6 OCTOBER 1973, Page 23

Cinema

Hell and high camp

Christopher Hudson L

A well researched and fascinating new book on British horror films* makes the claim that we are the only nation not to take the irrational seriously, and that, as a result of our robust, spontaneous approach to the Gothic, we produce the best horror films in the world. The argument needs developing, but I think there's a lot of truth in the assertion. It is certainly the most commercially successful genre the British cinema has known over the past fifteen years; and with the notable exception of Edgar A. Poe, both the French and the Americans have preferred to import British versions of the classical horror themes.

A "quality of methodical and unselfconscious eccentricity", Mr Pine calls it, which is a very good way of describing the latest horror offering, on view at the Carlton, The Legend of Hell House ('X'). Home of the Belasco family it is, as one of its investigators remarks to his wife without the flicker of a smile, "the Everest among haunted houses." Previous investigators died or were paralysed or went insane — all except one, Ben Fischer, a 'physical medium'. Together with a 'mental medium, and a famous physicist and his wife, he is paid by a dying millionaire to reopen the house and discover the truth about survival after death.

Since the very first horror film

— Edison's Frankenstein of 1908

— the plot has revolved as much around the figure of a good scientist as around the supernatural forces he is trying to conquer. Until recently the scientist was always right, and usually successful, but his reign has ended with the suddenness of the paleface in Westerns who no longer celebrates victory over the redskin brave. Time was when the man in the white coat had only to connect an electrical circuit or devise a chemical solution to annihilate the hideous monster in the very act of engulfing the helpless heroine: but nowadays he is often as impotent before the forces of evil as the blondes he used to rescue and marry. Such a one is our physicist here, Dr Barrett, who has a very rough time of it. To start with the mental medium, Florence Tanner, has made contact with a poltergeist and is emitting ectoplasm while Barrett is still having plates and cutlery thrown at him by an un

seen hand. Miss Tanner makes all the running — and does some of it, being a practical girl — until she gets too close for comfort. Barrett then inches ahead by making a great play with his scientific equipment, especially the 'Reversor' an enormous cube with dials which releases an electromagnetic counter-charge to the physical forces battened inside the house. The late finishing spurt, though, comes from Ben Fisher, although how he does it, of course, I shan't reveal.

It is a first-rate horror film, the best. rye seen for a long time, The screenplay, trom his own book, is by Richard Matheson who has a Wheatley and two excellent Poe adaptations to his credit. Clive Revill's Dr Barrett is nicely pedantic and arrogant, considering what's in store for him; Pamela Franklin and Roddy McDowell are good enough actors to give the two mediums considerably more weight than you might expect. John Hough directed. 'John Wayne is Cahill' says the publicity on Cahill ('AA' Warner), which is as much a recommendation, or discommendation, as many people will need. It is in fact the first really acceptable Western to come along for some months, being neither excessively violent, excessively slow, excessively stupid or excessively cryptic. , Marshal Cahill's two youngsters — one of them only eleven — get involved in a bank robbery in 'which the sheriff is murdered., Cahill deputises his elder son; they haul in four suspects who are condemned to hang; and the boys are caught, too literally for their comfort, in a croSsfire.

The story. is pleasantly fresh, and Andrew McLaglen, who has directed some sound, solid Westerns in his time, has had the good fortune to find two young actors (one of them the inevitable Gary Grimes) who don't ooze treacle as soon as they open their mouths. Wayne presides benignly, still cantering about, although we don't see him get into the saddle. I suppose these days the wretched beast has to stand still while he is lifted and swung on top of it.

Heritage 01 Horror David Pine (Gordon Fraser £3.00)