Hammer House of Horror S01E01 Witching Time

Welcome back to Midnight Viewing the Horror anthology podcast. I'm Father Malone and this is a brand new season, a brand new hosting configuration. It's a brand new Cherry Flavor. Did you see that?

Mike? What's that? Cherry?

Brand new Cherry Flavor was a TV series on Netflix. Was interesting, quirky in the best kind of a way. All Right, we have covered Night Gallery, We've covered Tales from the Dark Side in Another life, we covered Twilight Zone eighty five, and we're back to do it again. Who's we glad you asked? Joining me to discuss all things televisual from our friends across the pond is the projection Booths.

Mike white oudy, Hey, thanks so much for having me follow alone.

My pleasure and the show we're discussing. That program, as they would say, is the one season killer.

This was on Teams series.

That's our series one.

Technically we're going to get into britishisms, we might as well go as series.

This indeed a show that asks the question. This was on TV in nineteen eighty and we are discussing from nineteen eighty. Hammer House of Horror now Hammer Films, of course, founded back in nineteen thirty four by William Hines and James Carreras. That company mainly released comedies and swashbucklers, and a few crime flicks until about nineteen fifty eight. That's when the company would gain its notoriety as the UK's premier interpreter of classic horror when it released The Curse

They let that on TV.

Uh, yeah, I was pretty happy. Being a big fan of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This was the side of Patricia Quinn that I've never seen before, so yeah, I was pretty happy about that. But more over, what a quality cast. This cast is amazing. I love John Finch, I love Patricia Quinn. I'm kind of curious if Susan George was supposed to be in this because isn't that

Yeah.

Otherwise, I mean, the story is such that it it feels a little it reminds me of like when I was a kid growing up and there was a horror show on Nickelodeon where it was about, like, I don't know, a Puritan coming back and ruining the life of this teenage girl because it's this whole Yeah, we're time traveling and here's this witch and she's back.

But I was really hoping for more.

I wanted more of a plan or a plot or something, because she just seems so I don't know, just kind of well corny and nothing wrong with that, and then just mischievous. I was like, oh okay, and of course,

Now we just spent the better part of a year toiling and Tales from the Dark Side, And of course I love Tales from the Dark Side, do love Taless in the dark Side. But going back several years now from that, because this is nineteen eighty, would you not agree that the writing, even as a little dialogue and this little characterization as we're given here, just the level has come up remarkably right.

Yeah, this is movie quality. I was surprised at just how well, first off, how good it looks. The cinematography on this is wonderful. Yes, the writing is fantastic. Had they tacked on another what ten fifteen minutes, it would have been a feature length movie. It was just kind of blown away by that.

Yeah, it feels very adult, It feels very mature, even though it's delving even like further into the more lurid depths of what horror can offer, including the massive amounts of nudity. That's what we're talking about. Like this, I

Yes, that was nice.

Oh man, I thought that was beautiful. And it also brings us to a brand new segment here on Midnight Viewing Mike. This is called was Brian de Palma in England in nineteen eighty.

Yeah, this opening is very, very blowout, and yeah, just to have the composer be our main character, it felt a little barbarian sound studio as well for.

Me, very blow out. And then again body double, like the let's start with the artifice of it and then reveal that this is not this is the creators of that thing. So this is even more realistic, Like you can believe this even more than the old staid vampires and or like slashers.

Yeah.

I love when they start with this and just pull the rug out from under us, especially they're starting with that kind of unknown POV which we get through so many things, and yeah, that they get up to her and I was expecting to your point a really horrible screamed.

Yeah, exactly. And not only Brian de Palma, but is Jason Siegel a fan of this at all? This is about a composer whose actress wife girlfriend is cheating on him, and it does impose a Dracula puppet musical by the end, because that would have really would have been perfect.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was really happy with the whole idea of him being this composer and seeing some of the composition scenes. They didn't go too far into that. I was just like, Okay, this is nice. It's a nice way to set up this whole thing. I really like how we immediately get the idea of her cheating on him, and him pretty much. I think he knows that he's being cutcolded.

He's yeah, I mean, his first conversation is she's definitely

Yeah, and well you mentioned Macbeth, which I know he was in, but I was reminded a little bit too of Hamlet with this whole idea of the horse going crazy. That's almost like what they not magical realism, but like natural realism kind of thing where the animals are reflecting

Right? Yeah?

Yeah, he starts to question the whole idea of like, well, there really wasn't a storm last night, what's your problem? And that's one of the things that tips him off to think that our main character is little nuts.

Yeah. And by the way, that could have also worked in the opposite direction. It could have been because that's the wife's lover. He's trying to make him go crazy, because we've seen that how many times on night Gallery?

Yeah, gaslight a very intense gaslight with hiring a redhead to hang out in the barn.

Now, my question is during the storm, his dog, Billy runs off by the way. At a certain point, he calls after the dog and he just says Bill, and I thought, wow, what a great name for dog. Anyway, are we to believe that, because we do not see Billy again for the rest of the rest of the story, did she become Bill? Did the dog turn into the witch? Or And when he finds her, she's basically sort of crouched down like a dog. I think he thinks it's a dog at first, and.

Yeah, yeah, he has no idea what she is, that she's just black mound.

Basically, I think the possibility exists that dog transmographied into Patricia Quinn, making it the sexiest dog of what.

God damn, she's amazing.

Good lord. It's not the first time we've seen her naked, though she was not. Now for something completely different from the Meaning of Life. Meaning of Life, she's doing the sex education scene. She's John Cleese's wife comes in to demonstrate with it.

I think I've seen that movie.

I watch again.

Speaking of Nickelodeon, there was a making of Movies show on Nickelodeon when I was growing up, and they just kept playing the same four baby episodes over and over again, and one of them was of Life. What a weird thing to put on Nickelodeons, the Making of the Meaning of Life. That one Dark Crystal. I can't remember the other ones. But yeah, that whole thing with the guy

I watched those same ones. I remember those ones. Do you remember a similar behind the scenes behind the movies show hosted by Leonard Nimoy?

Yes?

Was that lights, camera action or something?

Yes?

Yeah, And I remember once they had on a special effects guy, like like prosthetics and masks and stuff, and there was like a second head that they placed on Nimoy and he's talking to it and he said, and I remembered at the time thinking it was just a funny name for a movie. But Nimoy says to the prop because the prop is from this movie, he says,

It doesn't feel it feels like nick might have taken name rather than vice versa.

I don't know.

Then we'll have to look at the timeline because I'm looking for that show and I'm unable to find that the Nimoy one.

Yeah, oh man, that's listeners. Somebody they'll write in, Actually, somebody please find that Nemoy show for us.

You would think it would be on my spleen dot org, but I'm not finding it there.

Oh what else is going on in this episode? Oh?

Power of light bulbs scares the shit out of our Yeah, well, you know, I was.

It made me happy that they made some sort of effort to show that she would be frightened by these things, that there was some time passed, because how many episodes of time traveling television if we watched where people are just like automatically accepting of everything. I think about Dave Leiterman's top ten list of things Abraham Lincoln would say if he were alive today, and one of them was

Yeah, exactly.

And it is kind of clever to have it so that when she comes in, it's all candlelit, and she's like, oh, okay, yeah, like that's normal, that's solely normal for me. And I'm surprised she didn't just she does sit there and like flip the light a few times. I just kept thinking that she was going to do that over and over. It's almost like dissolved to her hours later, like still flipping the light.

At a certain point, John Finch imprisons her in one of the bedrooms. He locks her into the bedroom and all I could think was like, you don't need to do that. Just give her like a blender or something like you joined this thing on and off and just leave, Go get your friend.

What match be is this? And the next thing you know, you just hear screams exactly, oh yeah, yeah, Well give her a vibrator. She seems to be very amorous in this episode.

Speaking of which, so there is there a couple of sex scenes in this but they have the one that is featured is there's a sequence where she's It ends with her scratching her nails down his back and gouging into it. And I bring it up because there's a

That was nice.

Yeah. Yeah, again, this thing is shot so well and it's not just a simple Okay, we're gonna have two characters in a room and we're going to lock down the camera and have them move around. No, we're cutting, cutting, cutting. There are so many shots on this it's really well done.

Yeah, the look is actually spectacular. And look, it's their film division basically funneled into the television and working with a lot of veteran television people like this director is a TV animal. Basically he was always a TV But yeah, I'm knocked out. I don't think there's only thirteen episodes of this series appropriate. But I don't think we're ever going to say the words. This looked really set bound. It's just too slick.

No, nothing in here looks like it was shot on the set. I don't know if it was, but it look like it, that's for sure. I really like the shot when it is his psychiatrist's friend asking him questions and you've got Finch laying closer to the camera and half of his body is obscured, and then you've got his friend with the needle in the background, and then you can see the whole ceiling, which is so nice

They definitely are. In fact, ninety percent of all of this series is filmed in one house, the Hampton House, which Hammer Films had purchased in Hampton. So we looked at a map today of all of the filming locations. It's all within twenty miles of this house. So every time they come, there's woods right there, there's a town

Which I guess is appropriate for the opening and closing of this where they just got to show the big house and I was hoping for you. We just came off of a show that has one of the best books ever, and I was really like Oh, what are they going to do for the opening of this Not a lot. But that's my small complaint about this show.

Yeah it's I like the theme because it's so modern in a way, but it is just random shots of this house and you would think maybe if there was a season two, they could have at least cut a montage together of creepy shit from this season, but they just weren't there. But I agree, I'm a happy to skip. I would never skip the opening of Tails from the Dark Side, but this one, I'm like, eh, I don't care.

Yeah, well it's a quick opening too.

It's not like we're sitting there and okay, get to the episode, and at least it's not as irritating as

Yeah, when that third season theme came in, down Dune, Dune done, run for your life, Jesus, yeah, turn off the TV.

Yeah, she loems so sorry.

The wife seems so clueless when she does. You talked about the scratches. When she sees all the scratches on his back, I'd be like, Okay, who were you fucking honey, But instead she's just like, oh, so many scratches. Oh, what's going on?

Really?

How did you do that to yourself? She lets him off the hook.

Oh god, yeah, I saw on a rake multiple times.

And I love that she's back because he's completely strung out and in her mind hallucinatory, and she's like, you need to relax, Let's go for a walk through the woods. No, I don't want to do that ever, And then she's with him downstairs, goes upstairs, finds a decapitated bird that is fluttering around. It has just been killed, and she's like, what did you do?

Yes, lady, Oh, I love that bird. I love the bird prop and how it's just twitching its little wings.

That's so nice.

And it's got like the bone sticking out of the neck like a cartoon bone.

It looks like.

It was so horrified. Like yeah, and it's just these subtle things like I don't know, but God bless hammer.

Yeah.

I love that bird. And I love like later where he's burying the bird in a grave that is way too huge. Yes, but he goes down and like makes out with it like this is I don't know.

But yeah.

It turns into his wife. And then his wife is riding along on her horse, and then you have her holding her face, so you're just like, okay, is this some sort of like voodoo type thing that's going on, Like of the bird, she's being affected. And then yeah, when he comes up, he's got blood all.

Down his face.

I'm like, oh, man, what were you doing to that bird?

Like he think he goes to crush it with his shovel, and then it turns into his wife, and then he goes down and makes out with her after thinking like, oh, I might have just stabbed my wife in the face with a shovel. Time for some tongue.

Yeah, Jesus was so strong.

Oh and at that point they still could have it still could be just in his head because like they cut to her, like when she's still on the horse, they show a wound like he's caused it, and then when they cut back to it, it's just not there. So it could be nothing at all. But of course it isn't because you said voodoo. Don't we get a version of that here? Yes, they're playing every angle this tiny, little hideous little thing with a lock of her hair.

I guess, yeah, yeah, I was kind of I didn't see the part where the wife kind of twists the doll and makes it into Patricia Quinn because I was like, oh, I'd be afraid to throw that doll into the fire, and it's like, oh, okay, it's the Patricia Quinn version of the doll. Now I'm like, oh, very talented lady to be able to swap out the the voodoo dolls.

There, like to what you were saying earlier. Like, the one criticism I do have of this episode overall is that we don't really get any groundwork about what the plan is. Like it's all just sort of happenstance. And that's fine because we're viewing it through the lead character's point of view, but we're the audience and we know more.

Yeah, yeah, major, yeah, talking about going back to the nudity thing that his wife is wandering around in broad underwear so much of this episode, like that whole middle sequence after she comes back from a ride, she's just broad and underwear the whole rest of the time until, like I think it's the next act where she finally puts on some clothes, and it so reminds me of when I was a kid and watching PBS and watching

Yeah.

Well, what's funny is Roy Skaggs was a producer of Benny Hill.

Oh funny, Okay.

In his time away from Hammer, he worked on the He worked with the Benny Hills Show. Yeah, we get the full I'm going to encourage people to watch another series right now, but I'm going to encourage you to do that after you've watched Hammer. House of Horror in its entirety. There are two shows actually, obviously Garth Marenghi's Dark Place, which is the more famous of the two, and then Steve Coogan has a show called Doctor Horrible's House of Terror or something like that.

Oh okay, I haven't seen that one.

Now. That one is way more specific. That one is more about Amicus and Tygon and Hammer during the seventies. So it's this esthetic, the same sort of I don't even know how to describe Hammer in seventies sort of British cinema. But nevertheless, both Dark Place and the Steve Coogan show take great pains to make fun of this esthetic, and you will not enjoy these shows if you watch those first. I'm telling you this will just be a curiosity.

I will have to check those.

I've seen Garth Marenghi, of course, but I have not seen this Doctor Terrible, so I'm gonna.

Have to check it out.

It's very fun. It's very specific too, like that if you're a fan of seventies British horror at all, particularly their anthology Horror, you're going to have a ball with this. Which I'm a terrible host in that I don't have the name off the top of my head.

But anyway, yeah, Doctor Terrible's House of Horrible and yeah, the first episode is Lesbian vampire Lovers of Lust. There you go, all right, as someone who just watched Twins of Evil, I can definitely get into that.

Okay, I don't know what else are you going.

Oh. I was glad that the priest character.

Seems to have his head about him very well, and he wasn't trying to be like, oh, yeah, you're crazy, but he kind of knew the lore. He didn't seem to be like, Okay, he does suggest an exorcism and that is kind of what really pushes this to the limit and brings about the voodoo doll and all that. But yeah, I again like, oh, pretty reasonable prest character.

That was kind of nice.

Yeah, I thought so too, And yet it ends up being an investigation kind of thing with the wife. By the way, It's like this was interesting to me in it I don't think you would have gotten this in America. She's cheating on him from the beginning, yeah, and like and he's just a pawn of this horrible thing, so she's effectively unleashed it. So she never really gets any punishment here, like, oh, she shows up, saves the day and gets to be a fucking hero, and it's like you're kind of a cause.

Yeah, no, no, come up in whatsoever, which is so weird compared to everything that we've been seeing where it's like, Okay, there's a balance to the universe and if somebody is bad, we need to punish them appropriately. We saw that so much with Tails from the Dark Side. No, she wins at the end, and I found that to be very remarkable. I was just like, Okay, well, where's the twist, and there is no twist.

And the thing is Dark Side would have at least brought it up, like I'm bringing it up because we watched it and are fucking critiquing it. But like, the story itself doesn't really play into that at all. In fact, it as soon as she shows up, it tries its best.

Yeah, And he's the one that goes nuts and tries to burn her at the stake, and I'm just like okay. And for a minute there I thought that was going to happen, because, like you said, she doesn't get come up, and this would have been almost appropriate for a cheating spouse. But instead, Yeah, she saves the day and wins everything. All right, good for you.

Yeah, dark Side would have burned her at the stake

That's the place I want to be.

Hell yeah, okay, anything else, No, I'm good right on. Well, on the next episode of Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology Podcust, We're going to be taking a look at season two, episode two, that is the thirteenth reunion. Until then, where can people find you if they're looking for you?

Mister Mike White, Well, everything that I do is over at weirdingwaymedia dot com, including the show that I do every week for the last fourteen and some years, which is the Projection Booth podcast. So come on by and listen to me ramble on about movies.

Oh my god, are you talking about the best fucking movie podcast out there? I agree? Everybody go see that. As for me, you're listening to my show, Midnight Viewing. We're on twice a week Mondays. It's Father Malone's weekly round Up. Every Friday we do either our horror anthology podcast or one of our fests. We're currently going through star trek Fest, proving very popular. Thank you all for joining and going to the Patreon page and all that shit. I don't have a sign off for this one yet.