Terror of the Healer

One of the great unsung performances in film history has to be Christopher Lee in 1966's Rasputin the Mad Monk, which I watched again last night. For all his association with cheap, lurid horror movies, Christopher Lee was by no means a chewer of scenery. He had a strong belief in restraint. That's what made him so great as silent, stoic monsters. But casting him as a boisterous madman results in a magnificent chemical reaction.

Lee's Rasputin is every bit as hypnotic, enigmatic, capricious, and physically intimidating as you would want from Rasputin in a movie.

A huge man with big black hair and beard, gazing with wide eyes and sadistic smile is lurking in the doorway. Then this frightful monument laughs and grabs someone and dances madly.

His miraculous healing powers are never explained. His supreme confidence suggests it's a fruit of conquest rather than any bargain, anything that might have required him to relinquish something. If he had a soul, he certainly doesn't seem to miss it. He exists totally outside the rules of civilised Russia but he knows the rules to flaunt them, to use them to his advantage, to plunder the privileges of the Tsarina.

But we first meet him at a little countryside inn where he saves a woman from fatal illness. Her husband, the innkeeper, is understandably grateful and willing to accede to any request. Rasputin seems to make a game of just how far he can push the man's appreciation, right up to taking the man's daughter into the barn.

In a long career of playing villains, Rasputin may be Lee's most admirably terrible.

The Prince was Back

So I started at the bottom of the pile of my recently recovered Hammer films and I watched 1966's Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Supposedly, star Christopher Lee, who returned to the role of Dracula after first playing him in Hammer's 1958 Dracula, thought the dialogue was so bad he refused to utter any of it. So he's basically a silent part. It's not one of Hammer's best Dracula movies but I do like it better than the first. There's not really any depth or interesting sexual subtext to the four English tourists who wind up in Dracula's castle and resurrecting him. I do kind of like that it's the asshole among them, Francis Matthews as Charles Kent, who manages to survive. Fussy prude Barbara Shelley gets recruited by Dracula and becomes a lot more fun as a ham-handed temptress.

The fact that Dracula never speaks somehow makes it even funnier that he's constantly annoyed by how she jumps the gun. Just a couple words of greeting thinly spread over clear, weird lust and then she pounces on Diana (Suzan Farmer).

But the best stuff happens in the last portion of the film set at a monastery. The first film didn't have a proper Renfield character but this one has Ludwig, played by Thorley Walters, who's usually comic relief.

He has no jokes here except when he hastily swallows a fly before some people enter his room. And that works out to be nicely disturbing rather than funny. He seems like he inspired a fair bit of Coppola's Renfield played by Tom Waits.

Another thing I think Coppola took from this movie was Dracula having a girl suck blood from his chest.

I wonder if this was in fact the first vampire movie to do this. It really is disturbing, too.

It's a shame Dracula is defeated by running water in this film. Hammer rarely seemed to treat Lee's Dracula with the respect he deserved.

Twitter Sonnet #1716

With triple flavours, ice awaits your gut.
The ether sweet implies a sour space.
A human skin describes a wand'ring mutt.
A tranquil pond distorts your only face.
Vampiric metal joined the living late.
But digits burned again beneath the strange.
When horses came, the tourists sought the gate.
Convenience dosed the fools beyond their range.
In stopping foot abaft, the grounds were pulled.
In blinking ports the turtles worked at night.
Forgotten wharves distort the list of fooled.
The paint colludes to force the flying kite.
Advancing oats reproach the wheat to stalks.
A change of dress and jumping spiders talk.

The Continued Misfortunes of Alien Saps

Everyone's favourite telekinetic alien siblings returned in 1978's Return from Witch Mountain. The kids are still innocent, wide eyed victims who can't act, and they're joined by an LA street gang of other kids who can't act. But, in the villain department, this film has the captivating duo of Bette Davis and Christopher Lee. They're delightful together and this is a genuinely good movie whenever they're onscreen.

We catch up with Tony (Ike Eisenmann) and Tia (Kim Richards) as they arrive in LA in a flying saucer. Their uncle Bene (Denver Pyle) tells them to avoid using their powers and then leaves them for some reason. Almost immediately, they get separated and lost and Tony is captured by a sinister man with a mind control device.

This is Dr. Gannon (Christopher Lee), whose lofty dreams of world domination are frustrated a little by the humbler avarice of his accomplice, Letha (Bette Davis). When Gannon turns Tony into his slave, all Letha wants is to make lots and lots of money.

The only scene in the movie that made me laugh is when Letha takes zombified Tony to a museum where a big stack of '49ers gold bars is being exhibited. After causing a distraction, she tells Tony to deliver the gold bars to her nephew outside. Tony follows her instructions and the nephew is nearly killed by the heavy flying bars and their car is crushed.

This isn't some kind of intentional foiling of the plan on Tony's part. It's actually a bit creepy how totally he's dominated by Gannon's device throughout the film. Even when Gannon is telling him to kill his sister, Tony doesn't flinch when trying to drop an elevator on her.

Really, it's Christopher Lee that makes this movie. He plays it to the hilt, regardless of the quality of the material and he's mesmerising.

Return from Witch Mountain is available on Disney+.

The Unholy Present Perfect

Will Dracula rise again? With a title well ahead of you is 1968's Dracula has Risen from the Grave. A Hammer horror film directed by Freddie Francis, it features Christopher Lee as Dracula but no Peter Cushing this time around. His adversary is a steadfastly honest young baker played by Barry Andrews, a dead ringer for Roger Daltrey.

I kind of hoped it was Daltrey when I saw him, despite not seeing Daltrey's name in the credits. The Who versus Dracula? I'd be down for that. But Andrews is charismatic in his own right.

The story feels suspiciously like a screenplay originally written without Dracula or even supernatural horror in mind into which Dracula was inserted. Screenwriter Anthony Hinds seemed preoccupied with the worth of honesty. Paul, Andrews' character, wants to marry the daughter of the Catholic Monsignor (Rupert Davies) who's just gotten home from putting a big crucifix on Dracula's castle, to make sure the Count never, ever rises from the grave. Along the way, he inadvertently attracts the eye of Dracula, who has already risen from the grave.

Paul's father is played by Hammer regular Michael Ripper, once again playing a tavern keeper. He advises his son that honesty isn't always the best policy, that he should know when to play things close to his chest. Unfortunately, Paul wants nothing to do with tact, and when the clergyman he hopes will be his father-in-law asks his religion, Paul happily owns himself an atheist.

You'd think the rest of the film, in which Paul's fiancee (Veronica Carlson) and the buxom tavern wench (Barbara Ewing) are both bitten and enthralled by the famous vampire, would cause him to reexamine his beliefs. But the plot proves to be more about the monsignor accepting Paul as his daughter's chosen.

Freddie Francis delivers the goods again as one of the better Hammer directors. I particularly like a rooftop set/matte painting combination he uses repeatedly throughout the film, making it the choice location for battles or even just the routine route for clandestine young lovers.

Dracula has Risen from the Grave is available on HBOMax, one of four Hammer films, the others including Hammer's first Dracula film, their first Frankenstein film, and the Hammer version of The Mummy. I'd say The Mummy is the best of the group with Frankenstein in second but, despite loving Hammer movies, I've never been fond of their first Dracula entry. It's a shame Warners doesn't have some of the better Hammer films on HBOMax, like Frankenstein Created Woman, Rasputin the Mad Monk, The Brides of Dracula, She, or The Vampire Lovers.

From the Depths of a Glitzy Hell

Did you know there's a movie where Sammy Davis Jr. plays a demon working for Christopher Lee as Satan to help Jack Klugman get revenge on Adam West? 1973's Poor Devil is a TV movie, in fact a backdoor pilot for a show that never happened, filled with awkward, corny jokes. But with such a cast it can hardly be a full miss and it starts to gain a real pulse when the relationship between Sammy Davis Jr. and Jack Klugman has time to develop.

The film opens in Hell where Sammy (Sammy Davis Jr.) works shovelling coal, hoping one day for a sweet promotion as a reward for shepherding another soul into Satan's (Christopher Lee) arms. Although it's great watching Davis Jr. and Lee perform together, the scenes in Hell are generally the weakest part of the film. One wishes the writers had just a slightly stronger grasp of the theology when Satan reminisces on how he first tried to tempt Adam with various other fruits before finally succeeding with the apple. As though God had forbidden Adam to eat any fruit of any kind.

But Sammy finds a kindred spirit in a mortal man named Bernie (Klugman), who's also bitter about not getting a promotion at the department store where he works. His boss is played by Adam West as such an over-the-top sleeze that he's one of the film's high points all by himself.

Bernie finally sells his soul to Sammy but the contract is void if Sammy can't fulfil Bernie's wishes. Bernie decides he wants his store to be looted of its entire inventory to ruin his boss. After putting together an extremely weird and nonsensical plot involving helicopters and Blackbeard the pirate, Sammy rounds up all the local burglars and has it done--only for Bernie to have a change of heart when he realises looting the store will endanger the livelihoods of the store's employees. A valuable lesson, that.

The chemistry between Sammy and Bernie fights its way through the cheesy dialogue to be genuinely sweet, almost a George Bailey and Clarence relationship.

Poor Devil is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1360

A secret politician teaches space.
Constructed lunch reflects the growing box.
A knowing grid creates the open face.
The legs dissolved in weirdly fattened socks.
A pointed flower's cash for lizard men.
To stop the water, earth absorbed the rain.
A swirling light became a glowing win.
The wings were curled beneath the feathered vein.
The scrambled cards attract the swiftest hand.
The drowning clock extends a rusty spring.
A beach deserts its ev'ry grain of sand.
Machines were judged on apps for going "ping".
The agents changed the story's sun to moon.
Entire worlds reside upon the spoon.

The Green Glow on the Wicked Regula

There's a 1967 West German horror film streaming on Amazon Prime now under the unassuming title of The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism. But according to Wikipedia it also goes by the similarly understated titles The Blood Demon, Castle of the Walking Dead, or its German title of Die Schlangengrube und das Pendel ("The Snake Pit and the Pendulum"). It looks like it's a straight transfer from the VHS and it's dubbed in English but it's well worth watching not just because star Christopher Lee does his own English voice over.

After torturing to death twelve virgins, a sinister nobleman (Lee) is forced to wear a weird smiling mask and is sentenced to be quartered, his body pulled apart by four horses. His name is Count Regula, and he's a "regula" fiend, this guy. I'm just kidding, it's a perfectly regula name. I guess this is how you can tell the story wasn't originally written in English.

Before his death, Regula vows a decidedly irregula revenge on the families of the magistrate who condemned him and the woman who escaped him. Thirty-five years later and a man and woman played by the same actors, Lex Barker and Karin Dor, respectively, have been summoned by Count Regula. They know nothing of their families or their relationship to the Count and are surprised when the nearby villagers are horrified that they intend to visit the Count's castle.

The film has fantastic visuals hidden behind the VHS haze. The town at the beginning used the beautifully preserved medieval town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber. The rest of the film is crammed with extravagant fantasy horror mise-en-scene, my favourite being trees ornamented with random human body parts.

Only the coachman sees this and he only tells the people riding in the coach that he hears screams. We're left to wonder if the body parts are products of his imagination or if they're just too horrible for him to mention.

Accompanying the group is a Falstaffian robber/monk named Fabian (Vladimir Medar), a nice addition to the group with the fairly ordinary hero and his love interest. He's one of the elements that clearly distinguish the film from a British production. The interior of Regula's castle also has lighting and design that recall the more lush, high fantasy films of Germany and Eastern Europe of the time.

The credits claim this film is based on "The Pit and the Pendulum" but, like most other movies that make that claim, it bears almost no resemblance to Poe's story beyond having one scene where a character is tied up while a pendulum swings over his belly. The film never reaches Poe's heights of psychological horror but if you're looking for some over the top, Halloween-ish, slightly campy vibes the good Dr. Sadism has what you need.

Twitter Sonnet #1170

Infected limbs assemble, walking straight.
Attending stars descend beneath the gloom.
A fatal coin contaminates the bait.
A razor thread has cut the wild loom.
An errant fly composed the helpless dough.
Repulsive cakes emerge in blackened pans.
The knife begins to scream and strangely glow.
The vittles thus prepared not beast's or man's.
Revived among the verdant slimes it rose.
A wretched claw, a shadow, former hand.
The bony finger still decisive chose.
Relentless wheels are turning on command.
A sea of howling dead condemn the hull.
To swirling depths the damned consign a skull.

Caesar in Dreams

All arguments between advocates for republics and enforcers of tyranny may be moot if all is controlled by capricious supernatural elements. The best part of Stuart Burge's 1970 adaptation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar is its sense of the dreamlike and the fantastic, the very palpable influence the stars really do have on mortal faults. But it's got a great cast, too, and despite cutting too much from the text I really don't think this one deserves its bad reputation.

Calpurnia's (Jill Bennett) dream sequence is terrific, for one thing, with pulsing fade ins and outs of footage of mobs, Caesar's bust actually bleeding in a dark void, and Christopher Lee as Artemidorus intoning his warning for Caesar about the conspirators. He never actually gets a chance to speak his warning in waking life in this version but it works a lot better as part of the dream. The echo effect on his voice and the soothsayer's ("Beware the Ides of March . . .!") reminds me of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland in a very positive way.

It really emphasises the incredible number of portents in this play where soothsayers, birds, the weather, and dreams are constantly trying to talk to the characters. If, as Cassius (Richard Johnson) says, the fault really is "not in our stars but in ourselves," it's not for lack of the stars trying.

That famous line is rarely quoted in full, "The fault (dear Brutus) is not in our Stars but in our Selves, that we are underlings." The reason Cassius is typically portrayed as a villain is that he, unlike Brutus, is motivated at least partially by his pride but he really doesn't deserve to be played like Snidely Whiplash, which Richard Johnson kind of does here. A lot of what he says makes sense in light of the fact that Caesar is becoming a dictator in what has long been a proud republic.

Why should that name be sounded more then yours
Write them together: Yours, is as faire a Name:
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well:
Weigh them, it is as heauy: Coniure with 'em,
Brutus will start a Spirit as soone as Caesar.
Now in the names of all the Gods at once,
Vpon what meate doth this our Caesar feede,
That he is growne so great? Age, thou art sham'd.
Rome, thou hast lost the breed of Noble Bloods.
When went there by an Age, since the great Flood,
But it was fam'd with more then with one man?

There's a television production with Peter Cushing as Cassius I'd dearly like to get my hands on.

There are several Hammer regulars in this production too, though. In addition to Christopher Lee, Andre Morell, my favourite Quatermass, plays Cicero, though if you blink you'll miss him. All of his dialogue was cut, you just see him walk past the screen in one shot, his role reduced to a curiously overcast cameo. In the play, he has dialogue with Casca about the weather, maybe Burge felt the storm effects worked well enough on their own. But Cicero's line, "But men may construe things after their fashion, clean from the purpose of the things themselves," is a nice thing to keep in mind while watching the play. It speaks to the conflicting motives of the conspirators which itself reflects the potential faults in decisions made by a group of people against a single clear vision like a Caesar's. The famous scene where Mark Antony sways the crowd after Brutus has spoken over Caesar's corpse shows just how much readier a crowd is to believe in a person than a principle.

Which makes Brutus' faith in a Roman love for republic so tragic. You might say it should've been obvious Antony would win the crowd over when the spectacle of Caesar's corpse is right there in front of them, but it only goes to show how much belief Brutus has in his own reasons and the capacity for other people to reason. He forgets how people might "construe things after their fashion".

Roger Ebert considered Jason Robards as Brutus to be a big weak point in the film, calling him "wooden". He's really no better or worse than he is in Once Upon a Time in the West or Melvin and Howard; I think the woodenness Ebert talks about is Robards' deliberate decision to make Brutus seem dispassionate. Here's a man who would murder a man he loves for a principle. The contrast between his performance and the others', though, may have a lot to do with the fact that he's an American in an otherwise almost entirely British cast who deliver their lines with the creativity of inflection and love of the language characteristic of traditional British stage actors. But there are other Americans in the cast who fit in better, including Robert Vaughn as Casca and Charlton Heston as Mark Antony.

While Robert Johnson maintains a straightforwardly villainous portrayal of Cassius, Heston takes the opportunity of playing Antony to deliver a more morally ambiguous character than he often had chance to at this stage of his career. His grief is sincere on beholding Caesar's corpse but he also luxuriates in an opulent picnic on the battlefield. It's one of those things that makes Antony seem like Charles II and Brutus like Oliver Cromwell by contrast and, indeed, I found myself thinking of the movie Cromwell which was released the same year. Alec Guinness' portrayal of Charles I is pretty restrained and Richard Harris is more more fiery than Robards here but obviously the story has a lot of philosophical similarities.

The cast of this Julius Caesar also includes Diana Rigg who's very memorable in a brief appearance as Portia; Michael Gough as one of the conspirators, making the most of only a couple lines; and John Gielgud plays Caesar himself, solid as always.

Twitter Sonnet #1156

In crimson steam the chain redeemed an eye.
For climbing rocks the newt awards a bike.
In circuits placid tigers eat the pie.
Through cloudy paints will thinner lightning strike.
A hollow hit resounds from golden bells.
But lucky storms return the ship to port.
An octopus contrives galactic Hells.
The snow returns to take the hidden fort.
The only legs support the speckled fawn.
Beneath the candy screen a movie plays.
Enchanted keys collect the doughnut dawn.
The bobbing frigate cleanly missed her stays.
A sinking flag was winking over waves.
The ocean rears a canny brace of knaves.

The Armour Becomes the Prince

Seventeen years after he played the definitive merry rebel, Errol Flynn found himself in the opposite role in 1955's The Dark Avenger. A high adventure take on Edward the Black Prince, son of England's Edward III, the film finds Flynn in charge of England's occupation of Aquitaine. Lacking the energy and fun of Flynn's great swashbucklers, it does have wonderful visuals thanks to amazing costumes and great locations.

Obviously one of the film's first tasks is to make it seem like a really good thing that Prince Edward (Flynn) is occupying Aquitaine. It gets to work showing how he's a benevolent leader who steps outside his castle to meet personally on foot with peasants who approach him with grievances. Taxes were a big issue in Robin Hood and this Edward is adamant the peasants will not be taxed unfairly.

Unfortunately the villainous Comte de Ville, played by a simmering Peter Finch, has other ideas. For reasons that aren't made quite clear, the English King (Michael Hordern) hadn't punished or deposed De Ville when he refused to swear fealty after being conquered. So De Ville goes right ahead imposing taxes to raise an army against the Prince, the army routes the Prince's forces, and the Prince and his right hand man are forced into hiding. They stay at a tavern where they run into an uncreditted Christopher Lee.

And Lee and Flynn have a sword fight. But despite the fact that Flynn accidentally nearly severed Lee's finger it's a fight lacking greatly in ferocity. The two slowly and deliberately swing their blades at each other as though they'd rehearsed the fight only once or twice. Producer Walter Mirisch is quoted by Wikipedia as saying of Flynn, "Before we started to shoot, I asked him to diet and hopefully lose some weight, which he didn't do. There were only traces left of the face, physique and charm that he had brought to The Adventures of Robin Hood, Captain Blood, The Sea Hawk and all those other great adventure films of his youth." But, the swordfight notwithstanding, I didn't have a problem with Flynn's performance or the fact that he seemed older and slightly fatter. He just seems like he's lived a lot more and the world has made him a little sad and circumspect. He seems wiser than the fiery young upstart he was.

The historical Prince Edward was called the Black Prince though likely not for the reason the film invents. Most of the plot involves Edward posing as a Black Knight who poses as an ally of De Ville, insisting on anonymity until the English are defeated. Joanne Dru, the tough dame who took an arrow to the shoulder in Red River, is surprisingly flat as Flynn's love interest and the two never have chemistry. But the film's parade of costumes is certainly a marvel.

Kind Of Beat

When Beat culture came to Britain it probably looked nothing like 1960's Beat Girl. Slightly more upscale than one of Ed Wood's issue films, this one began development as an exploitation film about strippers but somewhere along the way it was decided it was going to pretend to have a serious view on the post war youth counterculture. The writing is terrible, its insights completely superficial, but it does have a nice cast, including David Farrar and Christopher Lee. The star of the film, Gillian Hills, would later become a pop star in France and make some appearances in much better films than this.

A very young and skinny Oliver Reed also has a tiny role, seen here dancing with Jennifer (Hills). He's among the group of miscreants she hangs out with at the coffee bar where another boy "improvises" Elvis Presley knock-off songs. There's some discussion about kicks and World War II that sound like they came from a fifty year old Martian who read a fifteen page description of the Beats. Two of them commiserate over imagining their mothers hiding in bomb shelters. The screenwriter presumably felt the psychological issues the Beats were dealing with had entirely to do with the thought of their parents getting hurt.

The movie opens with Jennifer's father, Paul (Farrar), who's on his way home on a train with his twenty four year old new French wife, Nichole (Noelle Adam). They seem like a nice enough couple and Paul tells Nichole about his anxieties regarding his wayward daughter. When the three are in a room together, the film gives Jennifer some points by giving Paul one really obnoxious character trait to justify the girl's otherwise random surliness.

He starts waxing eloquent about this city he's designed. "You know, psychologists think that most human neuroses come from too much contact with other humans," is the dubious motive played completely straight he offers to Nichole. "I call it 'City 2000'. Grime, filth, poverty, noise, hustle, and bustle--these things would be unknown. An almost silent place. Soundproofed with the use of flying bevelled walls of concrete which also serve to cut wind and rain." I'd say he was written absurdly over the top but judging from how new parts of cities have been put together over the decades since then the film seems prophetic in this regard.

Nichole tries to make friends with Jennifer with the usual "young step mom" plot tension. When Jennifer finds out Nichole may have been a stripper--and Paul doesn't know--the movie starts to pick up steam with its real focus. Jennifer manages to talk her way into the strip club across from the coffee bar despite being underage. Christina Aguilera recently claimed to have invented twerking but I'd say this lady arguably has a claim:

We see a few lovely girls on stage whose dancing talents are well above the divey strip club this is supposed to be. They strip down to pasties before Christopher Lee finally shows up as the sleazy proprietor who tries to enlist Jennifer even after finding out she's underaged.

And Hills really was underaged, she was sixteen--unusual for a film from this era, Jennifer is a teenager played by a teenager. Which explains why in a later scene, when she strips for her friends, there's a body double. Though the double doesn't strip past her bra and panties and we see Hills in her underwear in an earlier scene. What's even stranger is the double is extremely obvious; she has a completely different hairstyle.

In this BFI interview from two years ago Hills talks about taking her clothes off for the famous scene in Antonioni's Blow-Up a few years later, which was followed by her taking part in the vigorous menage a trois in A Clockwork Orange.

When I talked to Antonioni, at first I had no inkling he’d ever use me; it was just a lovely chat with this wonderfully talented person. When he offered me the role, at first I turned it down, I just didn’t think I could undress. But then I realised I’d just turned 21 and I could do whatever the hell I wanted. I had to call up his secretary and get her to intercept the letter.

The interviewer says Hills in Beat Girl was "the first believable teenager on British screens." Which makes me wonder if he's ever seen Brighton Rock. Hills doesn't exactly give a bad performance but Steve McQueen was a more believable teenager in The Blob.

Strange Case of Dr. Marlowe and Mr. Blake

The most accurate Jekyll and Hyde adaptation I've seen so far doesn't even have a character named Jekyll or Hyde. 1971's I, Monster was released the same year as Hammer's Doctor Jekyll and Sister Hyde and featured Hammer's two top stars, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, but came from Hammer's rival, Amicus. The box office was apparently not as kind to I, Monster but Amicus won in the long run with this film--a much more cerebral take that makes much--perhaps too much--of Freud's ideas partly anticipated by Robert Louis Stevenson in his work. It also has some great atmosphere and performances.

For some reason, the name of Henry Jekyll is changed to Charles Marlow and Edward Hyde is changed to Edward Blake--all other names remain the same as those in the source material--Lanyon, Enfield, Poole, and, most surprisingly, Utterson.

The protagonist of the novella, Utterson almost never figures in adaptations at all, much less in the prominent role he occupies here. And Peter Cushing is very well cast in the role--one can almost see him in the opening lines of the novella:

Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed in discourse, backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow loveable.

Peter Cushing was born to hold a cat.

The film suffers, though, from missing what seems to me the crucial aspect of Utterson's character. The novella describes him as having "an approved tolerance for others; sometimes wondering, almost with envy, at the high pressure of spirits involved in their misdeeds; and in any extremity inclined to help rather than to reprove." This is what makes him an appropriate adversary for Jekyll, whose object is moral purity. Utterson is a tolerant man who would sooner see the humanity he has in common with sinners than to try to purge them.

But the absence of this character trait may be related to the film's introduction of explicit references to Freud. In this version, Marlowe--Jekyll--is a sort of psychotherapist and we see him apply his concoction to two patients, for both having the effect of liberating their ids, allowing them to achieve catharsis by acting out repressed feelings.

This version introduces fewer female characters than other adaptations--Marlowe has neither wife or fiancee--but there is an effective scene early on where a female patient (Susan Jameson) comes across Marlowe's porn stash while he's in the other room.

No doubt it's her discovery of the doctor's repressed libido that partly inspires her when she's taken the drug to try to seduce him--but Marlowe is far too composed to take advantage of her. Christopher Lee is great in this and he seems to have an understanding of the role much like John Barrymore's--he plays Marlowe/Jekyll as an increasingly brittle mask for the reality of Blake/Hyde.

We don't see Blake lusting after women very much, though still more than we do in the novella. The man he kills in the novella is swapped out for a prostitute who rejects him in a tavern. Blake's assault of her later doesn't seem sexual--he beats her in the skull with his cane, as he does the man in the novella. And, as in the novella, the cane breaks and becomes a crucial piece of evidence but instead of it being a gift from Utterson its significance becomes its resemblance to a cane Marlowe describes his father owning and using to physically abuse him. So the filmmakers here have dialled the Freud up a bit higher. It's effective, too, suggesting Blake/Hyde is partly a manifestation of Marlowe/Jekyll's issues with his father.

I would have liked it if Blake didn't resemble Marlowe so much though Lee does a good job of creating an impression of a different person just through mannerisms and posture. He kind of looks like Terry Jones sometimes.

Twitter Sonnet #1102

Excessive feet delivered fast the bell.
The windward tack rewards with broken yard.
Escape refurbished spring with chilly Hell.
In leather pocket dwelt the horrid card.
A resting league surveyed a waiting rock.
By clouds and moon and watchful faces keeps.
A host below abides for nature's clock.
An hour hand composed of mountains sweeps.
The echoes of transparent hooves arose.
The time diminished marked in shrinking skies.
The pebbles fall above in ragged rows.
The land's receding now bereft of eyes.
A hardened net restrains relieving goods.
The endless grid of hedges grew to woods.