Roundabout
Rippers
producer Anthony Hinds, 'but in- stead of that a servant comes out, straight through the window and into the moat. He fishes himself out and they throw him in again. Then they bring him in and roast him on the spit. It's all good stuff.'
The roasting bit isn't in Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles. It was also one of the things queried by the censor when he read the script of Hammer Films' latest production, now being made in Technicolor down at Bray, in Berkshire. Ah, but, replied Mr. Hinds, the book is a classic. The censor con- ceded this, and so, somehow, roasting is in.
This will be Mr. Hinds's thirty-seventh pic- ture. It follows in, the profitable tradition of The Curse of Frankenstein and The Camp on Blood Island and the latest, Dracula. Mr. Hinds, in his late thirties, with a little moustache and strong glasses, is one of three top men at Hammer. He has a nice frank handshake, palm upwards. He believes in craftsmanship, applied to films of broad comedy or horror,.and the sophistication of teenage audiences.
Being snooty doesn't pay, he says. The Rank Organisation was snooty about Dracula—'They didn't want to know about it, they didn't want it to play in their cinemas.' However, they, too, made concessions; they helped distribute it and now they're showing it. A lot of care, says Hammer, has been lavished on these films. A publicity man explained how The Camp on Blood Island had been described as highly authentic by Lord Russell of Liverpool. (It had its premiere the day his Knights of Bushido was published, but 'this was a coincidence.') An ex- PoW was invited to the premiere. 'He said this was really it. He was so overcome he couldn't sleep that night for thinking about it.'
For the prologue to The Hound a handsome banqueting hall has been built. Mr. Hinds ex- plains : 'Sir Hugo's got this girl upstairs. She's a very beautiful girl, everybody wants her. They're drawing lots for her, but when he goes up, she's done a bunk. Suddenly he gets an idea and says, "Get out the hound." . .
Down the studio hall is a great table covered with green and purple wineglasses, real fruit, real bread, a real joint of lamb and real flies. Near by the roasted servant slumps in an armchair, fore- head well clotted with blood, awaiting his call. Says the director, Mr. Terence Fisher, about the audience for horror films : 'I think we can feel them. We can understand them. We have a feeling for how these things should be used and put upon the screen.'
And then there's the fidelity. 'If people are hor- rible we show they're bloody horrible. Because it's logical to be horrible.' On the table, under the hot lights, the joint is beginning to smell a little.
Trippers
'slit?' inquired the butler at Burley on the Hill. His voice was an autumnal lament as he offered sweet or dry sherry to a covey of coach agents and proprietors. They drained the last brown drops and pushed their empty glasses around the cold marble splendour of the statue of The Kiss of Victory. Then they squeaked happily along every cc. ridor, summing up the seventeenth-cen- tury Rutland house as a terminus for their 1959 brochure of stately homes cruises.
Best blue serge brushed against enormous brocade curtains, protected to shoulder level in plastic wrappings. A whippet cringed licking and nuzzling between unfamiliar trouser legs. It .re- mained properly respectful towards the Regency furniture, the Adam fireplaces and the State Bed which the Prince Regent spurned in 1814. The coachmen, eyes embedded in sheaves of descrip- tive literature, plodded on through the Book Room, where the foxes' tails set off a television set.
A trestle table, at a strategic point in the passage, acted as a sherry filling station. 'I'm from Midland Red,' announced a pink-faced guest with a double-deck chin, 'and I think this place will be alright.' After a four-course luncheon, washed down by a Sauterne and wel- coming words from Burley's owner, his com- panion nodded expansively : 'Years ago, we weren't allowed in such lovely houses. Now the Stately Ho?nes of England are one of the most popular tours. We'll certainly have to get an operating licence for this.' A waitress asked were they sure, now, they'd enjoyed lunch, gents. She retreated, warmed by well-fed smiles. 'But tea's the thing,' said Midland Red. 'We've lots of people who come to Leicester for their holidays, believe it or not. The stay-at- homes visit these places just for the afternoon. An hour or so here, with tea. And a gentle ride back. We've plenty to choose from, and longer runs to Chatsworth House, Blenheim Palace and, of course, Woburn Abbey.'
He glanced about the Long Room, with rem- nants of fresh salmon and old memories of royal banquets. 'People just go the once to a place and then wait for three or four years.' The Trent man stopped nodding. 'I am of the opinion,' he began, 'that they're of one class on these jobs. Not a lot of youngsters. Certainly not these teen- agers. This trade's for people who have really got down to a bit of history.'
Burley's owner, Colonel Hanbury, a Joint Master of Belvoir Hunt, delivered snow-white scrolls to Trent and Midland Red. Awfully nice of them to be' so interested, he said, is tall, grey figure, clipping his sentences nervously. Trent unrolled his scrolls and peered at the posters approvingly. 'It's no use sticking "Burley" on a board and expecting to get coach customers,' he said. 'It's amazing, the ignorance of people on local knowledge.'
Trent looked at a poster picture of this Rut- land retreat, with one of the largest forecourts in England adorned by dull cream colonnades. Then he walked to the north front to compare the print with reality. 'Mind you,' he said, 'the most important question for us, always, is will we get a coach through the entrance gates?'
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