Cinema
Horror-struck
Duncan Fallowell
And Now The Screaming Starts Director: Roy Ward Baker. Stars: Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee. 'X' Rialto (91 minutes) Doctor Death Seeker of Souls Director: Eddie Saeta. Star: John Considine. `X' Rialto (89 minutes). Mutations Director: Jack Cardiff. Stars: Donald Pleasance, Julie Ege. 'X' Studio Two (92 minutes) Personally, I do like horror, `sci-fi', Da-Surreo-Da', all that deranged, adventurous stuff. What is more I had just finished Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and so was eager to experience in the field his ideas of Quality as the transcendental matrix of correct action. My subliminal perception was all tuned up and raring to go, quite an accomplishment for a windy Monday, but as sometimes happens I had overestimated the amount of cerebral hardware necessary to confront the week's offerings.
As reel after reel of nullity sped towards oblivia; one thing as a result however assumed monstrous clarity, that by and large the people making these pictures simply do not know where they are at. Actors, directors, producers, the lot, they are operating blind functions which prevent even a flicker of real involvement from reaching the screen. They would be better employed punching holes in a factory since at least you can think about something else as you do it. And if they say that they are not in the high art racket but in giving the public what it wants, i.e. in entertainment/commerce, they are not even adept at that.
Let us take entertainment first. The most entertaining of the three is Doctor Death Seeker of Souls. The first line is a witlessly brilliant stroke. A bereaved American business man and his doctor friend are walking slowly through a cemeterY heaped with tombstones. The doctor turns to him and says, "I don't think these daily visits here are doing you any good." That is a scream all right. It broke everyone up. They were broken up again later on when the bereaved American business man picked up the telephone and said, "I saW your ad in the paper about reincarnation," But gems like these are surrounded by vast inert pools of tedium and are funny because they summarise in a moment the entire loveless inadequacy of what we are seeing. Again in Mutations the big moment comes with Julie naked on a table waiting to bel mated to a plant by Dr Donaid Pleasance, and so giggles break out like measles. There is only one waY to endure such trash: detachment' the death knell achievement. It is not even camp any more because there is only one joke, the hung°t of an audience contemplating incompetence, and so the laughing, comes at the beginning. By the env' the joke has worn out altogether and everyone is madly recrossing, their legs or is asleep. A sense 01 humour is vital in such circumstances, the very best that can ne, wrestled from an absolute waste 0' time. It is untrue that critics are being patronising here, even if it would seem dreadfully like that were the director sitting among them. They are simply surviving. What is particularly deathly is not the inherent value of the original idea — And Now The Screaming Starts has quite an interesting one, the attempt Of a wronged woodman to possess the spirit of an unborn baby as an act of vengeance — but the terrifying cluelessness of the particinanta in making anything more than ail embarrassment of it. .
As for money making, I do not see much evidence of it. Very few films make money, some break even, most lose money. The fevi which succeed pay for the majoritY which do not. Currently there great interest in paranormal subjects, more profound than fashionable, Basically a film will make money if it takes something which interests people then giveS thern more than they have on the matter. But producers get it all wrong. They take the fashionable categorY and forget all the rest. It is amazi" that a many roe, s f them chances onfostp Tai li ins; a fortune are increased immeas?" ably if it also happens to be goo".
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