the shadow of the Second World War in its depiction of a battered London, the bravery of resistance fighters and a peculiarly British appetite for destruction that sees Battersea Power Station with its chimneys knocked off. In that respect Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. is grittier than its sleeker 1960s cinema counterpart, eschewing gloss and character development for a series of pacy action set pieces.

Flemyng takes the widescreen format and strives to fill it with visual interest, despite the lack of budget and extras, and manages to pull off some excellent uses of the forced perspective sets of a destroyed London, the two tiered set of the Dalek saucer including the ramp and its interior corridor and executes a great tracking view of the multi-levels of the Dalek bomb room with criss-crossing Daleks.

The film opens with a great pre-credit sequence, without dialogue and using an almost silent film like simplicity with a piano backing, as policeman Tom Campbell is attacked by jewel thieves and then stumbles into TARDIS before he is whisked away to 2150 A.D. Before the ship dematerialises there's an opportunity for Bernard Spear to do a comedy double-take as he reaches out for the police box in the aftermath of the robbery.

Thus we end up in a devastated future London, ruled by Daleks, and Subotsky retains the atmospheric setting of the original television serial along with its iconic moments such as the Dalek rising out of the Thames. Flemyng gets maximum value from most the cast, particularly Cribbins, Keir and a sinister Madoc. Cushing is at his best in the opening scenes and seems rather sidelined, perhaps due to the reported illness, in later sections of the film, especially when he disappears for a while after the attack on the saucer and Cribbins gets to indulge in some physical comedy pretending to be one of the Robomen.

The action set pieces dominate with victims of the Daleks falling off buildings, rebels attacking the saucer or Andrew Keir running Daleks over with his van in a profusion of explosions, stunts and kinetic camera work and editing. Underlining this is a jazzy, insistent score from Bill McGuffie which provides a memorable earworm with the theme for the marching Robomen. It may not be as glossy and otherworldly as Dr. Who and the Daleks but this still whips along very effectively and is enormous fun as Daleks get knocked over like skittles, flying saucers blow up vans and Philip Madoc gets exterminated inside a garden shed.

Sources:
'Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.' profile, Marcus Hearn, Doctor Who Magazine Spring Special, 1995
'Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.' Archive Extra, Andrew Pixley, Doctor Who Magazine 354, 2005

About the transfer
Again the Techniscope format does have its drawbacks with the graininess of the image. This is really evident in loss of quality in the process shots mixing live action and model or glass shots. Apart from that, this is a very clean looking transfer and colour, detail and contrast are very good throughout the 84 minute running time. Detail in faces, clothes and particularly the Robomen black PVC outfits is good. The Daleks, in their new silver liveries, don't quite have as much impact as in their big screen debut and the film, certainly a grittier but less glossy affair, is predisposed to silver, browns, greys and blues in its colour scheme where only the red of Susan's skirt, the lead Dalek's red livery and their big red bomb add some punch to the grade. The mono soundtrack is quite crisp and clear and only briefly suffers from some slight dropout toward the end of the film. Overall, a pleasing viewing experience.

Special Features
Restoring Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (7:11)
Again we hear from BFI curator Jo Botting talking about the challenge to cinema from television and how scope formats were part of the arsenal used by distributors to get audiences back in cinemas. Marcus Hearn discusses Gordon Flemyng's use of widescreen Techniscope. Techniscope's poorer image quality was also a problem that faced Deluxe when they restored the film from a 35mm interpositive made in 1969 from the Techniscope negative. Grading and repair are discussed by Paul Collard and John Heath while additional manual frame repairs are demonstrated by Lisa Copson and Ian Pickford returns to explain the audio restoration. 
Interview with Bernard Cribbins (4:02)
An all too brief chat with 'national treasure' Cribbins about the legacy of the film, working with Cushing ('he always looked to me as though he was chewing a mint... and then he would speak') and getting the giggles with the Daleks. He also touches on his interview with Barry Letts for the role of the Doctor shortly after Jon Pertwee vacated the role on television. The sound mix on this feature does not seem to have a middle channel included and is directed to left and right channels, resulting in a very echoing quality.
Interview with Gareth Owen (4:08)
Author of The Shepperton Story, Owen returns very briefly to offer some basics about the production of the film, the various problems that affected the shoot and the poor press reaction.  
Stills gallery
A disappointingly small collection of back and white promotional images, behind the scenes stills, model shots, ad campaigns, the campaign book and a Jill Curzon colour promotional image. Not exactly comprehensive and it strangely doesn't include the many posters or lobby cards which were issued.
Trailer (2:37)
A trailer in which the voice over fails to mention the word 'Dalek' or the character 'Dr. Who' and leaves you with the impression that the Robomen were in charge and the Daleks were their henchmen. Not a patch on the iconic Dr. Who and the Daleks trailer.

Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.
Aaru Productions / British Lion Limited 1966
StudioCanal Blu-ray / Released: 27 May 2013 / Cert: U / Region B / Total Running Time: 84:14 / Colour / Feature Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 / Feature Audio: LPCM Mono 2.0 / English Language / English SDH / Catalogue No: OPTBD2530

Due for release on 13 July is Celebrate Regenerate, a new book packed with pieces from over 250 fan writers (including my good self) from all over the world that have been brought together by editor Lewis Christian.

Fan-made and not for profit, the plus-300 page book is filled with reviews and articles covering every televised Doctor Who story. The reviews will be accompanied by a wealth of fan art and a few exclusive interviews with Series 1 director, Joe Ahearne; writer Tom MacRae, and writer Joseph Lidster which will be published alongside some other special features in the book.

There is still time to get your name in the book as a 'companion' supporter of the project and you may still want to contribute a review. The deadline for reviews of the final eight episode of Series 7, just transmitted, is 3 June 2013 and the deadline to get your name in the book is 1 July 2013.

For further information about how to buy a copy of the book and its availability as a PDF download then click on the link to Celebrate Regenerate's FAQ.

The cost of a physical copy of the book will be for manufacturing and shipping via Lulu.com only - no artists, writers or contributors are gaining any money from this project - and it is unauthorised and unofficial. The book is ultimately just for fun and it’ll make for a great addition to people’s bookshelves and / or downloads.

Time & Space Visualiser, by artist and writer Paul Smith of Wonderful Books, is the first exploration of both the factual and fictional history of Doctor Who through a range of eye-catching graphics, presenting information about the show in a way never seen before.
 
As Paul explains in his introduction, 'information is a product of the way humans codify the world around us and how we categorise, interpret and represent that information is crucial to its utility and value' and Doctor Who fans apply this very edict to their own enjoyment of the television series and the way we store millions of facts about it.

With a 50 year legacy, information about the production of the series and about the hundreds of adventures the Doctor and his companions have had is food and drink to any self-respecting fan. We pore over facts and figures constantly, make endless lists, charts and surveys about the series which encompass our favourite stories, the number of times a certain monster has appeared in the series to how many scripts a certain writer may have contributed to the show.

Just imagine your charts and lists synthesised in visual terms and you'll understand where this book is coming from. Data isn't just a string of words and numbers, as Paul argues, because it can look great too and for a series like Doctor Who, probably one of the most researched and over-analysed television programmes in the world, there is an imperative to find new ways of looking at the fundamental facts and figures we associate with it.

The book is split into four sections and includes 'Production' which visualises the programme's creation, recording and those who have contributed to its success; an exploration of the narrative of the series in 'Fiction' and a look at settings, companions and villains; the broadcast and ratings of the show in 'Transmission', and 'Reiteration' which covers repeats, overseas transmissions, book, video and DVD releases of the series.

Each chart in each of these sections is accompanied by detailed notes discussing the background and context of the areas under examination, how the data was compiled and what it reveals. The results can therefore be appreciated by those interested in the possibilities of data visualisation while also presenting new angles to Doctor Who devotees who might think they know all there is to know about the show.

In 'Production' one of the first, most comprehensive, rather mind-boggling infographics is 'All of Time and Space', and is, by way of an example of how much data Paul includes in these analyses, a year by year, season by season, Doctor by Doctor set of charts which also trace how many times a certain monster or villain appeared across the 50 year span of the show, the companions featured in each era, the viewing figures, the most-prolific writers and, just for added geek cred, the duration of each story and who produced and script-edited it. It's a massive amount of information but elegantly and wittily presented in superbly clear graphics and iconography with accompanying expert testimony.

The rest of the section is devoted to a charts about the prevalence of 'A' and 'The' as prefixes to story titles or the very common use of 'the x of the y' as the name of an episode or story; a data set of the BBC director-generals and drama controllers who steered the programme for good or ill; which studios at Television Centre, at Lime Grove and Riverside were used to record the original episodes of the series where the graphic uses a delightful set of TV camera icons, and finally a chart of those composers who provided the incidental and theme music for the series.

When we move to 'Fiction' I think we get some of the wittiest visualisations of the Who universe, including the various UK and international locations for stories set on Earth by Doctor and, one of my favourites, the stories which have taken place either in the bowels or at the highest points of the Earth.

This covers the depths to which Professor Stahlman sank his drill in Inferno, complete with an eruption of green mutagenic slime; the Loch Ness home of the Zygons' ship and their pet Skarasen complete with own pied-à-terre cave; the Silurians' Derbyshire residence and, at the other end of the scale, Vesuvius, the remains of Atlantis and the Himalayan setting for Marco Polo's trek to Peking and the Detsen monastery besieged by Yeti.

The section concludes with an infographic on which of the classic monsters and Time Lords each companion met as well as which fate, out of being hypnotised, infected or kidnapped, befell them. There's also a colourful if complex chart of how companions arrived or departed; each decade's gender balance for villains; and how, using a very knotty looking graphic, each villain met their demise in the new series.

With the 'Transmission' section of the book you get some splendid looking charts about transmission times and patterns for the series and the first broadcast of episodes; the days of the week the series was shown; the broadcast times and actual duration of episodes. And if you're planning a whole rewatch of the series the book also lets you know just how much time you'll need to set aside to do that. Apparently, if you consumed one story a day it would take you 231 days or approximately 7.6 months to watch everything. At the rate of one episode a day you're looking at setting aside 2.16 years to get through them all. Very handy for any forward-planning.

There's also a very absorbing ratings chart for the seven seasons of the 2005 revival and that'll come in use when trying to settle those 'it isn't as popular as it was' arguments down the pub. For the classic series Paul charts the viewing figures against a fan appreciation index so you'll have fun working out which clunkers the fans hated but the general audience loved.

Finally, 'Reiterations' takes a look at repeat screenings and their ratings and includes an extraordinary infographic plotting where in the world Doctor Who has been shown and which stories were the most seen; a brain-twisting graphic showing the release schedule of Target book adaptations; a chart confirming that Uncle Terrance Dicks is indeed the king of the novelisation and a chronology of the show's releases onto VHS (it took 20 years to release everything on tape, by the way) and DVD (now clocking up 13 years).

The book concludes, fittingly in anniversary year, with a '50th events in the 50-year history of Doctor Who' wherein you will discover that the alternate-Earth Brigade Leader in Inferno was actually the show's 50th major villain, the 50th Dudley Simpson score was for Underworld and the 50th type of robot in the series were the Handbots in The Girl Who Waited.

You see, you need to know these things. And you can discover these nuggets and much, much more in Paul Smith's beautifully designed and written book which definitely earns the 'labour of love' sobriquet. It should be required reading for all Doctor Who data nerds.

Time & Space Visualiser: The Story and History of Doctor Who as Data Visualisations 
120 pages, full colour / Designed and written by Paul Smith
Published by Wonderful Books
Printed on demand through Amazon's CreateSpace
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com 
Softcover / 22x28cm
ISBN 978-0-9576062-0-3

By 1959 the British horror boom had started in earnest. The spectacular success of Hammer's colour Gothic cinema, epitomised in The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Dracula (1958), confirmed there was an adult audience attracted to this material and ripe for exploitation. Recognising the potential box office for such films, a number of similar British film producers were quick to leap onto the bandwagon. Anglo Amalgamated were just one such company.

Set up by Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy in 1945, this small production and distribution company, which combined low budget British featurettes with American 'A' movies, had ambitions to move into full-length feature film production. By 1950, Cohen and Levy had formed a production company with Julian Wintle, a young producer working at Merton Park studios. Under their auspices Joseph Losey made his first film in the UK, 1954's The Sleeping Tiger, and they would produce three Tommy Steele musicals, all the Carry On films up till 1966 and the infamous 'Sadian horror trilogy' of Horrors of the Black Museum (1959), Circus of Horrors (1960) and Michael Powell's sublime Peeping Tom (1960).

Anglo's first films Mystery Junction (1951) and Wide Boy were primarily crime dramasor thrillers such as Ghost Ship (1952) and Counterspy (1953) and these established their fruitful relationships with the likes of directors Ken Hughes and Vernon Sewell. While Cohen and Levy bankrolled the Alec Snowden and Jack Greenwood production of the Scotland Yard (1953-61) series of half-hour crime second features at Merton Park, a number of breakthrough films established their credibility after they started to sign deals with the likes of Eros, Lippert, American International Pictures and agent Herman Cohen. (1)

Cohen had already met Nat (they weren't related, by the way) when they had formed a co-production and distribution deal with Lippert Pictures on Ghost Ship and Counterspy and secured American star Phyllis Kirk for Anglo's thriller River Beat which he produced for them in 1954. His reputation as a producer at American International Pictures was sealed with the drive-in successes I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), Blood of Dracula (1958) and How to Make a Monster (1958) after he had acknowledged there was a growing teenage audience for science fiction and horror movies.

'... a young stable boy was fired for having sex with her in the stables '

Anglo Amalgamated handled the UK distribution of Herman Cohen's AIP product and it was this relationship that brought him and AIP owners Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson to London and a fateful visit to Scotland Yard's own Black Museum. 'I was reading a group of articles in the Sunday Parade about Scotland Yard's Black Museum. I went to London, and while I was there, a friend of mine that knew an inspector at Scotland Yard got me a special pass to go through the Black Museum,' recalled Cohen in Tom Weaver's 1994 book Attack of the Monster Movie Makers - Interviews with 20 Genre Giants. (2)

Now referred to as the Crime Museum, the so called Black Museum of criminal memorabilia came into existence sometime in 1874 and was originally housed in a set of rooms in the basement of New Scotland Yard. Its collection of over 500 criminal artefacts inspired Cohen to concoct Horrors of the Black Museum with long standing collaborator, screenwriter Aben Kandel.

Kandel had originally gained some distinction in the industry as a novelist with Vaudeville (1927), Black Sun (1929) and City for Conquest (1936) and broke into screenwriting by helping adapt Dinner at Eight (1933) for the screen before crafting scripts for the likes of They Won't Forget (1937) and The Iron Major (1943). In the 1950s and 1960s his work was primarily on low budget exploitation movies such as Cohen's I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957)and How to Make a Monster (1958). 

Cohen and Kandel, inspired by the exhibits at Scotland Yard, came up with a number of bizarre murders based on actual cases, including the shocking opening to the film where a woman's eyes are gouged by spikes concealed in a pair of binoculars. According to Cohen: 'The murder with the binoculars happened in the thirties, in Kent. A young stable boy who was very much in love with his master's daughter was fired for having sex with her in the stables. And she would have nothing to do with him after that. When the Royal Ascot meet started the following year, she received through the mail a pair of binoculars, mailed from the Paddington Post Office. She took them to the window, she focused them, and the needles penetrated through her eyes and killed her. The stable boy was found, was tried and was hung. And those binoculars are in the Black Museum in Scotland Yard.' (3)

While Kandel co-wrote the screenplay of Horrors of the Black Museum with Cohen, Anglo Amalgamated confirmed a co-financing deal for the film with AIP, making this its first film in colour and Cinemascope. Although Merton Park's resident producer Jack Greenwood was credited as such on the film this was an arrangement to satisfy the Eady Levy which stipulated that co-productions must have a British producer to qualify for its production subsidy. Herman Cohen handled the production, including casting and hiring a director.

The Eady Levy regulations also impacted on the casting of Michael Gough as Cohen had originally wanted to hire Vincent Price for the lead role of crime writer Edmond Bancroft but was persuaded by Anglo it would be far cheaper and politically prudent to go with a British lead. Cohen recalled Gough from his supporting role in Hammer's Dracula, invited him to dinner and subsequently offered him the part.

He also secured Arthur Crabtree as director. Crabtree was a Gainsborough alumnus and had initially photographed a series of Will Hay comedies Oh, Mr. Porter! (1937), Good Morning, Boys (1937) and Hey, Hey USA! (1938) before working on the melodramas The Man in Grey (1943) and Fanny by Gaslight (1944).

Cohen, working within the Eady strictures, needed an English director and had so admired Crabtree's work on science fiction 'B' movie Fiend Without a Face (1958) that he quickly interviewed him. 'The price was right and the old guy needed a job, and I hired him. And he was exactly what I wanted and needed as a good craftsman,' admitted Cohen. (4)

Gough recalled his working relationship with Cohen and the producer's treatment of Crabtree in a conversation with David Del Valle, Hollywood correspondent for Films and Filming, in 1984: 'Cohen was a showman first, last, and always; his manner was always overbearing and his opinions sacrosanct. During the filming of Horrors of the Black Museum, he would show up unannounced onset and tell our director Arthur Crabtree how to direct a scene and the actors as well. I mean this just was not on and, as a result, Arthur began to loathe Cohen on sight. He demanded all the walls of the set be painted a violent shade of blue or green; Herman Cohen was the boss on all that he produced – and not in a positive way either.' (5)

Unlike Hammer's period Gothic fairy tales, Horrors of the Black Museum had a contemporary setting and would be the first of three films to tap into the appetite for sensational and violent crimes that fed into the sexual anxiety and voyeurism at the heart of what David Pirie called the 'Sadian-narcissistic' quality found in this and Anglo's Circus of Horrors and Peeping Tom. Pirie saw the period in which the three films were produced and released as a brief opportunity for their makers to persuade the BBFC to pass this material. Taking a leaf from Hammer's ability to manipulate the readers and Secretary at the BBFC, Cohen submitted the script to them in August 1958 and received the by now expected cold shoulder from reader Audrey Field.

'... an umbrella for out-of-the way sadistic ideas'

'The X certificate, if given, would merely serve as an umbrella for out-of-the way sadistic ideas and try the patience of decent people rather too far,' she reported. She equated a lowering standards with the current rise in crime and felt that horror films were contributing to the corruption and lack of self-control in the young audiences who paid to see such films. However, as Pirie suggests, there's a note of resignation in her report which implies that secretary John Trevelyan would indeed set out to negotiate with Anglo over the content of the film whereas previously she and other examiners had been far more determined to reduce as much horror content as they could, particularly in Hammer's films. (6)

Certainly Trevelyan discussed the opening scene in some depth in a letter to Stuart Levy and Nat Cohen, arguing that the removal of sensationalist details from the scene showing Gail's murder with the binoculars - 'screaming or blood gushing' - would make it more acceptable. He also requested the guillotining of Joan later in the film be achieved by 'implication rather than by direct shooting.' Pirie records that very little further discussion took place before shooting commenced in October 1958.

The completed film was submitted in December 1958 much to the apoplexy of the examiners at the BBFC. They demanded the removal of certain details in the binocular murder - 'the screaming must be reduced and the shot of the blood gushing through the victim's fingers as she puts her hands to her eyes must in any case be removed' - and the guillotine scene would have to have lose a shot of the killer looking down at his victim. (7)

In January 1959 it was Herman Cohen who now corresponded with Trevelyan directly and it seems gradually the censor softened his approach to the film after Cohen appealed to him about the cuts requested. The film was resubmitted with the binocular and guillotine murders more or less intact and the image of the victim with blood gushing through her hands was again criticised and Trevelyan again asked Cohen to remove it.

In his letter to Cohen in March 1959, Trevelyan more or less left Anglo to their own devices: 'We are prepared to accept the scene of the murder by guillotine and waive our original objection to the shot of Rick from the girl's point of view on the bed. We shall not need to see the film again. If you will send me a written assurance that the deletion asked for in reel 1 has been made I will issue the 'X' certificate.' Cohen requested, clearly using conciliatory tactics to plead for what he wanted, the examiners see a shortened version of the binocular scene and he eventually persuaded the BBFC to accept it barely unchanged. (8)

The other Anglo Amalgamated films in 'the Sadian trilogy' would test the BBFC's faltering resolve in the face of such material and a significant row also erupted over Robert Baker and Monty Berman's Jack the Ripper (1960) before the moral panic from the press and local councils which greeted Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) forced the BBFC to clamp down on such material in an attempt to rescue its tarnished reputation. Ultimately, the furore ended Powell's career.

While Hammer's home brew of Eastmancolour, blood and sex was still packing them in, the likes of Anglo Amalgamated also saw their opportunity to snatch some of the ticket sales with some added gimmicks and promotions which producer Herman Cohen had picked up from that master of the hype William Castle. Hence, in 1959 the American International Pictures release of Horrors of the Black Museum came complete with a 13-minute opening sequence espousing the virtues of the film's presentation in 'Hypno-Vista'.

In it Dr. Emile Franchel, allegedly a psychologist specialising in hypnotism, attempted to convince the audience, through some very thin suggestions about colour and a display of standard optical illusions in the stilted delivery of someone reading cue cards, that the images and situations in Horrors of the Black Museum were specifically 'designed to help you experience to the full all the feelings and emotions that the producers intended you to experience.' Although Cohen was reluctant to add the prologue, he later conceded, 'We tested it in a few theaters and the audience went for it like crazy, hokey as it was. It helped make the picture a success, I guess, 'cause people were looking for gimmicks at that time.' (9)

The film's basic premise features crime writer Edmond Bancroft (Gough) who, unbeknownst to the police, is the instigator of a series of murders using various implements of torture and murder collected together in his own personal Black Museum. He is literally creating the very headlines he likes to write about in his salacious books. The murders are committed by his faithful young assistant Rick (Graham Curnow), under the influence of drugs and hypnosis, and they provide the film with its signature gruesome set-pieces which so perplexed the BBFC.

As Bancroft mocks the police investigation by Superintendent Graham (Geoffrey Keen) and Inspector Lodge (John Warwick), his obsessions about the murders worry his physician, Dr. Ballan (Gerald Anderson), who cautions him against overwork. Aggie (Beatrice Varley), an antique shop owner who supplies Bancroft with some of the more dubious items in his collection, recognises the binoculars, fitted with deadly spikes, used to murder Gail Dunlap (Dorinda Stevens) in the film's disturbing opening sequence and attempts to blackmail him. Ballan, also convinced Bancroft is mentally unstable, threatens to call the police and is electrocuted and dropped into a vat of acid for his trouble.

When Rick is commanded by Bancroft to murder his girlfriend Angela (Shirley Anne Field), he goes out of control at a local fairground and precipitates a fatal encounter with the police and Bancroft. Holding this completely absurd storyline together is a jaw-dropping, baroque performance from the aforementioned Michael Gough as Bancroft. With his distinctive silver and black hairstyle and high octane scenery chewing, Gough is certainly a guilty pleasure and a very good reason to stick with this exploitation gem from the late 1950s.

The film's contemporary setting also would have provided the audience with a verisimilitude in direct contrast to the supernatural Gothic themes and settings of a typical Hammer film. The startling opening scene where Gail Dunlap receives the deadly binoculars is a good example of this. We follow a post van along busy central London streets as it arrives to deliver the package and then watch as she unwraps the binoculars and tests them out. The overwrought, sensationalist tone of the film is immediately secured with the close up of Gail's hand covered face, blood trickling through her fingers, and a cut to the binoculars, with their deadly spikes, on the floor next to a spatter of blood.

Peter Hutchings astutely connects this sequence with the opening scenes of Circus of Horrors, where a plastic surgeon's terribly scarred patient destroys a mirror and rejects her own image, and Peeping Tom, where the film opens with a close up of an eye and then conflates the eye with the viewfinder of a camera as it tracks the murder of a prostitute. 'The repeated references to looking... and cinema spectatorship... [is] made explicit' in all three of Anglo's films. (10)

Gough's character, Bancroft, transforms these gratifications into bestselling salacious crime fiction and 'his avid readership stand in for us, the audience for horror cinema.' Hutchings sees Horrors of the Black Museum and its ilk as a way for such horror cinema to pull in new audiences and 'to offer us a means of access into the horror, a position from which we can safely view gratuitous acts of violence.' As Bancroft explains to the disgruntled Superintendent Graham and Inspector Lodge, 'I don't write for you. My books, my magazine articles, my column - all this I write for a large public.' (11)

'Let's not have an ugly scene'

There is no doubt though that this violence and horror is directed at women in each of the films. In Horrors, the murders are all directed at 'independent' working women: Gail and her flatmate Peggy both clearly court the attentions of men and relish gifts from their affairs; Bancroft's 'companion' Joan who demands more money but is guillotined for her troubles; Aggie the antiques shop owner punished with a set of ice tongs for attempting blackmail and Angela, Rick's girlfriend who threatens to disrupt the relationship between Rick and Bancroft. As Hutchings notes,  'It is a condition of the undoubted powerfulness of these representations... that they are posed as threats to a male order that inevitably provoke acts of repressive violence.' (12)

While the violent men - presented by the strange, almost homosexual bond between Bancroft and Rick in the film - are symbols of misogyny there's also an undercurrent present about women trying to seize power back from men. Bancroft is depicted as an incomplete physical and mental specimen. He's physically impaired with a limp and has to walk with a stick while his physician is concerned that his mental stability is also questionable. The film links the sensational murders with Bancroft's mental health as, after each murder, he goes into 'some sort of state of shock' that can only be arrested by sublimating the gory details via his books and articles. Dr. Ballan more or less underlines Bancroft's involvement with the murders, which the viewer will already have identified him with, and how he shares the audience's own 'state of unnatural excitement'. 

This notion is also underlined in the sequence with Joan Berkley, the film's rather unflattering and inept attempt to promote starlet June Cunningham as Marilyn Monroe or Jane Russell, where her demands for money from Bancroft are met with a refusal and an implication he is unable to 'set off fireworks' in the bedroom. While the intentions of the script are clear - as a 'real man' Bancroft fails and is physically and mentally inadequate - Cunningham's terrible acting completely derails it all. Even though Bancroft unintentionally demands, 'Let's not have an ugly scene,' sadly, Cunningham does nothing but create such an impression from the minute she appears, providing the sexualised eye candy for a half empty bar of leering men and some very meagre applause from bit part players as wooden as their object of desire. Look out for the extra in the raincoat passing by in the background as Joan talks to the barman as a prime example of this clumsy mise-en-scène.

Poor old Joan gets it in the neck with an improvised guillotine in a truly bizarre scene where she prepares for bed by listening to a deafening jazz number. The number then acts as a rather incongruous score to the murderous machinations as Rick packs away his bloody instruments and Joan's decapitated head in a holdall. We never find out what ever happens to her head. A clutch of terrible bit part players, playing various inhabitants of the block of flats where Joan lived, inform Superintendent Graham the assailant was 'steeped in evil', had a 'devilish speed' and 'in a blink he was gone into the night'.

They're an erudite bunch these Cockneys and they're joined by several unconvincing policemen and a doctor when Superintendent Graham searches the crime scene. Poor Geoffrey Keen, a reputable British character and perfectly good as Graham, must have wondered what on earth he was doing in such a film. As Fanny Carby reliably informs us on the Embankment, while eagerly pouring over a newspaper, 'you're not even safe in your own bed'. Not from this film either, it seems.

Much of the opprobrium in the acting stakes is usually reserved for Shirley Anne Field's awful performance as Rick's girlfriend Angela but I'd say Howard Greene as the delusional Tom Rivers, a psychiatric case wrongly arrested as the murderer, is perfectly capable of stealing Ms Field's crown. His demands for a short-hand reporter and a death-ray are truly inspiring examples of the thespian art.

When Shirley Anne Field does turn up the film steers back to its diatribe about controlling women, the shackles of marriage and the inadequacy of the male species. Angela's dialogue is probably the worst in the film and even though Field's performance is dreadful I would argue any actor worth their salt would have a struggle delivering the lines without biting their own tongue off. As Bartlomiej Paszylk observes, the film strives to counter its misogyny with 'the fear of women gaining power and controlling their men'. Not only does Aggie attempt this with her blackmail over the deadly ice tongs and a demand to be an equal partner with Bancroft in their love for instruments of torture but, in a climactic scene, Bancroft turns on Rick for bringing Angela to the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of their Black Museum. (13)

As a woman she's described as a 'vicious, unreliable breed' but she also believes a woman can't 'begin training a husband too soon' and has already encouraged Rick to share everything about his work with Bancroft. It's a male privileged world that has now been 'invaded' and her knowledge of it will, according to Bancroft, in a ripe bit of invective, 'start a toboggan that will crush us!' To counter this, Bancroft drugs and hypnotises Rick and sends him out to murder Angela 'for his own good'. Paszylk notes the juxtaposition between 'being hypnotised into a murderous frenzy' with 'being trained into marital obedience' is emphasised in this scene. At this point the film is not just about male obedience to women like Angela but also raises up the master and servant relationship between Bancroft and Rick and, more importantly, with Rick as Bancroft's son and heir, Hyde to his Jekyll. (14)

The film concludes at a fun fair, the climax to horror occurring in a public space and used to titilate the passerby or onlooker just as the circus setting does in Circus of Horrors. Here a brief sequence at a 'test your strength' strongman striker stall, if you'll pardon the pun, hammers home the story's obsession with female deceit and male power as Rick proves his manliness and is able to, according to the fairground barker, 'show the little lady who wears the pants in the house.' It's as crude a metaphor as the rest of the cod psychology in the film, culminating with Rick murdering Angela in the 'tunnel of love' ride and then briefly recognising his dual nature in a hall of mirrors where his Hyde like visage is not a simple trick of reflection but an eruption of Bancroft's sadism.

Conveniently, his encounter with the police from atop a ferris wheel also brings about the demise of Bancroft, the true Jekyll and Hyde of the film. Rick is, after all, just a pliable victim. Unfortunately, Rick's plaintive cries of 'Mr Bancroft, Mr Bancroft' transform him into horror's Norman Wisdom as he implicates the father figure now urging the police to shoot Rick down. After plunging to his death, Rick manages to take the barking Bancroft with him, justly using the dagger Bancroft bought from Aggie to silence him forever. Geoffrey Keen's closing solioquy, as Arthur Crabtree frames the inert forms of Rick and Bancroft together, ensures we get the point too.

A lurid, overripe sensation Horrors of the Black Museum is now worthy of a chuckle over a glass of wine. Much of the dialogue is dreadful and many of the actors and extras resemble a particularly solid stack of planks in a builder's yard and while Arthur Crabtree is a perfectly acceptable director he clearly struggled with composing for the Cinemascope format and many of the two and three shots of the film are framed centrally, with the yawning emptiness on either side of the frame devoid of any visual interest. Some scenes are well composed and those in Aggie's shop and the funfair are much more confident in visual terms. But lets not forget, despite its risible and salacious tone, the terrible dialogue and performances, it appeared at a time when the established standards of censorship were having to cope with challenging material from the likes of Anglo Amalgamated. In that brief window of opportunity in 1959-1960 if Anglo hadn't chanced their arm we may never have seen the likes of Peeping Tom.

(1) Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane, The British 'B' Film
(2)Tom Weaver Attack of the Monster Movie Makers - Interviews with 20 Genre Giants
(3) Ibid
(4) Ibid
(5) David Del Valle, 'Sinister Image: “Konga, put me down!” – A Chat with Michael Gough' http://cinefantastiqueonline.com/2010/03/sinister-image-konga-put-me-down-a-chat-with-michael-gough/
(6) David Pirie, A New Heritage of Horror - The English Gothic Cinema
(7) Ibid
(8) Ibid
(9) Tom Weaver Attack of the Monster Movie Makers - Interviews with 20 Genre Giants
(10) Peter Hutchings, Hammer and Beyond
(11) Ibid
(12) Ibid
(13) Bartlomiej Paszylk, The Pleasure and Pain of Cult Horror Films: An Historical Survey
(14) Ibid

Special features
Trailers (10:23)
Fantastic selection of three trailers. First up, the US 'Hypno-Vista' trailer wherein Dr. Franchel sticks needles in a woman's arm to prove the film will place you in the middle of the horrors as a sonorous voice intones 'no human eyes have seen anything like this before' just as Dorinda Stevens gets her eyes gouged out by a set of binoculars. The UK trailer dumps Franchel and the gimmicks and just goes for blanketing out the sadistic highlights and terrible acting with booming announcements that this is a U trailer advertising an X certificate film and you're not allowed to see any more of June Cunningham's bid for BAFTA glory. A German 'Hypno-Vista' trailer completes the set and the dubbing adds a further bizarre layer. The real horror is, whether in English or German, that poor woman ever gets the needles taken out of her arm.
'Hypno-Vista' Introduction (11:18)
A typical example of 1950s gimmickry used to sell films in the US market, largely to drag people away from their television sets, this 'Hypno-Vista' opening sequence joins the illustrious company of Illusion-O, Percepto, Smell-O-Vision, Cinerama and the early 3D boom. Rather like the groggy woman who has two needles stuck in her arm, Dr. Emile Franchel's highly amusing attempts to plant suggestions in the audience's minds, with various optical and aural effects, probably sent them all to sleep. The only tentative relationship this codswallop has to the film comes in the last minute where suddenly Franchel suggests 'London... the time and place is now. You are in London'. Thanks for that, Emile.
Gallery
Brief selection of UK, US and international posters, a set of US lobby cards and a handful of black and white stills.

Horrors of the Black Museum
Carmel Productions / Merton Park Studios
Anglo Amalgamated - American International Pictures 1959
Cert: 15 / Released 24 June 2013
Network DVD / Region 2 / Total Running Time: approx. 78 mins / Colour PAL / Feature Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 / Feature Audio: Mono 2.0 / Catalogue No: 7953886

Roger Corman is quite rightly regarded as something of a legend in independent cinema. He is often attributed with creating the horror-comedy genre with A Bucket of Blood (1959) and The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), the former made for a thrifty $35,000 and the latter shot in just two days, and is renowned for the cycle of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations he directed and produced for American International Pictures throughout the 1960s. Something of a trailblazer, Corman was equally enthusiastic about using cinema as social commentary, to voice counter-culture and civil rights concerns.

He explored these diverse subjects in the first Hell's Angels biker film, The Wild Angels (1966); in an examination of segregation with an early lead role for William Shatner in The Intruder (1960); by depicting the downside of psychedelic drug culture in The Trip (1967) and the death of Hollywood and celebrity in Targets (1968). In 1970, he established his own independent film production and distribution company, New World Pictures and was responsible for a number of cult films, including Boxcar Bertha (1972), Caged Heat (1974), Death Race 2000 (1975), Piranha (1978), Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) and Galaxy of Terror (1981). The 'Roger Corman Film School', as it was fondly known, gave early career breaks to the likes of Coppola, Scorsese, Bogdanovich, Demme, Hellman and Dante.

Arrow Films take us back to 1960 with this month's Blu-Ray release of The Fall of the House of Usher (AKA House of Usher), the very first of the Corman-Poe adaptations. Corman's nous for low-budget film making developed in the 1950s after he took a left-turn on a career-path in industrial engineering. Trained at Stanford, Corman secured employment with U.S. Electrical Motors in Los Angeles but then realised he'd 'made a terrible mistake' and, having started the job on a Monday, quit four days later. The source of this revelation was his growing enthusiasm for theatre as he studied thermodynamics and electronics at Stanford and a yearning to work in the film industry. (1)

His first job was as a runner for Fox and after he gained access to their screenwriting department he became a reader, wading through and approving scripts producers had little time to look at. After a brief sojourn to Europe, completing post-graduate work in modern English literature at Oxford’s Balliol College, he worked briefly as a literary agent and a stagehand in television before selling his first screenplay, Highway Dragnet, to Allied Artists in 1953.

From his experience as an associate producer on the film, Corman instinctively came to understand how to make decent quality films for very little money. After a period in which he made a variety of films, including westerns and rock and roll films, car race thriller The Fast and the Furious (1956) and science fiction 'creature-features'It Conquered the World (1956) and Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), in 1959 he formed Filmgroup with his brother to produce and release low budget black and white double features for drive-ins on behalf of American International Pictures, Allied Artists and other distributors.

'Sam, the house is the monster'

The Poe adaptations, beginning with The Fall of the House of Usher, were instigated by Corman's frustrations with the double bills. As he told Tom Weaver, 'AIP asked me to make two ten-day black and white horror films and I was a little bit tired of that. Also, I felt that the sales gimmick of putting two low-budget pictures together was wearing thin at the box office.' A Poe enthusiast, he approached AIP's execs James H. Nicholson and Samuel Z. Arkoff with a proposal to make one $200,000 colour horror film, from the Poe short story, instead of two $100,000 black and white pictures.

Nicholson agreed, despite his reservations about Poe's suitability for the teen audiences most of AIP's films were aimed at. Corman rationalised that Poe had two audiences, one that respected him as a major American writer and one that simply loved to be entertained by his tales of the macabre. He hoped to transpose his adolescent love for Poe's work into a film aimed directly at a popular audience. Arkoff was more concerned that the film contained no monster or creature, an element he felt was intrinsic to the teen market, and needed further convincing. Corman reassured him, 'Sam, the house is the monster', and he was begrudgingly given the go ahead to make the film. (2)

Ironically, as the film's co-star Mark Damon recalled in his autobiography, Usher's lead actor Vincent Price was curious about a certain line in the script - 'the house lives, the house breathes' - and during the shoot asked Corman what exactly the line meant. '"It means that's the line that made them make this movie," Corman replied. Vincent nodded sagely. "I see. Well, I suppose I can breathe some life into it then."'(3)

As Corman himself noted: 'I suggested Usher to them showing them it could be a good film in the terror genre, that we could make something classic. They took their time making up their minds because it was their most expensive production and they were losing money at the time. They invested what they had left and gave me free reign.'(4) As Jonathan Rigby points out in the interview with him on this release, the market was also changing with the revival of Gothic horror spearheaded by Hammer and as a result AIP must have been aware that colour and horror were now synonymous.

That free reign included a one-and-a-half day rehearsal period, a generous 15-day shooting schedule that commenced in January 1960, a budget of between $150,000 and $270,000 (depending on which sources you read) and the assembling of a close-knit crew of collaborators, including cinematographer Floyd Crosby, production designer Daniel Haller and production manager Jack Bohrer. They would create the signature look for the majority of the Poe films. Crosby, who had worked with Flaherty and Murnau on Tabu (1931) and had shot Zinnemann's High Noon (1952), was well known for his craftsmanship and an ability to work quickly and he shot The Fall of the House of Usher in CinemaScope at the behest of AIP even though Corman felt such an 'interior' film would not be suited to the process.

Crosby and Corman first worked together on Five Guns West in 1954 and had formed an instant rapport. Wheeler Winston Dixon interviewed Corman in 1986 and the director recalled of Crosby: 'He was a rarity. He worked fast, which is important to me, and yet his stuff was always good. No matter how fast I moved, Floyd kept right up, and he could light a setup in 10–15 minutes flat, or even faster if need be, and we'd go. Plus, he knew how to set up these really complicated dolly shots quickly.' Indeed, on the commentary included with this release Corman recalled how they managed to complete the picture within the shooting schedule by planning out each day's shots the night before over a drink and a meal, happily at AIP's expense, and by returning to the set at night and working out camera moves and the need for cranes and dollies.

Daniel Haller was also highly regarded by Corman, with their working relationship established in War of the Satellites back in 1958, and hailed him, in his autobiography, as 'the real star of the show' because he cleverly constructed and embellished the Usher sets with $2,000 worth of props and scenery hired from Universal. He worked closely with Corman on pre-planning and re-organising the dressing of the sets and directed the final shot of the fiery demise of the house, signalling his later move into directing proper for AIP.

Arkoff and Nicholson, with Corman's support, approached Vincent Price with a three-picture deal, the first of which would be the lead, as Roderick Usher, in The Fall of the House of Usher. Price had built up a considerable reputation as a character actor, firmly establishing his screen career with Laura (1944), the notable Dragonwyck (1946) and a series of roles as villains and conmen. House of Wax (1953) proved his 'horror star' credentials which would then be exploited in The Fly (1958), its sequel The Return of the Fly (1959) and William Castle's The House on Haunted Hill (1959) and The Tingler (1959).

He was paid $35,000 for the first two films in his AIP contract (although Arkoff claims in his autobiography it was $50,000 for Usher alone) and Price regarded the deal as an appropriate artistic opportunity: 'It was a gamble. I think there comes a time in everybody's career when you suddenly say, money isn't everything; I want to take a gamble on something I believe in.' Corman was delighted and recalled that Price provided 'exactly what I wanted and what Richard Matheson's well-crafted, literate script suggested: a man with a brilliant but tormented mind that works on a register beyond that of ordinary men and thus inspires a deeper fear.'(5)

The late Richard Matheson, a Californian writer highly regarded at the time for his novels I am Legend and The Shrinking Man and prolific author of many horror, fantasy and western short stories, adapted the 1839 tale, expanding it and making a number of changes. Poe's stories are notoriously difficult to realise on screen, depending as they do on unreliable narrators, ambiguity and atmosphere in favour of solid characterisation, and their brevity necessitate a creative approach to fill 90 minutes of screen time. The unreliable narrator of Usher - described as Roderick's 'only personal friend' - was transformed into the more commercially acceptable character of Philip Winthrop (played by wholesome teen heart throb Mark Damon) and the dynamics between him, Roderick and Roderick's cataleptic sister Madeline were also altered. Winthrop became a hero in search of his fiancée, engaged to Madeline but fighting Roderick for possession of her, and personified an aspect of the film's doomed romantic themes. 

Matheson's script, originally titled The Mysterious House of Usher, had also envisaged Roderick, whom many academics suggest is a Poe self-portrait in the short story, sporting a Van Dyke beard and dark hair much as Price had originally appeared in The Song of Bernadette (1943). Matheson was rather taken aback, when he first met Price on the set, to see the actor in pale make up, sans whiskers and with dyed, white hair. This was apparently Price's own take on Roderick Usher: 'In Usher I bleached my hair white and wore pure white make up with black eyebrows. I don't think anyone had done that since Conrad Veidt - there was this whole extraordinary thing that he was ultra-sensitive to light and sound so I tried to give the impression that he'd never been exposed to the light, someone who had just bleached away.'(6)

'What Freud did consciously, Poe did unconsciously'

The Fall of the House of Usher was augmented by a small amount of location shooting where Corman took advantage of local connections to provide establishing and closing sequences for the film. When Corman read about a severe forest fire in the Los Angeles Times, he gathered his crew to shoot the opening scene of Philip Winthrop's arrival on horseback in the Hollywood Hills, at the burnt out area of Griffith Park. Later, several shots of the burning rafters of the Usher house, in the film's fiery climax, were filmed courtesy of an old barn he was able to secure and burn down in Orange County. Those burning rafters would be recycled through a number of the Corman-Poe films.

Matheson's changes to the relationships between Poe's narrator, Roderick and Madeline do not drastically alter the film's adherence to the story's many themes. Corman's film manages to capture much of the story's atmosphere and tension and the director's treatment of the material from a Freudian perspective is aligned particularly well with Poe's own intentions.

Corman often recalled a childhood kinship with Poe's stories and regarded the writer's use of first person narrative as a key to his psychological take on the film adaptations: 'He was one of the first subjective writers and also one of the first writers to have pierced human consciousness. What Freud did consciously, Poe did unconsciously. He literally penetrated the interior of the human spirit...[and] Poe uses a symbolism that is very close to modern psychoanalysis.'(7)

Certainly the opening of the film captures well the disintegration of the House of Usher, symbolically depicted as not only the collapse of the building and the Usher dynasty but also of Roderick's fractured mental state, through a madness passed on down the line. This insanity is symbolised by the 'two pale drops of fire' Roderick and Madeline (Myrna Fahey), a brother and sister representative of the struggle between the conscious and unconscious mind, by Roderick's dark romantic impulse and the threat to his sister from the equally romantic figure of Winthrop.

Inevitably, the film reworks the basic tenets of the Gothic genre within an American idiom where, despite the nod to the hyperbolised middle-European world of Hammer, Matheson establishes that the story takes place in Boston, New England. The unconscious is exemplified by an old house succumbing to decay, torn asunder, full of death, anxiety and family secrets, with suggestions of mental illness and incest. Haller's production design and Crosby's lush cinematography are immensely important contributions to the film's psychological undercurrents, creating a film of hyper non-realism, claustrophobia and interior narcissism perfectly in tune with Price's performance. Jonathan Malcolm Lampley notes: 'As a result of these underpinnings, House of Usher literalizes a madman's disordered psyche, twisted and distorted by his perverse simultaneous attraction and repulsion towards his own sister.'(8)

When Winthrop calls to see Madeline (the unnamed narrator visits Roderick in the short story) after a whirwind romance in Boston, his point of view establishes the house itself as a character, a tainted architecture of stairways, doors and cellars marked out by Crosby's ever-moving, restless camera, until Roderick literally pops out of the woodwork in one of Corman's many rapid moves into close up. He repeats it again with Madeline's entrance, the camera whipping suddenly to the door as she enters the room.

'You must leave this house now. It is not a healthy place for you to be,' warns Roderick, as lurid portraits, exploding fireplaces and collapsing buildings catch Winthrop's attention, before he explains the tainted Usher line. For Roderick and Madeline, he gloomily entreats, 'the slightest touch and we may shatter'. Price is mesmerising as he regales us with the Usher curse, his voice dropping to a whisper to warn Winthrop of the madness he is struggling with. The lute Roderick plays is again, with the paintings he surrounds himself, symbolic of his self-awareness, an embodiment of his mental state and 'peculiar sensibility of temperament'.

As Winthrop attempts to remove Madeline from the curse of the Ushers and take her back to Boston, Roderick's objections become less about her inevitable descent into madness and more fixated on his incestuous desire. The young lovers' bedroom tryst is abruptly interrupted by Corman's customary whip-pan to the bedroom door to frame Roderick eavesdropping on their plans.

The family, it seems, is tainted with other unsavoury elements and Corman's film allows them to bubble to the surface, rather like the boiling gruel cooked up by manservant Bristol (Harry Ellerbe). As Lampley rightly observes, Price's performance is the key to this, instantly capturing Roderick's waxing and waning self-control, his passions flaring only to be drowned in regret, sorrow and melancholia. His response to Madeline's charge of hatred is beautifully played. He is both lover and brother attempting to explain the extent of a 'love that makes me act as I do.'

On the other hand, Roderick's over protectiveness and jealousy may mark his fear of the unleashing of female power at the hands of the rationalist Winthrop, whom unstintingly takes Roderick to task over his abnormal reliance on the supernatural and the hereditary perversion of the Usher line to seal in Madeline's brief desire for a younger man. Winthrop's principle goal is to rescue Madeline from her brother's desires and from a house where female emancipation and sexuality is equated with madness, catalepsy and death. Even Corman saw the exploration of the Usher house as an adolescent fear-attraction to the female body: 'The deeper you go into the dark hallways, then, the deeper you are delving into, say, an adolescent boy's first sexual stirrings.'(9)

'savage degradations'

Certainly, Winthrop spends an inordinate amount of time moving deeper and deeper into the house, where the bubbling pot of gruel acts as a symbolic bridge to his morning encounter with Madeline. Here again, Winthrop rationalises the Usher curse and attempts to literally throw light onto the subject by opening the curtains in her bedroom. This is thwarted by Madeline's insistence to tour the cellar where she is sure her destiny already awaits her, with a coffin prepared among the Usher ancestors and doomed to join the same fate as her mother and grandmother. Her collapse into Withrop's arms after one of the coffins disgorges its contents is the scene of Roderick's further interruption, with Price suddenly appearing out of the shadows, and where both men become fully engaged in the battle to control Madeline.

Madeline's introduction to her deceased relatives is mirrored later with Roderick's own tour of the strange paintings that decorate the hallway and their depiction, the 'savage degradations', of the family as harlots, thieves, drug addicts, murderers and assassins. Burt Shonberg's off-kilter psychedelic paintings, an artist appropriately described as 'a prospector of consciousness', fittingly capture the malignancy at the heart of the film and prefigure the psychedelic touches Corman would bring to this film, especially Winthrop's nightmare about the dead Madeline, the other Poe adaptations and the elongated LSD waking dream of The Trip (1967).

The triumph of Roderick Usher is realised after Madeline's descent into catalepsy. Convincing Winthrop she is dead, a victim of all the Usher stresses and strains, he buries her alive. Price's wonderful reactions as he notes Madeline's recovery during their prayer over her open coffin define his sensitivity as an actor to the material. The premature burial is properly confirmed once they leave the tomb for, as Corman's camera slowly advances on the name plate of her coffin, we hear her ragged breathing and a scream as the screen goes black. Again, in a departure from the Poe story, in which Roderick accidentally buries her alive, the troublesome Madeline has here been deliberately silenced by Roderick and finally embraced by the stifling confinement of the Usher dynasty.

When manservant Bristol inadvertently gives the game away by mentioning Madeline's proclivity to cataleptic trances, Winthrop batters his way into an empty coffin. During his confrontation with Roderick, Corman again drops in visual allusions to Roderick's state of mind with brief shots of the lute lying suggestively across the bed and Winthrop's sudden encounter with one of Shonberg's psychedelic turmoils on canvas. After a frustrating search for the 'dead' Madeline, Winthrop falls, out of sheer exhaustion, into a prolonged and surreal dream. Distorted visions, lurid colours and a seething cloud of vapour take Winthrop into a nightmare where funeral and marriage, death and sex, are intertwined as, surrounded by the demented Usher clan, he sees Roderick sweep Madeline from his grasp. Price offers a lascivious smile and a twinkling eye just to underline the intention.

Madeline's screams transcend dream into reality as the storm lashed Usher house erupts with the power of female revenge. 'Perhaps this storm will finish it,' offers Roderick as he confides that Madeline is still alive and scratching at the lid of her coffin. Corman underlines this with a simple but chilling shot of the chained up coffin yielding briefly to a blood covered hand. Blood becomes more significant when Winthrop finds the open coffin and follows a trail of blood, suggesting the loss of Madeline's virginity not to her lover but to her Usher bloodline. He tracks her through the house, to the circle of paintings and to a brilliantly executed encounter as her bloodied hand claws around the door he is opening and, like a defiled bride, she lunges at him. Corman intercuts her piercing eyes with those of the Usher portraits, acknowledging that the untimely burial by her perverse brother has sent her as completely mad as her relatives.

A stunning moment is her appearance before she strangles Roderick, extinguishing her father, brother and lover in one fell swoop, where she is briefly seen holding her bloodied hands in front of her face, eyes lit with insanity. No matter how hard Roderick and Winthrop have tried to control Madeline, her female monstrosity will rise to threaten and destroy the symbolic masculine order, an acting out of female revenge for the long line of Usher patriarchal failure. There's a great shot of Myrna Fahey walking directly into camera, going completely out of focus as she approaches the lens, before she polishes off Vincent Price and the entire house goes spectacularly up in flames and its remains sink into the poisoned tarn.

The closing act of the film really gives Mark Damon and Myrna Fahey some delicious material to work with, transforming them from rather drab love birds into, respectively, ferociously angry and cuckolded suitor and demented bride-to-be. Price dominates the film with a classy performance, one filled with quite subtle nuances that do challenge the received wisdom he was capable only of camp excess. He completely captures what Mark Jankovich sees as the core theme of the Corman-Poe films, of madmen 'morbidly aware of their own psychic vulnerability... [who] desire their own destruction. Products of corrupt families, they seem simply to lie in wait for the fulfilment of their worst fears, fears they will be engulfed by the past; that they will be condemned to repeat the histories of their forebears.'(10)

(1) 'Corman Speaks', interview with Bertrand Tavernier, Bernard Eisenschitz and Christopher Wicking in Roger Corman Interviews, edited by Constantine Nasr
(2) Tom Weaver interview with Corman in Sci-Fi Swarm and Horror Horde: Interviews with 62 Filmmakers
(3) Mark Damon and Linda Schreyer, From Cowboy to Mogul to Monster
(4) 'Corman Speaks', interview with Bertrand Tavernier, Bernard Eisenschitz and Christopher Wicking in Roger Corman Interviews, edited by Constantine Nasr
(5) Denis Meikle, Vincent Price, The Art of Fear. 
(6) Ibid
(7) 'Corman Speaks', interview with Bertrand Tavernier, Bernard Eisenschitz and Christopher Wicking in Roger Corman Interviews, edited by Constantine Nasr
(8) Jonathan Malcolm Lampley, Women in the Horror Films of Vincent Price
(9) Denis Meikle, Vincent Price, The Art of Fear. 
(10) Mark Jankovich, Rational Fears, American Horror in the 1950s.

About the transfer
This is a very satisfactory viewing experience in 1080p. Transferred from original film elements by MGM, the colour reproduction is particularly good and flesh tones and costumes - Mark Damon's blue coat and Vincent Price's blood red robes vividly come to mind - look rich and Winthrop's nightmare is aptly lurid with its optically manipulated shades of green, purple and blue. There is also some impressive detail in faces, costumes and set decoration too and only occasionally does the image look soft. Transitions between scenes do decrease the image quality momentarily but that's perfectly normal during original optically printed fades in and out of a scene in films of this era. It's not distracting at all. Overall, it looks sumptuous and clean with good levels of contrast and grain. The uncompressed PCM soundtrack is robust and copes extremely well with the full blown Les Baxter score, dialogue, screams, thunder and lightning.

Special Features
Commentary with director and producer Roger Corman
A pleasant time is to be had in Corman's company and he discusses aspects of the production, the casting, working with Floyd Crosby and Daniel Haller and his Freudian take on the film and Poe's tale. There are brief moments of silence but this is well worth a listen.  
Legend to Legend: Joe Dante (26:47)
Dante discusses the 'Roger Corman School' of film making and how he eventually worked for Corman in the 1970s, editing trailers and learning his own craft. He also provides an excellent introduction to the cycle of Poe films, complimenting Jonathan Rigby's interview with his own view of the adaptations and their place within horror cinema.
Interview with Jonathan Rigby(32:58)
An informative, erudite and detailed production history of the film, featuring plenty of illustrative clips and stills, from horror expert Rigby. He covers Corman's proposal to AIP, Price's casting, the Matheson script, the location filming and the ensemble work of Floyd Crosby and Daniel Haller. He also contextualises the film within the American Gothic tradition and gives a considered opinion of the film's triumphs and failings.
Fragments of the House of Usher (10:47)
An interesting video essay from critic and film maker David Cairns which explores the Poe story in relation to Corman's adaptation, teasing out its themes of corrupt families, incest and death. 
Archival Interview with Vincent Price (11:26)
Endearing and lovely interview at Price's Malibu home, conducted in July 1986 courtesy of a French television company. This touches on many aspects of his career - contracts with Howard Hughes, working with James Whale on the ill-feted Green Hell (1940) and then the Poe films with Corman. He comes across as an utter charmer.
Trailer (2:30)
'The screen's foremost delineator of the Draculean!' screams the unrestored U.S. trailer about Price.
Reversible sleeve
Featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys
Collector's booklet
Featuring new writing on the film by author and critic Tim Lucas and an extract from Vincent Price’s long out of print autobiography, illustrated with original archive stills and posters.

The Fall of the House of Usher
American International Pictures
1960
Cert: 15 / Released 26 August 2013
Arrow Films / Region B / Blu-ray / Feature Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 / 1080p / Colour / English 2.0 Mono PCM / English SDH / Catalogue No: FCD844 / Feature Running Time: 79:19